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How long would he, could he stay.

November.

The man had some unexplained inner assurance — couldn’t be questioned about? Things would settle down in the shacks, he who had been living there with the people, three years, a South African woman and a child his compact with a life just as theirs (he determinedly would nod in agreement with whatever his own assurance was) he would go back. Soon. It will be all right. Soon.

Every week there’s another collection of shacks crowding to be a settlement, identified popularly if on no map, by the name of a Struggle hero and taking up another kind of struggle against people from over frontiers. In some areas the problem was solved by Better Life development as an industrial zone or country club, then it’s everyone out.

Soon. November. There’ll be no Wethu cottage. The new owners will move in. — They didn’t buy a Zimbabwean bonsella with the price.—

Confronting Jabu and himself. This kind of farewell.

The Mkizes, no. Jake and Isa…take him in; take him on?

She’s looking at discovery — The Dolphins. — The words don’t have a questioning lilt.

But how does she know these things; he has nothing less demanding to offer — for the meantime, which is any time between when the man thinks he can go back to his wife and child in the shack, and when there’ll be a Zimbabwe fit to return to.

Only Dolphins Donnie and Brian are at home, indoors with the newspapers and their glasses of good Cape Pinotage before a pinecone fire for the beauty of it, winter’s nearly over. Brian is a telecommunications expert who often has feasted them his other expertise, his jambalaya since they moved in to their welcome in the Suburb.

— No problem! There’s only junk we should throw out anyway since Marc’s got himself a wifey, it used to be his studio, he called it, but you know he’s never painted, no Picasso or Sekoto, always wrote plays there, he’s said he’d come to work back there in peace — whatever that tells the tale about life with Claire — we’ll just need a bed, if you have a spare—

They will have everything to spare of beds, tables, cupboards, chairs, freezer, TV — no, the new living-room widescreen will go along with furniture Wethu should have, perhaps Baba might like to give away the desks, keep his daughter’s, for himself — when transport is arranged, time come for her to go to KwaZulu. Soon.

When that time comes, if ‘meantime’ still needs it, the Dolphins will shelter the man with the topknot crown of city pavements. Imagine the ghosts/ghouls of the old Gereformeerde congregation: the sinful moffies in God’s house — now they even have a black man to bugger. Who’s thinking this, himself or others when Steve tells them the Zimbabwean will not be cast to the streets…

Autumn of parties, in summer. An ending.

The children are possessed by TV–Land, somewhere. He and she are on the stoep, that’s what the terrace was called when the house was built in the forties, as the Dolphins’ pool-house was the Gereformeerde Kerk before there came about a comrade takeover. Eyelids of light open upon the Suburb from houses on another hill, the conversation is that of cicadas rubbing legs together. But watchface glanced at in half-dark — they’re expected for another of the unacknowledged farewells. At Jake’s now.

They’re tardy. The comrades, Blessing and Peter, the Dolphins with their sexual renegade Marc and his honorary Dolphin woman — the comrades have been drinking before the arrival. Jake’s trying out one of the new vintages from an old well-known vineyard taken over by German (or are they Chinese) entrepreneurs with the precaution of one of the new black capitalists drawn in as a partner. — Why should whites own the wine resources as they do the mines — and there’re high voices in the ANC Youth none of the prosperous white oldsters are hearing yet — toyi-toying, calling for gold, diamonds, platinum industry to be nationalised. — Jake is even more loquacious than usual rather than drunk on this experimental Pinotage, unstoppable, uninterruptable (if there isn’t such a word there ought to be).

He and she — they sit on an unsteady swing couch. Hand within hand while these are not touching, not held.

— ANC’ll have to dig the wax out of ears before the elections come in 2014, that squalling prodigy Malema rallied his generation Brothers to vote first time Zuma Zuma Zuma, Zuma’d better start worrying whether they’ll dance with him all the way knee-high next time. Isn’t Malema lifting his to lead the dance himself? If not this time…after. One day. Soon. The five hundred thousand jobs Zuma promised as President? So where are they? The multi-million election victory celebration. The four hundred thousand he spent on a birthday bash for his daughter, and what about his nineteen or so other offspring and by-blows, will they all have birthday bashes at our tax expense? How many houses could have been built for three-generation families slumming in those abandoned downtown buildings, how many roofs could go up from the bill for French champagne gone down and pissed out by government ministers—

— There’ve been about two million houses. Eish. That’s nothing… — Peter is talking over Jake not defiantly but dismissively as if compensating for some congenital circumstance Jake himself — comrade — cannot be aware. — I’m the lucky one I have a house (spread hand waves to encompass the Suburb) I’ve got not just a job — it’s what we call a position, my wife has a business of her own, yes. But I — black, all of us, the beggar and big boss — I can walk where I like, move about my country, live in any place, city, get on any bus come in any door, send my kids to any school. That’s not nothing.—

Jake accepts — flinging right arm to catch his left below the shoulder — what a white cannot experience. But there’s no stalling him. — Strikes, they’re the employer these months, telecommunications, transport, electricity, every public servant from dustmen up, they’re taking over the country with blackouts and no-go streets they’re the worker-boss as full-time marcher to the headquarters of this commission and that. And NOW — the army, army—who can blame them, the ones it’s counted upon to do the head-bashing on workers if it comes to that. The army. Yesterday didn’t you see, the South African National Defence Force, three thousand rampaging under their banner at the Union Buildings, that’s boss government itself. Those supposed to protect us are the lowest paid government employees—

Blessing laughs out — So that’s the place to go! When there’s a strike I’m without my two cooks, although they share our profits, they want to show solidarity with other workers, their husbands from the municipality, one son with a bus company…—

— Since when do they have a union? — Eric of the Dolphin pool was in the apartheid army, remembers what doesn’t change with any regime. — Soldiers never have the right to strike. Jesus! Haven’t you heard call-in programmes, people saying the guys should be thrown out of the army in disgrace. Who cares if our ‘military force’ earns peanuts while we can send them off to earn us kudos, Congo and anywhere UN organisations are trying to prop up peace against oppressors — who those are and aren’t—

— Who’s for peace—

— Who’s doing the oppressing—

— ESCOM’s strike’s suspended anyway, going to be ‘allowed negotiations’ of the sticky issue, housing allowance — so we don’t risk rolling blackouts — for the time being, maybe.—

— What we ought to be worrying about is the mines, my man, platinum, the output’s about three thousand ounces a day, that’s worth fifty-eight million to the economy…—