A Guest of Honour (57 page)

Ras Asahe was talking of the strikes at the mines and Bray was only half—listening— “not such a push—over to stop production now that the Company's got the hardware to crack down on them!” The phrase was an arrow quivering: “Hardware?”

“Yes, they won't have to stand around biting their fingernails any more when the boys cut up rough. I saw it the other day, very hush—hush—but, man, it's all there! A nice little fleet of Ford trucks converted into armoured vehicles—”

“The Company police are being armed?”

“Well, what do you think? They're going to stand around waiting for the space men” (the regular police were called this because of their helmets) “to come? Or for the President to decide whether or not it's time to call in the army? Apparently the Company went along to him and said, look here, if
you
can't do it, you must let us.… And he gave them the green light.”

“They've got guns?”

Ras spread his elegant hands. “The full riot—squad outfit. Tear gas, guns—helicopters so they can move a dozen or so men where they're needed, fast. It'll be a great help wherever there's trouble … even if it's not the mines … the Big Man knows they're there if he needs them.”

At the same time there was some sort of sensation in the knot round Dando and Shinza. All Bray saw was Dando putting his arm round Shinza's shoulder in a flamboyant gesture, a lunge, and—distinctly—Shinza avoiding it quietly and swiftly as a cat slips from under a hand. Shinza wasn't looking at Dando, he was turned away talking to someone else at that particular moment; he must just have become conscious between one instant and the next of the arm claiming him. But Dando, already over—reached from the bar—stool, was unsteady, and the movement tipped his balance. He fell; there was a scuffle—people picked him up in the confusion that looks the same whether it represents hostility or concern.

Asahe said disgustedly, “That old man's the best argument for Africanization I know. They should let the two of them finish each other off; this place needs streamlining.”

“What a prig you are, Ras. Perhaps you should send for some tear gas.”

But Asahe was flattered to be thought tough; Bray was aware of being under the smile of a man who felt he could afford it. He went quickly to Roly Dando. Dando was on his feet again, somehow rather sobered. “Shall we go home?”

“Why the baby—talk, Bray. Anyhow, aren't you eating with Mweta?” He had the look of a fowl taken unharmed from the jaws of a dog.

“There's time to go home first.”

“Good God no, I've got a date.” He went off with two young men who had dusted him down, a cheerful, short—arsed little Mso—they were a dumpy people; Batwa blood trickled down from the Congo, there, in some forgotten migration—and a talkative, stooping man who, in addition to the Party tie, wore various insignia from colonial times—Boy Scout and Red Cross buttons.

He left behind him raised voices and exaggerated gestures; the confusion had released private antipathies and post—mortem tensions over the day's business in Congress. Shinza was surrounded solidly by his own men, now; Nwanga, Goma, Ogoto were drinking round a small table with an air of not being anywhere in particular, as if they were in a railway waiting room or on an airport. But Shinza said to Bray over his shoulder, “The old man's all right?”

He had dinner alone with Mweta, late; those guests at the Great Lakes who had not gathered in the bars took a long time to disperse
from the Golden Perch Room. Mweta was troubled, as always, by the choice of a cocktail party as a way of entertaining people— “Specially Congress.”

So Congress deserved something better. Yet he had sat there, in his robe that symbolized their coming into their own, and allowed himself to take from them consent to his rigging himself into a position of more power. Bray smiled. “Cocktail parties and democracy go together.”

“Is that so?”

“In dictatorships, it's banquets.”

Mweta grinned. “Do you want this, James—” There was a bottle of wine on the table.

“No, no, you're right, I've had enough—” They were served unceremoniously with steak and potatoes, and Mweta told the servant not to wait. The big dining—room had been air—conditioned since Bray was last in it and felt chill and airless. Mweta impatiently opened the windows and let in the thick warm night, like a signal of intimacy between them. He knew that Bray thought it a mistake for him to make the Trade Union S.-G. his appointee; he himself brought up the subject at once so that it should not seem an obstacle; they talked with Bray's attitude assumed. The cosy clink of fork on plate accompanied the emptiness of an agreement to differ. Mweta ate with unaccustomed greed, getting the steak down with a flourish.

