It was imperative; he smiled, the objection in court; but his legal representative counts on the volume to ensure privacy, the daughter won’t overhear. — She could be Sindi. Could have been her, I had to stop thinking.—
He must concentrate on what he can’t know, what it was like drawing a woman — a girl, to tell what rape is while it is happening; to have the body, the opening that can’t resist forced entry down passage to female being. — She’s not Sindi, I mean it’s not what we’d want to admit, but look, that one comes from the shacks, there for any man to grab — that’s the fact.—
— She’d remind you of Sindiswa.—
She is black. Living as the fag-end of racism. Can’t say it. She’s not the product of a Baba who sent his daughter away to Swaziland for the evolution of education, and of the white Reed breed whose offspring evolved into a revolutionary comrade, she isn’t the product of an Aristotle school where the origins of democracy are taught relevant to Here and Now. Can’t say this.
But they are too long through many circumstances for her not to follow. — Girls are forced into cars when they’re taking a walk to a shopping mall in their suburb, a gang gets over the security fence and breaks into a house, one rapes the woman while the others collect the TV and computer. You’ve read about it. An eight-month-old baby was raped, at the Centre we’re looking into a commission of psychiatrists to explain this.—
— Male entitlement. — He supplies.
She doesn’t bring home the rape case again until the week when she’s going back to her work at the Centre, the rapist has been found guilty and sentenced, his lawyer is applying for an appeal, but her bit-part is over.
— Nothing to be done?—
Her voice closes a file. — Nothing.—
Apparently she is not seeing the girl; probably handed to the care of one of the organisations for abused women which Blessing Mkize is supporting with leftover food from the weddings and corporate dinners, as she does for old-age homes.
It’s noticeable — the interest of his documentation on Australia; lately come, as if only now she sees on the calendar that November is four months near. It’s not on the practical settlement arrangements, the school decided for Sindi and Gary Elias, that she is turning pages. It’s the legal profession in a country which is not a republic under a president but still some residue of a British Empire, in the Commonwealth, a federation where the Queen is the highest authority as represented by a governor-general. What conditions are going to be the immigrants’ in relation to the statistics of crime, the nature of crimes. She has struck up quite a lively Internet exchange with a group of women lawyers Over There. Of course — not strange — logical if we look at the map, that what Australians call their dialogue partner is South-East Asia, those nations, people nearest to them. They signed a ‘Comprehensive Partnership’ (she’s reading it out) two years ago, political, economic, socio-cultural and on security, trans-national issues including terrorism.
He and she each walking over in projection their own future field. Sometimes afford the other a glance there, afterthought. — There are women on the judges’ bench…city hold-ups in certain quarters…low incidence of rape.—
He had had his self-accusing doubts, was he forcing her to leave because they belong together as proven in every circumstance and solution. Now she has made her decision for Australia, down under in herself, to pry into it would be to admit some macho misuse of intimate freedom.
South Africa inhabited by humans for almost two million years.
Australia inhabited by humans for less than sixty thousand years.
He’s called up online. ‘Australia at the time of European settlement in the seventeenth century the Indigenous population with its highly developed traditions reflected in a deep connection with the land was estimated at least 315,000. The Indigenous population declined significantly as a result of increased mortality and by 1930 was only 20 per cent of its original size.’
Colonisers solved any future problem of liberation movement by killing off the natives, one way or another.
‘There was no population referendum until 1967, after 250 years of colonisation. The Australian constitution was then altered to allow Commonwealth Parliament to make laws to include aborigines in the national census.’
Before that they didn’t exist.
‘The 2006 census. The Indigenous percentage of the total Australian population 2.3 per cent. But with an average annual growth of 2 per cent compared with 1.18 per cent for the total population.’
Poor always breed like flies.
‘Just over half Australia’s Indigenous population live in or close to major cities but as a proportion of the total population Indigenous people are far more likely than non-Indigenous people to live in remote areas. Nationally, Indigenous people make up 24 per cent of Australians living in remote or very remote areas and just 1 per cent of those living in major cities. The expression “native title” is used in Australian law to describe communal, group or individual rights of aboriginals. In a decision of the High Court of Australia in 1992, Eddie Mabo was the first Indigenous person to have native title rights recognised on behalf of Indigenous people. The court rejected the idea that Australia had been terra nullius—land belonging to no one — at the time of British settlement. The Mabo decision led to the establishment of the Native Title Act which recognises and protects native title throughout Australia.’
End of Outback Bantustans.
‘The Australian government is committed to the process of reconciliation between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians. Reconciliation involves symbolic recognition of the honoured place of the first Australians and the implementation of practical and effective measures to address the legacy of profound economic and social disadvantage experienced by many Indigenous Australians, particularly in health, education, employment and housing. Fewer Indigenous students attend and finish school than Non-Indigenous students. Today Australia has a population of 21 million. More than 43 per cent were either born overseas themselves or have one parent who was born overseas. The Indigenous population is 23 per cent of the total.’
In South Africa everything in reverse. Whites 12 per cent of the 49 million population, still dominate the economy, the black majority which overcame also produces those who join the white class and take freedom as the advance to corruption and distancing from the majority living jobless between shacks and toilet buckets.
Take the Down Under information to her; familiarising herself with law over there, unlikely she’s not aware…
The fact that she’s never brought it, to us.
We’ve paid our Struggle dues: and the result? What our son and daughter must grow up to be here, at home, by birth and genes, responsible to a Zuma, a Malema.
Gary Elias is practising on his newly acquired guitar and Sindi, Jabu and Wethu are watching the news on TV, Wethu doesn’t want to see again alone in her cottage the excreta of city’s life where she found herself that afternoon, the rotting food nesting flies, the shore of dirty paper, broken bottles, torn T-shirts cast by municipal workers on strike again, when she was there to buy some special headache muti demanded by a sister back home in KwaZulu.
Education — no, mustn’t allow himself to be distracted by sections on agriculture, bird life, entertainment, Internet cafés. Education: over the past decade the Australian government has committed to halving the gap in literacy and numeracy between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians (that’s a humbling admission in identity, imaging South African whites agreeing to call themselves Non-Africans!)…Although it’s admitted there’s still a long way to go to increase the educational levels of the Indigenous, the progress is encouraging. Out of the country’s total population the number of Indigenous children attending school has increased to 4.2 per cent…universities: the proportion of Indigenes attaining Bachelor or higher degrees, 5 per cent of the national intake—