Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

“You knew about the ILO thing,” Shinza said, after a pause, watching Bray saw through his overdone sausage.

“You’re not impressed.”

“That’s what’s happening here. Management schemes. A training centre to make a petty merchant class. They’ll learn how to get extended credit from the white importers and how to keep a double set of books for when the tax man comes.” He tipped back his chair. “Everybody’s happy because they think what’s behind it is to get the Indians out. As if that solves anything. They think it’s a stroke of genius meant to avoid that stupid situation in Zambia when the Indians were told to sell and it turned out there weren’t any Zambians who had the money to buy or knew how to run a business. But anyway whatever they think, it’s beside the point. It’s not the race or the colour of the shopkeeper that needs changing. All middlemen are by nature exploiters; Africanizing the exploiting class isn’t going to solve our problems.”

It was not necessary for him to say he agreed, there; Shinza knew. “The training might come in useful for other things — running small retail co — ops and so on.”

“We should have had something like the Tanzanians got — the ILO’s establishing a national institute of productivity in Dar. Even the Ugandan scheme would have been better than this management thing. Small — enterprise training could be adapted along cooperative lines. They’ve got a fishing and marketing business going on Lake Albert, a carpentry shop in Kampala. Not bad. But you get what you ask for. That’s set down in the policy of this sort of international aid — naturally; they can’t go on and work against the policies of countries. So we’ve got a scheme that’s for Africanizing an old, free — enterprise society.” He turned round the bread — plate with the bill. “Well — let’s get on, I suppose. How much’s mine?”

“You can pay for me tomorrow.”

They screeched the chairs back. Shinza let Bray go through first and said as he passed, “You better not eat with me too often.” He stopped to buy cigarettes at the counter. He joined Bray in the glare of the street, putting on big dark glasses so that the secrecy of the beard was reinforced and his whole face was obscured. “Nobody here calls me ‘boy’ any more. Is it freedom or just I’m getting old?”

“You are not getting old,” Bray said. “You may be older, but you are not getting old, I can tell you that.”

Shinza pushed his shirt in under his belt, smiling. As they walked he took a match, broke it in two, and probed in his mouth. “My teeth are going.”

Shinza, despite his sophistication, remained very African; if you lost your teeth, it was in the nature of things: he probably would not think of going to a dentist to have the process delayed. But Joshua Ntshali had prominent gold — filled teeth; it was simply that for him — Bray — what Shinza did was significant. There are people in whom one reads signs, and others, on the surface equally typical, whose lives do not speak.

“Why shouldn’t we eat together?”

Shinza said nothing, threw the match away. “You stay at Dando’s place. He might not like it.”

“Poor Dando.” Roly, too, was an old friend of Shinza’s. He was about to say: Dando spoke to me about what happened to you, months ago, the moment I arrived. He got drunk and lamented you. “He’s a functionary these days.”

“That’s so. They might not like it.”

He wants to know whether I’m seeing Mweta.

“I don’t think my presence anywhere compromises me.”

“You don’t think.” It was not a suggestion that Bray was innocent of the facts of life; it was said almost bitterly, an accusation, a challenge. “But it has, it does, it will. We think.”

He was faintly riled by the imputation that he fell short somewhere. His defence was, as always, to get cooler and cooler, give more and more evidence of being what he was accused of. “We? You and Mweta?”

Shinza laughed, but it was not a laugh that let Bray off.

Before they reached the cinema Shinza left him with the remark that he had to see someone. “I’m at Cyrus Goma’s place,” he said.

“Old Town?” The African quarter had always been called Old Town.

“Mm. I think it’s number a hundred and seven, main road. Just by the Methodist Church.”

“Oh I know.”

“The dry cleaners’ on the corner will give a message. A Mrs. Okoi. Take the number.”

“Dhlamini’s mother? I remember her.” Dhlamini Okoi was Minister of Posts and Telegraphs; Mweta had just taken Information away from him and made it a separate portfolio.

“That’s it. It’s really the old Gomas’ place I’m staying.”

The secretarial committee had been careful to place no big issue on the first afternoon’s agenda. The question of the participation of women’s organizations produced hard words from the few women delegates — formerly they had attended congresses on a branch and not a regional basis — and they wanted their rights back. (This must have been the reason for the militant female singers outside.) The resolution that “strenuous” efforts be made to build up the State’s own diplomatic network instead of continuing to rely on services provided by the former colonial power was the sort of thing that gives an opportunity for people to ride their hobby — horses through — in terms of party politics — an unmined field. Conservative or radical, everyone wanted the country to have its own diplomatic representation; the resolution satisfied patriotic principles even though the government didn’t have either the money or personnel to carry it out. A resolution on the Africanization of social amenities, put by the Gala Central Branch, turned out to be Sampson Malemba’s baby — Sampson hadn’t said a word about it, coming down in the car. But there was no question which particular institution he, personally, had in mind when he spoke of the “white social clubs with valuable amenities, still existing in small towns where such things are not available to the community as a whole.” There was one instance he knew where the “dogs’ kennels were refused for a community centre workshop.” A chest — hum of laughter stirred, rose aloud against him. Malemba looked slowly surprised; he explained that this was no ordinary doghouse. This time the chairman had to call Congress to order. Heads went down at the press table and ballpoints scribbled. Sidelights of Congress: the white editors would transcribe the anecdote into European connotations — Congress Puts White Clubs in Doghouse — and Africans would be puzzled and rather offended at the choice of issues publicized. The women were in splendid form after the vindication of their right to attend Congress in full force. If the chairman evaded one pair of commanding eyes he looked straight into another. A large woman with a turban in Congress colours and a German print skirt down to her ankles cited the “powder rooms” of shops and garages as amenities to be Africanized. She spoke in her own tongue with the English phrase mouthed derisively. There were lavatories and water taps in these “powder rooms” but the keys were for white ladies only. If white women could put powder on their faces in there, why shouldn’t African women be able to go in and wash their babies?

After this, the resolution that wine and liquor be taxed more heavily to discourage excessive drinking wasn’t given the serious attention it perhaps deserved. The delegate who spoke to it had the facts and figures all right; fifteen times more liquor had been imported last year than in 1962. And this at a time when the European population was thinning out. The country must be careful not to follow the example of places like Madagascar, where one year liquor held second place of all imports, to the disadvantage of much — needed machinery and equipment. There was more laughter but faces were dutifully straightened when someone invoked the example of the teetotal president. Mweta himself grinned broadly in disarming self — parody of a strong — man showing his muscles. The resolution was carried and ended the day’s proceedings and as they edged slowly out into the aisles Bray’s neighbour remarked confidentially gaily, “And now we all go off for a beer.”