She is down-mouthed smiling at her Steve, he doesn’t see, in their dark. He didn’t say ‘who should give a fuck about’.
As each practised the professions they might perhaps not have chosen if different youthful ambitions had not been put on hold by the Struggle, and in the aftermath freedom, overcome by necessities of private living, they often had obligations outside daily working schedules, hours each spent without the other. Hers, representing real advancement of what was better than ambition: fulfilment of her place in that basis of what’s called the New Dispensation, the law; his without the sense of common action in an alternative to the old confines of education, hers alternative to the defence of justice confined to those who can afford legal representation. She was embattled in the accepted opposition between prosecution and defence in court, but she’s at one with the colleagues, at her level the attorneys, and the advocates whom they serve, as she was among comrades in the Struggle. Even if most of the lawyers in the commercial firm she was ‘lent’ to had been fellow travellers onlooking from home, all are committed to justice now. In the laboratory, in his seminars, he served his academic purpose of imparting knowledge and skills; when the information notice that he was available to students in his room brought timid bewildered ones or cocky aggressive ones to his door, and the bridging classes which he and what remained of his like-minded academics persisted with the band-aid to school education he gave his obstinate best effort and encouragement. But in the faculty room he was in a coterie of the present among the structures of the past, fuming inwardly against the coffee machine’s mantra, the rites of scholarly self-esteem rising in fragrant steam. There were scientific conferences he attended to educate himself, faculty dinners for visiting research scholars he was invited to on the strength of his thesis being accepted by the university—the Vice Chancellor’s speech-making pride in the Department of Science, its choice for association by scientists prominent in astrophysics and the twenty-first century conception of the nature of the universe.
As well as formal gatherings of the legal profession, Jabu had restaurant lunch quite often with this or that partner of one of the commercial legal practices she happened to be working for temporarily. She would put her hand on her stomach that evening, not wanting to eat again when she sat at the table with the meal she and Wethu had put together to feed the children and Steve, his lunch having been a snack in a fast-food chain favoured by his students.
At her pauses in the day she and table companions would be occupied in shop talk, analysis of what had taken place in court; he and his students, along with their pizza, argued over how the university was or was not meeting their expectations.
As the muscular image of a professional sports player develops a certain conformation so Jabu’s image went through certain changes. Though her hair was the African crown of braided patterns and locks that was the general assertion of traditional African aesthetics reinstated in the free woman, she has as if unnoticed by herself begun to adopt the other traditional convention of female freedom, the informal but well-cut pants and jackets of professional men. This was an outward expression of something . . . an impression she had managed or been given a synthesis between the working relevance of the past and the present; which Steve had not.
Return from the daily separation of preoccupations is not only to the children as the core of the personal living state. It’s to the Suburb; it was with Jake, Isa, the Mkizes and other comrades who renewed contact that there was in place, space claimed to consider, with confidence of mutual experience and understanding, what they had envisaged to be achieved. What was happening in the country. Even the occupants of the old Gereformeerde Kerk that would have consigned their kind to condemnation were interested in the secular concern with the aftermath of the struggle for freedom in which they hadn’t taken active part, although some of their orientation, white and black, had been revolutionaries, comrades in prison and in the bush. The playwright Marc, probably researching for certain aspects of a new play in mind, brought dramatic first-hand accounts about what was not being done about the degradation of black workers existing in conditions worse than the ‘white farmer keeps his pigs’—it was Marc who confronted the Dolphins to see beyond the particular discrimination against themselves. Sunday’s permanent invitation for Jake, Isa, the Mkizes, Jabu, Steve and everyone’s kids to come to the pool became socially political amid the cult repartee and affectionate dunkings of the commune.
