Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

Laughing Jabu calls as if across to her father what he might answer. — Then there’ll be another lawyer who’ll say he didn’t do it. — Shall she try to explain the concept of justice Constitution defines, to this child — it would seem like bragging. The small place she’s made for herself in the new dispensation (that’s what it’s called among lawyers) — and isn’t it him, he who made it possible for her to do it.

She’s carried off to admire the queen-size bed and the paraffin-powered refrigerator-cum-freezer one of the husbands working in the city has had delivered to his wife. (And didn’t she herself want just such possessions when Steve and she were moving to the Suburb.)

Her father walked with her to the car, his very presence having made clear to her mother and the extended family all were to respect this, once the exuberant and tearful farewells had been made. Gary Elias was already scuffling with two boys in the back seat.

— Baba…I don’t usually appear in court, I mean for a complainant. Mostly I prepare witnesses. For cross-examination. It’s scary for them, the kind of close questioning, they need to know how to deal — say—

She doesn’t need to add, not to incriminate themselves.

— That is just as important. — He’s standing by the praise he gave, not something glibly produced to impress children. She turns to cling to him for a moment and his arms in his stiff black jacket are firm around her, with a quick release. A few words over his shoulder to the boys and they tumble out of the car; her boy, as if commanded, takes his place in the front passenger seat. — Wave to Babamkhulu! — as she shifts into gear.

Her father’s hand, lifted like a salute.

Time to talk; pack the day aside. Sindi and the boy have been allowed to watch a wildlife documentary DVD, and although in the shared living room, their attention to the screen means isolation from anything, anyone else as the way is for children of their time. (Nothing to be done about it, and at least a nature series is not a channel soapie.) — You were going to tell. What did he say.—

— My father. Well. — Can’t take him lightly. — He says he must have — tasks, he called it (old word, italicised, from Baba’s childhood among missionaries) — things to do, for us, the family, some of the everyday things. Responsibilities.—

— I don’t get it. Responsibilities? Nine years old. — Of course the father’s not only a headmaster he’s also an Elder in the church, always with the habit, some subject to preach on. But her attachment to Baba is central to her, mustn’t be fingered.

— He should have duties. Kufanele abe nezibopho . When children have these — even doing things they don’t like too much — this means they’re important, they know they count for something. They’re somebody.—

— You love him, I love him, we love him isn’t that what shows how he counts.—

— Do, give something, not just here to be loved.—

Love. Irrelevantly at this moment he knows how he desired her. — Jabu my darling. What could he do for us, empty the kitchen bin instead of me taking it out, wash his shirts in place of Wethu and the washing machine. What ‘tasks’—no goat for him to milk here, no chickens to feed here, no wood to fetch. — The sharpness is kindly — not patronising?

Here. There will always be these moments when she is not ‘here’ with him. And when he’s not ‘here’, wasn’t ‘here’ in the clandestine Glengrove with her, some tug of your outgrown kind.

They made love not war between them that night.

What was still mustered of the academic group eventually did get that appointment to meet the Minister of Education. Couldn’t be called a delegation, that would imply representation of the University Convocation. It seems one always keeps the identity of dissident whether as a revolutionary or what’s known as a law-abiding citizen taking the right of consultation. That’s how they presented themselves, their spokesperson initiator from the Science Faculty falling into line.

The Minister most unfortunately is unable (or has the foresight?) to receive them as he is in talks with a delegation from abroad. They are before a senior member of his department, a heavy finger stuck between the pages of a file, should he pause for recollection of a date, a fact. Lesego Moloi remarked afterwards over something more reviving than a coffee, that one’s been dug up as a loyal member of the Party from a kraal college somewhere to show that the department’s really Africanised.

The Minister’s deputy listened with the posture and occasional stir of close attention, to be read as agreement or doubt, then gave the account they knew would come, they could have recited it for him. The redeployment of available finances from the days when ten times more was provided in education subsidy for every white child than for a black child meant that an equal subsidy for all, now, required greater resources than the department’s budget allocation from the Department of Finance. The need to fund justice in education in less than one generation in something like five centuries of discrimination (he hawks to clear his throat, turning to pages where there might be a decade fixed by historians when missionaries first transcribed a people’s volubility into written symbols) — yes, it’s inevitable that resources are inadequate; but the limit the country can afford.

What’s the purpose of one of Steve’s group bringing up money found for spending on arms when no enemy exists to threaten the country which has the strongest defence forces on the African continent? — that’s not the Minister’s Department, you’re in the wrong building, Bra, take your guys to the Ministry of Defence.

The man assures the Minister’s concerns for the consequences, for university teaching, at a time when the continuation of the country’s remarkable renaissance (doesn’t miss the buzz word) must have engineers, scientists, economists, geologists — he pauses; every one of these academics will add the inclusion of his particular discipline.

— Literacy. — Steve presumes to speak for them. — Nothing of this can come about unless you can raise literacy. In any of the mother tongues the children speak, and English, Afrikaans, the languages of their instruction. The vocabularies used in university subjects are way beyond students, no fault of their own. They run to Internet, quick fix, for words they don’t understand, can’t spell, not to the dictionaries where all different meanings, contexts, uses of the word are to be discovered. — He doesn’t know or care whether it’s understood he’s using the ‘word’ in an adapted creational sense, the Word is not God, it’s Man, what gives humans the text of thought. The Minister’s stand-in does not take offence at bluntness, he puts a politician’s hand on this academic’s shoulder as the group leaves. He has assured them their openness and trust in coming to the department is the way forward (renaissance-speak again). The department is applying itself intently to changes that will bring about development necessary for the times. — What the fuck does that mean — Lesego, using current limited vocabulary of the pub to which they have retreated. But nobody takes up the irony.

Not long after (there’s probably a change of minister in a cabinet reshuffle by then) there is announcement from the Department of Education to mark the esteem of the people for education and the dignity of those in school: the children are now officially designated as and are to be referred to as ‘Learners’. The demeaning ‘pupil’ belongs to the discriminatory past. And what resolves in final examinations from the years of being a Learner is now called ‘Outcomes’. Results no longer exist.