—How does anyone go about it?— The others turn to her, on her. It is recognition, something comrades learnt, had to, demand of one another’s qualities, chance of effectiveness, in the Struggle.
The eagerness to see action instead of settling for condemnation by disgust; she sees they have higher expectations of her familiarity with the process of justice than she can offer, straight off. Justice Centre elders will know how, by whom, what criminal charges should, can be made.
Jabu has long overcome what she had to admit, face that time when she went to her father after her day at the Zuma trial and found the poster image celebrating dismissal of the case at her Baba’s place, her home. If you live with someone through successive phases of your life together, you don’t, can’t know how he or she has come to terms with them, the disillusion and the pain, can only sense this has come about. She’s gone back on a visit to the village where the Elder of the Methodist Church, the school headmaster, decrees the way of an extended family’s life, his synthesis of what are known as traditional values and his rightful claim of whatever gained at such a price of centuries’ loss and indignity (you defy tradition and send your female child for education in the coloniser’s culture). He certainly supported Zuma for triumphant election, president of the ANC at Polokwane, as preliminary to becoming president of the country, giving the weight of his voice to electioneering among collaterals and the village. But does not expect, it seems, obedience from her. There was the customary welcome for this daughter and the grandson who successfully belongs both to the colonial-style city school and the country cousins on their soccer field. Offered to teach them to pick up the ball and run with it rugby-style.
So she’s tough, Jabu. Tougher than a Reed. Although together—they’ve grown through bush camps and detention as their initiation. No—not tough, this gentle woman of his, soft flesh on her hips and more on backside now, in confirmation of black women’s femininity. No other ideal adopted; not conditioned like his mother, dieting to stay young beyond successive stages. No, not tough, strong in the way he never could be, of course. A matter of another conditioning, her people, her Baba, all the generations behind them have survived those centuries of everything determined to demean and destroy them. His drop of Jew’s blood? If he’d been the survivor son of German Jews who were shoved into Nazi incinerators; if he were a Palestinian in Gaza, he would be tough in her way, maybe.
Now she has the resources she’s earned, she’s able after that initial retreat into victim as along with the cleaning women, to use all these advantages combined within her.
She keeps the two of them informed on the understanding that it will be a long process, there are many devices of the guilty for delaying the law: the Judicial Commission may have to be involved before there’s public demand for justice to be seen to be done before the Constitutional Court. Maybe he could get going movement at his university beyond its certainty that such horror could never have happened there.
How certain. Change, change, the past had to be overturned but what crawls out of the rubble can surface in some form anywhere, even in institutions undergoing real transformation: there are more black-of-all-shades in the Faculty of Science this year than last. Remind himself; some reassurance against disgust.
There is between them the realisation that he had not discarded, ruled out consideration. Did this mean she is convinced it would not, could not come to pass, but she must grant him the freedom to research what he knows he is putting before her, and what he is putting before their daughter and son. He receives some further information he applied for by email from the immigration department of the government of Australia.
Yes yes conditions apply. A positive response, a sign. He takes it to his lawyer—wife, comrade, for interpretation beyond his: interpretation for them all, Steve, Jabu, Sindiswa, Gary Elias, applying to them all, if it comes to that; comes about.
September, spring, season of burgeoning.
The African National Congress Youth League has a new spokesman, he says of the call to ‘Kill for Zuma’ the League won’t use the word again but ‘will stop at nothing to see Zuma elected as the country’s next president’.
Peter Mkize is promoted general manager of a group of communication enterprises, mobiles, data modems.
Blessing has now her own catering firm in partnership with Gloria Mbanjwa who used to be a waitress at the coffee shop Isa frequents; a BEE opportunity.
Isa has opened a gallery selling indigenous art, with one of the artists himself.
Jake is in insurance, with good prospects, a company where one of the ministers of the present government (may not be around next year after the elections) sits on the board and has investment.
Jabu’s place among comrade ex-combatants, in her career both prestigious, likely to become prosperous, while devoted to justice against the past and for justice in the present, has been the first to see something like the Black Economic Empowerment policy in evidence even if only within the class of the Suburb.
When the Suburb gets together each in this trusted company can unburden frustrations, unforeseen situations, unexpected successes of their piece of the jigsaw, argue where it will fit in to make the map of the new life. Not everyone sees the same cartography, anyway. These are the mountains to sweat your way up—no, these are the cesspits still to be drained of the shit of the past, no, they’re the green fields in the dew.
—What d’you do with leftovers when you make all that fancy food for government people, what happens to it I wonder? Do your helpers eat what they like? Takeaways?— Isa tick-tocking a finger at Blessing.
—It goes to any orphanage or old age home, school—you know, that’s near, we’ve got our fridge van.—
—Caviare for the kids.— Jake makes affectionate fun of Blessing.
