Mweta crunched a paper napkin into a ball and aimed it at the wastepaper basket. “Time, again, time. In the meantime, we’ve got to keep the Englishmen.” Mweta called all white men Englishmen: South Africans, Rhodesians, Kenyans, and others who sold their skills up and down Africa. “Talk to Phiri about it, though, it’s an idea.”
Mweta’s mind moved among problems like the attention of a man in charge of a room full of gauges and dials whose wavering needles represent the rise and fall of some unseen force — pressure, or electricity. He spoke now of the move he had taken a few weeks before, the surprise expulsion of the leader in exile and group of refugees from the territory adjoining the western border of the country. These people had been living in the country since before Independence; in fact, one of the first things he had done when he got responsible government as a preliminary to Independence was to insist that Jacob Nyanza, David Somshetsi, and their followers be given asylum. He couldn’t receive them officially, for fear of the reactions from their country; but they had a camp, and an office in the capital, financed by various organizations abroad who favoured their cause. Outwardly, he maintained normal though not warm relations with the president of their country (there was an old history of distrust between them, dating from the days when Mweta and Shinza were seeking support from African countries for their independence demands); from time to time there had been statements from President Bete vaguely threatening those “brother” countries which sheltered their neighbours’ “traitors.” Mweta explained how it had become impossible to let Nyanza and Somshetsi stay. Of course, he had publicly denied President Bete’s assertion that Nyanza and Somshetsi were acquiring arms and preparing to use the country as a base for guerrilla raids on their home country. … He turned to Bray, pausing; Bray gestured the inevitability. “They didn’t care any more” Mweta said. “They didn’t even take the trouble to conceal anything. Nyanza flew in and out and there were pictures of him in French papers, shaking hands all round in Algiers. They kept machine guns in the kitchen block the Quakers built for them at the camp — yes, apparently there were just some potatoes piled up, supposed to be covering—” He and Bray had a little burst of tense laughter. “So there was nothing else I could do.”
Bray took out a cigar and held it unlit between his lips. And so Nyanza and Somshetsi had had to move on, over the border to the next country, to the north — east, a country which was not part of the new economic federation which was about to link their country and Mweta’s.
“I saw Jacob Nyanza. Nobody knows. I saw him before they went. He was always a more reasonable chap than Somshetsi.” Mweta stopped; of course, he would have hoped that Nyanza, if not Somshetsi, would understand. But apparently it had not been so. Bray lit the cigarillo and Mweta followed the draws that burgeoned the blunt head into fire. He did not smoke or drink: influence of the Presbyterian mission where he had gone to school. “You saw what Tola Tola had to say at Dar-es-Salaam?” Bray’s lips opened and closed regularly round the cigar. He nodded.
“It was good, eh?”
Bray said, smoke curling round the words, “One of the best speeches there.”
“This morning there’s a call to say he’s going to Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Helsinki.” In the House some of Mweta’s most important front — benchers had questioned the expenditure of the Foreign Minister on travel and produced a log — book of his journeys, showing that since Independence he had been in the country for only a matter of weeks. “Yes, if I had another Gwenzi,” he said. “Albert is busy broadening the mind, isn’t that what you say. If someone invited him to drink a glass of iced water at the North Pole, he’d go. It’s very difficult for me to do anything. He gives me his good reasons … you know? And of course he is capable. They listen to him—” He meant in the world outside. Albert Tola Tola was also an Mso, the only one with a key cabinet post; what Mweta really was discussing was the fact that Tola Tola, capable or no, could not be replaced without betraying the electoral pact with the Mso, and could not be kept without agitation from Mweta’s men looking for a good reason to have him out. And beneath this tacit acceptance of facts was another that could not be taken for granted — if Tola Tola were given another portfolio, did Mweta believe that he would become one of the ants? Did Mweta fear there was a possibility of a disaffected Tola Tola being drawn to discuss his grievances with others — Neil Bayley had mentioned the Minister of Development and Planning, Paul Sesheka, Moses Phahle, and Dhlamini Okoi. Tola Tola was a brilliant man; sophistication had taught him the showmanship of the common touch as a formidable substitute for what Mweta had naturally.
Bray was able now to talk about the Bashi Flats as an issue apart from the question of Shinza — Shinza or no Shinza, there must be roads, there must be an energetic move to make the Bashi less like another country in comparison with the area round the capital and the mines. “The trouble is there’s nothing there,” Mweta said.
“No, nothing in terms of what is exploitable, what’s attractive to foreign capital. But the people, Mweta.”
“Unless there’s a mineral discovery of some kind — there’s a geological survey due out there in the next few months, Swedes — the only thing is cattle. And even then. I mean they come down on the hoof — what slaughter cattle there is.”
The Flats were one of the few parts of the country not infested with tsetse fly, the carrier of the cattle disease trypanosomiasis, but cattle were used mainly in the traditional way, as a form of wealth and capital possession within the tribes. Bray said, “You’ll have to change all that. Get beef cattle — raising going there on a commercial basis. Then you’ll be able to stop importing meat from the South. And it’ll be uneconomic to have the stuff coming down on the hoof — you’ll have a good reason for building roads.”
Mweta began to make notes of their conversation. “I want to come out there with you and have a good look round. I’ll fly to Gala next month some time and we’ll go up. And then later in the year we’ll go to the lake. Perhaps I can bring Joy and the kids, if Olivia’s there they can have a holiday for a few days while you and I — there’s that house for me, you know, I’ve never seen the place—” The fishing company had presented the President with a “lodge” on the lake, at the time of Independence. “In the meantime, James, you will write to me, ay? A letter every now and then. Let me hear. We mustn’t lose touch.”
He insisted that Bray stay in the capital for the rest of the week. “You’ll come to the dinner. The one with the white businessmen. I’ll tell Asoni.” Mweta threw back his head and his shoulders heaved loose with laughter. “You know what they wanted to know? If they must build a special lavatory for me.” Years before, when some minor royalty came to the territory, PIP had made political capital out of such unpromising material as a “comfort station” for the Royal Highness, quick to point out that this small building cost more than the type of house provided for an African family down in the native town. While they laughed Bray remembered it was Shinza’s idea; Shinza had a sure instinct for the concrete issue, however unimportant, and knew how to make his opponents look absurd as well as reprehensible.