— How come our hostel boys have golf clubs—we didn’t know private schools provide coaching for the future chairmen of boards—
— But Jabu, don’t forget comrade Thabo Mbeki, when he was president, he revolutionised the status of blacks on the golf course from caddy to player, taking up golf, low handicap he had, himself. — Jake gets his laugh.
— D’you think the leader should be expelled? — Isa seems unaccustomedly embarrassed by the Mkizes and the Reeds with whom until now so much has been shared. Anderson boys are not at that school, don’t risk being initiated or initiating others — so far as the Andersons are aware.
— What’d you do if it’d been your boy — The playwright, dramatic. — I mean how’d it feel for anyone to know your own kid had somehow become so brutal, where did it come from in his life, the decency he must get from you — you’d know, wouldn’t you — he wasn’t a kid you’d let torture a kitten.—
— It’s not just the one they’ve ‘removed’, there was a gang, can a school expel a group maybe most of them in that hostel have been through the ordeal, proud of it, expect others to be tested the way they were — one of these manhood rituals eih, isn’t what’s really behind it is that a male must be made killer enough to be conscripted to kill in some war your country decides on. Peter — blacks, you have your initiation, circumcision school whatever you call them, in the bush, and look at the cases when the job is botched, the victim suffers horribly to ‘become’ a man.—
— We Zulus don’t circumcise, Steve, don’t you know that—
Reproach: white ignorance.
A Christian father, yet ritually, as a baby, made a man, the Jewish way, was that really what my mother couldn’t have known: preparation for the Struggle…and finally a man for the contradictions of a decision.
— Violence is — cool — even if the hero wins in the end it’s also by violence — all this comes to our children on TV. We allow them to see hours of it — Peter’s head is jerking, his eyes squeezed, then wide. — What happened last year not in a school — a university? Right, not on TV, but d’you think those boys haven’t followed that shit, what’s to be done with the big brothers at schools whose filthy kind of initiation has been got away with — that’s manpower all right? They followed…—
— Subconsciously. — Marc supplies for Peter.
— Eish, I wouldn’t know how to explain it, perhaps someone else…? Something in the…what we breathe—
It’s Blessing, who listens more than she speaks. — We haven’t asked our boys. What they want us to do about — school. How they feel.—
It is not easy to find the right time, the place in a day to bring the subject up with Gary Elias. His subject. She’s threading new laces in one of his football boots while he is threading the other, and naturally, without a choice, she finds herself asking — What’s it like at school now. Have the teachers changed, are they more strict with everyone…did you know, I mean…any of those boys.—
— Oh they’re matric, not in class with Njabulo and me, but Raymond, he’s one of them, he’s our top goalie, first team.—
— Were you very surprised he’d do — things like that. Does it make you…Njabulo and your other friends unhappy. In school. So awful such a thing happened.—
— Headmaster had us in the big hall — you know, I told you and Dad that day. There was Father Connolly from the Catholic’s church and Reverend Nkomo our school pastor, they were praying and now every morning at prayers those boys are there, we look at them — He breathes slowly on his hands deftly looping long laces.
Quickly lifts his head. He’s smiling directly at his mother to comfort her. — They’re mad. — Vociferous scornful dismissal.
It must be said although she has the confident answer already. — Gary, you don’t think, you wouldn’t rather be at another school. — If nothing else (he’s dealt with shock, disgust by declaring the perpetrators freaks) is he not afraid that as he advances to become a senior, the age at which such ‘madness’ takes place, he could be a victim.
Or — how could she ever have thought — a ritualised ‘man’ subjecting others to torture.
The freedom comrades fought for.
— Our boy is strong. — She’s telling how the necessary moment came about, of itself. — He’s not afraid. And not to worry. He’ll never become a bully. He won’t take on that ‘madness’ and he doesn’t want to run away to another school, I could see he already knows what happened is something, the sort of thing that is going to come up anywhere. As you grow, make your life.—
Even in Australia. He does not feel bypassed as a father; she has opened the way for him. — It wouldn’t come up at Aristotle. Ask Sindi; she’d freak out, as she’d say, even at the idea.—
It lies between them where their bodies and shoulders touch in bed at night, their hands encounter, settling for sleep. A conformation brought from clandestinity of Glengrove to that of the Suburb and wherever they may go. — Suppose it doesn’t make sense anyway — move school when there’s only the rest of this year here.—
He’s the one who took the initiative, if the process has been, is being followed by them together. — I just wish I could have taken up a post now. Bad luck it was too late for this year’s academic entry, all that paperwork, emails dragged on so long.—
— We’re stupid to think of it, crazy.—
Take him out of one school? Put him somewhere else? New surroundings, new teachers, new kids — and he and Sindi are going to have to deal with all that, new country, people don’t even speak — no, what is it, yes, don’t pronounce English like we do — And she breaks into a little snort invading the clandestinity of the darkness.
We’re going to hear Terror. — One leg then the other, shaking off the shine of drops as she gets out of the bath. It’s a statement.
He’s shaving. — Yes.—
And it is not a simple agreement, it’s a consent. She will not question, for either, the right to be at gatherings at which declarations will be made for the present and future of the country. The question which Isa’s moment of blank regard had realised in him at the ANC meeting.
Neither the Andersons nor the Mkizes would be asked if they would be coming to hear the Congress of The People gathering.
There are some comrade faces they know in the crowd neither as tight-packed nor palpably at one with each other as at the ANC parent-party electioneering. In the courage to break with the political fortress of the shared Struggle, defiantly exuberant voices exchanged, there is the unaccustomed shrill timbre of defection, inevitable in human self-consciousness no matter how convinced of the political validity brought about by the parent Party’s own betrayals of its battle-avowed politics. There are whites present; a few prominent ones, also defected from other parties? Prospective or already COPE committed? And maybe relics who regard themselves as not before having found a political home which might be their own: roughly awakened to the push and shove of the country’s situation, a never-before. Perhaps you can’t now be apolitical, that old solar topee of colonialism?
Lekota spoke with the individualities of his personality — the Terror of the football field — and the standard raised fist of rhetoric dedicated to victory, but smiling intelligence rather than berating, and he neither danced, pranced nor produced an armed theme song, while leading the cry and response that belongs to all who defied apartheid, his AMANDLA! bringing AWETHU from a following avowing themselves to him. The Reverend whoever-he-is, standing by; he has his turn invoking Christian values in COPE under the restlessness of the gathering’s preoccupation with Lekota.