— Don’t we have to have promises—
— Even if our leaders don’t — can’t — keep them.—
Sindi gets up to go and swim.
Sindi hitching at her bikini. Sindiswa’s adolescence, summons of attention to another current of time running with change, she’s walking now with the side-to-siding of buttocks Jabu had when he first saw her in Swaziland, the side-to-siding attractive to men black women have. His daughter in this kind of present.
Gary Elias is out of sight fishing with pals he’d immediately made on the beach. They are coloured, like himself, and various, some black as well as white, nothing remarkable about that, to them. But unthinkable remembered from another childhood: playing on the Whites Only beaches. And at last Sindi and the boy are getting a decent — a human education; but this is because the parents — we — can afford (we’ve ducked comrade principles enough) to send them to private schools. Open to any child of the people. Whose parents can pay.
They’re alone under the umbrella. He takes a swill from a bottle of juice and holds it out for her.
As if she doesn’t see.
— Has something happened at the university.—
The jostle of waves and the hush of their retreat. Doesn’t she understand. That’s not it. You don’t come suddenly to the stage of considering, at a certain point in the living of it, your life, the multiple living of Sindi, Gary Elias, Jabu and self. A shock at some academic decision taken by the Principal he trusts? No. An uncovery — like the recent one the science faculty dealt with so well, that one of his own brightest students was peddling drugs on campus. The culprit’s defence: to pay hostel fees. No. Or a bypass, when a colleague was given a promotion of responsibility above the Assistant Professor’s own? No. That’s not it. She always had ambitions for him he didn’t covet, care about for himself.
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!—