Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

There’s something of a moral assertion, responsibility, that the decision to leave the country doesn’t mean you don’t go to hear what the contesting parties’ hypotheses are if they succeed in coming to power; or in holding onto it. It’s not become an abstraction. What you hear, there, confirms — or contests, within that decision. Without changing it. Perhaps it will be contested within, for ever, without denying its validity. That’s the reality in all decisions. No reason to make a subterfuge out of going to hear Zuma or Terror.

— Jabu and I’ve been to the COPE election meeting. Last week. You weren’t curious? Seems the — other — parties won’t even have the chance to get hands on power unless they make alliances which contradict their individual aims, Where-They-Come-From; the ANC’s the only one with a sofa-size throne more or less able to contain nationalism, communism, traditional leadership — so far.—

He knows Lesego will be with the ANC, split or not.

He and Lesego are having their usual Friday lunch together in what used to be known as Chinatown (the Chinese, who had been segregated, but closer to whites on the colour scale, have moved upmarket in freedom) although now it is a street of Indian traders whose shops are closed and takeaway curry and Bunny Chow stalls left unattended during noon prayers at a nearby mosque. There’s one Chinese restaurant left. Lesego speaks of Lekota as of one dead — well, ‘passed on’, the euphemism generally used is perhaps apposite in the different, political sense, for Lekota. — What’d Terror have to say for himself. I just supposed I’d read it all…Lots of people turn up?—

— Full. But of course he’s not the one-man-band of Zuma. — Spring rolls arrived and mouths were occupied.

— Were there any of ours there, heckling from the youth group?—

An appreciative swallow of the bite dipped in sweet sauce. — Not that we saw. Someone did ask the big question and Terror answered well, or rather turned round on itself to his own advantage.—

— Oh he’s cool. That he is.—

Lesego started his won ton soup, tasting a spoonful, pausing to add drips of soya sauce, applying himself again, while he heard the account of Lekota’s response to the haltingly posed question about the call to abandon Affirmative Action. Between spoonfuls, he once waved the spoon licked clean, go on go on. — So you and Jabu were there. Heard it from him. — And as the colleague who had reported, turned to his soup, Lesego above his emptied bowl was beginning gestures not concluded…opening lifted hands, fingers running a scale, drawing a long breath through a scenting nose.

He was silent, as if he were the one now occupied with the soup. When he saw the last mouthful captured and he was sure of attention, he leant a little across the table and then drew back. — That’ll be one of the nails in the coffin. You’ll see. He’s attacked head-on by Cosatu. The new baby’ll be buried before it gets to squawk in parliament. I’ve got hold of that booklet the unions’ve put out, they’re saying COPE could cause great damage to the workers if it came in to power. It’d roll back the gains the unions and the poor have made since ’94, even if it drums up a small number of votes, gets a few seats in parliament. It would put brakes on policies to create jobs, cut poverty, accuses Lekota and his deputy Shilowa — big businessman, they’re cosying up — they’ve left the ruling party ‘to pursue an agenda of the capitalist class, international capital and its local allies’! The booklet’s to set the record straight, my man, so voters won’t be cheated by COPE. Lekota’s handing on a plate ammunition against himself, scrapping our genuine African herb medicine, Affirmative Action, that national muti . Man, it’s heresy to list our open sores for which it’s no use.—

There on the floor. Lesego must have slid the booklet under the door of his room while he went to the laboratory for a class after their lunch. Was it a sign, some sort of hesitant encouragement taken from the fact that Steve and Jabu went to hear the election speeches of the Party, congenital for them in the Struggle whatever’s become of it now, and then followed the electioneering of its break-away — this seen to mean the comrades were not going; anywhere. Except where the country was going in this election. Otherwise what was the point of sitting among people whose lives were being ordained.

Her legal qualifications are insufficient for Australia: part of the information going back and forth on many aspects, requirements for visa application — permanent visa, working visa, probably if you just want to go and visit the Opera House with its wing like a bird (picture in all brochures) ready to take off over Sydney harbour, attend the Adelaide Festival, fish on the Barrier Reef, you can get the tourist one without more collateral than ID, proof of funds, and medical certificate you don’t carry any communicable disease, what’s it now — swine flu? Of course the Australians are justified (the professional qualifications), no one wants shysters practising law who aren’t conversant with and observant of the legal system of the country. And she’s informed also that this may differ in some aspects from province to province. It looks as if it’s going to be Melbourne, but that is not settled. Migrate@2OZ.co.za had informed her she would have to complete additional legal subjects by correspondence from Australia through application to an ‘Additions’ Board. This study material is coming efficiently through email to the Suburb but she takes a batch from time to time to the Legal Agency’s library to make clear to herself the precise difference between clauses in the South African Constitution under which she is living and their counterparts — in that other country.

His academic qualifications: if the post is confirmed, he will qualify for a permanent residential visa and she and the children would emigrate with him. She could take the new subjects while already resident as his appendage.

They were told the immigration process takes about a year. Which fits in with the academic year, in Australia, just as in his university in South Africa, opening in January and running through November. Too late, for comments as he’s had to accept, for this; election year. There’s no haste.

She takes the material and her notes onto the terrace table at weekends and applies herself to what has no application to the life around her that catches her attention every now and then — Sindiswa taking the fashion and events pages from her father as reading weekend newspapers he discards these: the teeth-bared acolytes in the company of someone who must be famous. Gary Elias squatting on the grass with a bottle of Coke, swallows turn-about with a new friend, son of a KwaZulu countryman Wethu had found, attendant at the local fuel station.

He felt a touch ill at ease that she his lawyer would have to go back to school, while his qualifications as an industrial chemist and academic were approved. But looking at her on the terrace he would see that her application was absorbed concentration; Baba had given her a love of learning for its own sake, even if for an object like that of her present, as people who exercise regularly do so out of instinct of their bodies even if not committed at that time to some sports contest. She makes synthesis of the concept of law deriving from colonisation, and traditional authority — the cultural image of that crown of hair majestically mounted, thread-woven locks falling to her shoulders, like some ancestral memory. Come back, Africa.

The documents are loose on the passenger seat so driving home she can glance at marked clauses while held at traffic lights.

At the next she’s at the back of a pile-up of vehicles having to wait edged close as each change to green allows only a portion to proceed — there’s a strike today, this time municipal workers, and their procession has left hazards of rubbish spewed from their trucks blocking the parallel street. Nothing to be done, but for once something —impatience is occupied, she can take hands off the wheel and turn the pages of her study material to verify margin notes made when finding comparisons she sought in tomes at the Centre’s library. A touch control sends her windows down for the breeze sluggish with bad breath of exhaust fumes, it brings cool, anyway — but something else, laboured breathing and — a sight, summons: