She was not allowed to finish. “Certainly not, Mma,” said Mma Potokwane. “I am not a chair—I am a person.”
Mma Makutsi did not press the point. Mma Potokwane’s protestations were all very well, but, now that she came to mention it, she did look remarkably like a chair—a great, accommodating upholstered armchair. You could certainly sit on Mma Potokwane and feel perfectly comfortable: she was the sort of chair into which one might sink after a hard day’s work—sink, and possibly not reappear until hours later, emerging from voluminous feather-filled cushions. That was the sort of chair that Mma Potokwane would be, whereas poor Mr. Polopetsi, if he were ever to be a chair, would be a wooden kitchen chair, hard and uncomfortable, because he did not carry much spare flesh; unlike Mma Potokwane, who had more padding and spare flesh than the Bank of Botswana had currency reserves—and those reserves, as everybody knew, were considerable.
It was a delicious train of thought, this chairing of people, but it was a distraction from the business of the moment, and so Mma Makutsi said, “I think that you have order now. As long as Charlie keeps quiet.”
Mma Potokwane unfolded a piece of paper and laid it on her knee. “I’ve made some notes,” she said. “There is an agenda of matters we need to discuss.” She picked up the paper and peered at it. “Number 1: Strategy. Number 2: Tactics. Number 3: Leaflets. Number 4: Posters. Number 5: Any other relevant business.”
She looked out over the meeting. Everybody seemed to be nodding their agreement. Then Charlie raised a hand. “Excuse me, Mma. There’s another item: money. What about money?”
Mr. Polopetsi, who had said nothing so far, nodded sagely. “A very good point, Charlie. Strategy and tactics may be free, but leaflets and posters require money. What are we going to do about that?”
Nobody said anything. Behind her desk, Mma Ramotswe shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She had not given any thought to financing her campaign, and this only increased her misgivings over the whole thing. She hoped that Mma Potokwane was not assuming that she, the candidate, would cover the costs; if that had been the assumption, then the matron should have mentioned that to her before persuading her to stand.
At last Mma Potokwane cleared her throat. “Money is very important,” she pronounced.
This was greeted with silence. Charlie looked at Fanwell, and Fanwell looked out of the window.
Mr. Polopetsi raised a finger. “May I say something, Mma Potokwane?”
That was typical of Mr. Polopetsi’s timidity, thought Mma Makutsi. It was, in general, a good thing that he was not a pushy man, as there were far too many of those around, but she wondered whether being timid was the best quality to have if you were involved in politics.
Mma Potokwane made an encouraging gesture. “Think of this as a kgotla.” That was the traditional village meeting, the bedrock of Botswana’s democracy, a firm rule of which was that everyone could have a say. “Of course you may speak, Rra. It is very important that people should be allowed to speak. That is the way we all get to hear useful ideas.” She paused. “Have you an idea, Rra?”
Mr. Polopetsi looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. “No, Mma,” he stuttered. “It wasn’t so much an idea as a question. May I ask a question?”
“Perhaps that’s his question,” said Charlie, in a stage whisper. “Perhaps his question is whether he can ask a question.”
Mma Potokwane glared at Charlie. “It is very important that people do not interrupt other people,” she said. “If we have constant interruptions—with comments from the floor…”
“But I am on the floor,” said Charlie. “If we cannot hear from the floor, then I will be able to say nothing.”
Mma Makutsi sighed. “Sometimes you just don’t understand, Charlie. The floor of a meeting is not the actual floor you’re sitting on. The floor is all the people who are there—that is the sort of floor that Mma Potokwane was talking about.” She sighed again, and for a few moments remembered the lectures on meeting procedure at the Botswana Secretarial College, where the taking of minutes had been explained in great detail and the finer points of recording proceedings extensively discussed. It was long ago now, and the lecturer who had taught them all that was now late—she had seen the notice in the newspaper and had been saddened at the snapping of yet another link with that part of her past, her student days. One day, she thought, we should have a reunion, and all of us who sat together in the college’s classrooms could meet once again and compare notes…Except for Violet Sephotho, of course, who could be left off the list of those invited.
But now it was time to get back to money and to the question that Mr. Polopetsi had raised.
“Mr. Polopetsi,” said Mma Potokwane, “you may certainly ask a question. Please go ahead.”
Mr. Polopetsi looked around him nervously. “How many people are there in this room?” he asked.
Charlie sniggered. “If you can’t work that out, Rra…”
“Hush, Charlie,” said Mma Potokwane. And then, to Mr. Polopetsi, “Is that your question, Rra?”
“No, I can count how many people there are in the room, Mma. What I wanted to say was, if you think of how many people there are in this room, and then you imagine that each of those people gave one hundred pula to the campaign, that would end up being quite a large amount. That would cover the printing bills if we can find somebody who has one of those big office photocopiers.”
Once again there was silence as people digested this suggestion. Then Fanwell spoke. “I don’t have one hundred pula,” he said.
Now Mma Makutsi had an idea. “We need to have a sliding scale,” she said. “I have always said that sliding scales are a good way of doing things.”
They waited for her to expand.
