Denials. Denials.
Shed by a split in the Party, one of its most popular Struggle leaders, Mosiuoa Terror Lekota is lost defected from the ANC to lead a new party, Congress of the People, with its smart double-meaning acronym COPE. COPE calls for scrapping of the policy of Affirmative Action by which blacks must be employed when black and white are applicants for the same post, the criterion uncertain whether their qualifications are equal.
Gone dark.
Peter snaps off the voice and the wide-mouthed image. — Affirmative Action, it’s simply more jobs for cousins, in-laws to join the black elite — our Brothers — that’s joined the white elite.—
A columnist writes as if speaking for the one who is snipping the cutting. ‘The National Prosecuting Authority, government and leadership of the ANC, should take notice — the endless power games the different parties are playing: prosecute or not Zuma.’
She doesn’t need to read it. — It’s time for him to defend himself in court, he’s forgotten he said that’s what he wanted — he should stop his legal stalling tactics. Corruption, racketeering, tax evasions should be put to Zuma in the High Court on a date to be set for next week. Look, if the opposing parties aren’t ready for a trial now, never will be. Zuma probably will want the Supreme Court judgment against him tested in the Constitutional Court. Let that arbiter of human rights decide once and for all whether there’s any reason to believe the conspiracy theory that the Zuma camp says charges are purely the vendetta against him, rivalry in the ANC itself to keep him out of becoming President.—
Next week? But there’s the real alternative…delay, delay. Once he’s President, cannot be charged. It’ll all go away.
Gary Elias and Sindiswa see many kinds of mass celebration that exists for them only on the screen; but it’s even bigger than the international football one with Maradona playing. The footage of who knows how many cameras can’t encompass the size, the whole.
A commentator has made himself heard.
— Eighty thousand people, that must be a guess not an estimate. — But to their children the sight and sound of such is familiar; while to the parents it’s some sort of consequence — of a different kind, of the protest crowds defying apartheid laws, police guns and arrest. It is Jacob Zuma’s launch of the ANC’s election manifesto. The date of the election still not given but in the air; and the triumphal joyousness as if the result has already been won. ‘Awuleth’ mashini wami’ Zuma sings, the chorus that soars with him is exaltation both of himself and the people themselves.
The cohesion, mass transformation of what are individuals can be uplifting or an assault. The effect of whether you are down there at one with the mass in their purpose, or reject it. Gary begins to dance along Zuma-style, back-jacking from the knee, enjoying himself. Sindiswa with some schoolbook in her lap looks distracted and goes off to the family computer.
Comrades are not accustomed to being onlookers. He gestures — enough! — the control in hand. She frowns no, stoical. If they’re not there, they’re part of the Party constituency, share responsibility for it as they did in action. There are going to be plenty of other gatherings of the Party in its election campaign, and not all a pop praise song.
She assumes the Mkizes, Jake and Isa, will be coming with Steve and her to the one in the city. Jake’s low voice — is it poor reception on a cell phone. — I don’t want to hear him sing, I want to hear him in court. — Isa is laughing in the background and her message passed on, of course they’ll be there…
It’s what was a depot for tramcars way back when the city had tramways — for Whites Only. Must have been long before this distinction was named apartheid, that term that’s even used — comrade Jake, not a Jew, often insists, to characterise mistakenly the situation between Israelis and Palestinians. Nothing to do with the justice of returning the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Palestine. Both peoples with ancient claims of origin to the same territory, whereas we whites in South Africa have no such claim, no common origin with local aborigines — unless you accept the palaeoanthropologist discovery of the origin of all hominids in The Cradle of Man, the site in this African country.
A huge skeleton shed is crowded to standing crush at the entrance. Way is made for the mixed group, either in amused recognition of the novelty among them or as a small sign of reconciliation that’s supposed to exist. A woman buffeted, answers Isa’s apology. — Welcome, my sister — this electioneering event is in one of the ‘safe’ areas of the country, confident of Party votes. ‘Kill for Zuma!’—some youths have declared — Isa looks about, quoting in mumble. Jake prods her along by the elbow — Well, suppose Zuma’s ‘Bring Me My Machine Gun’ is heard as permission.—
— See any AKs. — Peter is gazing around from where the comrades from the Suburb have found a bench and people in possession have shifted to make cramped space. There’s nothing to signify in appearances, anyone who isn’t too fat is like the Suburbans, in jeans; there are the usual hair constructions, more spiky than Jabu’s, some Afro-bushes dyed redhead, nose-rings and shackling ear-baubles. Isa’s appreciative of political participation. — That’s how we are…you can’t tell which is pop group and which is Youth League showing signals of having outgrown wisdom from Party leaders—
— Heritage isn’t a grand old pile out of which nothing new must come.—
— Stevie — Blessing, head on side. — Shame, they mustn’t rubbish it.—
— Mandela and Tambo, the young ones, changed Luthuli’s ANC, the great man for the reality of his time — for what they’d say, ‘knocking on the back door’—youth came up, eh, and brought the Party to Umkhonto.—
— That’s it! That’s it! We need a youth group, wild to keep us awake, know it’s now — a luta continua—but it’s a new one at home and globalised, Internet, blog. — Peter repeats in a mix of isiZulu and isiXhosa, for the benefit of the sharers on the bench he hears speaking in their tongues.
— So we’ve got to take up the AK to fight a free and fair election? — He hasn’t waited for Peter to finish the translation amid the delighted attention of the beneficiaries.
His own vehemence registered by Isa; he’s aware of the questioning blankness turned on him: her usually expressive face.
Zuma has not come to address this gathering. Kgalema Motlanthe, interim President of the country since Thabo Mbeki was dismissed, is up there. Jabu, just loud enough to be heard — He was under pressure to appoint an inquiry into the arms deals.—
Motlanthe repeats Party promises, he doesn’t charm, sing or dance. Speeches have had their place, electioneering is taken over by the crowd. A man has heaved to the vacated stage a bulbous street-shiny successor to the cowhide drum and stretches a crane of arm to haul beside him a small boy clutched round an example of the old kind. The man performs, with all fury of a star preacher, angry hysteria of victory to bring about an event to come, and turns a gasp for breath into command for the boy to lift his child’s head too big for the body, and flail tiny hands expertly over his drum. Out of the battle-song chorus of the crowd all the women have risen and are wending widely round and round, up and down, they are the breasts and belly foremost of an anti-privatisation movement’s expectation, government takeover of the mines, gold, platinum, uranium, coal. The stark echo of the tram shelter becomes itself their voice.
Jabu beside him sings with her sisters, from where she sits; one of the men sharing the bench legs up over it to cheer AMANDLA! brotherhood granted he leans to put an arm either side on Peter Mkize and the academic who has the promise of professorship in Australia. AMANDLA! It comes out of this one along with the Brother, Jake, Peter and Isa. But not Jabu; as if now she hasn’t the right? Although she cannot help singing. AWETHU! the others respond with the call from the crowd, power to the people.