Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

Marc takes on Jake. — How can you be so cynical. Where’d that get us. This party has its policy, that one has another, we choose between how we think our country should be run, develop.—

— Democracy’s only about power? Well, democratic Zimbabwe’s one that proves it. — She speaks and Peter’s reminded — Jabu, what’s happening — the refugees — we’re all so busy with this election — they’ll still be pouring in when that’s all over. Or if the new government gets the door shut at the borders we’ll still have how many thousand already — how long now. The church guy, is he still running that shelter or has the city council got onto him again.—

— They’re there, on the pavement and the street, he still has his church full. And soon it’ll be winter. There was a move to take them to some abandoned building but they came back to where they get food, and some sort of pickings from street trading. And it seems the camp at the main border point people enter, Messina, it has been closed, it was supposed to prevent the drift to the cities. We’re acting for the church, our Centre lawyers. But I’ll take you down to see — right beside the Magistrates’ Courts the city’s had to put up portable toilets, the kind at sports events. And now the local shopkeepers have gone to court against this.—

— Choice. Did you see? One of the columnists has guts to write: we’ve the choice of a balance of thieves to vote for—

Isa claps her palm a moment over her lips as if this is what she’s really doing over Jake’s. — Why’s my man such a bad-mouth, he’ll be first in the queue to make his cross—

— Because… my love , ay — you have to face the facts.—

— At least you don’t say ‘the truth’.—

— Let me finish? The journalist says there are some good ones thrown in, sharp, sharp, aih Peter. Our ANC has luxury German cars as canvassing fleet, where we’re getting our funding — shhhh — no one knows he says, how many millions from the dictators of Libya and Equatorial Guinea. Can’t call these bribes can we, no, just sweeteners to be sure our foreign policies will support the sugar daddy donors to our democracy when their totalitarian states get hauled over the coals by International Human Rights. The opposition? The Independent Democrats have a murderer on their list, the Zulus’ IFP has a convicted fraudster, another has a churchman — not Dandala! — convicted and then pardoned. Well, can’t complain things are dull. The Trade Union S.G. tells workers Malema may become the next Mandela. Malema’s now called Helen Zille a colonialist, that’s much worse than when he called her a whore. She comes back at him — do I pronounce it right— inkwenkwe , whatever that insult is.—

Blessing blurts cheeringly — Stevie, it’s my language, isi Xhosa, ‘uncircumcised boy’.—Her man Peter to the comrades — You don’t know our insults, that’s about the worst thing you can call a black man.—

Malema’s repartee allows election-mode freedom of speech become general. — The shit hits the fan — And Isa leads the laughter, as Steve ejects the words.

She has insider reflections to bring back from the company she keeps at the Centre. The advocates in their exchanges pronounce, the Zuma corruption indictment hasn’t safely blown away. And what she confides isn’t legal gossip, that’s not her responsible nature. However the provisions of Constitutional law brought this about, right to appeal is upheld, and the withdrawal of the charge is judged as invalid — overturned. For complex procedural defections you need a lawyer in-house, to follow.

Jacob Zuma goes to the polls with charges reinstated against him, to be heard again after 22 April.

— When he’ll be President.—

He says it for her and for him, as if already an event in their past.

22 April.

She often is kept late at chambers when a client has to consult after hours and she must be there with the advocate leading the case. Wethu has microwaved the lamb stew taken out of the freezer, so he and the children with Wethu are at the table when she comes in tossing her briefcase to a chair and running a hand along her tailed locks.

— There was such a crowd queued up.—

That is how she is telling.

His eyes hold hers, question — and answer: she — Jabu — has come from a polling station. She kisses each child and him, flutter of a passing moth come in to the light as if her apology for being late, before serving herself and sitting down to eat with them. Gary Elias mocking his mother’s own admonition — You didn’t wash your hands — while holding out his plate for a second helping.

The bedroom — that non-conformist confessional. So she cast a vote, well that’s her right, it was withheld over so many generations from her people she’s entitled to use it for them, even on her way out.

She has another choice to admit. — I voted COPE.—

There are too many confusions to be questioned between them in the process of packing oneself up, each must trust the other. The accord in the Struggle — that was another time.

Baba taught her to have her conviction, duty (among many others to be observed and of which, turning away from the poster on the fence, she is in default in respect of her father). To face for herself what others expect of her. But she has no obligation to tell the gathering of Suburb comrades Isa has insisted must receive together at the Anderson house twenty-four hours later the final results of the day, 22 April. The mood — rueful, it’s Zuma — congratulatory, the Party has anyway defeated the lucky dip of rivals; of course whatever their doubts the comrades of the Suburb have all voted for the Party. It’s as if in the emotion of the day the coming final defection of two among them is forgotten. It is — understood? — Steve and Jabu did not vote.

There is no surprise in the televised announcement above blare of crowd, ululating women, farting vuvuzelas — a sound majority.

— The scary shift to the Left that might have put some crosses in the wrong place—

— Who would have?—

— The whites who’re afraid of Zuma, the rival blacks, House of Traditional leaders—

— Didn’t happen. — Oh it probably did, but Zuma had Malema herding the Youth!—

Then amazement. Final analysis: COPE gets 8 per cent of the vote — they’ve been in existence how long, three months? — Two months, for God’s sake! — Terror must be dancing as well as our Zuma.—

Her vote in the count, that is as clandestine love once had to be.

The doubts the comrades had about Zuma as their Party’s choice — there were preferred names of those not potentially damaging to the country, less compromised by corruption and sexual shenanigans, although no one knows what the power virus may manifest against the antibodies of trust — are overcome by evidence that the Party of liberation, Mandela’s, Tambo’s, Sisulu’s — it’s still in charge! The loyalty of intelligent people, some battle-scarred, isn’t the uncritical slogan fealty. All the better for that. Viva ANC if not Viva Zuma! There is zest in the fact of victory, third time, over sham elections of the past, whites only, same as the signs on the public lavatories. Jake and Isa brought out wine, beer, and the whisky bottle for those who had advanced to it in the present. The children — except for attentive Sindi who played Antigone in her school’s curriculum which naturally includes politics as an element of everyday history from ancient times — had only gusted in and out, irritatedly gestured away by Jake during the result announcements that will affect their lives if not determine them. They burst back along with Blessing’s contributed snacks. Jake and Isa’s Nick slid a CD to play what his parent liked from the unimaginable distance when they were young, a Miriam Makeba, and the folks, he knew, wouldn’t resist it. While the boys finished Blessing’s curried chicken wings Peter took Sindiswa by the elbow, up to dance. Marc, swinging sexy gyrations round his serious choice of a new gender partner, wife Claire; Jake and Blessing circling Isa’s hip-shrugging solo.