Chapter 7

CONSTANTIA SAT IN THE Parliament gallery with dozens of other new councillors from around the country. Now she was someone important. She’d won 92 per cent of the vote in Sivuyile. Monwabisi said she had a ‘powerful mandate’ from the people. She was beginning to feel the weight of responsibility. Though she’d only been a councillor for two weeks, her job at the nursery school felt like ancient history.

This was her first trip to Cape Town. She’d never dreamed she’d be in such a place. The Parliament floor was wall-to-wall with heroes of the struggle seated in high-backed leather chairs. She spotted Thabo Mbeki, Ronnie Kasrils and Winnie Mandela. Madiba himself sat in the front row. The enormous South African flags on the poles behind the podium brought a sliver of new life to the colonial decor.

They had gathered to hear the Minister of Reconstruction and Development, Carl Prince, deliver what the media had called a ‘major address’. As Prince strode to the podium, the audience rose and applauded for several minutes. Constantia remembered the Minister when he worked with Monwabisi in the union. In those days, Prince wore nothing but jeans and T-shirts and was always on his way to a workshop or meeting. He looked strangely awkward standing behind the podium in his charcoal suit, like a man not quite used to power. Still, she knew she had to listen carefully to every word he said.

‘Let all South Africans come together in a spirit of forgiving the transgressions of the past,’ Prince began, ‘to create a new South Africa, a Rainbow Nation of which we can all be proud.’ He paused briefly, waiting for the trickle of applause to die. His gold cufflinks glimmered as he gripped the edges of the oak podium.

Prince’s words excited Constantia, but Monwabisi was teaching her to temper her emotions, to view such occasions in a new way. When he’d bid farewell at the airport, he reminded her that ‘the devil is in the details. Where there is a carrot, later comes a stick.’

‘Masakhane,’ said Prince, ‘is an Nguni word meaning “let’s build together”. Let masakhane be our guiding light.’ While the people on the floor cheered for Prince, Constantia sat back in her seat and tried to reflect. She was hunting for details the way she used to survey the sandpit at the nursery school for toys. Anyone could spot the plastic motorcycles the four-year-olds rode. But only a trained eye could locate the tiny corner of a Lego peeking out from the sand. Other times a handful of beads would be completely buried. The searcher had to know the habits of certain children, their favourite hiding places.

Besides masakhane, the Minister also spoke of ‘cash-strapped municipalities’. He went on to describe the R200 million owed by local authorities across the country.

‘Much of this debt was incurred during the apartheid days,’ he said, ‘when our people boycotted payments to illegitimate local governments. Those debts we can forget. But we must tread carefully. We have been a global pariah once. Let it never happen again.’

Constantia didn’t know what the word ‘pariah’ meant – she wasn’t even sure how to spell it. She would ask Monwabisi when she got home.

The Minister went on to explain South Africa’s ‘difficult position in the world’. Though his voice blasted through the microphone, Prince looked tiny from Constantia’s vantage point near the back of the chamber. The room felt big enough for Kaizer Chiefs to play a match.

‘If we cancel all debts of the past we might incur the wrath of Washington and Geneva,’ said Prince. ‘They may deny us the loans we so desperately need for development.’

Constantia had never thought of such connections before. What did Washington or Geneva have to do with implementing the RDP in Sivuyile? She had her own problems without thinking of people thousands of kilometres away, like getting a new light bulb in her office.

She’d had to wait two weeks for the maintenance people to change the bulb. Nothing would ever have happened if one of the white councillors, Mr Kelly, hadn’t told her she had to ‘walk the work order through’.

‘Take it from one desk to another until everyone has signed,’ he said. ‘Or better yet, get one of the boys to do it. Petrus is very good at that sort of thing. Otherwise you’ll be waiting until the cows come home.’

She’d followed the white councillor’s instructions, though she felt like she was making a pact with the devil even talking to Kelly. Maybe this is what the Minister meant by ‘masakhane’. If Madiba could speak Afrikaans to farmers in the Free State, Constantia could endure a white councillor who referred to Petrus Mthimkulu, a black man with grandchildren, as a ‘boy’.

Prince continued. Constantia could hear his voice change. The stick was on the way.

‘While we are determined to provide services to all historically disadvantaged communities,’ Prince said, ‘we need to remain realistic. We must think of our municipalities as if they are families whose monthly bills are more than what they earn. Such a family must learn to spend less or earn more. Or both.’