“Of course one can't deny it, in many countries the trade union organization is subordinated to the government's policy. But these are countries whose economic development is slow, they have the greatest difficulties to face in overcoming their initial disadvantages … reasons that don't apply here.”

Mweta took in what he was saying with each mouthful, nodding not in agreement but to show that he was attentive. “—Yes, but trade unions in the most advanced African countries must be careful not to become radical opposition movements as their position is consolidated—that's a serious danger to the success of any economic development policy.”

Bray was aware of his own cold smile and shrug; he reached for the wine after all. “It depends where you draw the line—what does and what does not constitute opposition? There's a difference between a radical approach to labour problems and radical opposition
to the government. That's where the confusion comes in. In the choice of economic priorities, can a government afford to take action without the support of the majority of an organized labour movement?”

Mweta smiled as a man does when dealing one by one with objections for which he is prepared. “We have the support.”

“That's not borne out by what's been happening in the last few months.”

Mweta didn't believe that was what he meant. He answered words put in Bray's mouth. “That business today was a perfect example—an attempt to push the unions into the position of political opposition. Well, as you saw for yourself, it failed. That answers the question whether or not we have the support.”

He said dryly, kindly, “Edward failed. You won.”

Mweta showed no signs of distress. He no longer said, trust me. He no longer urged to explain himself. “So you think it's between Shinza and me—never mind economic prosperity.” He was half—joking, in his new confidence.

“I think that's the way you see it.”

“Opposition—especially political opposition—from trade unions can only be allowed when it's clear the governing class is working to consolidate its own benefits rather than for the development of a progressive economy,” Mweta said, confining himself to concern to be exact. “When it's only an attempt to discredit the government, the government has no choice except to break these people, ay?—even to use force, probably.”

“—I wonder what it was you won.”

But they both rendered the remark harmless by a kind of nostalgia, regretful, giving way to each other; what's-done-is-done.

He had held in himself the necessity ever since the mission was accomplished in the glare of the carpark that morning— “my old friend, Semstu”—that he would have to give an account of himself on that behalf this evening; here. Why?—now the whole intention was irrelevant. And by the same token it was not necessary for Mweta to admit to him that he was allowing the Company to equip a private army. The evening passed. Each had what he left unsaid. Yet they talked a great deal. Mweta was eager to discuss some mistakes he admitted, difficulties, some doubts—particularly about members of his cabinet.
The frankness was a substitute for a lack of frankness. It was perhaps not calculatedly ingratiating—an unconscious appeal (to loyalty? sympathy?) that did not yield an inch. The business of whether Bray was staying on in the country was not mentioned either; Mweta merely remarked that he supposed the work in Gala must be nearly finished? He did not ask why Olivia hadn't come. And if he had?—what answer, what hastily offered and hastily accepted lie?

Congress remained restlessly divided on everything it discussed. The margin of order at each session was very narrow. Shinza stared out over the auditorium, disdainfully unkempt. He looked more and more like a stranger who suddenly appears from the wilderness and takes up a place to the discomfiture of other men. Even his supporters seemed to approach him at the remove of Goma, the cheerful Basil Nwanga—men more like themselves. Bray wrote to England (he took advantage, these days, of having something objectively interesting, such as the Congress, to tell Olivia about, to make a long letter to her possible) describing Shinza as “an uncomfortable reminder that ideas are still on the prowl. Beyond the charmed circle of the capital's glow, the whole country …”

It was a letter that would be read aloud to the family or friends. “Interesting,” and nothing in it that anybody couldn't read. What was happening between himself and Shinza, Mweta—there was no word of that; one confidence, like another, was not possible. Yet—reading it over (he sometimes read over his letters to her several times, now)—he saw that the remark about Shinza reflected some truth about his attitude towards him that had come unconsciously through the studied tone.

