by Wole Soyinka
Me, Tinaye Musonza. With my vast knowledge of regional relations.
And yet the Secretary General’s monthly salary was large enough to fund a few wars in the region.
I had had enough. Perhaps I could transfer my work permit and go and find work elsewhere? There were many organisations willing to pay someone with my expertise a better salary. A friend had told me of a job that he could hook me up with in the corporate sector right up my alley. Director of Diversity or something. Had to do with political correctness in the corporate world. More title than work but I could use the relaxed hours as well as the large salary with incentives.
‘Perhaps you would allow me to transfer my work permit and look for a job elsewhere?’ I asked tentatively.
Congwayo looked at me intently, his blue eyes seemingly staring straight into my soul. Yes, I said blue eyes. His own gaze was harsh enough but add the blue eyes in the dark complexion and when he gazed upon you, you could not help but feel as though you had erred greatly. For some strange reason ever since he married an Afrikaner woman a few months back, he had started wearing blue contact lenses. He had also started ranting against the system and how the whites exploited ‘our people’ which was rather rich coming from him if one knew his history.
Congwayo, you see, was one of those South Africans with a wonderful ability for reinvention. A former Special Branch man, according to the Human Resources Manager and my colleague Maki, when the winds of change were beginning to blow towards South Africa – way after Harold Macmillan’s speech but before Mandela became president – Congwayo aligned himself well. He started feeding bits of information about his colleagues in the Special Branch to the UDF, making himself appear as though he had a Saul-like conversion. The leadership of the UDF accepted him as an informer for the other side but there were those who still looked at Congwayo with suspicion. It’s said that until now, there are certain neighbourhoods he can’t walk in Soweto without encountering threats of grievous bodily harm for responsibility for the deaths and disappearances of many locals.
He talked a good game, did Congwayo, but I was proving a wee-bit too clever, so when I suggested I transfer my work permit elsewhere his pupils dilated before he said in a voice full of disappointment, ‘After all the resources we put forwards so you could come here, you want us to transfer your work permit so you can work elsewhere?’
He paused meaningfully before continuing, ‘Are you aware, young man, just how many young people in this very country are looking for jobs? Do you have any idea how many of your fellow Zimbabweans with degrees are sleeping at the Central Methodist Church because they have no work permits?’
Why did South Africans always do this when someone complained of unfair labour conditions in their country? I really couldn’t give a hoot at that moment how many of my compatriots were sleeping at the Methodist church or wherever. After all, this was a meeting about my salary raise. I would have told him this but I couldn’t afford to be disrespectful when I was the one who wanted a favour from him.
I shook my head, ‘No, Comrade James.’
He insisted on being called comrade. I think it made him feel like a benevolent leader. Or made him feel like he was making up for his shady past (his work CV conveniently forgot to mention about his Special Branch days but waxed lyrical about his contribution in the UDF).
‘No, Comrade James?’ he paused as though talking to a three year old. ‘Right. Plenty. The way I hear it, half of your country, qualified or not, is in this country because your damned leader thought he could run the country without white capital. ’
Congwayo sometimes overstepped his mark. He forgot that he was supposed to be politically correct – working in the NGO field as he did. Did he also forget that South Africa was an African country?
‘I am disappointed in you,’ he said, shaking his head again. ‘I really believed you were out to make a difference.’
I answered, seeing the blackmail before he had finished, ‘Of course, sir. But if I am going to make a difference, I need to do so on a full stomach. It would be hypocritical of me to tell everyone to stand up and speak out against poverty when I am not speaking out against my personal poverty.’
Congwayo’s eyes twinkled. He seemed to enjoy my turn of phrase but then he continued as though I had not said anything at all. Or maybe I hadn’t? Maybe that was what I wanted to say? What I would have said? Then why did he smile? ‘So here it is, Mr Musonza. If you want to leave you can go ahead but you can’t transfer our work permit elsewhere. Those who are offering you a job will have to get you a work permit as well as pay us for the rest of your contract. Now. Are you staying or are you going?’
‘I am staying, comrade,’ I replied in a whisper.
‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you,’ Congwayo stated, seeming to relish my discomfort.
‘I said I am staying, sir.’ I said a little louder, emphasising the ‘sir’. Comrade my foot.
He patted me on the shoulder with a smile that did not quite reach his blue eyes. ‘You are a good man, Musonza. A good man. Maybe after the next six months our donors will see that we have men of your calibre and give us more funding so that our finances will be better and I’ll bring the possibility of your raise to the board. If that is all . . .’ he said dismissively.
I stood up wishing that I was financially well-cushioned enough to tell him to take his job and shove it. But I had become a slave to this job. If it were just me, I would have survived but my father’s salary – which had seen me through one of the best private schools in Harare – now seemed just sufficient to get him to work and back. The family depended on me to send money for my sister’s tuition (which for some unknown reason was paid in US dollars and constantly had to be topped up every term) and to pay for other essentials like the telephone and DSTV (Yes, I just called that essential. Anyone who has had to sit through an hour of ZTV will tell you why). If my younger brother Rusununguko – or Russ as he called himself – had been getting an income it would have helped but he had decided he wanted to help at the farm, which really meant selling what he could whenever he could get away with it and driving around picking up girls in the city although he had a wife with two children staying at the farm.
Then there were my own expenses. Sure, I wasn’t starving. I was renting a two-bedroomed house in Melville. I could afford to take myself to a restaurant for dinner every once in a while but add my parents’ expenses and mine and I often found there was, as the saying goes, always so much month at the end of the money.
My contract was for four years. Three years and the extra trial first year. Just a year less than it would have taken me to qualify for residency. I had been in this country for three years. From the way Congwayo looked at me after I asked for a raise, it was highly unlikely that I was going to get the contract renewed after it lapsed. I was in a quandary.
I started thinking of this country that I loved that didn’t want to love me back. I remember how excited I had been when I left Oxford. How I nurtured a dream of coming back to Africa and joining hands with other like-minded Africans to save the continent. But since I arrived I had realised something.
In South Africa, an African country, I was just what I had been in England. An immigrant. To the white South Africans who sat on the board of AfriAID, I was probably filling the quota of the black head count. To black South Africans I was one of them kwerekweres because I allegedly took one of their brothers’ jobs. I would think (without ever vocalising), ‘Aren’t I a brother too?’
Other immigrants had the benefit of escaping in their work or having a salary that they could sufficiently utilise to give themselves little vacations and weekend treats of a glass of single malt. But not me. I no longer had job satisfaction – neither from the love for my job nor from the pay (or was that peanuts?) I earned.
I wanted to quit but I couldn’t. If I quit, I’d no longer have a valid work permit. People in the developmental field were a dime and dozen in the UK, so there was no way I was going back there
.
The only other place I could go to was Zimbabwe and I could not, would not, go back there. Only a fool would repatriate while the rest of the country was escaping. There had to be a way that I could stay in my beloved Jozi but with a job that gave credit to my academic training without reducing me to a yes-man, to an annoying sell-out of a black man.
Then I had what I thought was a brainwave. I scrolled down my cell phone and dialled her number.
‘Grace speaking, hello?’ she answered.
‘Well hello to you too. What, you don’t call your old colleagues to see how they are doing?’ I asked.
‘Oh, my God, Tinaye, is that you?’ she screamed and I had to hold the phone a little distant from my ear.
Grace had been a receptionist at AfriAID. She got disillusioned when she was asked to help with the bookkeeping and realised she was the lowest-paid employee but could never convince the powers that be that she needed a raise. Grace was going to be my ticket out of AfriAID while I continued staying in Joburg.
In this business, I deal with statistics all the time.