“So,” she went on, “people who earn less than other people will give, say, twenty pula, and those who have more money than the people who have less money will give more money than the people with less money.”
“That sounds very clear,” said Mma Potokwane. “I will give one hundred pula and Fanwell can give ten.”
“That will be very fair,” said Fanwell.
Mma Potokwane was decisive. “In that case, that is the money issue dealt with. Now we need to talk about strategy.”
Fanwell, relieved by the financial settlement, raised his hand. “I think we need to be both positive and negative,” he said. “That will be the key to success here.”
They all looked at him.
“Just like a battery,” Fanwell continued. “A battery has a positive terminal and a negative terminal. You put the two of them together and you get a strong current. That’s how batteries work.”
“There is a lot of truth in that,” said Mma Potokwane. Then she added, in a slightly puzzled way, “But how does that apply here, Fanwell?”
Fanwell thought for a few moments before he explained himself. “I think we should tell people what we are going to do if Mma Ramotswe gets elected. That will be the positive terminal. But then we should tell them about how bad the other candidate will be. That will be the negative terminal.”
“Very, very good,” enthused Mma Potokwane. “I think that is exactly what we should do.” She turned to Mma Ramotswe. “What do you think, Mma? Do you agree? You’re the candidate and you’ll be putting these messages across. Do you agree?”
Mma Ramotswe’s mind had been wandering and she had not followed every detail of the proceedings. But she had taken in the gist of what Fanwell was suggesting, and it seemed to her that there was a fundamental issue here as to what she would do in the unlikely event of her being elected. What was she to say? Did she have any policies? All politicians, it seemed to her, had a long list of policies. She was not sure if she had any—other than to veto the building of the Big Fun Hotel.
“I agree with the positive part,” she said. “I am not so sure about being negative, b
ut we can come to that later.” She paused, and looked about the room. “The problem, though, is this: What exactly am I going to do? What are the policies that I can put to the voters?”
“Progress,” said Mr. Polopetsi. “You must tell them you believe in progress.”
Mma Ramotswe considered this. She was not sure whether she agreed. Most people would not hesitate to say that they believed in progress, but was all progress necessarily a good thing? The people who wanted to build the Big Fun Hotel would undoubtedly claim that their plans were an example of progress in operation, but if that was so, then it was not the sort of progress that Mma Ramotswe would like to see. Progress was more and better schools, better clinics, less poverty in general; progress was not riding roughshod over people’s wishes, pursuing profit at all costs, building large and noisy hotels in places where people wanted there to be quiet—in places where there were important memories of late people and what they meant to us. That was definitely not progress.
“Not all progress is good, Rra,” she said mildly.
Mma Potokwane looked thoughtful. “There’s truth in that, Mma. Yes, there is truth in that.”
Mma Makutsi thought that it would be possible to put across that message by talking about going forward. “Why not say, Let’s go forward together with Mma Ramotswe?” she suggested. “That would be a good message for people to get.”
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But where am I going?”
“Forward,” said Charlie. “Not backwards.”
“I think it’s becoming clear what we must do,” declared Mma Potokwane. “There are problems with progress because there is obviously good progress, which we like, and bad progress, which we do not. We can come back to this question of a slogan some other time, once we have had time to think a bit more. For now, I think we need to concentrate on tactics.”
The debate continued. There were many good ideas, and others that were generally agreed not to be all that good. Then there were one or two suggestions—mostly from Charlie—that were firmly vetoed by Mma Potokwane. One of these, which was that they should find somebody to break into the other side’s headquarters and find out what their plans were, attracted particular opprobrium. “This is not a game, Charlie,” warned Mma Potokwane. “We must be very careful to do everything correctly and legally. We are not Violet Sephotho, remember!”
At length the meeting came to an end. Everyone had been given a task of some sort, and everyone was keen to get on with it. Only Mma Ramotswe remained somewhat detached. Her doubts about the whole venture had only grown during this meeting, and now they weighed heavy upon her. It was too late now for her to withdraw, but her heart was far from being in this campaign, and there was a niggling feeling in the back of her mind that it would all end unhappily—or, even worse, messily. There were some people cut out for politics, but she was sure she was not one of them. She believed in reconciliation and compromise; politicians seemed to believe only in the routing of their opponents. That was not the way she saw the world. It was not the way her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, had seen it, either. It was not the way, she was sure, that the ancestors had viewed things. It was not the Botswana way…And yet, there were battles to be fought precisely because there were people, right there in Botswana, who were not doing things the Botswana way. The people who were proposing to build that hotel were a prime example of that. If they were to be defeated—because that progress was the wrong kind of progress—then perhaps it was necessary after all to engage in this unpleasant business of politics, with all its talk of positive and negative approaches, of strategy and tactics and the communication of messages. What was the difference, she wondered, between strategy and tactics? They both sounded very much the same to her. And why did people have to refer to communicating with others rather than talking to them? She sighed again, and joined in the general applause that followed Mma Potokwane’s closing of the meeting—but she did so with reservation, and with a heavy heart.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PHUTI AND GRACE EXCHANGE WORDS, BUT REGRET IT
AS MMA MAKUTSI drove home later that afternoon, her mind was full of the task that had been allocated to her at that morning’s meeting. It was, she thought, the most sensitive of the assignments that Mma Potokwane had allocated. While Mr. Polopetsi was charged with the task of designing the posters, and Mma Potokwane had undertaken the wording that would go on these, she had been entrusted with the far more onerous responsibility of assessing the company behind the hotel project. This had been Mr. Polopetsi’s idea. He had pointed out that, if the Big Fun Hotel was to be a campaign issue, then it was important for them to know more about the people behind it. “It is important to know your enemy,” he said. “If you know who he is and what he wants to do, then you can plan your defences. That is something that any soldier will tell you. He will say: Know who you’re up against. That is what he will say.”
