They don’t either of them remind. You will not be here.
President Zuma has declared the African National Congress will rule until the Second Coming.
Along the streets there are men and women thumbs-up for lifts, the bus drivers have been on strike for almost four weeks. Blacks in their locked cars don’t stop to pick up stranded workers any more than whites do; he’s a white among them. Class makes unity in consciousness of hijack danger. She does take on the signals, from men as well as women, swerving to the kerb. She hasn’t told him she picks up commuters along her way. He warned her against this, it’s risky, but there is no man other than Baba who has been able to tell her what not to do.
City parks gardeners and cleaners, administrative staff in the municipalities, social workers, prison warders are ready to strike if pay packages agreed upon two years ago are not distributed within a week. ‘If it comes to the push we will bring the country to a standstill, we have no option.’
While they are handing the Sunday papers between them she folds a double page down the middle and slides it over the one he’s reading — there’s a picture spread of black and white doctors picketing outside the hospital named to honour a white woman who spent years in prison in the Struggle, Helen Joseph. WE’RE LIFE SAVERS NOT SLAVES MY PLUMBER EARNS MORE THAN I DO.
Round the first fire of the coming winter, at Jake and Isa’s, Peter Mkize repeats precisely the President’s assurances as if testing the vowel sounds for genuineness. — Corruption and nepotism will be fought under his administration.—
Jake grants — You have to have the nerve with which the man doesn’t begin on himself. Anyway, there’s a new code of accountability to us, the nation. The Minister of Transport gets a million-rand present from transport contractors and dutifully asks the President if he should give it back. — Peter’s glass staggering its contents — Our President’s advice, no, man — keep the present after you declare according to whoever’s in charge of — who’s it — the government’s code of executive ethics.—
Isa flips into the fire a skeleton twig claw from the bunch of dried grapes on her vine the birds have missed. — Box of wine, Gucci outfit—
Jabu’s asking — Remember? — Zuma’s promise to stay in touch with the voters, people’s president. Someone from the Centre was at the Maponya shopping mall in Soweto last weekend when Zuma came from a church where he’d been to thank the congregation for praying for the ANC victory in the election that would make him President. Zuma Zuma people yelling ran to keep up with the electric golf cart he sat on going through the mall, the movies and fast food sections, kids went wild, and outside — a crowd waiting for him. He said he was there to thank them for voting for him, when we were campaigning we told you, we were coming to you not just for votes. Today’s the start of staying in touch…first stop Soweto because this is the place that symbolised the struggle of the people, I came here because this place tells a new story, here you can walk into world-class shops and buy what you want, you don’t have to go to town, this is a story of our freedom.—
— To spend, spend, if you’re not unemployed — Jake hails with arms in the air.
It’s as if she feels she must be the one to acknowledge between them, if he wants to spare her what might appear as reproach: it turns out the party she voted for, COPE has its own share of corruption. A huge parastatal fuel and other energy sources company (she reads to him from a document) has COPE strongly represented on the board. Bonuses of 1.8 million and 3.5 million rands have been awarded to top executives of the company. Lifestyle. Everyone has corporate membership of a golf estate which costs a princely initial fee and there are yearly fees on the matching scale. The company’s spokesperson says expansion plans require its executives to engage in networking initiatives with current and potential business partners, customers, investors.
At the eighteenth hole. Whatever he may have felt about her defection (said nothing of this at the time) both share a general outcome.
President Zuma again declares the ANC will rule until the Second Coming. The Council of Churches has objected to his statement as sacrilege. (Jake evokes — Shades of the Mohammad cartoon in Denmark? Don’t demean our gods. — ) In the confusion of public tightrope acts, while students riot because they can’t afford university registration fees, ‘Financial Exclusion from Education’ is the subject on the tacked-up posters’ call to a mass meeting at the university and among the discussants, student union leaders, heads of departments, known ‘activists’ Lesego and himself, are three-piece-suit Professor Neilson and his one or two other colleagues from various faculties who usually absolve themselves, now, from public protest. A Brother (or is it a Sister) university last year saw a 154 per cent increase in student enrolment. First-year maths students sit on the floor, have to share desks. Other ‘tertiary’ institutions: one failed in the last financial year to spend 142 million made available by the government for bursaries. What’s happened to the money? Nationally, mid-year marks of engineering students in a developing country short of engineers dropped to 35 per cent passes. Like the voice of authority unexpected from an opened tomb, it’s Professor Neilson speaking. — There is everywhere, among all of us, enormous — a staggering strain on teaching staff, on our possibility of educating, our dedication to disseminating knowledge on required levels for this country.—
The Old Boy product of exclusive educated class, clubman, has never before been applauded at present gatherings.
There’s an Australian exclamation picked up from the books in the process of being read: Good on him!
What is the difference between not doing anything, and having arrived, while desperately opposing yourself, at recognition that what had been believed, fought for hasn’t begun to be followed — granted, couldn’t be realised — in fifteen years — and right now, every day degenerates. Oh that fucking litany, Better Life, how often to face the dead with it, the comrades who died for the latest executive model Mercedes, the mansions for winter or summer residence, the millionaire kickbacks from arms deals and tenders for housing whose brand-new walls crack like an old face. Who would have had a prescient nightmare of ending up sickened, unmanned of anything there is for you to take on, a luta continua.
She has been ‘lent’ to a firm of lawyers in a case of rape. Although any violation of the human body would seem under rights in the Constitution a case for defence by the Justice Centre it would first have to be heard in a civil court before, lost or dismissed, going on appeal to the Constitutional Court. She’s been chosen because it’s remembered she has done so much in her early time as a recruit to the Centre preparing disorientated people to bear witness; her natural empathy would be an advantage in a case of this nature. And someone may have noticed her presence in the crowd at the President’s rape trial.
— Have you ever known a woman who’d been raped? — Surely no one among the women they knew, but the country is said to have one of if not the highest incidence in the world. Maybe if it had happened, a woman wouldn’t want to talk about it. Not even an Isa, much.
— How would we know. Among the girls at the university. Did we know that one in four men in the country is willing to admit committing a rape? Statistic: I’m so amazed, can’t believe…you…can you believe it. — She is asking him not as her husband but as a male, whether this is an instinct all males share but all don’t follow. Calling her up not as a lawyer but his lover is his certainty that the instinct or whatever else it may be has nothing to do with his making love to her impulsively perhaps demandingly sometimes not in their marriage bed but as they had to on the run against the law. Might as well have asked if he could understand murdering someone, yes? What is turned up under these stones. If you kill in a revolution for freedom that’s not murder. Too late to question.