These—Suburb family occasions, public rather than private, were in a sense, guarded. While decisions taken by the government that affected everyone, taxes, health insurance, crime, were talked about with criticism of cabinet ministers and ridicule mimicry of some politicians livened the exchanges, laughter all round, there were aspects of these matters Jake, Isa, the Mkizes, Jabu, Steve, did not speak of. Did not offer, as if by political vows like Masonic vows. When they were alone together in the house of this one or that, the same matters were under a light different from that reflected by the pool.
Kinship of prison and bush between the comrades, tentacle within, this was a meaning of their lives that could not be erased. They had known rivalry for esteem, nose-picking habits, farts, hard to tolerate cheek-by-jowl in the tent and the cell, jealous sexual tensions when there were women comrades among them, all the human shortcomings, faults and passions; but outreached, outdistanced by the Struggle. Alone together now they could remark on veniality from inside, informative experience, signs it was always there, in this high government official, the cut-throat determination of this Under Minister to oust that Minister, the question why so-and-so, whose pathetic lack of capabilities comrades all knew too well, had been given the leg-up in a ministry while so-and-such, comrade of brains and integrity, seemed to be sidelined onto some minor committee chair.
These were not facts and doubts for Sunday morning gossip.
But the family of the same Shaik was continuing to appear in the newspapers in connection with the arms deals. The first democratic government had formed a Department of Defence Strategic Arms Acquisition Programme, on the principle that the country needed to strengthen its defence booty inherited in defeat of the apartheid army’s force. Corvettes, submarines, utility and marine helicopters, fighter trainers and advanced fighter aircraft went out for tender in the world with the proviso that foreign arms manufacturers promise to invest in the country and create employment. The Shaik name—family of brothers, Shabir, Yunus known as Chippy, Mo—is a front-page staple in the news since the delivery of arms under contract has been in progress for more than five years. There had been something called an Audit Steering Committee, and then the government signed this Arms Deal as a necessary expenditure of billions. A Shaik was a member of the steering committee.
—Who the hell is Chippy Shaik, anyway?—
—Here it is, you’ve just read, ‘Director of procurement in the Defence Force’ when the ‘irregularities’ in contracts to sub-contractors now under investigation were awarded. No—but as cadre in Umkhonto. What was he.— Jake answering himself with the grimace of culpable lapsed memory.
There were so many levels of activity in the Movement (that other euphemism, this one for the Struggle). Some would have been familiar with the deployment, whatever, of Shaik, but along with Jake, Steve and Jabu weren’t.
Trust Peter Mkize. —Doesn’t matter. Shaik turns out now, eh, to be financial adviser of our Deputy President Jacob Zuma. You’ve seen what’s come from the Auditor General’s report, the cost of the deal in billions far higher than the government’s figure and nobody can say what the final costs might be—why? Something like ‘industrial offsets’. Eish!—
Steve knows what everybody in the outside world takes for granted. —The arms trade is the dirtiest of them all. ‘Industrial offsets’—that’ll be investments and trade opportunities that tender sinners promise to advance for the good of the country. Arms dealers know they can forget about these obligations. Their bribes to ministers?—government officials who d
ecide tender awards.—
Jake snatches from him like a flag —That’s sufficient contribution to development of the country!—
The complex Shaik kin keeps being unravelled. —Zuma’s financial adviser’s brother Shabir got the arms deal contract although it was twice the price of another tender, of equal standard—
—Whose pocket took in the bribes— The refrain.
—If the deal ever does come to court we might—
—Zuma as President elect—as if the President will ever—
There’s a lawyer among them. —He was arraigned. And he appeared in court on another charge—of rape.— She was present when he did, and was declared not guilty.
The Suburb comrades follow the beginning of what is apparently an era in the aftermath of revolution attained.
—With apartheid we were the pariah of the world, with freedom we become what we never were, we’re part of the democratic world. Corruption doesn’t disqualify. It’s everywhere.— That’s Steve.
Jabu is withdrawn as if among strangers.
