Whatever she said then was drowned by a plane trampling the sky, grumbling away.
Australia.
The public relations department of the university — where every detail of his post has been confirmed — has considerately sent a photograph and description of the residence assigned to him and his family. It is larger by several rooms than their Suburb house where they’re handing round the photograph and obviously has no history of the kind this house has, taken over from the community of the Gereformeerde Kerk transformed into a Dolphin pool; it is the colonial version of open-plan Californian, attractive, which suits sunny countries like South Africa and Australia. There happened to be a racing bicycle against the façade wall when the picture was taken. — Is that my bike — Gary in joking anticipation.
— Is there a pool? — Sindiswa speculated. Some of her boy- and girlfriends at the school she will be leaving have swimming pools at home taken for granted; she has been the exception.
There are conditions her father could not meet in the adventure, another country, which her friends see privileging her. — I shouldn’t think so — but there’s an Olympic-size one along with a gym, apparently the team swimmers compete nationally. — Quote from a brochure. Sindi takes the photograph of the house. — I’ll borrow it to show Aretha. — A friend whose family have a house on a Greek island.
Gary flips it from her. — Give here, I’m going to let the Mkizes see. — But on the way he changes direction and goes to the Dolphins. The pool is a watercolour painted by the setting sun. The men are in the house, with Marc and Claire, he remains part of the Dolphin family although she is, in a sense, a foreigner, they are drinking wine and watching election meetings, exclaiming over speeches on TV as Gary would heckle at a televised football match. — This’s the house my father’s got for us, over there (he’s picked up the geographical colloquialism) isn’t it fantastic. I’m not taking my old bike. I’ll be getting a new racer, like this. Cool. — The notion momentarily dismissed the co-education school about which he never speaks. But the Dolphins and the woman pass the photograph between them with abstracted glance taken from the screen or hand it on without notice. Marc gives him a welcoming punch on the shoulder while his attention stays with that of the passionate crowd hailing a bear-hug of Msholozi Zuma and his pop-star acolyte Malema, who, going beyond confidence of his own presidency, he predicts as a future candidate some day. — Where’re the folks — Gary Elias is just a sprig of the Reed entourage. — At home? Be a good guy and call them to come over. — The boy draws past his buttock the mobile in his pocket — although he hasn’t yet been granted one of his own, has filched his sister’s. There’s some sort of questioning from the other end — what’re you doing at the pool, you said you were going to the Mkizes’—but in a short while Steve and Jabu arrive amid welcoming laughter at the invitation coming from their son. Who then leaves to proceed to where he was supposed to be, the Mkizes’; in the interim he, too, has been watching the crowd out of habit as at any spectacle on TV, without taking in the exhortation of the speeches, he’s too young to be recruited as a Malema disciple — or just not black enough, only half-half and middle-class nourished, Julius Malema at the age of nine was a poor black child demonstrating protest against apartheid and rejoicing Mandela’s release from prison.
The Dolphins and comrades continue to follow the electioneering but their counter-crossfire to the blast prevails at the touch of a remote control that drops the politicians into night.
Wherever Suburb comrades and comrades of the Struggle are together there is now an underlying strain felt almost in the juxtaposition of the familiar bodies, the known characteristics of crossed legs, cracking of knuckles — they may have become strangers. Since the split, breakaway in the party, each unbelievably — unacceptably — does not know how the other right there at the Dolphin pool, in the Mkizes’ house, on the Reed terrace, under the Jake and Isa garden umbrellas — is going to vote. It has become a fact of life in common, better left unsaid. Unasked.
This can’t mean there is no exchange of impressions, arguments over the tendencies, Left, Right, uneasy Centre — politics no longer simply white against black.
Peter Mkize, Umkhonto cadre, is a scornful descendant of tribal society, the — nevertheless legitimate? — base of the black Traditionalist party. — Are they Left, Right, Centre? What? If you sit yourself in a European model parliament, that’s what we’ve taken over from the colonialists, that’s what we’ve got, my Bras — you have to position yourself — see what I mean — in the way that House knows politics, like the way followers of the church see Catholic, Methodist, Seventh Day Adventist, so on, everybody knows the different kinds of Christians all expecting to be saved.—
— Sharp sharp! But no no no. — Lesego, all colloquial in defiance of being an academic, has come to the Mkize house with Steve, this time. — There’s nationalism, the African nation, wasn’t that how it was, early days of the ANC, Mandela, until the SACP brought the light of the Left, scared some people it might be kind of Outside: colonial. There’s nationalism in power in many countries on our continent, maybe under a different fancy African name. For them…The rest of the world can go to hell, not Brothers in the Underdog we still share.—
Jake looks to Steve for his concurrence. — We’re as a nation committed to switching away from the old North — South, South — North axis, yes we’re getting good trade and other connections, India, Brazil—
— China. — It’s Mkize again. — I’ll bet everyone here’s wearing jeans made in China. Including me. Our textile people can’t compete with the cheap price of slave-labour stuff. Has Zuma or Lekota said anything, what they will do about that. China coming. Already own twenty per cent in our biggest bank.—
At election time you question the intentions of those whose political eloquence is hooked for your vote. He can’t ask — but what if the Party whose human aims you share, even risked lives for, is snarling against itself, now in what is only the third election in freedom — which side, now, in the break has what you and she believe in?
Where you ‘belonged’.
Other political parties are of no account to members of the African National Congress although they’re disgusted — embarrassed? — by the behaviour of their own Youth League’s crude insults to a white woman, leader of a liberal party generally regarded as white with a growing tint from voters in its territorial majority of descendants of the indigenous San and Khoi aborigines, mixed with blacks and colonialist variety, the real people native to South Africa. Babyface Malema said the politician was a white whore who selected only white males for her provincial cabinet because she sleeps with them all. A political wily caper: at the same time he also claims respect for women’s rights. Anything goes in platform audacity.
The two halves of what was the unity of the comrades’ Party.
Zuma — of course — its Presidential candidate — his sacredly danced promises of integrity to the Party’s great vision, the mantra ‘Better Life For All’, is obsessively seen and heard.
Mosiuoa Terror Lekota shares his COPE platform with that Reverend Dandala who turns out to talk some sober sense on what could be done for the better life but hasn’t the flair of Terror to suggest COPE could achieve it. Terror has been joined by another deserter of the Party, Tokyo Sexwale, a stronger ally than the Reverend. But maybe a risk as a rival to head COPE?
Insecurity added to the great breach between Terror and Zuma, broken apart in this other Struggle — it’s Jake who’s said it, and repeats — Who could ever have thought. We’d come to this.—