Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

It was true that the day before the trial of Tola Tola and his co-accused opened (it was suddenly announced: Dando, perhaps, getting tough, standing out obstinately against Chekwe for his inch of the rule of law?) Mweta arrested twenty — three trade unionists. “That’s the way to do it,” Aleke sat back in his big office chair and dropped his chin to his chest with a grin. “Selufu says there were others, too. And now he expects he’ll get the okay to put away a few people here we can do without at the moment.”

“What was there to stop him? If there’d been any rioting at the iron mine, he’d have made arrests — but the strikers seem to be keeping their heads there better than most.”

“These aren’t actually strikers he’s thinking of — some of the wise guys here in town. Prevention is better than cure. But ever since you caught Lebaliso on the wrong foot that time, everyone here is v-e-r-y careful.” He laughed good-naturedly at Selufu’s difficulty.

“Oh that.”

“You’ve forgotten?” Aleke’s was a reminder of the graceful removal of Lebaliso from the scene rather than of the boy whose back was scarred.

“No. But everyone else has. Selufu has nothing to worry about.”

“Oh he’s ambitious, Selufu. He’s a bright fellow. No flies on that nose of his.”

“I hope he’ll use his zeal to deal with the people who’ve threatened Sampson.”

At least Selufu was managing so far to prevent the Young Pioneers from Gala from “settling” in their own way, this time, the strike at the iron-ore mine; apparently he had set up police check-points that investigated all vehicles and people on foot approaching the mine or compound. Of course this would also make things difficult for Shinza — for any of his people from outside who were working with the strikers; but Shinza’s men were obviously so well established in leadership among the workers themselves that this might not be important. And Shinza? His “headquarters” at Boxer’s ranch were very near the mine. — Shinza was probably miles away in some other part of the country, if not over the border. Yet if he wanted to see Shinza now, their old agreed meeting place was out of the question.

Mweta made a vengeful speech on television; a fly crawled and lingered, bloated hairily out of focus by the cameras, round the marvellous smile become an aggressive mouth. In the Tlumes’ hot dark living-room the sound failed a moment and the white teeth seemed to be snapping at the fly.… The voice came back: he was “finished with patience,” he would “rub out the vermin,” “burn the dirty rags that carry filthy subversion.” He spoke of the Tola Tola affair openly although it was sub judice. A state of emergency was proclaimed over the whole country; there was a curfew in the capital. An interview with the Chairman of the Company — obviously a statement prepared in consultation between the Company and the government — was given a full page in the newspapers. The strike crisis had already “done untold damage” to the country’s prospects of foreign aid and investment. The country should not be “misled into the belief that it was only private investment — which people were comfortingly told was ‘economic imperialism,’ ‘exploitation,’ and other catchwords of Communist propaganda — that would be lost.” International financial aid organizations, without which he would emphasize none— none —of the major development projects could be achieved, depended heavily on reports from industry for “stability collateral” when allotting funds. (His voice in the ear of the World Bank?) … The Company, which had played a major part in making the country’s economy one of the healthiest in Africa, would cooperate in every possible way (recruiting more men for their private army, buying more guns?) with President Mweta to restore industrial peace and prosperity.

They listened to every news broadcast in silent concentration. At meals, not the clink of a spoon. In the stifling nights under the fig, Bray and Hjalmar with their shirts off, only the pale blurs of their chests giving away their presence with the girl. In the bathroom, with the little transistor radio on the windowsill while he shaved and she lay still in the bath (under-lake landscape, white rock of flesh, garden of dark weed, clinging snails of nipples; he had floated up, face to face with another man there); even in the bar of the Fisheagle Inn, once, among the white men who cut off their talk and stared ahead while the fan sent currents shivering across their sweating foreheads, hearing the voice and waiting for it to be over. Waiting for it to be over. In the white shops of the main street the shopkeepers and white residents had this same air; a habit of mind saw what was happening in the country in terms of “trouble among the natives” that, while it made one uneasy, would be put down, dealt with, pass incomprehensibly as it had come (“they” didn’t know themselves what it was all about, never knew what they wanted). Be dealt with by whom? Pass into what? Their long isolation as settlers in this remote place under the mahogany trees had not prepared them to take the proposition further. With their reason they knew this was a foreign country now (a colonial country belongs to the colonizers, not the colonized who serve them), but their emotions refused to ratify reason. Someone in the bar at the Fisheagle remarked of Mweta, “Sir Reginald’ll have to clear up the mess for him, as usual,” and then they all went back to their gin and cold beer and weekend golf scores. Bray, swallowing his own beer, alone after a nod from one or two faces, felt no resentment or real dislike; but rather the sort of half-interested disbelief, undeniable inner recognition, with which one goes back to an institution — school, barracks — and smells again the smell of the corridors and sees again the same curling notices on the baize. He had been here; he was one of these people in the colour of his skin and the cast of his face.

This dependence each day on the oracular announcements of the radio displaced the normal divisions of decisions, moods, actions by which, hand over hand, life is taken and left behind. Each midday, you waited to hear what had happened that morning; each evening you waited to hear what might have happened since then. And in the town itself, in Gala, there had opened up again those moments of hiatus when anything might rush in, anything might be the explanation — a truckful of police went shaking down the main street, past the bicycle-mender’s and the barber’s and the venders with their little piles of shoelaces, razor-blades and cold cream. Where were they going? The limeworkers began to gather under the slave tree in their lunch breaks; no one could find a reason to disperse them so long as they were apparently simply hanging about in the shade, but other people, trailing along the red dust road into town or out again with a loaf of bread or a bottle or paraffin, gathered round loosely — what was it all about? As if in unconscious response to an audience, one lunchtime a scuffle broke out and there was a chase through the town: torn shirts, heaving breasts, and a small boy with his little brother on his back breaking into howls outside the post office. He had been knocked down by the brawl; no, he hadn’t, he was simply frightened by it — but already there was another group around him: the crazy woman who sang hymns, a few old men who lived out of dustbins and sat most of the day on the post office steps, the young messengers who gossiped there. (Rebecca, passing, bought the child an icecream; fat Mrs. Maitland from the dry cleaner’s stood shaking three white chins and said to her, “It’s terrible the way they neglect their children. Most of them shouldn’t be allowed to have any.” Bray and Hjalmar were delighted with the story.) Someone spray — painted hang tola tola on the wall of the Princess Mary Library. A house was set fire to in the African township and neighbours said “Commandant Mkade” had told them that the people in that house were “Tola Tola men.” Albert Tola Tola, spending his time as he did in London, Washington, and West Germany, had never been anywhere near the remote north of his own country, and the Galas traditionally discounted the importance of the Msos, so it was more than unlikely he would have had any supporters in Gala. But whoever it was they were determined to harass, the Young Pioneers set fire to three more houses and there was street-fighting in the township at night. Selufu had most of his small force concentrated on keeping peace at the iron-ore mine, a hundred and seventy miles away; Aleke imposed a curfew in Gala, like the one in the capital. “Old Major Fielding’s offered to get together a group of volunteers to help out, patrolling the centre of town,” he said to Bray; a piece of information that was in fact a request for advice.