He’ll ask, although there cannot be any question on what Jabu really is raising, which is about those Australians known just as indigenes rather than black in any degree or variation. The young woman at the emigration agency is a South African employee who makes an assumption on necessity to reassure a white, like herself — Schools are open to all races, of course…it’ll depend where the schools are, if it’s not a school near where most blacks live, there’ll probably be only a few…you know, the ones whose parents…you know, can afford private schools—
He relates this to her like a feeble racist joke.
Julius Malema is in a bid to be taken seriously these last weeks before the election, his child prodigy leadership of the Youth celebrating Zuma in triumph they’ll be voting to bring about for him. Malema’s reinventing himself again, new avatar as peace envoy. He’s getting a good press now (although it was the bad capitalist — colonialist press that ridiculed, demonised — and thereby first, made him) since he’s gagged his cry ‘We’ll kill for Zuma’. His arrogation of leaders’ right to make promises there’ll be a new, functional country run by an ANC united (forget COPE): the Party has the Youth vigorously empowered with testosterone, alongside or ahead of it. A count of potency to match Zuma’s own, sexual and political.
You have to be young to ignore or be unaware of what that future may look like. A schoolfriend of Sindiswa has asked, — You’ll be coming back? — Sindi answers in a variation of emigrants’ assumption of reassurance. — Oh in the holidays — not this Christmas we’ll only just have moved there — but next year, oh sure, maybe — they have the same winter and summer as here, I think the same school holidays.—
She hasn’t told Gary of this question. But as the family eats Sunday evening takeaways he asks — Are we going back home, I mean, to see everyone, sometimes. — His father gives a gentle lesson in realities children must be trusted to understand — It’s very expensive, the flight for all of us — You can send me. I can stay with BabaMkhulu.—
— Are elections the same everywhere, other countries? — For Peter Mkize the choice of a government is a right he, Jabu, and everyone else tanned with a black DNA have experienced only twice before. The first, the euphoric freedom one, Mandela from Robben Island, prisoner to President. The second his successor Thabo Mbeki also a Struggle man despite being an intellectual who forgot that a man of the people doesn’t quote Yeats to comrade voters who are half-literate, have had poor schooling even in their own languages — and then he’s President betrayed by his brain in refusing scientific evidence that AIDS is a disease caused by a virus.
— Comrade — elections are about rivalry. For power. That’s all.—
Marc takes on Jake. — How can you be so cynical. Where’d that get us. This party has its policy, that one has another, we choose between how we think our country should be run, develop.—
— Democracy’s only about power? Well, democratic Zimbabwe’s one that proves it. — She speaks and Peter’s reminded — Jabu, what’s happening — the refugees — we’re all so busy with this election — they’ll still be pouring in when that’s all over. Or if the new government gets the door shut at the borders we’ll still have how many thousand already — how long now. The church guy, is he still running that shelter or has the city council got onto him again.—
— They’re there, on the pavement and the street, he still has his church full. And soon it’ll be winter. There was a move to take them to some abandoned building but they came back to where they get food, and some sort of pickings from street trading. And it seems the camp at the main border point people enter, Messina, it has been closed, it was supposed to prevent the drift to the cities. We’re acting for the church, our Centre lawyers. But I’ll take you down to see — right beside the Magistrates’ Courts the city’s had to put up portable toilets, the kind at sports events. And now the local shopkeepers have gone to court against this.—
— Choice. Did you see? One of the columnists has guts to write: we’ve the choice of a balance of thieves to vote for—
Isa claps her palm a moment over her lips as if this is what she’s really doing over Jake’s. — Why’s my man such a bad-mouth, he’ll be first in the queue to make his cross—
— Because…my love, ay — you have to face the facts.—
— At least you don’t say ‘the truth’.—
— Let me finish? The journalist says there are some good ones thrown in, sharp, sharp, aih Peter. Our ANC has luxury German cars as canvassing fleet, where we’re getting our funding — shhhh — no one knows he says, how many millions from the dictators of Libya and Equatorial Guinea. Can’t call these bribes can we, no, just sweeteners to be sure our foreign policies will support the sugar daddy donors to our democracy when their totalitarian states get hauled over the coals by International Human Rights. The opposition? The Independent Democrats have a murderer on their list, the Zulus’ IFP has a convicted fraudster, another has a churchman — not Dandala! — convicted and then pardoned. Well, can’t complain things are dull. The Trade Union S.G. tells workers Malema may become the next Mandela. Malema’s now called Helen Zille a colonialist, that’s much worse than when he called her a whore. She comes back at him — do I pronounce it right—inkwenkwe, whatever that insult is.—
Blessing blurts cheeringly — Stevie, it’s my language, isi Xhosa, ‘uncircumcised boy’.—Her man Peter to the comrades — You don’t know our insults, that’s about the worst thing you can call a black man.—
Malema’s repartee allows election-mode freedom of speech become general. — The shit hits the fan — And Isa leads the laughter, as Steve ejects the words.
She has insider reflections to bring back from the company she keeps at the Centre. The advocates in their exchanges pronounce, the Zuma corruption indictment hasn’t safely blown away. And what she confides isn’t legal gossip, that’s not her responsible nature. However the provisions of Constitutional law brought this about, right to appeal is upheld, and the withdrawal of the charge is judged as invalid — overturned. For complex procedural defections you need a lawyer in-house, to follow.
Jacob Zuma goes to the polls with charges reinstated against him, to be heard again after 22 April.
— When he’ll be President.—
He says it for her and for him, as if already an event in their past.
22 April.
She often is kept late at chambers when a client has to consult after hours and she must be there with the advocate leading the case. Wethu has microwaved the lamb stew taken out of the freezer, so he and the children with Wethu are at the table when she comes in tossing her briefcase to a chair and running a hand along her tailed locks.
— There was such a crowd queued up.—
That is how she is telling.
His eyes hold hers, question — and answer: she — Jabu — has come from a polling station. She kisses each child and him, flutter of a passing moth come in to the light as if her apology for being late, before serving herself and sitting down to eat with them. Gary Elias mocking his mother’s own admonition — You didn’t wash your hands — while holding out his plate for a second helping.