Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

English best for this. — Everyone’s talking about millions being spent on making a palace out of the President’s state residence — what a time to spend a fortune on one of his houses where he’ll spend only a few days a year and the housing target promised for our people living in shacks doesn’t show any sign of being met. Well the President’s big spending started right off, the seventy-five millions his election party cost.—

Doesn’t answer, contest. Maybe Baba was invited to some such occasion held by the traditional leaders of the AmaZulu in celebration of one of their own as President.

What’s left, at last, to say between them.

— The mess in the streets where you are? I don’t like to think of you and the children—

— Not where we live. The central business parts…and on the marches to the big employers’ headquarters, transport authorities — bus and train drivers’ strikes, the municipal workers—

— Someone is putting them up to it, for sure…it’s all part of plotting against Msholozi. What is it like for you, going around the city.—

— They don’t need inciting, Baba, they’re miserably paid, they’re poor even if they still have jobs, not yet laid off.—

— Of course Zuma couldn’t have taken on our country at a worse time, the recession hitting us from the world.—

That’s his explanation.

— But Baba, trashing the streets is all that’s left to get something done for them. Negotiations drag on, the workers demand fifteen per cent they’re offered five per cent they come down to eleven, they’re offered eight…on and on. The worst time. I see every day in the city people with nowhere to live and when Steve and I drive past at night, they are there, they’re sleeping on the pavements in the cold, it’s a bad winter this year.—

He must have the last word with her on Zuma; his advice, her father’s. — Our President has only had a few months. How can he be made responsible. Singa mubeka kanjani icala na? —

There is no subject, Australia.

Baba has accepted (as he did, although that was a matter of his decision for her, a bright female soul should not be disadvantaged educationally, enlightenedly, by being female) that whatever he thinks of the desertion, the betrayal of heritage of Africa, it is her own made by right (fault?) of his ambitious evolution of her from the status of the sex that stays behind in every sense while the brothers go to school. He believes, she sees, it’s out of his hands; in God’s hands.

And this shows he’s gone further than ever in his trust of her? Terrible must be for him to hold this while she disrespects, rejects the future of the country to be achieved led in the person of a son of the Zulu nation.

Sindiswa has always been uninterested in, resistant to KwaZulu visits, finding reasons for staying behind in the Suburb; at this stage of adolescence in the time to be calculated before the adventure of Australia her school friend envies she is getting on intimately (blood will tell?) with her cousin contemporaries. It’s television that has brought them together — not blood will tell — they all envision life, sex, love, ambition, popular aims, gains of success, fear failure, from the same sitcoms and soap operas. Almost every mud-plastered house has the altar of the box, now. Baba himself has the same wide screen in his house as installed in his school, both to provide the informational and educational material available; the programmes on culture and politics in the world brought by the image without the opportunity or need to desert. No one and nothing whatever is permitted to distract him from the sight and sound of every public appearance, even on state visits to other presidents in distant places where President Jacob Zuma is received by the President of France, President Brother Obama, or the Queen of England. The hour of each newscast is a knell that silences all interruptions in Baba’s house. She sits with him now in the old instinctive ordinance to his interests, the privileges she had as his favourite child. Six o’clock and there is Zuma eloquent as he concludes a dramatic appearance he has made in a KwaZulu district where a rival party has the majority in provincial elections but nevertheless is confronted with a community burning tyres, attacking the mayor over failure of water to run from the taps, lack of medical supplies in a clinic where the women give birth.

Msholozi has the infallible instinct to take in his upraised fist the failure of the rival party to meet the demands of its followers and vow his government will not tolerate the deprivation of the people of their rights anywhere in the country, he’s in process of nationwide inquiry, those responsible must answer for their neglect and lack of action. As if the water has begun to flow into the taps with his words the angry disarray of the crowd has become a song and dance of celebration for the presence among them: ZUMA ZUMA ZUMA. He is them they are him, their suffering, the man of the people, is his.

A flick of the control in the father’s hand dismisses whatever might follow, on- or off-screen.

Baba leads her out to the veranda where Sindiswa and the girls are drinking Coke, the boys lobbing their football into the midst, demanding a share, the sight of Baba and the appearance of aunts with the mother quietens the scene without lowering the pleasure. Some of the Elder’s fellow members of the church governing committee arrive with homebrew and the women mock protest, two of them striding their bulk zigzag to bring out as well the hospitality of the house. One of the men has been to see the site for a stadium to be built for the World Cup event that has been won, against all other world contenders, for South Africa next year. KwaZulu is to have the honour of one of the stadia which will hold fans coming from all over the world to see international countries compete. The boys are all gabbled questions. What’s it look like, how big, bigger than — but the man can’t find any comparison grand enough. Gary Elias from the city is fully informed, these country people haven’t a clue. — The Orlando one’s m-u-c-h bigger. But they’re all e-normous. — One of the boys insists — So what’s it look like? — The man who’s been there is grinning, lifting his chin to the scale of magnificence planned. But Gary Elias has the answer before him. — It’s not up yet!—

— Yes, they’re only clearing the ground, sixty-one thousand three hundred and twelve square metres they told me—

— Wow!—

— D’you hear—

— So how big would that look?—

— Mfana awazifundi izibalo zakho na? Don’t you learn your maths, umfaan —

The boys tease excitedly, punching each other. Gary Elias triumphs, he’s been with the Mkizes to see the vast changes already in progress at the stadium in Orlando. — That’s where the action’s gonna be.—

— And we’ll have our stadium in KwaZulu, d’you hear—

— And we’ll be there, we’ll all be there! — Chorus, the boys are linked, Gary Elias in the middle.

The headmaster reminds. — That depends whether you’ve passed your exams you must all be going up to grade nine or ten—

— Except Thuli—

— Yes well he is a year younger so he’ll have to be up to grade eight, he’ll be the exception if he’s worked hard this year.—

— Baba’s getting tickets for everyone in the team — you’ll come. — Vusi with assurance to Gary Elias as one of them.

Baba never needs to acknowledge boasts on his behalf, it is understood he has influence on this occasion as in many others that concern the community of the family. — We must not count the chickens before they are hatched. Ungabali amatshwele engaka chamuselwa , the tickets will only begin to be available perhaps early next year, it’s going to be a process, a great many, whole lot reserved for the people overseas, all the other countries with teams taking part, America, England, France, Brazil — At the pronouncement of that South American country a cry goes up even though you don’t interrupt Baba; after the home team Bafana Bafana the Brazilians are the favourites.