He interprets, from her manner of response lately to ordinary happenings: angry when a pot of food she’s not checked soon enough threatens to have dried away the gravy, chastising herself by tugging at her scalp with recalcitrant braids when she’s at the mirror in the morning, and at her self-accused carelessness at letting her car run out of petrol so that a colleague had to fetch a can from a service station before she could drive home from the Centre. At times when they are alone together she will get up abruptly, a gesture of rejection of some TV commentator, leave the room; on other occasions she will be so eye-to-eye with the image and so tense against what is being said she ignores what she is usually alert to against all other registers of her attention, conversation, music—the racket of some trouble between Sindi and Gary Elias. He sees, feels approaching, pressing upon him like her flesh against him in their intimacy, that Jabu is affronted and disturbed, beyond his own reaction.
She does not say much when he looks up from the newspaper —D’you see this—‘Zuma allegedly solicited a 500,000 a year bribe’ from the French company that won the contract to supply some equipment for corvettes. Shabir Shaik’s company was the French’s black empowerment partner—
—Why do we do what the whites do in their countries. What business is it of ours. We aren’t their black colonies any more.—
He noted but did not misunderstand the juxtaposition in opposition, whites and blacks; ‘we’ excluding him, her man, from its solidarity identity. Jabu is shamed by the betrayal of blacks, of whom she is one, by themselves; although racism is no part of her life, finally proven by the existence of her own two children?
Gary Elias’s periods of the year spent with his grandfather are regular, pleasures not outgrown as his activities and interests at home in the city, school and Suburb grow. At least once among the school holiday visits his dad came along with his mother to deliver him to the village and pay his own respects: husband of the daughter not only of the Elder of the Methodist Church and headmaster of the school, but of the family commune. While he drove Jabu mentioned in undertone, they wouldn’t bring up the subject of Zuma during the visit. Her father had known Zuma well, was associated with him way back while he was MEC for Economic Affairs and Tourism in the KwaZulu Natal provincial government.
Steve had thought the arms deal was exactly the subject to engage, of interest to everyone in the village. Her father who always directed the conversation among those who gathered with him, wife and extended family in welcome, did not mention it, and authority emanating from him as naturally as he breathed, no one did. There was much else to exchange. Two lively cousins Gary’s age were urged to tell about the science laboratory equipment that had been donated to the headmaster’s school by some Norwegian foundation—this news produced in recognition of Steve as a man of science, must be a professor. —The Education Minister was here himself with the Norwegian Ambassador, you have met the Education Minister, Jabulile?— No limits to the level of achievements won for this daughter he had somehow instructed even when she was in prison. Everyone, including the survivor of Jabu’s two grandmothers, carried in respect tenderly to a chair, went to see Gary Elias playing goalkeeper with the style of his triumphs in the junior team at school. The comrade’s advice has been right, the boy was no longer a reluctant spectator of sport—Jabu exchanged a look away from the leaping catch of the ball, at Steve, in their acknowledgement. He spoke his acquired isiZulu and those around celebrated in applause for both him and his son. At a signal from Jabu’s mother food was carried in a procession of pots and bowls and there was bottled beer as well as a calabash of home brew her father had learnt was much to Steve’s liking.
These visits passing the grandson from one home to what is another have coaxed his son out of his temperament of withdrawal into open security, a belonging that before existed only in his blood. A child’s secret example of Tutu’s truth and reconciliation?
And the timing of this visit seemed to have brought assurance to Jabu, she chattered all the way back to the city, the Suburb. She was recounting stories, events from her childhood in the place in the world they had just left; what, so young, she hadn’t recognised as rivalries between the Elder’s pious congregation, the in-house power struggles with the heavy presence of the relatives in their thatched annexes, the skill with which she’d understood later, her mother managed not to be totally extinguished by her father; while this daughter belonged—chose to be—only to him.
