A Guest of Honour (47 page)

He brought her an aspirin and a glass of water and she slept, snoring a bit because of the weeping. A process of dismemberment began to take place in him. She would go with her children. He would tell her. He held her and the current of her body carried him, as if nothing had changed, finally to sleep.

In the morning they overslept and it was impossible to begin to talk. She could not come to him in the evening; Nongwaye was away in the bush and Edna was on night duty, so she had to sleep at home with the children. He went over for supper and again there was no chance—it was Friday and the children were allowed the treat of staying up late. He and the girl played musical chairs with them. She was full of private jokes and was happy and when the children had gone to bed it was not the time to make her sad again. She was happy because Edna's mother was coming to look after the family next day, and he had promised that they would go alone to the lake. Every day made what he had to say more difficult. Driving to the lake brought back each time a renewal of the first time they had been there alone together. They went to the island—these days they took
the spear—fishing equipment with them—and she got her first fish. It was spring; the heat that built up over the two months before the rains was beginning, and he had to drag up the pirogue and balance it against the rocks to make shade—the baobab was not yet in leaf. Even then, the stasis of one o'clock was formidable. Drawn up into their covert of shadow they talked in the mood of animated confidence that, for them, went with being at the lake. At one point she said, “… and when I was miserable—you know. It really was that I hardly mind at all. It's awful, isn't it. I look forward to you and I … not having them around, just … The trouble is I want to burst with joy at the idea of us being left alone—” and for a moment he did not quite realize what she was saying—he had forgotten, in the familiarity and pleasure of the day, what it was that had to be said by him.

And so it was not said; there was no need for it.

The children left Gala by car with the United Nations husband—and-wife medical team who were on loan to advise on the country's health services. They were old friends of Rebecca from her time in one African country or another, and were returning to the capital after a trip to the lake communities. In the capital, Vivien saw the children off in the care of a friend of hers who was travelling on the same jet to Johannesburg.

In the last days before her children went Rebecca was sometimes sad, and wept again—but perhaps this time really because of the parting from them. They were too excited by the importance they assumed and the prospect of flying to their father to have much emotion left—and now and then, when they were babbling all at once about Johannesburg and what “we” were going to do there, there would be a moment of vacancy in the face of one or the other, and the remark— “Silly, Mummy won't be there yet.” They seemed to believe—or had been told by her?—that she would be following soon. Perhaps it was true, and she had not told him.

Edna Tlume was found sobbing in the Volkswagen after the children left; she had gone there to be alone, and had to be brought out and comforted. Her starched uniform was crushed as if she'd been violated and the ink from the two ballpoints she kept with the scissors in her neat nurse's pocket had leaked a stain. She said to Bray while Rebecca went to fetch a lemon for tea, “Don't tell her—I would never leave my children, never. Don't tell her.”

It was not necessary to creep out of his house back to her rooms at the Tlumes' before it was light, now. Gordon telephoned from Johannesburg when the children arrived; it was a radio telephone call, the reception very poor, but sufficient for her to understand that all was well.

They sat under the fig, afterwards, she with her sandals kicked off and her feet up because they were swollen from the heat. “He wanted to be remembered to everyone—the Tlumes, and you.”

He said to her, “He asked me to see that you and the children got out in good time, if ever I thought it necessary.”

She was tranquil. “Oh? Well now there'll be no need for that.” She put out her palm for his, and their hands hung, loosely clasped, between the two chairs.

The Luxurama Cinema was owned by Ebrahim and Said Joshi, second generation of a family of Indian traders who came to the capital before the railhead. A Joshi brother was usually in the foyer at all performances, making sure the unemployed African youths did not push their way in without paying, but neither was to be seen the day of the opening of the PIP Congress and the expanse of red and green tessellated floor quickly being blocked out by feet in sandals and polished shoes, figures in trailing togas, in Mweta tunics, in dark suits and even in suits with a metallic sheen, and the intense gathering of voices in place of the apathy of cinema queues, gave the place the air of forced occupation. Fish lit up in ornamental tanks (the Joshis claimed theirs “the most lavish cinema in Central Africa”) sidled along the glass and gasped mutely at their beaded streams of oxygen, like the playthings of a vanquished people, left behind in panic. The popcorn machine was not working; the soda fountain had been taken over by a committee of Party mothers with hired urns for tea.

Out in the street women's organizations in various quasi—uniforms—the only uniform thing about their dress was its combination of red—and-black PIP colours—sang full strength. One of the Young Pioneer groups had a tea—chest band going. Now and then, shouting Party slogans, holding their flags and banners tottering above people's heads, these celebrants surged into the foyer and made it impossible
for lobbying delegates to make themselves heard, or for traffic to move up- and downstairs to where the secretarial committee responsible for the agenda sat in the mezzanine. Press cameras rose like periscopes out of the crush; flash bulbs puffed and caught faces in sudden lightning. A countering surge of impatience rather than the efforts of Party stewards sent the singers and chanters giddying back into the street among children, icecream tricycles, and the motorcycles of the police.

The heat of October—the white settlers used to call it suicide month—held siege outside, but the Luxurama was air—conditioned; in this refrigerator smelling of smoke and chewing gum Bray heard every word fall, suddenly clear of the noise and thick—headed humidity. Mweta walking in to give his opening address matched the mood of confidence Bray felt all around in the quick eyes white against black faces, the tense composure of people who hold ready within them, untouched as yet by any blight of counter opinion, the speeches they have prepared, the points they are going to send home. And Shinza was up there somewhere on the stage among the Executive and Central Committees; slowly the face detached itself; the beard, the way of looking up easily, not out into the auditorium but to one side, as if some invisible confidences were being made to his inclined ear. There he was.

Mweta's tunic had the variation of a small—patterned scarf in the neck; it made a reddish blur from a distance under the lights of the stage, and made one aware of his face among all others even when one was not looking at him. His skin shone; he was healthy and handsome. He began by speaking in his warmly confidential way of the instability of the government machine which was taken over less than a year ago, with the repatriation of the colonial administrative staffs greatly increasing an already chronic shortage of manpower. The country's skills always had been largely provided by expatriates because the colonial power had “thought it unnecessary” to develop the skills of the local population—that was the well—known policy of colonialism. “We were not ‘prepared' for independence by the white man and when we fought for it and won, we took our country into our bare hands.” From the very first day the fact had been faced that much of the administration and skilled labour would have to continue to be done by expatriates—with the difference that “we are the employers,
and they are our employees, now: we pay the piper and call the tune.” Considering this difficult, this dangerous, this precarious state of the country when it fell at last into the hands of its rightful owners, how did it look now?

Mweta broke off and looked out and around into tiers of spread knees and faces that he must have been able to half—see in the dimness of the house lights beyond the glare that enveloped him on the stage. He bared his face, a Sebastian to many arrows. And seemed to pluck them, harmless, from his flesh, in advance: yes, there had been certain difficulties, labour troubles in industry and public works, all of which were really the direct consequence of the colonial legacy, the problems shelved and shirked under colonialism, always put aside for another day. “That day is ours”—he switched suddenly to his football—stadium, mass—meeting voice, so that for a moment it was too much for the microphone, and the phrase flew back and forth about the walls— “that day is ours and it has to be dealt with by us just as if the government had created those problems instead of inheriting them. It is easy to please people for the time being, to put something into their hands and send them away happy—for a little while. But what happens when they come back with hands outstretched again, and this time you have nothing to offer, because you have strained the country's economy beyond its resources?” The needs of economic development, at this stage, must prevail over all others. The welfare of the country as a whole was what the government had in mind when it did not, could not and would not accede to the demands of the mineworkers, which were not based on the economy of an independent, developing country, but harked back to the economy that had existed in colonial times. It was understandable that this confusion could arise in the minds of the workers … and of course in this country everywhere there were individuals ready to take advantage of the confusion for their own ends. But “the PIP government has to stand tall and look over the heads of its people.” The PIP government was settling industrial disputes in the way that served the long—term interests of the workers better than they perhaps could realize—in fact in
their
best possible interests, as well as those of the country as a whole. “During the European war, the British government in the U.K. took special measures, including forbidding the right to strike, in order to keep up industrial output. We are at war, too—with the underdevelopment
of our country, with backwardness and poverty. I will never take the easy way out, if it means losing that war. I will never put myself in the position where the people of this country must be turned away empty—handed.”

On the last syllable of the high—sounding phrase he produced his usual trick of confronting himself with another concrete accusation—there had been another problem that had had to be dealt with in these first few months. He had given a full statement to the nation at the time, but of course he would always regard it as a special responsibility to account to the Party for what was done in the Party's name. A Preventive Detention Bill had been introduced; a measure to put a stop to any underhand attempts to throw the country off balance at the time when it was still finding its feet. As he had already pointed out, in certain sections of the community impatience for the fruits of freedom could temporarily overcome the people's natural good sense. They were then in danger of falling victim to those sly disruptive forces that appeared all over the new Africa, trying to persuade people to sabotage themselves. It was easy to fan grievances; easier than to satisfy them through hard work and the controlled and orderly growth of the country. “When we have built our state we shall be able to tolerate the quibblers and the plotters as harmless madmen and we won't need preventive detention. It is a temporary measure for our new kind of state of emergency—an emergency not of unrest but of the necessity to get on with the job, unmolested by pests.”

There had been a third problem, and this one also was not this country's alone, but common to emergent Africa. Often there was instability and unrest in neighbouring states; stable and peaceful countries found themselves in the position of having to play host to refugees “of one kind and another.” These refugees knew perfectly well that they enjoyed the shelter of the country on the strict condition that they did not abuse it. No country could tolerate the presence of “plotting foreigners who violate the right of asylum by bringing arms into the country, and by using the ordinary, peaceful activities of the people as a cover for a traffic in weapons.” Fish trucks transporting food from the lake to the capital had been used in this way by refugees. He would not allow anyone to “conduct a war at our expense.” These people had been told to leave; and they could consider themselves lucky that they had not been tried in a court of
law. The decision about whether such exiles should be tried for bringing in arms lay with the Attorney—General, and he would not fail to act if such incidents occurred again—other refugees could take note.

In spite of “all these troubles we were heir to when we took over” the country's prestige today stood high, both among its fellow African states and in the rest of the world, and, what was more important, the people could see their hopes taking shape in daily life. Africanization was going ahead. In the civil service, nearly half the customs officials were now African. African Provincial Officers had replaced all white District Commissioners. Sixteen African magistrates had been appointed. The command of the police force was in the hands of an African—a reflection of the unity and loyalty of the country that he did not think any other new state could match. In two or three years, even the commander of the army would be “one of our own people.”

A new Apprenticeship Bill would see that the private sector of industry played its part in training youth as artisans. Of course the biggest step forward had already been taken—in two years, under the training scheme that had been put into operation immediately with the cooperation of the mining companies, all labour in the mines up to the level of Mine Captain would be African. He was happy to be able to announce for the first time, to this Congress, that he had just been told that the Minister of Education and the Minister of Development and Planning had made successful arrangements for the International Labour Organization to set up a management—training project in the capital. The specific aim would be to train Africans to bridge managerial gaps in commerce and industry, and take over middle—level and senior jobs now held almost exclusively by foreigners. A further aim would be to help expand the economy by motivating more Africans into business. The project would last five years, at the end of which time the United Nations experts would have phased themselves out. The United Nations Special Fund would bear eighty—five per cent of the costs, and the government the remaining fifteen per cent.