Here. There will always be these moments when she is not ‘here’ with him. And when he’s not ‘here’, wasn’t ‘here’ in the clandestine Glengrove with her, some tug of your outgrown kind.
They made love not war between them that night.
What was still mustered of the academic group eventually did get that appointment to meet the Minister of Education. Couldn’t be called a delegation, that would imply representation of the University Convocation. It seems one always keeps the identity of dissident whether as a revolutionary or what’s known as a law-abiding citizen taking the right of consultation. That’s how they presented themselves, their spokesperson initiator from the Science Faculty falling into line.
The Minister most unfortunately is unable (or has the foresight?) to receive them as he is in talks with a delegation from abroad. They are before a senior member of his department, a heavy finger stuck between the pages of a file, should he pause for recollection of a date, a fact. Lesego Moloi remarked afterwards over something more reviving than a coffee, that one’s been dug up as a loyal member of the Party from a kraal college somewhere to show that the department’s really Africanised.
The Minister’s deputy listened with the posture and occasional stir of close attention, to be read as agreement or doubt, then gave the account they knew would come, they could have recited it for him. The redeployment of available finances from the days when ten times more was provided in education subsidy for every white child than for a black child meant that an equal subsidy for all, now, required greater resources than the department’s budget allocation from the Department of Finance. The need to fund justice in education in less than one generation in something like five centuries of discrimination (he hawks to clear his throat, turning to pages where there might be a decade fixed by historians when missionaries first transcribed a people’s volubility into written symbols) — yes, it’s inevitable that resources are inadequate; but the limit the country can afford.
What’s the purpose of one of Steve’s group bringing up money found for spending on arms when no enemy exists to threaten the country which has the strongest defence forces on the African continent? — that’s not the Minister’s Department, you’re in the wrong building, Bra, take your guys to the Ministry of Defence.
The man assures the Minister’s concerns for the consequences, for university teaching, at a time when the continuation of the country’s remarkable renaissance (doesn’t miss the buzz word) must have engineers, scientists, economists, geologists — he pauses; every one of these academics will add the inclusion of his particular discipline.
— Literacy. — Steve presumes to speak for them. — Nothing of this can come about unless you can raise literacy. In any of the mother tongues the children speak, and English, Afrikaans, the languages of their instruction. The vocabularies used in university subjects are way beyond students, no fault of their own. They run to Internet, quick fix, for words they don’t understand, can’t spell, not to the dictionaries where all different meanings, contexts, uses of the word are to be discovered. — He doesn’t know or care whether it’s understood he’s using the ‘word’ in an adapted creational sense, the Word is not God, it’s Man, what gives humans the text of thought. The Minister’s stand-in does not take offence at bluntness, he puts a politician’s hand on this academic’s shoulder as the group leaves. He has assured them their openness and trust in coming to the department is the way forward (renaissance-speak again). The department is applying itself intently to changes that will bring about development necessary for the times. — What the fuck does that mean — Lesego, using current limited vocabulary of the pub to which they have retreated. But nobody takes up the irony.
Not long after (there’s probably a change of minister in a cabinet reshuffle by then) there is announcement from the Department of Education to mark the esteem of the people for education and the dignity of those in schooclass="underline" the children are now officially designated as and are to be referred to as ‘Learners’. The demeaning ‘pupil’ belongs to the discriminatory past. And what resolves in final examinations from the years of being a Learner is now called ‘Outcomes’. Results no longer exist.
The church pool friends are the best of hosts — female guests noting that old conventions in allocation of domestic roles have been discarded in Constitutional normalcy of gay households more completely than in heterosexual ones. Ceddie, the jambalaya cordon bleu, cooks while Guy the apprentice (in the order of sexual relations managed by the commune, as well?) peels and chops, Justin who seems to be the Elder (as Jabu’s father in another church) mixes drinks, chattering ice in glasses along with animated indiscretions about the clients in the decorator’s business where he works as an interior designer. — I make houses habitable after the architects have cleared out. — That’s the way he mockingly describes himself. — Wifey wants a full-length mirror in the bathroom so that she can check the spread of her backside against the kilos on the scale, husband prefers not to see what he’s neglecting in favour of the new girl he’s picked up among women who’re now getting theirs down on boardroom seats. — And he gets his laughs, as he distributes the drinks, for his unprejudiced tolerant gossip: the kugels—Jewish sweetmeat term he’s picked up for all over-dressed rich women — these days they’re also Indian, black, mixed palette of the risen middle class. Politics touched on indirectly with Justin’s quips from the underside of progress are not the subject of talk the way they are when Struggle comrades, Steve, Jabu, the Mkizes, Isa and Jake gather alone, belong for ever under that rubric, which needs no tattoo to mark it — although Isa was never a cadre but a fellow traveller late-come recruited as Jake’s freely chosen wife. At times she’s good leaven in their set. That property in her personality isn’t necessary in the company of the Dolphin commune and its friends, some of whom are still arriving. Lively anecdotes of where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to, holiday trips, the predicted break-up of ‘this’ relationship and the surprise blooming of ‘that’; ambitions in professional activities, Marc’s just written a second play and does anyone know a backer for production, he’s found amazing, you’d never believe it — such talent — among young black men who wave you into parking bays, no education, can’t read a script you have to teach it to them orally—
— Illiterate. — Jake confirms, reminded. — What happened to your call on the ministry?—
Steve asking Marc what his play’s about — turns aside: this is for everybody — Haven’t you learned the new terminology for your kids?—
— You mean?—
— They are Learners and there will be Outcomes.—
— The ministry have any plans to get them past ABC?—
Steve’s shoulders rise and drop. His response is curt. — Euphemisms.—
Jabu is concerned that this exchange means the happy lunch is going to be spoilt for the Dolphins by the preoccupation of Steve and Jake — heavy. She glances at Steve as a mother hushes a child with a certain loving look.
He pauses in dismissal and turns back to Marc and his play. Euphemism. Not a word Jabu would be likely to use. Not in her vocabulary of what? — her three, four languages he doesn’t know, not in the vocabulary her father expanded for her through his reading of books in English smuggled from a library for whites. Everything’s been definitive for her, imposed. Her experience. He dismisses again — in himself, the glib judgement. Black is being black that’s all, has been; in some circumstances, still is.
The gay commune like every household in the Suburb except Steve and Jabu’s, which has a resident relative, deploys a domestic servant called a Helper as a school child is a Learner, but the Dolphins’ woman doesn’t work over weekends. Isa knows this through her own helper informing her that those men in the church house grant this desirable condition of employment which she doesn’t. A word aside to Jabu, and Isa and Jabu insisted they would do the washing-up. Comrades don’t exploit their hosts.