Everybody at the meeting had been impressed with this, although Mma Makutsi had secretly wondered how Mr. Polopetsi knew what soldiers would say. If she were to think of the least likely person to mix with soldiers and to know their ways, then that person would undoubtedly be Mr. Polopetsi. But perhaps people did not mind too much about authenticity when it came to quoting others; Mma Ramotswe, after all, regularly quoted Seretse Khama although she had never met him. Mma Makutsi had long suspected that these quotes were entirely made up, even if she had to admit that the sentiments they expressed were, on the whole, consistent with that late great man’s philosophy of life. On the one occasion when Mma Makutsi had raised this issue, Mma Ramotswe had responded by saying that, even if Seretse Khama had not used the exact words suggested, and even if one could not be certain that he had ever expressed a view on the matter in hand, she was nonetheless sure that he would have said something similar had he had the opportunity to do so. Perhaps it was the same with Mr. Polopetsi’s quoting of soldiers. Even if he had never heard any soldiers talking about knowing one’s enemies or knowing what one was up against, he could be reasonably certain that this was the sort of thing that soldiers would say.
From Mr. Polopetsi’s suggestion to a definite plan was but one short step. Mma Makutsi would pay a visit to the headquarters of the hotel’s developers. She would speak to the manager there and find out as much as she could about their plans for the site. She would also find out who the hotel’s backers were, with a view to discovering some chink in their armour, some weakness that they could exploit in the arguments that were now sure to follow.
Charlie had seen a flaw in this plan. “But how are you going to do that, Mma?” he asked. “You can’t just turn up and ask: Who are you people and what are you planning to do? They will say, But who are you, Mma, and what makes you think you can come here and ask us questions like this? That is what they may say, you know. People don’t like to be asked personal questions by complete strangers.”
This was a valid objection, and it was a few minutes before Mma Makutsi was able to respond. “That’s a very good point, Charlie,” she said. “But I have a perfect excuse to go and see these people. It will be a commercial visit.”
They waited for her to explain.
“You see,” she went on, “if you build a hotel, you have to put furniture in it. They will need to buy chairs and beds and all sorts of other furniture. And where will they buy that from? From furniture shops.”
Fanwell emitted a sigh of discovery. “Ah, I see where this is going now. The Double—”
“Yes,” interjected Mma Makutsi. “Phuti’s company—the Double Comfort Furniture Store. We have supplied many hotels with many chairs. Many.”
“So they won’t be suspicious,” said Fanwell. “That is very clever, Mma. That is a very good trick.”
“It is not a trick,” sniffed Mma Makutsi. “It is a strategy. Or even a tactic. I will go to talk to them about a contract for chairs, but I shall try to find so much more than that.”
&
nbsp; Mma Ramotswe looked out of the window. She did not like subterfuge of any sort, but there were times when, as a private detective, you needed to have what Clovis Andersen called credible cover. If you could assume such cover without telling direct lies, then there was nothing too much to worry about. This situation was on the borderline, she thought. However, Mma Makutsi could say with complete truthfulness that she was from the Double Comfort Furniture Store—she was…in a sense. And it was also true—just—that she could claim to be discussing the possible purchase of chairs because Phuti’s company might well be interested in selling furniture to the developers. So she put aside her concerns and wished Mma Makutsi luck in what could be a very delicate operation. “It’s just as well you’re so experienced, Mma,” she said. “This is not an assignment for an inexperienced person.”
If Mma Ramotswe had had her doubts about the propriety of Mma Makutsi’s plan, then such doubts were more than shared by Phuti Radiphuti. When Mma Makutsi explained to him that evening that she would be speaking to the management of the proposed Big Fun Hotel, he listened intently. When she finished her explanation, he was silent for a while before he responded. She noticed this, and looked at him with concern.
“Don’t you think it will work?” she said.
Phuti was hesitant. “It might,” he said. “I don’t know those people very well, but they will certainly talk to you. They’ll know who you are, you see.”
She was surprised. “Will they? I was going to tell them I worked for the store. I don’t think they’ll know who my husband is.”
He shook his head. “No, Mma, you’re wrong there. They’ll know. This is not a great big city—this is quite a small town, even if it has grown and grown. Inside it’s small, Mma; inside it’s still one of those places where everyone is somebody’s cousin or friend, and where there are not many secrets.”
The Colors of All the Cattle Page 13