According to Stats SA, South African women work twenty-six per cent longer hours than their men. I was willing to work hard. I was not bad looking either with my brilliant mind and good looks. That made me a catch. If I could get a job that allowed me to stay, I could work my way to marrying a South African woman, get my residency, and eventual citizenship.
I had decided Grace would be that woman.
I see you are judging me for being mercenary. How easy it is for you. You are probably South African, or have never faced my dilemma. I never planned to hurt anyone. All I wanted was a fair chance to earn an honest living but had the misfortune of not being born in.
My friend and former colleague Mzilikazi had left to work in Cape Town because he had that flexibility. I couldn’t do the same.
Grace was an easy choice for me.
When she was still at AfriAID, I always had the feeling that Grace was interested in me. Whenever she came to me to sign documents, she would linger a little too long chatting and lean into me. I had not entertained her then but there was no reason why I couldn’t entertain her now. There was no conflict of interest and she was a beautiful woman. I only hoped there was no boyfriend lurking in the background. As I said before, Grace was a beautiful woman.
‘Yes, it’s me. How are you?’
‘I am lovely thanks,’ she answered.
‘I am just calling to see whether you have any plans this Friday?’ I asked.
I heard Grace drawing a breath and then sighing.
I knew I had her.
Even if she had plans, she would probably cancel them.
Her response was coy. ‘It depends on what you have in mind,’ she said.
‘What I had in mind was dinner, perhaps some dancing, and some drinks, and then we see where it goes. What do you say?’
‘I would love to. Can you come and pick me up from my workplace then?’ she enquired.
‘Sure thing. Give me the address.’
And that is how Grace and I became an item.
She worked in Rosebank and on that first date when I walked up to Primi Piatti with her, I could sense every man in the room looking up and wishing they were me.
Grace was the embodiment of beauty – African or otherwise. She had luscious lips that were made for kissing, a nose that was just perfect for her face and dimples that seemed to be etched on her face as they stayed in place whether she was smiling or not.
Her greatest features though, were her eyes. Large and expressive, even when what they expressed was not much, which was frequent. They had long lashes that had nothing to do with any of those television-advertised volumising mascaras. A man couldn’t look at Grace for any length of time without feeling as though they were drowning in her eyes. I still commended myself for self-control for not having dated her when she was at AfriAID.
She was almost as tall as me with a fair complexion – what South Africans term a yellow bone. She had the long legs of a catwalk model and now as always, she wore them to advantage in a miniskirt and heels.
Forget Beyoncé, this girl had a bum that was curved and firm as though worked on by some architect who’d had all the time in the world.
And that was Grace. Beautiful.
We sat down and ordered.
‘So what took you so long to call?’ she asked as I drank my double whisky and she sipped on her Smirnoff Spin while we waited for our starters.
Ah ha. So she had been waiting for my call.
‘I wanted you to break up with your other boyfriend first,’ I answered.
‘What other boyfriend?’
Great. She didn’t have a boyfriend. Or he was so inconsequential she was willing to lie about his existence. This was working well for me.
We had sex that very first night, just as I knew we would and she spent the weekend at my place.
Soon Primi became our spot and Grace my weekend shift. However, beautiful as Grace was, conversations with her were painful. In conversation she had nothing to add and when she picked up a newspaper, it would be to relay to me some ‘fact’ that she had read of, such as some woman being raped by a tokoloshe in Limpopo, or something along those lines.
The sex was good. The conversation was expectedly dull. Grace wasn’t the brightest light bulb in the tool shed. Whenever she came to ‘sleep’ at my Melville home, I had perfected the art of feigning sleep after sex. Marriage to her would be a tedious affair but I knew, with a good job, I could always get lost in my work so long as I paid the bills and bought her a twelve pack of Smirnoff Spin on the weekends.
Perhaps it’s true that we men are never content.
But that was probably said by some bra-burning, man-hating woman.
I was content with Grace, I swear I was. It’s just that I kept getting the feeling that there was something better out there.
