Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

“Listen to it: demands, demands—” Dando began showing off, appealing to his audience.

But to them Bray was as much a part of the performance as he was. “… it’s the only way to overcome the contradiction between demands that aim at short — term results, and measures you’re going to have to take if you want to establish a real development policy. Of course the difficulties are enormous … it’s risky …”

Every now and then Dando momentarily lost grip and talked out of some hazy response twitching through the alcohol in his brain— “Risking your life every time you cross the road, feller.”

“… the position of the unions and the government could become irreconcilable.”

“Ha-ha, ha — ha-ha.” Dando wasn’t laughing; he shadow — boxed above the bar. “Tread lightly, Bray, eggs underfoot, y’know.” His attention lashed back, drawn to Shinza. “You get your trade union membership largely from public administration, apart from the mines. If you start cracking down on bureaucracy, there’ll be cutbacks. How’re you going to get these people to agree without losing hundreds of members?”

“I couldn’t care less about your few hundred bloody bureaucrats if we can gain thousands of peasants. Forget it, man—”

Two or three people had started singing PIP songs, at first raggedly, and then, with the African inability to sing out of tune even when drunk, in noisy harmony. Roly had become defiant without knowing what about; he looked very small and white, his thin greased hair standing up sparsely at the crown, his glasses turning on this target or that. “Better than the whole damn bunch of you, I can tell you that. More guts than some of you’ll see in a lifetime … I don’t trust him as far as the door, old bastard … but you, wet behind the ears, the lot of you, you won’t see another one like him, not for you to start telling me—”

Bray felt an old affection for poor Dando, never standing on the dignity of his office but keeping for himself the exactions of personal response, no matter how battered or ridiculous he might emerge. Only an African state would employ a man like that; anywhere else, his professional ability would be lost against considerations of professional face.

Ras Asahe was talking of the strikes at the mines and Bray was only half — listening— “not such a push — over to stop production now that the Company’s got the hardware to crack down on them!” The phrase was an arrow quivering: “Hardware?”

“Yes, they won’t have to stand around biting their fingernails any more when the boys cut up rough. I saw it the other day, very hush — hush — but, man, it’s all there! A nice little fleet of Ford trucks converted into armoured vehicles—”

“The Company police are being armed?”

“Well, what do you think? They’re going to stand around waiting for the space men” (the regular police were called this because of their helmets) “to come? Or for the President to decide whether or not it’s time to call in the army? Apparently the Company went along to him and said, look here, if you can’t do it, you must let us.… And he gave them the green light.”

“They’ve got guns?”

Ras spread his elegant hands. “The full riot — squad outfit. Tear gas, guns — helicopters so they can move a dozen or so men where they’re needed, fast. It’ll be a great help wherever there’s trouble … even if it’s not the mines … the Big Man knows they’re there if he needs them.”

At the same time there was some sort of sensation in the knot round Dando and Shinza. All Bray saw was Dando putting his arm round Shinza’s shoulder in a flamboyant gesture, a lunge, and — distinctly — Shinza avoiding it quietly and swiftly as a cat slips from under a hand. Shinza wasn’t looking at Dando, he was turned away talking to someone else at that particular moment; he must just have become conscious between one instant and the next of the arm claiming him. But Dando, already over — reached from the bar — stool, was unsteady, and the movement tipped his balance. He fell; there was a scuffle — people picked him up in the confusion that looks the same whether it represents hostility or concern.

Asahe said disgustedly, “That old man’s the best argument for Africanization I know. They should let the two of them finish each other off; this place needs streamlining.”

“What a prig you are, Ras. Perhaps you should send for some tear gas.”

But Asahe was flattered to be thought tough; Bray was aware of being under the smile of a man who felt he could afford it. He went quickly to Roly Dando. Dando was on his feet again, somehow rather sobered. “Shall we go home?”

“Why the baby — talk, Bray. Anyhow, aren’t you eating with Mweta?” He had the look of a fowl taken unharmed from the jaws of a dog.

“There’s time to go home first.”

“Good God no, I’ve got a date.” He went off with two young men who had dusted him down, a cheerful, short — arsed little Mso — they were a dumpy people; Batwa blood trickled down from the Congo, there, in some forgotten migration — and a talkative, stooping man who, in addition to the Party tie, wore various insignia from colonial times — Boy Scout and Red Cross buttons.

He left behind him raised voices and exaggerated gestures; the confusion had released private antipathies and post — mortem tensions over the day’s business in Congress. Shinza was surrounded solidly by his own men, now; Nwanga, Goma, Ogoto were drinking round a small table with an air of not being anywhere in particular, as if they were in a railway waiting room or on an airport. But Shinza said to Bray over his shoulder, “The old man’s all right?”

He had dinner alone with Mweta, late; those guests at the Great Lakes who had not gathered in the bars took a long time to disperse from the Golden Perch Room. Mweta was troubled, as always, by the choice of a cocktail party as a way of entertaining people— “Specially Congress.”

So Congress deserved something better. Yet he had sat there, in his robe that symbolized their coming into their own, and allowed himself to take from them consent to his rigging himself into a position of more power. Bray smiled. “Cocktail parties and democracy go together.”

“Is that so?”

“In dictatorships, it’s banquets.”

Mweta grinned. “Do you want this, James—” There was a bottle of wine on the table.

“No, no, you’re right, I’ve had enough—” They were served unceremoniously with steak and potatoes, and Mweta told the servant not to wait. The big dining — room had been air — conditioned since Bray was last in it and felt chill and airless. Mweta impatiently opened the windows and let in the thick warm night, like a signal of intimacy between them. He knew that Bray thought it a mistake for him to make the Trade Union S.-G. his appointee; he himself brought up the subject at once so that it should not seem an obstacle; they talked with Bray’s attitude assumed. The cosy clink of fork on plate accompanied the emptiness of an agreement to differ. Mweta ate with unaccustomed greed, getting the steak down with a flourish.

“Of course one can’t deny it, in many countries the trade union organization is subordinated to the government’s policy. But these are countries whose economic development is slow, they have the greatest difficulties to face in overcoming their initial disadvantages … reasons that don’t apply here.”

Mweta took in what he was saying with each mouthful, nodding not in agreement but to show that he was attentive. “—Yes, but trade unions in the most advanced African countries must be careful not to become radical opposition movements as their position is consolidated — that’s a serious danger to the success of any economic development policy.”