A Guest of Honour (48 page)

He had a way of waiting patiently for applause to end, his mind apparently already moved on ahead to what he was going to tell his audience next; but he gave a quick, wide smile of acknowledgement before he began to speak again. It was education now— “the whole
position of education is being urgently reviewed with the object not only of making a full ten years' schooling available to all children, but also of finding a new approach that will cut through the psychological barriers that colonial schools created in the education of our children by relating the learning process only to foreign cultures and putting the idea into their heads that they were being offered a smattering of something that didn't really belong to them.” Then he turned to the development of natural resources—the successful negotiations for the vast hydro—electric scheme meant that “our children will know a life of plenty while we ourselves are still alive.” It also meant, since it was the joint project of two African states, that the country had taken the first important initiative in Pan—African cooperation, the building of a third world of African achievement, by Africans, for Africans, in Africa. In industry, the foreign mining companies' investment over the next five years would be between thirty—five and forty million pounds. This was the answer to those people, still thinking in terms of dreams before independence became a concrete reality, who “talked nationalization” at this stage. There could be no talk of nationalization in an underdeveloped nation.

He raised both palms to stem applause. This first Congress since the Party had come to power was perhaps the most important one in the Party's history. PIP had become, in effect, the government, and was itself responsible for carrying out the mandate it had been given by the people—it was no longer in the position of putting pressure upon others to do this or that. This called for certain changes. The Party could no longer be set to perform the old functions, the old activities of the struggle for freedom—these had become outdated and wasteful in some instances. It must realign itself in accordance with the functions and activities of a party firmly in power, a party that was not not only the inspiration of the people, but the consolidation and backbone of the government it had put in power. This was the spirit in which, as President, as leader of the People's Independence Party, he had called for this Congress so soon after Independence, sooner than the Presidents of most countries would have cared to report back. He knew that now, just as in the early days of the struggle for freedom, he would find the Congress vigorously adaptable, and ready to offer “the courage and collective wisdom of a truly African leadership gathered from every corner of the country.”

The general applause first swamped the different currents of reaction. Then, as the various forms of applause became distinguishable from the general, they also became indicative of the differing forms of the reaction itself, as the instruments of an orchestra are indistinguishable in the crescendo in which they all are sounded, but can be identified when it dies down and some fall silent, while others sustain a theme or variation in which they at once become recognizable: the voice of the oboe, the collective plaint of the strings. Part of the hullabaloo was simply polite—everyone's hands must be seen to move when the President has spoken—and died out, leaving the hard palms of a large section of enthusiasts to keep a heavy brass going, getting louder, backed by the muffled regular stamping of feet on the cinema carpet. This deafening, obliterating racket stirred the dust of an unrest in other sections; men who had been sitting merely resisting any show of accord since they had given their token acknowledgement of the speech, began to move about in their seats, to twist their heads around them, to surge subterraneously towards another solidarity, in opposition.

Bray rested his neck back against his seat for a moment. The air—conditioned spaces were filled with turmoil like the wheeling and counterwheeling of birds. He had the impulse to make contact; to spin a filament between himself and Roly Dando, sitting up there on the stage with his arms akimbo and his ankles crossed under the conference table, the position he had taken up in unconscious defensiveness at the moment when Mweta had referred to his powers as Attorney—General. (Like a member of a private bodyguard, a thug; little Dando.) —Or to catch Mweta himself, straight in the eyes, believing for a moment that Mweta could make him, Bray, out, from that distance. The few remarks about an education plan were almost word for word what he had written to Mweta; they came back to him from the public rostrum, an oblique claim on his anonymous presence there in the crowd. The Secretary—General—Justin Chekwe was Secretary—General of PIP as well as Minister of Justice—was beginning the interminable business of welcoming and introducing representatives of political parties who had come from other countries as observers. Spatters and squalls of applause followed the names: enthusiasm for the TANU man from Tanzania, the UNIP man from Zambia; a half—hearted acknowledgement for the Nasser delegation with their
cropped crinkly shining hair, pleasant smiles and trancelike squinting gaze—the country people did not know quite who they were and for many of the others who did, they were too Left to be given the accolade. In the usual way, Mweta was elected President of the Congress and it was moved that the election of the Party President, office bearers and committees would be held at the final session.