He was included in discussions at the Goma house in Old Town. Of course it was his talk to Semstu—using the claim “my old friend” that day sitting in that oven of an ancient car with the plastic rose at eye—level—that, to the rest, made him proven and acceptable; Shinza, no doubt, banked on things more durable and of longer standing. But maybe they were right: the smallest act can be more binding than the largest principles. Shinza's group themselves continued to attack, through every issue debated, what Goma called “the ossification of Party leadership,” although, gathered in the Goma house, they knew that the defeat of the Secretary—General motion was their defeat at
this Congress. They seemed determined that delegates should have in their ears, even as they voted this opposition down, demands for more initiative for the basic units of the Party and a transformation of antiquated social and economic institutions. They pressed the need for simple living, discipline and sacrifice, instead of what they called the careerism of the new ruling elite. Bray remarked privately to Shinza that they were beginning to show the symptoms of puritanism typical of a pressure group. Shinza smiled, picked at his broken tooth; “That's what's wrong with pressure groups in the end, ay—it's all they've got to do with themselves.”

But in the closing day's debate on the President's opening address, he made a brilliant assault on Mweta's position without appearing to attack him personally, and pleaded passionately for a rejection of the “false meaning of democracy that sees it in the sense of guarding the rights of the great corporate interests and the preferential retainment of ties with the former colonial power.” He summed up the “spirit of dissension” that had “sprung up everywhere at Congress, because it is in people's hearts and minds” by pronouncing with a turning from side to side of his bushy—maned head like a creature ambushed, “Independence is not enough. The political revolution must be followed by a social revolution, a new life for us all….” And he quoted, his hands trembling, not quite resting on the table in front of him,

“Go to the people

Live among them

Learn from them

Love them

Serve them

Plan with them

Start with what they know

Build on what they have.”

It was audacious; this Chinese proverb was, after all, the favourite quotation of Nkrumah, who had both professed socialism and set himself up as a god … but Shinza could hardly be reproached, through association, with similar aspirations, because Mweta, like Kaunda, had continued for some time to recognize the deposed Ghanaian head of state. Later, interviewed by a visiting English journalist and referred to as “the fiery political veteran whirled back like
a dust—devil from the Bashi Flats,” Shinza was quoted as asking, “When we have built our state, are we going to find the skeletons of opposition walled up in the building?” (Olivia sent the cutting at once.)

The man chosen for the closing address to Congress was traditionally a right—hand man of the Party leader; now that the Party leader was the President, the choice was generally taken to signify a coming man in the government. There was talk that John Nafuma, Secretary of Presidential Affairs, was going to be the one. But it was Ndisi Shunungwa, Secretary—General of UTUC, who gave the address.

On the Sunday there was a big Party rally; many delegates stayed on for it and people came by lorry and on foot for miles. The Independence Stadium, used for the first time since the Independence celebrations, had been tidied up for the occasion; the weeds, the damage done by the rains and by people who (it was said) had removed parts of the stands to use as building material—all this was cleared and made good, apparently by the generosity of the Company, using the gardeners and workmen who still maintained Company property with the green lawns and beds of cannas that had created a neat, neutral environment for white employees in colonial times. Bray was there with Hjalmar Wentz and his daughter Emmanuelle, and heard the Chairman thank the Company, among others that he referred to as “sponsors”—an international soft—drink firm had provided delivery trucks to transport old people and parties of school children.

Hjalmar had been so eager for the outing, and Emmanuelle was more or less in attendance on Ras Asahe, who was directing a recording and filming of the event for both radio and one of the rare locally made television programmes. The girl wore a brief tunic made of some beautiful cloth from farther up Africa, and, all legs, clambered about among the throng with Asahe, looking back now and then to where her father and Bray sat with a radiance that came from a presentation of herself to them as a special creature, much at ease among these black male shoulders showing through gauzy nylon shirts, these yelling women with faces whitened for joy. In her own way she was so exotic that she was part of the spectacle, as in the Northern Hemisphere a cheetah on a gilt chain does not seem out of context at a fashion show. Bray remarked on the fact that Ras Asahe was making
films as well, now, and Hjalmar said, almost with grudging pride on his daughter's behalf— “Whatever he touches seems to go well.” He spoke in a close, low voice; this was the sort of remark he would not pass in the presence of his wife, Margot.