Constantia understood the example. Prince was talking about families like hers. They’d lost Monwabisi’s income and she had new expenses to think about. A councillor made no more than a nursery school aide. But at the nursery school her image was prepackaged. The blue smock covered her clothes, the doek concealed her hair. A councillor needed matching shoes and handbag, visits to the hairdresser. She’d even begun to think of jewellery, perfume and watches befitting an elected official. She’d never thought anyone could need more than one watch. Monwabisi now said she looked like a ‘real little bourgeois’ when she went off to work. But his provident fund was almost gone. Where would she find the money to maintain her councillor’s image if her husband kept living the life of a revolutionary? Anyway, he’d just say that a councillor’s image didn’t matter; what mattered was whether or not the councillor served the people. He was probably right, but she’d still need a new dress every now and again. She’d borrowed money from Mthetho when Monwabisi was still in Joburg, but she’d never told her husband. He wouldn’t approve.

‘Economics contains some brutal lessons,’ Prince said. ‘One of those is that as government we must earn more money. There are those who would choose the easy route – tax the wealthy, make them pay for the inequalities of the past. This is short-sighted. In the long run such a choice would be shooting the nation in the foot.’

Constantia could already hear Monwabisi’s arguments against what the Minister was saying. Her husband always said that the bosses had profited for too long, that now it was time for the workers to get their fair share.

‘Our goal is not to bankrupt the wealthy or drive them away,’ said Prince. ‘We say to them ‘masakhane’. We need their resources and expertise to benefit all South Africans.’

The Minister’s words made Constantia think. Perhaps some of the dreams of the past were unrealistic. She wished it could be different – that, as the Bible promised, the meek would inherit the earth.

‘Apart from taxes,’ said the Minister, ‘our other source of revenue is payment for municipal services. We have a problem here: a culture of non-payment.’

‘Now we have democratically elected local governments,’ he continued, raising his hand towards the gallery where Constantia and the others sat. The parliamentarians on the floor rose to their feet and turned in Constantia’s direction. She’d never forget this moment. Even Madiba was joining in the standing ovation.

‘There is no longer any excuse for someone not to pay,’ Prince said. ‘Anyone who wilfully avoids payment is undermining the progress of our nation. Everyone must carry their own weight.’

What the Minister said made perfect sense to Constantia. But she wasn’t quite clear. Did he mean that households must pay all those old debts? Even her family couldn’t afford that. And what about the people in Sivuyile who only survived off granny’s pension, the nkam-nkam as they called it, and a few piece jobs? The Minister and his aides had surely thought of such cases. There were still so many things she didn’t understand.

She also wondered how the Minister could preach this sermon of frugality while putting all the councillors up in a posh hotel. At the reception the night before, they’d been served lobster and deep-fried prawns. A huge ice sculpture of an elephant marked the centre of the room. How much did it cost to make an elephant out of ice? By the end of the reception it had melted down to a calf.

The Minister closed his speech by offering a ‘hand of solidarity’ to all the newly elected councillors. ‘We shall work together to make South Africa ring with democracy and development, from the most remote rural village of the Transkei to the heart of industrial Johannesburg,’ he concluded. The audience stood and applauded Minister Prince for a full five minutes. By the end of it, Constantia’s hands were beginning to sting.

After her day in Parliament, the newly elected councillor from Sivuyile did a bit of window-shopping. A couple of the other councillors had cautioned her not to walk around downtown, that it was full of tsotsis. She ignored their warnings, but she’d taken out all her cash before she left the Parliament Building and slipped it into her bra for safe keeping. She waded through the densely packed pavement along Adderley Street, clinging tightly to her suede bag.

She could feel that life had a different pace here. Taxi drivers were yelling everywhere, the roads were filled with new BMWs. She’d never seen so many white people at once. Those huge mountains that surrounded the place made her feel almost like she was at the bottom of a hole somewhere. And the coloureds spoke a special kind of Afrikaans she couldn’t understand. In the window of one store she saw a pair of jeans that cost R500. How could anyone pay that much for a pair of trousers? She’d heard things were even more dear at a place called the Waterfront, but she didn’t have time to get there. Maybe next time.

When she got back to the hotel room she indulged herself in a long, lavender-scented bubble bath. The complexity of the Minister’s message began to sink in. It all made Constantia long for the simplicity of the past. At the nursery school she had a clear set of tasks: make porridge, serve breakfast, sweep the floor, read a story to the children. A councillor had to think about everything: delivering services to the community, getting reports to Mayor Siziba, satisfying the wishes of people in Washington.

At least she solved one problem when she got back home to Sivuyile. She looked up the word ‘pariah’ in the dictionary. In fact, she felt like she was becoming a pariah herself. She no longer had time for the meetings of the umgalelo and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d watched Bold or Generations. She didn’t even watch the reruns on weekend mornings. Everyone wanted something from their councillor. She wondered if life would ever return to normal.