Attention had drawn in momentarily as this formality was gone through: it was as though everyone ran his mind's eye over the limits of the battleground, confirmed in the contours of time. Two and a half days in which to persuade, to rally, to group and regroup, trade favours, call in old scores and tot up new ones. In the pale—nailed dark hands scribbling notes and the unctuous, closed, hearty, determined or uncertain faces were embodied all the intentions gathered from townships, villages, lake, flood plains, road—side stalls, Freedom Bars, that cohere slowly in the interstices of daily life. Between ploughing, drinking, herding, labouring, loafing, dreaming on rush mats or iron bedsteads, arguing in wattle—and-mud church halls, lounging over pin—ball machines and planning over second—grade clerks' ledgers, the formulation comes into being. I want. You want. He wants. We want.
They
want. The conjugation of human will. Because of it some of these heads about him were lit up within with a private scene in which this face ousted that and this name took away from that a prefix of office. Somewhere in the agenda there was the plan of campaign to be decided; he had some idea of it in advancehe must have a proper look before the sessions started in earnest. Already, while other formalities of procedure were being got out of the way, Mweta's address was being sifted away into this memory and that—slotted, categorized, the intention extracted and the verbiage discarded. What was Shinza making of it? A thickly built man beside Shinza hid him from view most of the time.

At the lunch break Bray hung about near one of the fish tanks; his white face couldn't be missed anyway. The delegates had the gaiety of boys let out of school before work has even begun; no one got farther than the chatter of the foyer. Several old PIP campaigners came up to greet him—Albert Konoko, once treasurer (not an entirely honest one but he was long ago relieved of the post and the early “irregularities” forgotten), old Reverend Kawira from the Ravanga district with his stick and his dog—eared briefcase, Joshua Ntshali, the mayor
of Gala— “We should have made arrangements to come down together—why didn't you give me a tinkle? Plenty of room in my car—some cold beer, too”—the one or two Indians who survived at delegation—level from the small band who had supported PIP openly from the beginning. People threw cigarette ends in the tank and with his rolled—up agenda he lifted out one at which a fish had begun to nibble. “Poor fish.” Shinza stood there. Shinza was good at private jokes derived from other people's absent moments. “You know Basil? Basil Nwanga.” He had with him the heavy young man with the tiny hippo ears who had almost run Bray over outside the House of Assembly one day. They recognized each other, grinning. “I heard him put his word in, in the House, not long ago.” Nwanga went off after a few moments with the air of one who had been curious for an introduction, got it, and knows he mustn't intrude. “Are you going to eat?” Bray said.

“Where're you staying?” Shinza considered.

“With Dando.”

“Oh. Well there's a café down the road. The one near the post office. I'll meet you in a few minutes.”

As Bray was leaving Roly Dando came up level with him, but left the distance of two or three people in between. As white men, there was a tacit feeling they shouldn't appear to stick together in any sense; a feeling based, in any case, below its social meaning, on the private inkling that their positions had become very different, although they were old friends. Roly said, “Having a good time?” His face was small with gloom. He had changed so much; the sexually spritely, dapper Dando of ten years ago really existed only as one remembered him; this was the aged, middle—aged face, completely remoulded by disappointments, desires and dyspepsia, that is more characteristic of a white man than his skin. No African ever transformed himself like that.

