“Spouting Marx to defend black capitalism! Remember who you’re working for these days, Dando.” Shinza pulled down his bearded mouth, half — humouring, half — patronizing. “—All you’re saying’s the workers won’t feel the benefit right away—”
“—Not Right away or Left away or Middle — of-the-road away — you can talk till kingdom come. Have a drink, Edward. — Come on, man, look after the gentlemen,” he berated the barman. The circle drew in closer. “Edward and I were talking about these things when you were all a lot of snotty — nosed kids … he knows what I’m saying.”
“What’s this rubbish about trade unionism being ‘tied up.’” Shinza took a swallow of Dando’s round of whiskies. “Listen — what it has to do is make a choice. For the sake of economic development, it can become an organ of the government’s policy — making machinery — which means any criticism of government incompetence is out — finished. Then union activity’s restricted to one thing — ensuring the allegiance of workers in productive industries. Now that’s something that perpetuates your famous inequitable distribution of national income, all right. You hand out the big money to dignitaries, you foot the bill for a massive police force to keep everyone quiet. And all that represents unproductive expenditure, ay? So the trade unions’ll be able to congratulate themselves on consolidating the political power of the elite. — But there’s another way—”
Dando started shaking his head while Shinza was speaking. “—Defence-of-the-workers’-interests line. Tell me another one, do. Inevitably leads to a slowing of economic growth. All your ideas about activities based on the workers’ productive role can have only a very limited effect. Either you get the workers to buckle down and shut up—”
Shinza was waving an arm at him— “That’s what you’ve tried to do, that’s what you’ve tried!”
“Oh nobody’s denying there’re plenty of doubts about the unions’ ability to put their policies into practice. We know that.” Bray, also on Dando’s whisky, found himself borne into the argument. “Until now, the trade union leader’s metamorphosis into a political’s forced him to compromise … that’s one of the principle causes of weakness here. But the fundamental weakness is a mixture of the two — industrial underdevelopment plus the political responsibility trade unionists have had to assume.”
“Oh for Christ’ sake. The only thing is, take that political responsibility properly—” Shinza’s hands extended under something invisibly heavy— “No holds barred,” Dando said. Bray turned on him— “You’d agree that a big say in the drafting of an economic development plan is one of the basic demands of most African trade unions, Roly?”
“Listen to it: demands, demands—” Dando began showing off, appealing to his audience.
But to them Bray was as much a part of the performance as he was. “… it’s the only way to overcome the contradiction between demands that aim at short — term results, and measures you’re going to have to take if you want to establish a real development policy. Of course the difficulties are enormous … it’s risky …”
Every now and then Dando momentarily lost grip and talked out of some hazy response twitching through the alcohol in his brain— “Risking your life every time you cross the road, feller.”
“… the position of the unions and the government could become irreconcilable.”
“Ha-ha, ha — ha-ha.” Dando wasn’t laughing; he shadow — boxed above the bar. “Tread lightly, Bray, eggs underfoot, y’know.” His attention lashed back, drawn to Shinza. “You get your trade union membership largely from public administration, apart from the mines. If you start cracking down on bureaucracy, there’ll be cutbacks. How’re you going to get these people to agree without losing hundreds of members?”
“I couldn’t care less about your few hundred bloody bureaucrats if we can gain thousands of peasants. Forget it, man—”
Two or three people had started singing PIP songs, at first raggedly, and then, with the African inability to sing out of tune even when drunk, in noisy harmony. Roly had become defiant without knowing what about; he looked very small and white, his thin greased hair standing up sparsely at the crown, his glasses turning on this target or that. “Better than the whole damn bunch of you, I can tell you that. More guts than some of you’ll see in a lifetime … I don’t trust him as far as the door, old bastard … but you, wet behind the ears, the lot of you, you won’t see another one like him, not for you to start telling me—”
Bray felt an old affection for poor Dando, never standing on the dignity of his office but keeping for himself the exactions of personal response, no matter how battered or ridiculous he might emerge. Only an African state would employ a man like that; anywhere else, his professional ability would be lost against considerations of professional face.
Ras Asahe was talking of the strikes at the mines and Bray was only half — listening— “not such a push — over to stop production now that the Company’s got the hardware to crack down on them!” The phrase was an arrow quivering: “Hardware?”
“Yes, they won’t have to stand around biting their fingernails any more when the boys cut up rough. I saw it the other day, very hush — hush — but, man, it’s all there! A nice little fleet of Ford trucks converted into armoured vehicles—”
“The Company police are being armed?”
“Well, what do you think? They’re going to stand around waiting for the space men” (the regular police were called this because of their helmets) “to come? Or for the President to decide whether or not it’s time to call in the army? Apparently the Company went along to him and said, look here, if you can’t do it, you must let us.… And he gave them the green light.”
“They’ve got guns?”
Ras spread his elegant hands. “The full riot — squad outfit. Tear gas, guns — helicopters so they can move a dozen or so men where they’re needed, fast. It’ll be a great help wherever there’s trouble … even if it’s not the mines … the Big Man knows they’re there if he needs them.”
At the same time there was some sort of sensation in the knot round Dando and Shinza. All Bray saw was Dando putting his arm round Shinza’s shoulder in a flamboyant gesture, a lunge, and — distinctly — Shinza avoiding it quietly and swiftly as a cat slips from under a hand. Shinza wasn’t looking at Dando, he was turned away talking to someone else at that particular moment; he must just have become conscious between one instant and the next of the arm claiming him. But Dando, already over — reached from the bar — stool, was unsteady, and the movement tipped his balance. He fell; there was a scuffle — people picked him up in the confusion that looks the same whether it represents hostility or concern.
Asahe said disgustedly, “That old man’s the best argument for Africanization I know. They should let the two of them finish each other off; this place needs streamlining.”
“What a prig you are, Ras. Perhaps you should send for some tear gas.”
But Asahe was flattered to be thought tough; Bray was aware of being under the smile of a man who felt he could afford it. He went quickly to Roly Dando. Dando was on his feet again, somehow rather sobered. “Shall we go home?”
“Why the baby — talk, Bray. Anyhow, aren’t you eating with Mweta?” He had the look of a fowl taken unharmed from the jaws of a dog.
“There’s time to go home first.”