Chapter 14

FOR THE THIRD STRAIGHT night, Susan woke up at 3 a.m. Had her secretary remembered to book the teleconference with the Danes? Were the remarks she made at the departmental meeting about ‘inefficient systems’ potentially offensive to the Minister? She tried to go back to sleep, but eventually she got up, wrapped her dressing gown around her and booted up the computer. There could be an email from those USAID people in Washington. With a seven-hour time difference, messages from the Americans came at all hours.

She put on the kettle and dropped some tea leaves in the pot. At least at this hour she had time to let it steep. Except for her computer, her bed and those wilting red roses from Peter Franklin, everything was either in boxes or wrapped in plastic. She’d be moving to a new house atop a hill in Kensington at the weekend. The security people said a Deputy Minister couldn’t be properly protected in a flat. Besides, her job came with a housing allowance. She might as well put it to use.

Her driver arrived at seven. By that time she had finished her second pot of tea, edited two reports and shed the dressing gown for the black suit and flats that had become her work uniform. She missed the relaxed atmosphere of the university, where she sometimes even wore jeans.

She had to do some editing of a consultant’s report on water roll-outs in the Eastern Cape before a ten o’clock meeting. The writer had forgotten to include the former Ciskei area in his budget projections. The Ciskei had been plundered by homeland leader Brigadier Oupa Gqozo. Susan had to make sure the area didn’t get neglected again. Besides, the new municipality of Ukusa, one of the area’s biggest, couldn’t be overlooked. The Deputy Minister of Local Government for the province, Mthetho Jonasi, came from there. Susan was learning to pay attention to fiefdoms.

As Susan came out of the lift, her secretary, Mrs Kruger, hurried towards her. She was a well-dressed woman in her mid-fifties who took great pride in her precision management of Susan’s diary.

‘The Minister phoned just now,’ Mrs Kruger said. ‘He says you can catch him in the next five minutes.’

Susan dug in her purse for her cellphone and dialled through to Minister Tumahole. He just wanted to tell her about the change of venue for the management team’s weekend retreat. His secretary could have done that, but Susan appreciated the personal touch.

When she tried to open the consultant’s report on her computer, the folder where she’d saved it was empty. She went to File Manager and hunted for the document. Nothing. She was sure she’d saved it to her hard drive the night before. She checked the plastic case of disks on the bookshelf. She backed up every day before leaving work. But her latest backup disk was gone. She called Mrs Kruger into her office.

Mrs Kruger told her that Mr Molefe had been in the office twice when Susan was out. ‘He said he had forgotten something on your desk,’ she said. ‘He’s a skelm,’ she added lowering her voice as if someone might hear.

The short, balding Molefe was a Deputy Director, though he was still taking evening classes to complete his Bachelor’s degree. Susan remembered him from the UDF days, when he wore threadbare struggle T-shirts. She sometimes gave him money for taxi fare home from late-night meetings. ‘Tell Molefe to come and see me immediately,’ she told Mrs Kruger.

The Deputy Director arrived five minutes later. Susan invited him to take a seat.

‘She’s lying,’ said Molefe when Susan told him Mrs Kruger mentioned he’d been in her office. ‘I was never here.’ Susan called in Mrs Kruger. The secretary took a seat by Susan’s desk, leaving an empty chair between her and Molefe.

‘Mr Molefe says he was never in my office,’ Susan said.

‘He was here twice,’ said Mrs Kruger. ‘Last week Wednesday afternoon and last week Friday morning.’

‘Why are you making this up?’ said Molefe. ‘I was never here. What is the problem?’

‘It’s my mistake,’ said Susan. ‘Let’s just forget this ever happened. I misplaced something and I made some wrong conclusions.’

‘Wrong conclusions?’ said Molefe. ‘Like what – that I’m a thief? So you can take the man out of the township but you can’t take the township out of the man, is that it? Better hide your ballpoints and staplers too. The natives are running loose now in government buildings.’

‘Please, Comrade Molefe,’ said Susan. ‘I made a mistake.’

‘So it’s comrade now, is it?’ Molefe stood up and left.

‘He was here,’ said Mrs Kruger. ‘I don’t know what he’s covering up.’

‘You can leave now,’ said Susan. ‘I’ll sort this out myself.’

Susan could get the consultant to email her another copy of the report. She wouldn’t get the budget fixed before the ten o’clock meeting, but she had bigger problems now. She went to Frances Mmusi, the Deputy Director of Finance, and explained what had happened. Mmusi had studied finance in the US after her husband died of malaria in an ANC camp in Tanzania. Susan felt she had a more mature perspective on things than did most people in the department.

‘Once I had Molefe in my office,’ Susan told her, ‘I remembered that only Mrs Kruger had the password to my computer. She deleted that document, then stole the disk. The sabotage of the old guard.’