The shops run by Greeks had always been called “cafés” although they had little enough in common with the European institution from which they took their name. The one near the post office sold the usual fish—and-chips over the counter, for consumption in the street—a relic of the days when black people were not allowed to sit at the tables—and still served the staple frontiersman diet of eggs, steak, and chips. Shinza was already there drinking a glass of some bright
synthetic juice that churned eternally in the glass containers on the counter. He held up a finger to settle an important question: “Steak and eggs? Sausage?” “Yes, sausage, I think.” Between them on the table was the usual collection of bottles, like antidotes kept handy—Worcester sauce, tomato sauce, bleary vinegar. “Could almost have been old Banda himself in some places, ay,” Shinza said; Mweta's address was between them with the sauce bottles.

Bray smiled. “For example?”

Shinza fluttered his hands over the table impatiently. “ ‘This is the answer et cetera to those who talk of nationalization.' ‘… no sense in talking nationalization in an underdeveloped country.' That's just what the mad doctor himself tells them in Malawi.”

“Not quite as bad.
He
always says you have to accumulate wealth before you can nationalize—something like that. ‘Nationalization as national suicide.' No—Mweta's was more Senghor's line.”

“Senghor?” Shinza grinned at him to prove it.

“Oh yes. Senghor once said it—very much the same as Mweta. He rapped the trade unions over the knuckles and wrote an article saying there was no point in nationalization for an underdeveloped country.”

“Ah, I remember what that was about. Yes, I suppose it's possible he did….” Shinza gave his snort, acknowledging himself a man of no illusions. “He's always had it in for socialist—minded unionists. D'you know when that was? That was before sixty—one. When he was fighting UGTAN's demands for the development of a publicly owned sector in the economy. He was busy calling the union boys a hypocritical elite and a lot of other names.” He nodded his head significantly at the parallel he saw he had stumbled upon there.

“I haven't had a good look at the resolutions yet. How've you done with the secretarial committee?”

Shinza pressed his shoulders back against the uncomfortable formica chair and his pectoral muscles showed under his rather smart, long—sleeved shirt. He wore no tie but the shirt buttoned up to a pointed collar and there were stitched flaps to match on the breastpockets. The outfit ignored as fancy dress togas or paramilitary tunics (he had worn a Mweta tunic during the days of the independence struggle, so this was a sign that, for him, there was no dilly—dallying in the past) and disdained the terylene—and-wool prestige of the new
black middle class. He said—one who knows his chances don't look too good, but prefers to ignore this— “We submitted that the position of the Party in relation to trade union affairs be re—examined, but that was chucked out.
But—
so was the Young Pioneers' one that the Party should support the government ‘in its efforts to consolidate the unions against disruptive elements in their ranks.' A little bird told me that's how it went. —I like that one, don't you? I
like
that. As one disruptive element to another.” They laughed. “But we had a lot of smaller stuff—resolutions here and there that'll give more or less the same opportunities … we had an idea the big one wouldn't make it onto the agenda.… We've got quite a few that will do.”

“How did the committee manage to squirm out of the big blast?”

“Oh you know—the old formula: all matters that would come under that heading were actually being dealt with separately under other resolutions, so there was no point. Well, we'd thought of that, too.… And the Young Pioneers must've been asked to go easy and give in on theirs. No need to have Congress discussing what they're allowed to get away with every day, after all.”

Shinza ate quickly and almost without looking at what was on his plate. He cleaned it with bread, like a Frenchman.

Bray paused often. “I see the business of challenging Mweta's power to appoint the Secretary—General of the Trades Union Congress is coming up. How'd you manage that?”

“That's a resolution from the Yema branch—”

“—Yes, so I noticed.” At Yema there were railway workshops and phosphate mines; the Party branch was one of the oldest established, started by trade unions organized by Shinza years ago.

Shinza gave his breathy chuckle; released his tongue with a sucking sound. “That was a tough one. They said it was a matter for the UTUC congress itself, not the Party Congress. But as it happened”—he raised his eyebrows and his beard wagged— “several other branches sent in exactly the same resolution … so … It made things difficult for the committee. They were forced to hear us.”