Peter joins in. —You’re not jealous she brings things home for me. I’ll call you next time she has a bottle of wine under her apron.—
There’s also development of another nature, would seem entirely personal if it were not that all their situations out of their pasts are personal to the ex-combatants’ comradeship of the Suburb. Marc was now often not among the Dolphins when the Reeds brought their young over for a Sunday swim. He was missing in the lively adult playfulness around the church pool; assumed with his growing success that he was busy staging his new play in some festival, another part of the country. He walked in one night late when Steve and Jabu were about to go to bed and told them he had fallen in love with a woman. He was going to live with her: his first time, ever. He wanted to talk. Never been bisexual. This was a decisive discovery—they would understand. He who’d become their comrade was no longer a Dolphin.
Summer and he’s in court again, Jacob Zuma: the charges of corruption against the President of the African National Congress are withdrawn in a High Court judgment. The statement later that this order was made while it was the judge’s belief that there had existed political interference in the defendant’s case was not the reason why he held that charges against Zuma were unlawful, his belief was merely a response to the State’s desire to have the allegations struck off . . . it was ‘an adjunct to issues of law’: the national Department of Prosecution had not, he said, given Zuma a chance to make representations before deciding to charge him.
—This did not relate to Zuma’s guilt or innocence in the criminal charges against him—what the hell does that mean?— Now it is Jake who turns up: at the Reed door. She’s home, the lawyer comrade, and it’s to her that a page torn from a newspaper is thrust.
Steve brings beers and a packet of chips to one of the Suburb’s usual sites of discussion, the terrace.
—You’re guilty or you’re not guilty, isn’t that what the court decides! What else does the whole rigmarole, evidence, counter-evidence—
—Oh hold on Bra, you’re not a lawyer, neither am I, but there’s the case of extenuating circumstances, I remember that time when what’s-his-name, Fikile—
—Extenuating all
right, the charges have been hanging on for a year now, no hearing.—
Under this, she has been rereading to herself the newspaper report she knows from a copy of the judgment at the Justice Centre—there were calls for a commission of inquiry. This means he says he was not in this specific corruption case handing down judgment on the arms deal—Zuma’s involved there, too, through allegations of his money-making tenders conspiracy with Shaik and the French arms company. —Look, Zuma’s had threats of prosecution over his head for years.—
—Commission of Inquiry. Not to worry, delay, delay, and it’ll all j-u-s-t go away.— Jake’s sweep of the arm to a future. It is set before them: this is what the years in prison, exile, deaths in the bush battles were for.
And Zuma himself was ten years on the Island.—
Wethu has seen Marc at the gate and brought him through the garden, the Reed and Anderson, Mkize boys come along from the street with their steeds, a rivalry of ikon-adorned bicycles.
—What’s making your cabal so long-faced, losses on the stock exchange, you should be so lucky, afford the bull and the bear ring, ay? Don’t you listen to the radio, this evening’s Friday programme how to appreciate booze was on whisky, enjoy the single malt from the unpolluted streams of Bonny Scotland, not that beer you’re swallowing brewed with urine from streams around squatter camps.— He’s come to invite them to church, not the church pool but the Anglican one where he is going to be married, and to a party with the Dolphins after. —They’re reconciled to my defection, not only same-sex marriages are respectable, kosher, now.—
The flash of laughter changes the aspect of everyone.
Isa swings round to reach him with a knowing embrace, they’re laughing together as if in some secret shared. Yes, of course, he, the Dolphin was the one who came to take care of her and the children while Jake was in hospital after the hijack attack, when no comrade made her- or himself available. After the celebratory neighbours left with the future bridegroom the mood remained. Jabu who rarely makes any intrusive remarks about the Suburb’s private lives, softly, barely mouthed, —D’you think she . . . did it that time when they . . .— He spluttered again into laughter, now at her, his turn an urge to embrace her as if in example. —Are you telling me our Isa initiated him!—
And then recovered, asking himself—why are we heteros so joyful, is he a trophy for us, do we still have a trace, throwback contempt for the third sex, righteous about any conversion to our kind, the only way to live; to be.
A week after Jacob Zuma had again walked free out of court not on a charge of rape but of corruption, the National Executive Council dismissed the President of the country, Thabo Mbeki, from the National Presidency. It’s the landline that’s summoning not the Michael Jackson signal on Sindiswa’s mobile. Jake: —So the vacancy’s there for Zuma!—
The Christmas season—not in climate sense, the southern hemisphere is summer holiday time. Instead of snow for the old man’s sleigh, time of peace and goodwill brings also the time of summing up the academic year ended. Total enrolments, 97 per cent of the country’s children are in schools, 40 per cent are now no-fee schools. Recent statistics show 67.4 per cent of schools have no computers, 79.3 per cent have no libraries. And 88.4 per cent no functional lavatories.
Under the ‘Outcome Based’ education system (what’s happened to ‘Results’?) due to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme black enrolments doubled this year: black students now may enter universities with a lower academic qualification than coloured, Indian or white students. —The freedom hierarchy.— No one catches Lesego’s low bass, or if they do, takes him up on devaluing his own university. Between Faculty room farewell exchanges of who is going where, sea or mountains there is the rumour that our universities are going to lose accreditation in the world because here students are accepted without adequate qualification.
