Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

— Who the hell is Chippy Shaik, anyway?—

— Here it is, you’ve just read, ‘Director of procurement in the Defence Force’ when the ‘irregularities’ in contracts to subcontractors now under investigation were awarded. No — but as cadre in Umkhonto . What was he. — Jake answering himself with the grimace of culpable lapsed memory.

There were so many levels of activity in the Movement (that other euphemism, this one for the Struggle). Some would have been familiar with the deployment, whatever, of Shaik, but along with Jake, Steve and Jabu weren’t.

Trust Peter Mkize. — Doesn’t matter. Shaik turns out now, eh, to be financial adviser of our Deputy President Jacob Zuma. You’ve seen what’s come from the Auditor General’s report, the cost of the deal in billions far higher than the government’s figure and nobody can say what the final costs might be — why? Something like ‘industrial offsets’. Eish! —

Steve knows what everybody in the outside world takes for granted. — The arms trade is the dirtiest of them all. ‘Industrial offsets’—that’ll be investments and trade opportunities that tender sinners promise to advance for the good of the country. Arms dealers know they can forget about these obligations. Their bribes to ministers? — government officials who decide tender awards.—

Jake snatches from him like a flag — That’s sufficient contribution to development of the country!—

The complex Shaik kin keeps being unravelled. — Zuma’s financial adviser’s brother Shabir got the arms deal contract although it was twice the price of another tender, of equal standard—

— Whose pocket took in the bribes — The refrain.

— If the deal ever does come to court we might—

— Zuma as President elect — as if the President will ever—

There’s a lawyer among them. — He was arraigned. And he appeared in court on another charge — of rape. — She was present when he did, and was declared not guilty.

The Suburb comrades follow the beginning of what is apparently an era in the aftermath of revolution attained.

— With apartheid we were the pariah of the world, with freedom we become what we never were, we’re part of the democratic world. Corruption doesn’t disqualify. It’s everywhere. — That’s Steve.

Jabu is withdrawn as if among strangers.

He interprets, from her manner of response lately to ordinary happenings: angry when a pot of food she’s not checked soon enough threatens to have dried away the gravy, chastising herself by tugging at her scalp with recalcitrant braids when she’s at the mirror in the morning, and at her self-accused carelessness at letting her car run out of petrol so that a colleague had to fetch a can from a service station before she could drive home from the Centre. At times when they are alone together she will get up abruptly, a gesture of rejection of some TV commentator, leave the room; on other occasions she will be so eye-to-eye with the image and so tense against what is being said she ignores what she is usually alert to against all other registers of her attention, conversation, music — the racket of some trouble between Sindi and Gary Elias. He sees, feels approaching, pressing upon him like her flesh against him in their intimacy, that Jabu is affronted and disturbed, beyond his own reaction.

She does not say much when he looks up from the newspaper — D’you see this—‘Zuma allegedly solicited a 500,000 a year bribe’ from the French company that won the contract to supply some equipment for corvettes. Shabir Shaik’s company was the French’s black empowerment partner—

— Why do we do what the whites do in their countries. What business is it of ours. We aren’t their black colonies any more.—

He noted but did not misunderstand the juxtaposition in opposition, whites and blacks; ‘we’ excluding him, her man, from its solidarity identity. Jabu is shamed by the betrayal of blacks, of whom she is one, by themselves; although racism is no part of her life, finally proven by the existence of her own two children?

Gary Elias’s periods of the year spent with his grandfather are regular, pleasures not outgrown as his activities and interests at home in the city, school and Suburb grow. At least once among the school holiday visits his dad came along with his mother to deliver him to the village and pay his own respects: husband of the daughter not only of the Elder of the Methodist Church and headmaster of the school, but of the family commune. While he drove Jabu mentioned in undertone, they wouldn’t bring up the subject of Zuma during the visit. Her father had known Zuma well, was associated with him way back while he was MEC for Economic Affairs and Tourism in the KwaZulu Natal provincial government.

Steve had thought the arms deal was exactly the subject to engage, of interest to everyone in the village. Her father who always directed the conversation among those who gathered with him, wife and extended family in welcome, did not mention it, and authority emanating from him as naturally as he breathed, no one did. There was much else to exchange. Two lively cousins Gary’s age were urged to tell about the science laboratory equipment that had been donated to the headmaster’s school by some Norwegian foundation — this news produced in recognition of Steve as a man of science, must be a professor. — The Education Minister was here himself with the Norwegian Ambassador, you have met the Education Minister, Jabulile? — No limits to the level of achievements won for this daughter he had somehow instructed even when she was in prison. Everyone, including the survivor of Jabu’s two grandmothers, carried in respect tenderly to a chair, went to see Gary Elias playing goalkeeper with the style of his triumphs in the junior team at school. The comrade’s advice has been right, the boy was no longer a reluctant spectator of sport — Jabu exchanged a look away from the leaping catch of the ball, at Steve, in their acknowledgement. He spoke his acquired isiZulu and those around celebrated in applause for both him and his son. At a signal from Jabu’s mother food was carried in a procession of pots and bowls and there was bottled beer as well as a calabash of home brew her father had learnt was much to Steve’s liking.

These visits passing the grandson from one home to what is another have coaxed his son out of his temperament of withdrawal into open security, a belonging that before existed only in his blood. A child’s secret example of Tutu’s truth and reconciliation?

And the timing of this visit seemed to have brought assurance to Jabu, she chattered all the way back to the city, the Suburb. She was recounting stories, events from her childhood in the place in the world they had just left; what, so young, she hadn’t recognised as rivalries between the Elder’s pious congregation, the in-house power struggles with the heavy presence of the relatives in their thatched annexes, the skill with which she’d understood later, her mother managed not to be totally extinguished by her father; while this daughter belonged — chose to be — only to him.

If the question of Jacob Zuma’s relationship with Shabir Shaik didn’t surface at her father’s house, it is raised where politics are also sidled round tactfully by Jonathan and Brenda, out of respect for commitments they don’t share with the combination of Steve and his wife, though they had warmed to and always welcome her personally. On the Reed mother’s eightieth birthday, a party is in progress at Jonathan’s house. It is Jabu who’s given time and thought to with what present Steve should honour his mother on what would be recognised with ancestral respect in the church Elder’s community. Someone addresses in kindly attention as to one who would be concerned — What’s going to be done about this corruption stuff that’s coming out. How serious is it — or just infighting, like all governments?—