Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

Zuma is going to be President next year. The breakaway — hardly a party yet, COPE’s unlikely in the months before election to gather enough votes to dent Zuma’s support: and Zuma’s the ANC’s choice. How can party comrades through prison, bush and desert, not cast the vote Umkhonto fought for to the African National Congress.

— What’s going to happen under Zuma, and after? Who is going to follow if he’s overtaken after this first term, who among his performing worshippers singing for his machine gun will see it as power right there in his fist, want to grab it in their own. He’s promising them everything, how much or little is he going to deliver. The ANCYL, Jabu it’s not the youth group of Mandela Tambo and co. who transformed the Party to the need, then, of forming Umkhonto because that was the only way left to kill racist rule. ‘ Awuleth’ Umshini Wami ’, the youth singing for him now will be a different tune for Sindiswa and Gary Elias to dance to and God alone knows, if he exists doddering helplessly up there, whether the way Zuma’s failed won’t have led to a new Ubuntu — dictatorship—

She’s waiting.

— Sindi, Gary, growing up; to that.—

She’s still waiting for it: Australia.

— So must we, should we be here as you can see it coming. Are they growing up to another Struggle, this time Brother against Brother, it’ll make Congo, Zimbabwe, look like pub brawls. At least…for them, something else. Something else. We can’t force on them our AMANDLA! gut-strings to a country that’s not the one we believe in.—

— But does that mean…comrades working together — at least a beginning — it’s useless. You’re in a university where have you forgotten? — Black medical students weren’t allowed to dissect white corpses but white students could dissect black ones. No one could marry you to me. Sindi may soon have a white boyfriend, no one will look twice at them, they won’t need to hide from the police, Gary maybe fall for a black girl, like me.—

— A new class? The class above, out of the race divide, race war, yes: elite, that’s ours while the mass of the brothers and sisters, still the blacks left down behind. D’you really believe in the classless society we were making for. Our old freedom dream stuff? We’ve been woken up. Had to be. There’ll always be a hierarchy of work, not so? The professions and the factory hand — set aside business tycoons all right, black as well as white, for a moment — the street cleaners, has to be someone to take away the dirt — one of those workers and the advocate, the assistant prof, the editor, the surgeon, they’re not always going to be planets apart, prestige as well as money, economic class? It’s political power now that’s the Struggle and it’s going to be between Brothers. — And the unsayable — colour.

When the looming of a threat has been made undeniable there’s the instinct to confirm closeness by confession of mistake. — I don’t know why…I just…I went over and showed Jake the cuttings. He was alone, wasn’t feeling well.—

He does not ask what Jake said. Accepts apparently that hers was an impulse: maybe he is to blame for feeling it was too soon for the purpose of the newspaper offering, recruitment for another country, to be brought out, to her.

Done now. Comrades have always been open with one another, it had been a condition of survival and it survives as one of the forms of honesty necessary to justify a ‘normal life’. For some among the cadres that life was taking on the option — duty? — of the new political kingdom, ministries, responsibilities in parliament and governance. Give credit for that even if it’s turning out to be an option for the rainbow nation few to survive in luxury.

Jump in the deep end. Steve himself brings up: Australia. Among the full complement of Suburb comrades back at the church pool on a Sunday, the company joined by his brother Alan. It’s turned out that Alan knows the Dolphins through circles among gays.

Steve presumes it is to be taken for granted that Jake told Isa and Isa told the Mkizes and so along the trusted chain, of Jabu coming with a handful of newspaper cuttings to find Jake at home with one of his headaches. So far as honesty is concerned, apart from playwright Marc, the Dolphins are unlikely to have any particular interest in stigma of someone’s leaving the country, just as anyone would move to another city within it to better opportunities or because of personal attachments.

There is frankness in a veteran’s bonding. Jake asks what she has stopped herself from presenting further, with Steve. — Have you been to one of those, what’s it seminars? — This doesn’t have the tone of accusal.

— No…I didn’t think there’d be much for me to hear about in business opportunities. — A brief laugh nobody joins. But no outright rejection, denial, of what’s being contemplated. — There is one coming up next month I’ve registered for—

— You have to register, can’t just walk in? So many people interested…? — Jake’s lips remain apart, taking breath on his own naivety.

— Exodus. The flight from Egypt. — Glib as a line from his advertising copy: Alan.

— This one’s about the professions.—

— So the Aussies want our teachers, academics, as well as civil engineers, opticians, doctors, nurses, all down the line to our refrigeration mechanics, crane operators. — Jake’s remembering randomly from the cuttings she brought for him to read.

— Well, there’re plenty of mechanics, artisans unemployed, factories laying off, here, if they can be assured of jobs. — Is she just showing loyalty to her man, despite the shock with which she had found Australia calling him, or has Jabu come to taking the call herself. Although Jake saw no mention of lawyers in the listed opportunities.

She remarks at supper one evening while everyone is around the table helping themselves to spaghetti drooling from the bowl’s serving spoon — she’s going this weekend to KwaZulu, it’s been some months since she’s visited. Wethu enthuses— Bheka Baba! See Baba! His good girl that’s right!—

Sindiswa goes along to KwaZulu only on occasion when it is understood that everyone goes. Gary Elias, Wethu’s usual companion on visits, attacks — Ooww no, not this weekend, we’ve got some guys from Pretoria, our first team against them — I’ve got to be there, we must vuvuzela our guys. Who’s going to take me to school sports, Saturday?—

— I am of course. — Steve will not be going to KwaZulu, not expected to share all daughterly duty.

After the meal the children and Wethu watch an episode of a television thriller they follow and she is in the kitchen with the two mugs of coffee she makes every night for the Suburb’s patrol watch he has suspected of being personnel of impimpi veterans.

— Anything special happening at home this weekend?—

— Not that I know of. — She lifts the mugs in a gentle hint for him to open the kitchen door for her.

She’s gone out to the front gate to hand out what has become the men’s comfort.

Back in a few moments, and stood while he locked the door behind her. He turned and smiled: forgotten something? But she wasn’t looking round the kitchen.

— I think I have to tell him about Australia.—

— But why. What for?—

He’s saying what has it to do with your father.

— What he would think about leaving. Us leaving. Me leaving.—

— I can’t see how that can have anything to do with us just looking at — What’s got into you, we’re not taking the plane tomorrow, are we, we’ve made a hell of a lot of decisions, we’ve always had to have all the circumstances clear, simply considering. Why does he have to know — right — it’s ‘common knowledge’ gossip among comrades even, I’ve picked up although I don’t know how it spread, by someone’s Twitter Face Talk or whatnot, to the Faculty. But how would this have reached the village…the school, the church. — While he is speaking: her leaving. What business is it of anyone. What the Reed clan would think about him leaving; a son has opted for a superior degree that will qualify him for a post in another country while civil engineers are needed for the future of this one. ‘Her leaving’—her Baba. Yes her Baba. What Baba thinks in every decision for every move she makes in her life, the life he propagated and that is deep in her being as Sindiswa and Gary Elias were embedded in her womb; it matters to Jabu. It’s not a question of influence; between her and Baba, his comrade wife and her Baba there is an identity. Final one?