Of course Jabu’s work influences their postponement of a companion for Sindiswa. With the achievement of her LLB she has been taken in as attorney by one of those new three-name legal practices which are literally up on the board, signs of change, one with an Indian name, another with an African name, among the partners. No denying that her political CV if not her colour was an advantage in the choice out of other applicants, but that’s no reflection on the abilities she had to offer. The firm did not deal with divorce cases, the partners kiddingly accusing one another of turning down the most lucrative briefs, but was known as appearing for the defence in property disputes which used to be more or less exclusive to whites, with a few Indians who had acquired business concessions in the urban area where at one period Indians had some undetermined rights. Blacks had none. Now, anyone may own property anywhere — capitalism freed of its chains, Jake says wryly, announcing he and Isa, who always could have had that white right, were buying the house they rented — but inheritance rights were compounded by the remnant of religious or traditional law that had been recognised by the apartheid system, whether just or not. Keep the natives quiet where this doesn’t affect anyone else. Among blacks, after the husband’s death the wife has to quit their home acquired together; the house was to be passed to his brother. Jabu was Ranveer Singh’s assistant in court on one such case, taken up and instructed by a legal aid organisation as a Constitutional rights issue, let alone a humanitarian one. The Justice Centre had briefed a prominent civil rights Senior Counsel, comrade whose patriarchal white face did not match his feared cross-examination techniques. At tea recesses he was centre stage in discourse, an oratory she was too impressed and inexperienced to know an attorney should not interrupt, and her unexpected questions surprised him with their aptness to the relevance of his anecdotes to the case being heard. This young black woman must have grown up as what it meant to be black in that old regime — his big head agitated encouragement at her — the political nuances in such cases, while upholding the breach of law, not to mention (he did) preposterous breach of human dignity, one must know that from the perspective of custom, unwritten laws, by getting the verdict in favour of the complainant you are putting down Constitutional law’s feet sacrilegiously on some traditionalists. Black victims again…and without them, what sort of national unity? A legalistic-moral system seceded from it? The traditionalists believe freedom includes recognition — no, incorporation of the particular organisation of life that governed their ancestral relationships, their concepts of entitlement, before colonialism and apartheid. Apartheid dead, black president in the cabinet, members of parliament, but their traditional laws are alive. Can we afford to insult for their own just benefit members of the majority population. Answers himself. — Well we’re going to win this case. — A wide laugh, everyone joins him. — Law enforcement means taking risks — on principle.—
The other lawyers use his first name, first names all round, she addresses him formally as she has been inducted since childhood in approaching an elder and anyone of obvious rank; the other siblinghood, of comrades, hasn’t outmoded that for her even while she’s uninhibited as a result of that comradeship. — The majority of the black majority (she underlines the neat significance with drawn breath in tightened nostrils) — I don’t think would want to see traditions made law, certainly not when it comes to property. I mean, there was so little we could own that all white people had a right to, who would want to have in the Constitution the right to evict a woman, hand over a woman’s home to a collateral — a man, of course.—
It was a diverting contradiction, appreciated by the Senior Counsel and others; that the member of the population from which traditionalists came should speak treason.
At the end of the trial, which indeed the S.C.’s lead won for the defence, as she thanked him for her benefit of having been allowed to be even a small part of it, he said as if he suddenly had his attention tapped by a detail overlooked — You should be at the Justice Centre. Why don’t you come along and see the director, I’ll have a word with him.—
This man of her father’s generation, distanced, distinctive by public achievement, recognised in a marginal note of judgement what was for her the fulfilment of something not to talk about even to comrade, confidant, lover. To come out with a claim as a boast. The purpose of being alert — still as a comrade. The possibility of it. Opportunity.
In her new employment at the Justice Centre Steve lived with her transformation, the growing confidence in the voice, the certainty of gesture, the pleasure of relaxation evident in intervals between concentration on the current work at night preparing précis from notes taken on an advocate’s sessions with the attorneys and, soon, appointed to what she was gifted for: speaking to witnesses to assess what could be expected of them in the dock — coaching was the disallowed description. Whatever was mandated in this aspect of her professional responsibilities, she took it as her responsibility to give the nervous, frightened or angry people understanding of the fears even of this kind of interrogation; hadn’t she known the other, in a prison cell.
He found Jabu happy; fulfilment, isn’t that what ‘happiness’ is. That he wasn’t responsible for this part of it — component — is of no account; he shared it. It was unexpected when she brought up something that did involve him. They had made love. Whatever the daily apartness of the worlds of work, in identity, the illusion of exalting into one leaves an echo in which anything can be broached. — We should have another child.—
Heard.
Hadn’t they decided for good reasons on which they also were at one, their purpose wasn’t to perpetuate the human race, not even in the advancement the mixture of their distinctive bloods did, there were billions of others just as well equipped to breed, billions of women for whom this honourable task was the best they were equipped for. No condescension, discrimination in this fact. Be fruitful. The father’s church said so, probably Jonathan’s Torah said so, the eyes of the women at her home village said so.
— Sindiswa needs…to be an only child isn’t a good thing.—
— Sindiswa gets enough companionship. She’s very sociable, school buddies, kids of our neighbours here, in and out.—
— But they have the same mother and father.—
— If you’re going to take Silk one day. An advocate with the kind of twenty-four-hour work that means, you know how Bizos and Chaskelson and Moseneke slave but they’ve had wives to stop the squabbles dry the tears and wipe the bottoms—
Touch of her lip to the crook of his neck, the skin the softest most vulnerable of a man’s body, before the sandpaper of shaved beard begins — unless male lovers find the anus the most, how does a woman judge. — You’ve always done your share with Sindiswa.—
— OK. But all the mother stuff. You’ll neglect the work, your mind will be elsewhere, and you’ll be guilty, either way, before the children or the accused.—
His hand, shield on her breast as if some avid infant is already sucking her hard-won chosen life out of her. — I don’t want you unhappy.—
— I won’t be. We’re not talking about a brood, five, six. There’s Wethu — look how she and Sindiswa get on.—
A member of the extended family is not a nanny.
A woman is mama to all babies.
Jabu’s reasons for convincing Steve they should have another child.
Her reason is not the stated one that Sindiswa needs a brother or sister. Neither is it that when back Home the women look at the flat waist where they expect to see a belly; her mother puts forth what in the extended family is taken for granted: your husband wants sons.