Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

“The pity is that there will be preventive detention to deal with impatience.”

“James,” Mweta said. He was seated again; he leant forward and put his hand on Bray’s big knee. “It will not be used for that. I promise you. It was not intended for that.” He sat back. His face shone like the faces of black schoolchildren Bray had seen, tense with effort and enlightenment.

Bray felt the corruption of experience; perhaps things happen here as they do because we bring from the old world this soiled certitude that makes anything else impossible. He said, “Once the law is there, there’s no way of not using it.”

In the old days they would have sat down to stew and bread and strong tea supplied by Joy, or not eaten at all until there was time for such a meal, but Mweta must have had to accept along with the turning of night into day on planes and the suitability of any hour as a working hour, the stodgy snacks that fuelled that sort of life. They had sandwiches and coffee on a tray; washing down the triangles of bread like labourers they discussed Mweta’s ministers, Mweta confiding doubts and Bray making observations that neither would speak of to anyone else. Mweta still wanted Talisman Gwenzi for Finance, he was a better economist than Jason Malenga and generally much shrewder, but who else would there be for Mines who understood as Gwenzi did that looking after Mines was purely a matter of a grasp of international finance, on the one hand, and handling local labour relations on the other — it wasn’t a knowledge of ores and mining techniques the Minister needed, all that was the affair of the companies. “If I had two more Gwenzis!” Mweta said enviously, “Just two more!” “One for Finance and one for Foreign Affairs, eh?” “That’s it.” And Gwenzi had pushed ahead the Africanization ideal magnificently — and put the onus on the companies. In two years, through intensive training courses devised and taught by the companies, all labour up to the level of Mine Captain would be African. Mweta swallowed his coffee. “A few years ago we weren’t even trusted to use dynamite down there.” They both laughed. “—Of course there may have been other reasons for that.” “Last time I was here Phiri was talking about training people for mining administration at the School of Further Education.” “The trouble is once you start a course like that, you’re going to get a lot of teachers resigning from the ordinary schools. They’ve got the basic education to qualify — and of course what an administrative job on the mines will pay compared with what you’ll get as a teacher … I think something like a Mine Secretary would get twice as much as a school headmaster …? We can’t afford to drain our resources in one place to fill up in another.” “The best thing to do would be to channel people off at high — school level — have scholarships for the school — leavers to go on to the course at F.E., just as you have scholarships for teacher — training.”

Mweta crunched a paper napkin into a ball and aimed it at the wastepaper basket. “Time, again, time. In the meantime, we’ve got to keep the Englishmen.” Mweta called all white men Englishmen: South Africans, Rhodesians, Kenyans, and others who sold their skills up and down Africa. “Talk to Phiri about it, though, it’s an idea.”

Mweta’s mind moved among problems like the attention of a man in charge of a room full of gauges and dials whose wavering needles represent the rise and fall of some unseen force — pressure, or electricity. He spoke now of the move he had taken a few weeks before, the surprise expulsion of the leader in exile and group of refugees from the territory adjoining the western border of the country. These people had been living in the country since before Independence; in fact, one of the first things he had done when he got responsible government as a preliminary to Independence was to insist that Jacob Nyanza, David Somshetsi, and their followers be given asylum. He couldn’t receive them officially, for fear of the reactions from their country; but they had a camp, and an office in the capital, financed by various organizations abroad who favoured their cause. Outwardly, he maintained normal though not warm relations with the president of their country (there was an old history of distrust between them, dating from the days when Mweta and Shinza were seeking support from African countries for their independence demands); from time to time there had been statements from President Bete vaguely threatening those “brother” countries which sheltered their neighbours’ “traitors.” Mweta explained how it had become impossible to let Nyanza and Somshetsi stay. Of course, he had publicly denied President Bete’s assertion that Nyanza and Somshetsi were acquiring arms and preparing to use the country as a base for guerrilla raids on their home country. … He turned to Bray, pausing; Bray gestured the inevitability. “They didn’t care any more” Mweta said. “They didn’t even take the trouble to conceal anything. Nyanza flew in and out and there were pictures of him in French papers, shaking hands all round in Algiers. They kept machine guns in the kitchen block the Quakers built for them at the camp — yes, apparently there were just some potatoes piled up, supposed to be covering—” He and Bray had a little burst of tense laughter. “So there was nothing else I could do.”

Bray took out a cigar and held it unlit between his lips. And so Nyanza and Somshetsi had had to move on, over the border to the next country, to the north — east, a country which was not part of the new economic federation which was about to link their country and Mweta’s.

“I saw Jacob Nyanza. Nobody knows. I saw him before they went. He was always a more reasonable chap than Somshetsi.” Mweta stopped; of course, he would have hoped that Nyanza, if not Somshetsi, would understand. But apparently it had not been so. Bray lit the cigarillo and Mweta followed the draws that burgeoned the blunt head into fire. He did not smoke or drink: influence of the Presbyterian mission where he had gone to school. “You saw what Tola Tola had to say at Dar-es-Salaam?” Bray’s lips opened and closed regularly round the cigar. He nodded.

“It was good, eh?”

Bray said, smoke curling round the words, “One of the best speeches there.”

“This morning there’s a call to say he’s going to Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Helsinki.” In the House some of Mweta’s most important front — benchers had questioned the expenditure of the Foreign Minister on travel and produced a log — book of his journeys, showing that since Independence he had been in the country for only a matter of weeks. “Yes, if I had another Gwenzi,” he said. “Albert is busy broadening the mind, isn’t that what you say. If someone invited him to drink a glass of iced water at the North Pole, he’d go. It’s very difficult for me to do anything. He gives me his good reasons … you know? And of course he is capable. They listen to him—” He meant in the world outside. Albert Tola Tola was also an Mso, the only one with a key cabinet post; what Mweta really was discussing was the fact that Tola Tola, capable or no, could not be replaced without betraying the electoral pact with the Mso, and could not be kept without agitation from Mweta’s men looking for a good reason to have him out. And beneath this tacit acceptance of facts was another that could not be taken for granted — if Tola Tola were given another portfolio, did Mweta believe that he would become one of the ants? Did Mweta fear there was a possibility of a disaffected Tola Tola being drawn to discuss his grievances with others — Neil Bayley had mentioned the Minister of Development and Planning, Paul Sesheka, Moses Phahle, and Dhlamini Okoi. Tola Tola was a brilliant man; sophistication had taught him the showmanship of the common touch as a formidable substitute for what Mweta had naturally.