Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

They see Sindi their schoolgirl; dancing as a grown woman does with a man.

Sindiswa in Glengrove Place, proof of clandestine revealed: forbidden intimacy. Growing up in a second freedom, in another country, from burden of the past.

They dance wildly as they had in their beginnings in the Struggle, Swaziland, Baba’s girl and her white boyfriend.

A week or two later President Zuma’s multi-million celebration is a bash, the press didn’t hesitate to remind, on taxpayers’ money. Wethu had gone home to vote where she was registered, KwaZulu. She came back — Happy Happy! Her refrain as she unloaded the gifts of emerald swatches of spinach you don’t see frozen in supermarket packs, woven shoulder bags, straw and reed origin of the plastic version city women wear, and for Gary Elias a little clay figure of a boy clutching a calabash as a football, modelled by one of his holiday pals. He laughed with pleasure and scorn at the arms without hands; his father challenged, — You couldn’t make anything like this out of mud, could you?—

Wethu brought greetings and what must be a message rehearsed with school principal Elias Siphiwe Gumede. She paused between chatter about and for nobody in particular to recall to his daughter faithfully — Baba says we must thank God the country he said it’s in good hands — how was it — oh for us, our country. And we — we can be — proud amaZulu. — This was a translation, polite in a house where English was familiarly spoken. She gave the message again in its original isiZulu with the gravity in which Jabu’s Baba had spoken it.

The Justice Centre is preoccupied with the immediate. Situations in which its lawyers are likely to have to take on defence for individuals singled out by the police among mass protesters from ‘informal settlements’ outside this town or that where there’s rioting over that colloquialism for bucket toilets, water supply, electricity…‘service delivery’.

— A car burnt, shops stoned, the clinic set alight, a local government official seriously injured. The Minister of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs who’s been making speeches condemning violence was supposed to go to the settlement to calm people, hasn’t come. Instead he’s threatened to crack down on what he says are instigators and perpetrators. Three arrested, who knows whether they shouted louder than others or actually got there first in the attack on the official. We’re going to apply for bail on Monday.—

He turns to her perspective they’re living with just as before the election victory euphoria. (Morning after: still babelas from the first in 1994.) — But let’s give your Zulu countryman a chance, he hasn’t even had a month, never mind the American President’s hundred days.—

She looks at him, half-smile down the corner of her mouth. So fair-minded he ought to be a judge. There’s irony that didn’t exist in the clarity of cadres, you were for or against, simply a matter of life or death, apartheid the death-in-life.

For him the immediate that was preoccupying the university was happening not in this university but can’t be ruled out as not to happen. The university at which it was, is where students in the Young Communist League threaten to make the university ungovernable by mass action until the principal agrees to step down. — So it’s not Black Empowerment issue, that vice chancellor principal’s as black as ours. — Lesego has come to the Science Faculty to talk.

— Not much in that — well, shows we’ve moved on. It doesn’t matter whether the man’s black or white he’s responsible for what’s wrong at his university even if he says it’s due to government underfunding.—

— What can the university do to stop the Young Communists from disrupting mid-term exams. Mass action, bring in the National Students Congress, that’ll mean some of ours joining. Eish! You know what they say, ‘We usually sing loud as possible to ensure our demands are heard’. Call in the police to beat them up?—

At home Sindi asks — What are the guys protesting about, what do they want?—

— Twenty thousand have been refused permission to write exams because they couldn’t pay their tuition fees this year — her mother explains.

Sindi’s clamped teeth and tightened shoulder blades. — When I’m at university, I’ve paid fees, I don’t want people stopping me from writing exams. I don’t want to be in it. — She has the — privilege? — they’ve paid for it, for her: the principle of Socratic argument not violence, for everybody.

They don’t either of them remind. You will not be here.

President Zuma has declared the African National Congress will rule until the Second Coming.

Along the streets there are men and women thumbs-up for lifts, the bus drivers have been on strike for almost four weeks. Blacks in their locked cars don’t stop to pick up stranded workers any more than whites do; he’s a white among them. Class makes unity in consciousness of hijack danger. She does take on the signals, from men as well as women, swerving to the kerb. She hasn’t told him she picks up commuters along her way. He warned her against this, it’s risky, but there is no man other than Baba who has been able to tell her what not to do.

City parks gardeners and cleaners, administrative staff in the municipalities, social workers, prison warders are ready to strike if pay packages agreed upon two years ago are not distributed within a week. ‘If it comes to the push we will bring the country to a standstill, we have no option.’

While they are handing the Sunday papers between them she folds a double page down the middle and slides it over the one he’s reading — there’s a picture spread of black and white doctors picketing outside the hospital named to honour a white woman who spent years in prison in the Struggle, Helen Joseph. WE’RE LIFE SAVERS NOT SLAVES MY PLUMBER EARNS MORE THAN I DO.

Round the first fire of the coming winter, at Jake and Isa’s, Peter Mkize repeats precisely the President’s assurances as if testing the vowel sounds for genuineness. — Corruption and nepotism will be fought under his administration.—

Jake grants — You have to have the nerve with which the man doesn’t begin on himself. Anyway, there’s a new code of accountability to us, the nation. The Minister of Transport gets a million-rand present from transport contractors and dutifully asks the President if he should give it back. — Peter’s glass staggering its contents — Our President’s advice, no, man — keep the present after you declare according to whoever’s in charge of — who’s it — the government’s code of executive ethics.—

Isa flips into the fire a skeleton twig claw from the bunch of dried grapes on her vine the birds have missed. — Box of wine, Gucci outfit—

Jabu’s asking — Remember? — Zuma’s promise to stay in touch with the voters, people’s president. Someone from the Centre was at the Maponya shopping mall in Soweto last weekend when Zuma came from a church where he’d been to thank the congregation for praying for the ANC victory in the election that would make him President. Zuma Zuma people yelling ran to keep up with the electric golf cart he sat on going through the mall, the movies and fast food sections, kids went wild, and outside — a crowd waiting for him. He said he was there to thank them for voting for him, when we were campaigning we told you, we were coming to you not just for votes. Today’s the start of staying in touch…first stop Soweto because this is the place that symbolised the struggle of the people, I came here because this place tells a new story, here you can walk into world-class shops and buy what you want, you don’t have to go to town, this is a story of our freedom.—