But time wasn’t on my side. I had decided I would date her for a respectable six months then propose to her. We would get married. I would become a resident, and then get a better job. Then I’d leave her after a reasonable amount of time.
And then it happened.
In the fifth month of my courtship (for that is what I now thought of it) with Grace, I met Slindile.
I should have ignored Sli. I didn’t need any complications to my perfect Grace plan, but temptation was strong. And I, I was weak.
Hiding in Plain Sight
Mary Watson
The witch had been riding her back again. She sometimes did in the small hours of the night when everyone else was asleep. Meg felt, though could not see, that there was someone just above her chest, as if dropped from the ceiling. Her arms were pinned down, tied by invisible ropes. She wanted to turn on the lamp but could not move.
‘Old hag,’ her mother told her. ‘Kanashibari, if you’re in Japan.’
In bed at night, Meg was plagued by screeching fiddles from distant houses, by rats scurrying across narrow roads. She was bothered by mice nestling in her boots, slugs burrowing beneath the grass. Light leaked in through the chinks in the curtains and seeped into her dreams. During the day, ravens and crows beat their black wings towards her, or else hovered just off the edge of her vision, biding their time. Her mother insisted it was nonsense; there was no way that she could hear the fiddles and rats. She just needed to be still. Shut your eyes. Shut out the light and fall asleep.
‘The ravens and crows aren’t interested in you,’ her mother said, stuffing a white envelope with an application form for a job at a school. ‘Put a pillow over your head.’
Those early months in Ireland were marked by an elusive disquiet. They had arrived at Kiln House with four suitcases, a dog-eared copy of You magazine, a Table Mountain key ring in Meg’s back pocket, and a small beaded doll with crazy eyes from the airport curio shop.
‘But you don’t have any keys,’ her mother had said, nudging towards the departure gate.
No keys, no house, no home. Meg’s fa
ther had died because of his kindness to strangers. And because her husband was gone, Catriona had wanted to leave. She seemed to blame her adopted country for the death of her husband. Within a few short months, they had packed up their things, sold their house and arranged new schools for Meg and Damien. They would squat with their Aunt Maire until they were settled in Ireland.
‘Is that a present for me?’ Maire eyed the doll in Meg’s hand as she entered Kiln House. Not really a doll, but an artefact. A souvenir from her life before. Hot sunshine, the lemon tree in the garden, taxis screaming through the main road, the colour and noise of a different world were bound up in that doll and in the plastic mountain-shaped key ring.
‘No.’
‘She’s rather like her father, isn’t she?’ Maire said in a voice that belied her broad smile. Uncle John carried their suitcases in.
Kiln House was pockmarked with grey pebbledash. It had low doors that forced Uncle John to stoop, and a narrow, dark staircase that sucked you up inside its guts. The house was so obscurely located that Meg was sure the mess of low stone walls was designed to misdirect visitors. A higgledy-piggledy house surrounded by higgledy-piggledy stone walls in a teeny tiny village called Arse End, Nowhere.
Kiln House served a dubious function as a bed and breakfast, the kind with smoke-stained net curtains and faded floral tablecloths draped over chipboard tables. Plastic carnations in made-in-China rosebud vases. Inexplicably, they had a decent passing trade, which seemed to be made up of customers who returned over the years. Maire was tighter than a gnat’s chuff while Uncle John was inclined to hand out free things to his friends. And it only took a drink or two to become his friend. Meg had seen him handing over a clutch of miniature soaps and shampoos to bewildered children. It was something of a nervous tic, the need to hand over his worldly goods. It was impossible to have a conversation without him trying to give her sweets or money or his handkerchief or whatever he could lay his hands on at the time. Uncle John was one of those men with a shed. The exact purpose of the shed was a mystery, but whatever it was seemed to need a large amount of time. Meg tried looking through the windows, but couldn’t see beyond a jumble of mismatched furniture and electrical objects.