If the question of Jacob Zuma’s relationship with Shabir Shaik didn’t surface at her father’s house, it is raised where politics are also sidled round tactfully by Jonathan and Brenda, out of respect for commitments they don’t share with the combination of Steve and his wife, though they had warmed to and always welcome her personally. On the Reed mother’s eightieth birthday, a party is in progress at Jonathan’s house. It is Jabu who’s given time and thought to with what present Steve should honour his mother on what would be recognised with ancestral respect in the church Elder’s community. Someone addresses in kindly attention as to one who would be concerned —What’s going to be done about this corruption stuff that’s coming out. How serious is it—or just infighting, like all governments?—
Jonathan doesn’t wait for response from Jabu. —People are confused about the sound of the name. Shabir—thank God he isn’t a Jew.—
He has to keep on reminding, telling himself. The arms trade, dirtiest in the world. The true cliché. There was no impulse, it was back then, no time to face this when Umkhonto had to lay hands on arms wherever and from whom they would come. Not the democratic powers of the Western world; these were busy stocking up the armories of apartheid, military and financial.
—So what d’you do.—
You knew what it was you had to do in the bush.
He answers himself, in new derogatory voice: Get together a delegation. Yes? This isn’t your troubles in the lecture halls at a university behind its security gates, my Bra. And we aren’t in your camp in Angola, ready for our Cuban comrades to fight beside us. Mustn’t apply the code, the morals of the Struggle, as adjusted to the tongue-twisted Peace-and-Freedom.
From Peter Mkize, Jabu and Jake the question, statement—whatever it is—comes outspoken. So what d’you do.
And answers himself again because no one else wants to, or knows. —You join the chorus from the opposition holier-than-thou, slam for your own upright benefit the corruption in the government, corruption by the ANC.—
Peter speaks as if constrained to betray under interrogation. —Zuma was our Chief of Intelligence in the bush.—
—And ten years on the Island!— Jabu keeps the calendar of armed resistance.
Heroism has an imperialistic halo, not to be invoked for individuals when every cadre was dedicated to whatever the Struggle demanded; in responsibility, stoicism, suffering.
Jake brings knuckles down on the table, crushing something. —How’s it possible to believe t
hese same comrade leaders have forgotten what they were, what they fought through—in exchange for freedom as bribes, freedom as money.—
Perhaps it was the very same October evening that it was happening?
Not only the ware Boer suburb has transformed in accordance with political correctness as an expression of justice. The suburb of fine houses, many with fake features of the various Old Countries from which the owners came, that had been in well-off white ownership has also undergone invasion, if not transformation. Where the white inhabitants, some second or third generation in possession, have sold the family home for security reasons and bought an apartment in a gated complex supposedly quarantined from burglary and assaults, or left the country to live out of rule of a black majority government, there is no longer any law to prevent any black who can afford such a stately home from acquiring it. One block away from the house where Steve grew up, past which he rode first on his tricycle, later bicycle, the Deputy President Jacob Zuma had chosen to buy, and lived in flittingly from time to time, a house among his other homes about the country. During the week when the now ex-Deputy President Zuma, dismissed from his cabinet post by President Thabo Mbeki as the consequence of his financial adviser Shaik declaring in court Zuma received bribes from a French arms dealer, Zuma was in his house neighbouring Steve’s old home. A young woman, daughter of a comrade with whom Zuma had shared ten years on Robben Island, and who in respectful African custom addresses him as malume, uncle, asked or was invited to spend Saturday night after a party in the house. A confused story: both probably lying, they had intercourse—the only admitted fact. She laid a charge she had been raped. He, in this trial that did come to court after postponement from December to April, said there was consensual sex. Zuma headed the ‘Moral Regeneration Movement’, a government initiative on prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS. He admits he knew the woman was HIV-positive, he had no condom; he took a shower afterwards as this was, he said, post-coital cautionary prevention of infection. If not in so many words, a gift to the press. A cartoonist created a crown for the man that would surely ever after be his royal image: a plume in the form of a shower sprinkling over his head.
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