Over the seasonal get-together drinks at house or church pool in the Suburb it’s not the comrades’ academic who turns within the holiday mood to interrupt, it’s Marc, there with his bride, who’s brought up the subject —How do we know that the students are not granted degrees on the same principle, that’s the Outcome of Outcome based education . . .—
—How are you going to open up higher education without making some concessions for blacks to get in—
—But that’s still exactly where we were months, a year ago.— Since the injury to his spine Jake has a tic of gathering himself to pout his chest. —Can you tell me the ‘advancement’ in granting degrees to students who’re going to enter professions unequipped to do the work they’re supposed to do. What’s the sense? So people are happy to say—see, dumb blacks! That’s perpetuating the racist ‘inferiority of blacks’ brains’, that’s apartheid dolled up as Black Economic Empowerment.—
In the flying decibels of voices these are directed at Steve, the university professor. Although the comrades know about Australia: what has he to do with what happens, is going to come about in education, here.
So what right has he to be asked. To give any answer. Are they pretending not to know about Down Under, avoid, deny judgement of him, one of their own.
Presuming the comrade still has the decision for Australia in mind whether or not negotiating it; at the university Lesego in African Studies and one or two other academics sometimes speculate on who might have the chance to succeed him in the Faculty of Science; an opportunity, however come about. Everything in what’s known as the country’s new dispensation erupts, and then drags on, become somehow everyday life. The country is in its adolescence.
The Christmas season.
By chance brings return of one of those violent happenings whose consequences are resolved by Jake’s other gesture, his sweep of the arm, delay, delay, delay, it’ll just go away. The initiation of black cleaners by white students into the barbarity of white culture seemed to have done just that. There had been now and again a few inner-page references to what the university’s intentions were to be ‘dealing with the incident’. These apparently were whether the students should be allowed to continue with their studies; whether or not the university’s concern included the consequences of the ‘incident’ for the cleaners wasn’t mentioned. But while the year was running out the incident of the year before untimely surfaced; as black and white unemployed men took the Santa Claus job in supermarkets under the ritual beard, one of those students gave or sold a copy of the video and more photographs appeared in newspapers. Greeting of the guests, circus of prancing drunken display under the glee whip of encouragement, heads bent over the pot the guests were uproaringly forced to eat from; again the back of the student pissing in preparation of the potjiekos. It hasn’t just gone away: a reminder. But maybe at the wrong time. Everyone preoccupied elsewhere.
For him the reminder was, could be taken as to himself. Although happenstance, he had received after an on-off of contacts with Australian consultancies, slow progression to the education authority, some finality to be approached: presentation to specific universities. Academic credentials, CV stuff; he could and did ask Professor Nduka to write a character and personality recommendation for him—Nduka the man who had left for his reasons his own Nigeria to take up a foreign appointment. Could not approach one of those in cabinet posts whose supporting testaments would really count, the Struggle comrades who had known him in that time and could vouch best for what were his qualities—this comrade leaving the country.
An impimpi. In the new life: caught a glimpse of himself in that shop window.
Applications for a post in the Faculty of Science are very encouragingly received by the three or four he approached. The consultancies supply glowing pamphlets describing the climate, flora and fauna, sports facilities, cultural activities, likely to be decisive for an intellectual of wide interests in the community where each university is situated. He tells—University of Adelaide, South Australia, Melbourne, Victoria State, James Cook University, Queensland. After a pause —Show me the map.— Sindi has an atlas
handy among her school books she lends her mother without curiosity about the purpose, she is gasping, conspiratorial, into her mobile as called from her room she brings it. The children don’t know about Australia, there has been care that they don’t overhear—too soon.
Only Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef mean anything conjured up visually, it’s consideringly admitted. But not that there are actual institutions, universities named and placed in the unknown; simply possibility confirmed as existing. Nothing has been spoken of opportunities in the practice of law. The acceptance of his opportunities as if understood, of course also hers, in common.
He had seen in those first advertisements of welcome to Australia, civil engineers, opticians, nurses, refrigeration mechanics, armature winders, crane operators, no lawyers on the list of desirables. They had not talked in the private hours where they might have, of what would be open to her—there. Not as someone’s wife brought along in his baggage. Whether her LLB degree was a recognised one in that country’s judicial system. Whether Australia has enough lawyers, thank you. Whether her present experience as an attorney in a Justice Centre is a plus in the capacity of an appointment to commercial legal practice or a social service created to provide defence lawyers for people who can’t afford to hire them.
—You could ask about that.— Ceding to him the possibilities for her.
So they have been living on Baba’s customary law that a woman will as ever live on the decisions of her man.
—Look, you ask, you’re the one who knows the ins and outs of law. There’s a seminar next week, some hotel.—
—What day. I’ve got to be in court Tuesday—no, Wednesday.— Her casually practical response was the answer: she is independently with him in the decision of the possibility—Australia.
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