As well as formal gatherings of the legal profession, Jabu had restaurant lunch quite often with this or that partner of one of the commercial legal practices she happened to be working for temporarily. She would put her hand on her stomach that evening, not wanting to eat again when she sat at the table with the meal she and Wethu had put together to feed the children and Steve, his lunch having been a snack in a fast-food chain favoured by his students.
At her pauses in the day she and table companions would be occupied in shop talk, analysis of what had taken place in court; he and his students, along with their pizza, argued over how the university was or was not meeting their expectations.
As the muscular image of a professional sports player develops a certain conformation so Jabu’s image went through certain changes. Though her hair was the African crown of braided patterns and locks that was the general assertion of traditional African aesthetics reinstated in the free woman, she has as if unnoticed by herself begun to adopt the other traditional convention of female freedom, the informal but well-cut pants and jackets of professional men. This was an outward expression of something…an impression she had managed or been given a synthesis between the working relevance of the past and the present; which Steve had not.
Return from the daily separation of preoccupations is not only to the children as the core of the personal living state. It’s to the Suburb; it was with Jake, Isa, the Mkizes and other comrades who renewed contact that there was in place, space claimed to consider, with confidence of mutual experience and understanding, what they had envisaged to be achieved. What was happening in the country. Even the occupants of the old Gereformeerde Kerk that would have consigned their kind to condemnation were interested in the secular concern with the aftermath of the struggle for freedom in which they hadn’t taken active part, although some of their orientation, white and black, had been revolutionaries, comrades in prison and in the bush. The playwright Marc, probably researching for certain aspects of a new play in mind, brought dramatic first-hand accounts about what was not being done about the degradation of black workers existing in conditions worse than the ‘white farmer keeps his pigs’—it was Marc who confronted the Dolphins to see beyond the particular discrimination against themselves. Sunday’s permanent invitation for Jake, Isa, the Mkizes, Jabu, Steve and everyone’s kids to come to the pool became socially political amid the cult repartee and affectionate dunkings of the commune.
These — Suburb family occasions, public rather than private, were in a sense, guarded. While decisions taken by the government that affected everyone, taxes, health insurance, crime, were talked about with criticism of cabinet ministers and ridicule mimicry of some politicians livened the exchanges, laughter all round, there were aspects of these matters Jake, Isa, the Mkizes, Jabu, Steve, did not speak of. Did not offer, as if by political vows like Masonic vows. When they were alone together in the house of this one or that, the same matters were under a light different from that reflected by the pool.
Kinship of prison and bush between the comrades, tentacle within, this was a meaning of their lives that could not be erased. They had known rivalry for esteem, nose-picking habits, farts, hard to tolerate cheek-by-jowl in the tent and the cell, jealous sexual tensions when there were women comrades among them, all the human shortcomings, faults and passions; but outreached, outdistanced by the Struggle. Alone together now they could remark on veniality from inside, informative experience, signs it was always there, in this high government official, the cut-throat determination of this Under Minister to oust that Minister, the question why so-and-so, whose pathetic lack of capabilities comrades all knew too well, had been given the leg-up in a ministry while so-and-such, comrade of brains and integrity, seemed to be sidelined onto some minor committee chair.
These were not facts and doubts for Sunday morning gossip.
But the family of the same Shaik was continuing to appear in the newspapers in connection with the arms deals. The first democratic government had formed a Department of Defence Strategic Arms Acquisition Programme, on the principle that the country needed to strengthen its defence booty inherited in defeat of the apartheid army’s force. Corvettes, submarines, utility and marine helicopters, fighter trainers and advanced fighter aircraft went out for tender in the world with the proviso that foreign arms manufacturers promise to invest in the country and create employment. The Shaik name — family of brothers, Shabir, Yunus known as Chippy, Mo — is a front-page staple in the news since the delivery of arms under contract has been in progress for more than five years. There had been something called an Audit Steering Committee, and then the government signed this Arms Deal as a necessary expenditure of billions. A Shaik was a member of the steering committee.
— Who the hell is Chippy Shaik, anyway?—
— Here it is, you’ve just read, ‘Director of procurement in the Defence Force’ when the ‘irregularities’ in contracts to subcontractors now under investigation were awarded. No — but as cadre in Umkhonto. What was he. — Jake answering himself with the grimace of culpable lapsed memory.
There were so many levels of activity in the Movement (that other euphemism, this one for the Struggle). Some would have been familiar with the deployment, whatever, of Shaik, but along with Jake, Steve and Jabu weren’t.
Trust Peter Mkize. — Doesn’t matter. Shaik turns out now, eh, to be financial adviser of our Deputy President Jacob Zuma. You’ve seen what’s come from the Auditor General’s report, the cost of the deal in billions far higher than the government’s figure and nobody can say what the final costs might be — why? Something like ‘industrial offsets’. Eish!—
Steve knows what everybody in the outside world takes for granted. — The arms trade is the dirtiest of them all. ‘Industrial offsets’—that’ll be investments and trade opportunities that tender sinners promise to advance for the good of the country. Arms dealers know they can forget about these obligations. Their bribes to ministers? — government officials who decide tender awards.—
Jake snatches from him like a flag — That’s sufficient contribution to development of the country!—
The complex Shaik kin keeps being unravelled. — Zuma’s financial adviser’s brother Shabir got the arms deal contract although it was twice the price of another tender, of equal standard—
— Whose pocket took in the bribes — The refrain.
— If the deal ever does come to court we might—
— Zuma as President elect — as if the President will ever—
There’s a lawyer among them. — He was arraigned. And he appeared in court on another charge — of rape. — She was present when he did, and was declared not guilty.
The Suburb comrades follow the beginning of what is apparently an era in the aftermath of revolution attained.
— With apartheid we were the pariah of the world, with freedom we become what we never were, we’re part of the democratic world. Corruption doesn’t disqualify. It’s everywhere. — That’s Steve.
Jabu is withdrawn as if among strangers.