— They weren’t Julius Malema ready to kill in time of freedom.—
Refugee Brothers and Sisters lying on the wrong side of political palace walls of Idi Amin, Mugabe, Malema. Sindiswa and Gary Elias on some Methodist Church pavement. But no neighbouring country available as refuge, refugees from those themselves seeking a pavement to sleep on.
Australia.
She is not the eagerly confiding, open young one, his girl in the Swaziland discovery of sexuality as a natural part of political discovery: you were not white, she black in the risk of prison, torture threat to both on your short-lived existence that was set fighting to end existing categories of power, custom, what-have-you and create in their country a human one out of all the divisions bedevilling the hideous past. Working with law, its sane obstinacy defending justice within the new varieties of injustice, she has come to act as determinedly.
Ah…I don’t want to go—no echo there also in the decision of their future? They don’t need even to suppress the subject, there’s no distance between them: she’s there for him, for departure; the leaving. They’re in it together. In their bathroom, taken off the bubble of her shower cap, with the other hand she’s lifted the stiff tumbled locks released, they are dancing wildly pointing the hair about her head. — Medea! — He’s amused. But the reference is unlikely to have visual meaning for Jabu, just as in Zulu image or metaphor often her reference has no meaning — match — for him. In Australia at least however they’ll both not have references to the local foreign images, metaphors. That in common.
But if references not known between them at home are sign of the intimately irreconcilable, coming from their different ‘cultures’, aren’t they, haven’t they been from the beginning the fascination of what’s called the Other!
The aspects of the election are divergent for the different concerns of groups each in its familiar enclosure: coffee-room focus is that in its last weeks before dissolution of parliament the government has made a farewell announcement. The Ministry of Education is to be split into two departments: ‘Primary’, for schools, and for universities and technical institutions, ‘Tertiary’—avoiding the old-style category ‘Higher Education’ with its suggestion of class distinction. Probably not coincidental that in this last month before the Day of the Vote the Education Minister visited the university to inspect improvements in progress. A bank has funded a building which will provide new lecture halls, a student centre and tutorial rooms. — He doesn’t know how the guys and the gals are going to miss the necessity to squeeze up close. — It’s old Professor Miller from Maths who enjoys showing he’s cool. A new appointee in the History department, Hafferjee, a thin gold earring winking in approval. — More Internet connections for students—
— Facebook, Twitter — enough enough! — what they need is somewhere to live, what about shortage of beds and bathrooms. — Lesego in Nelson Mandela dashiki turns to Professor Neilson in his form of academic dress, impeccable suit-and-tie, everyone has a constitutional right to traditional attire, with official uncertainty about veiled Muslim girls in school. — Three-ninety-nine million the university’s asked for from ‘Tertiary’. The man won’t be in his ministry after April twenty-two, he won’t be there to see we do get it.—
Overture to that day of election is deafening against everything else even if he reminds himself he will not meet what comes after. The Secretary General of the Party — His and Jabu’s, the Mkizes’—says of the brain drain, professionals follow opportunities as a result of the country being part of the integrated global economy.
Nothing to do with the prospect that the new President at the crest of fervour for the man of the people, will be a President with seventy-two charges of fraud and corruption against him?
She’s uncovered that 20 per cent of the people living in the Methodist Church and the pavement dormitory are not refugees from Zimbabwe or any other country but are destitute South Africans, thrust finger down the open mouth.
Hasn’t Zuma’s corruption case caught the delay wind.
— There have been calls for a review of the Constitutional Court decisions. — Lifting not his machine-gun song but the weapon of Christian values he accuses the judges of ‘behaving as if they were almost close to God’. And in the same cycle of this country the National Union of Metal Workers is calling for the nationalisation of a mining company owned by Struggle veteran Tokyo Sexwale and Patrick Patrice Motsepe; black, two of the wealthiest men in the country. Brothers betraying the egalitarian ideals of the ANC? South Africa — mixed economy — is still largely a capitalist society — if only one in which laws preventing the emergence of a black entrepreneurial class have been abolished.
A voice from under the bonnet. — You can’t attack white fat cats without pointing at black as well. Double standard. — The friend of Peter Mkize joining the Suburb comrades to give advice about the faults of acceleration in Blessing’s car, is one of those who are members both of the ANC and the SACP. — We won’t exempt class betrayal by brothers profiting on capitalist enterprise.—
Peter can place him. No offence possible between them, no contradiction in the policy of the ANC alliance. — Who’s arguing about that, we’re equal now whether exploiting or exploited, isn’t it, aih, sinning or sinned against, all got the vote. The workers have the same boss if he’s black like us or white like Stevie.—
— Ja, we’ve heard it all — (whether he means: even down in the engine’s belly)—Eish man, we know, tarara black capitalists generate new wealth the white capitalists tell us, how’s it go, they make job opportunities, they have to pay taxes that increase money for social grants poor women get something to feed their kids—
Isa and Jabu coming out with coffee and a tray of mugs; Jabu is there with the figures. — Inequality, it’s increased more than fourteen per cent, that’s since two years after the first all-race election (as if prompted the horn blurts from inside the car’s engine where Peter’s friend must have touched a wrong part) — alarm bells, you see it in the service delivery protests. At the Justice Centre we have reports, political connections work in favour of prominent ANC members winning contracts for upgrading township water supply, electricity, over tenders of firms lower priced, better qualified. We’ve seen houses where the roof’s blown off in the first storm after tenants moved in. People rewarded with tenders are making millions. There’s the risk, street protests will lead to black class conflict, Zuma’s going to have his hands full. You can forget about xenophobia.—
Always he finds himself curiously in the same relation to her as are other people while she is speaking from a professional perspective. Instead of that indefinable identity called wife. Other women are desirable, that’s the basis of man-woman, but there’s no woman other than she who could have been, could be the identity of all he has found in her. He’s in recognition.
Jake — That’s why the big man has to make sure the hands of support are well greased!—
Is it a jolt back to personal reality or a diversion…Gary Elias’s school. Another ‘incident’. One of the matric class who was involved in the initiation affair apparently not directly enough to be named then, has lined up senior boys on a grandstand for what he called ‘haircut inspection’. He swore at a boy about his unacceptable haircut, kicked him in the chest, thrust fallen to the ground.
When he comes home from an after-hours meeting at the university she is with Gary Elias sitting close, on the terrace. Wethu is there; she groans a soft accompaniment while mother and son tell what happened.