‘But you can’t prove it,’ said Mmusi, ‘and now you’ve got Molefe accusing you of racism. Welcome to government. Now go and talk to the Minister before Molefe does.’

‘I’m still left with the problem of Mrs Kruger,’ said Susan.

‘Sack her immediately.’

‘There’s procedures, regulations.’

‘Find a way,’ said Mmusi.

Twenty minutes later, Susan was in Tumahole’s office. The Minister had been a town planner in Glasgow for ten years before he returned to join Mandela’s Cabinet. He’d already won international awards for his department’s roll-out of water service to rural areas.

‘Let us not make mountains out of molehills,’ Tumahole said to Susan. ‘We have enough mountains already.’

Susan wanted clarification on what she had to do to sack Mrs Kruger. ‘I don’t want to do it wrong and have it end up in the headlines: “ANC Minister Illegally Sacks Ageing Afrikaner”,’ she said.

‘We can’t sack her,’ said Tumahole. ‘We place her on paid administrative leave and make her an offer she can’t refuse. It might cost two or three hundred thousand rands, but it’s nothing compared to the chaos she can cause. Nothing.’

‘So she gets rewarded for sabotage?’ said Susan.

Tumahole smiled. ‘Susan, we have millions of people clamouring for water, dozens of companies banging on our door with investment offers,’ he said. ‘We don’t have time to fight one administrative assistant. Send her home right now. I’ll take care of Molefe.’

Three days later Susan had a new administrative assistant, Dipuo Mothopeng. She wasn’t quite as meticulous with Susan’s diary as Mrs Kruger was, but she could learn. By the end of Dipuo’s second day, Susan had finalised the water roll-out budget for the Eastern Cape. Water was on the way, or at least the money for water. How they’d manage to lay all those pipes and install all those taps was another question. The department would be looking for business partners.

After work Susan drove to Peter’s. She needed an escape. Pellmar had rented him a three-bedroom house just five minutes down the hill from her new place.

By the time she was walking up the front steps, Peter was already at the door.

‘I’d know the sound of that Jetta anywhere,’ he said. Peter called it her ‘minimum mobile’. A Deputy Minister’s allowance was sufficient to buy any car on the road. Susan chose a Jetta to set an example of ‘frugality and discipline’. The only compromises she made were central locking and air conditioning. The car didn’t even have a CD player.

Peter boasted that he’d been studying the RDP all day and that his boeuf bourguignon was simmering on the stove. ‘I was lucky enough to find some decent mushrooms,’ he said.

Susan could smell the wine seeping into the bright red meat. Peter would have found the freshest stewing beef Joburg had to offer. He didn’t compromise on such issues.

He held up the brightly coloured volume entitled Reconstruction and Development Programme. ‘I can recite some passages verbatim,’ he said. ‘People will be impressed. Listen.’ Peter began to shout as if he were speaking to a filled stadium: ‘The RDP seeks to mobilise our people and our country’s resources towards the final eradication of apartheid and the building of a democratic, non-racial and non-sexist future.’

He put the book down. ‘How was that?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got a little skinner for you,’ she said. ‘The RDP will soon be a thing of the past.’

‘But it was the election platform of the ANC,’ said Peter. ‘Everyone loves it, even the white businessmen. It’s a wonderful document. Something for everyone. What the hell’s a skinner?’

‘It means gossip in Afrikaans,’ she said. ‘Anyway as we speak, a team of World Bank economists is drafting a new economic policy more in line with global trends. The RDP is scaring away investors.’

‘It doesn’t scare me,’ said Peter, ‘but with the Bank, you can’t go wrong.’

‘Why don’t you open this?’ said Susan. She brought out a bottle of a local Cabernet. Peter was thinking of the Chateau La Clotte 1994 he had in the rack in the kitchen. Not the best, but far superior to anything South Africa produced. He only used local brew for cooking. He took Susan’s wine into the kitchen, then eyed the La Clotte. He opened her Cabernet and filled Susan’s glass. Then he turned to the Chateau. He eased the cork about halfway out, then wrapped a tea towel around it to make sure Susan wouldn’t hear the final pop. He poured himself the Chateau, then held the two glasses up to the light. The colour was close enough. She’d never know the difference.

After a candlelit dinner, which Susan labelled ‘exquisite’, they snuggled on the sofa and watched an idiotic video, The Bridges of Madison County, a Clint Eastwood film about some woman who had an affair and kept it a secret for thirty years. Peter fell asleep. Susan said the movie had a ‘distinctly male perspective, trying to separate romantic love from the love women express every day with their labour’.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You South Africans make a political issue out of everything.’

‘And you Americans try to pretend you don’t,’ she said.

Peter woke up at four o’clock with a faint taste of Chateau on his tongue and those passages of the RDP running through his head. ‘The RDP integrates growth, development, reconstruction and redistribution into a unified programme…’ He couldn’t block it out. Why couldn’t these South Africans make up their minds?