Luke Alfred Luke Alfred was educated at Wits and UCT, served his journalistic apprenticeship on the then Weekly Mail and Guardian in the early 90s before joining Shaun Johnson on the Sunday Independent in 1995. He worked for the Independent as a sports and features writer from ‘95 until early in 2001 when he resigned to concentrate more squarely on writing books that matter. His first novel, “One for the Road,” continues to gather rejection slips, although his book on South African cricket — “Lifting the Covers: the inside story of South African cricket (Spearhead)” — has sold remarkably well. Luke lives in Johannesburg with his wife, Lisa, and three beautiful sons, Samuel (7), Jake (5) and Thomas (1).

Diplomacy

Luke Alfred

       He was about to register an official complaint with the Minister. It would be the fifth in as many weeks. Before phoning the Union Buildings he gave Sue Hubbard of the Black Sash a ring. He knew that she usually had access to better information than the embassy staff, and it was best to double-check your information first.
       “Sue, hi, Reggie Beresford here.”
       “I had a feeling that you might call. What can I do for you Ambassador”
       She knew why he was ringing but he expected that her use of the A-word was her way of showing that she took exception to his chuminess. Maybe his greeting was a little mock-informal, as Harriet liked to call it, but what the hell he thought, I’m here in Africa, by some way the most barbaric continent on earth, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to call myself ‘The Ambassador’ to some hard-drinking Westcliff liberal. Even as he thought about Sue Hubbard and her reputed drinking problems, he was aware that he liked her: She was open with her information and free in her judgements, her words cartwheeling down the line from Johannesburg — sharing their integrity with several pairs of ears en route — in ways that he admired and trusted.
       “We heard about the Thokoza shooting last night. We wondered if you had anything to add to the official line.”
       “Nothing I’m afraid. I’d almost like to tell you that there was another dimension — a departure from the usual scenario but it wasn’t like that — standard stuff, Third Force are implicated of course. De Wet is unlikely to be having sleepless nights on this one.”
       “Know anything about the shooting of a Reuter’s photographer. We’ve been told he’s a British national,” he asked and took a sip of coffee.
       “He’s fine Reggie, a flesh-wound in the shoulder; it was probably some 12-year representative of the war against ‘the de Klerk regime’ who hadn’t used an AK before,” she snorted.
       “That doesn’t sound like you,” he heard himself saying.
       “I know. It just gets a little much sometimes.”
       “I know the feeling.”
       There was a brief silence. He could imagine her moving a stapler across her desk, or motioning to someone on the other side of the room to wait until the call was over.
       “Before he leaves for work Benjy makes me tea. He’s done this more or less since we were married and it’s a ritual of which I’m fond. Sometimes though — and today was one of those days — I sit in bed and sip my tea and think of the violence in the townships and it just seems so unreal, contrasting whether I’ll see the hoopoe on the lawn this morning with the fact that someone mightn’t live to see dinner on the table tonight. That’s if there’s dinner to have of course.”
       He was startled by the turn in the conversation.
       “That sounds awfully melodramatic I know, but sometimes being in a human rights organisation condemns you to a particular kind of hopelessness — we like to call it ‘liberal ennui’ here in the office.” There was a pause, and when she continued he understood why. “Spare me the importance of human rights campaigners spiel Reggie,” she said almost comfortingly, and he knew by the tone of her voice that if not in the midst of talking herself round she was about to begin. “Our children have left the nest and if we had more imagination we might travel the world but instead we wrestle with our PC’s and try to keep our over-active consciences under some form of control. But that’s it. It’s something, not much, and sometimes we have a rough time of it, that’s all.”
              He would be late for the Minister and wanted to cut the conversation but he wanted to do so gently, as though he were opening official mail with the Embassy letter opener.
“Did you see the hoopoe this morning Sue?” He consciously used her name and it was so shallowly pre-meditated that it almost embarrassed him.
       He knew by the slight yet significant pause before answering that it hadn’t passed her by. “The hoopoe decided to sleep late this morning, thank you Reggie,” she replied. “When you have another query we’ll be happy to oblige. Until then.”

       “We recognise Britain’s concern about the continuing unrest situation,” said the Minister, reaching for the tea-cup at his side. “Whilst taking congniscance of your visit, and thanking you for your concern, we feel that we have the East Rand situation under control. We will be taking further steps — I am meeting with Minister Badenhorst this afternoon — to ensure a speedy return to normal.” The Ambassador presumed that the Army was about to be called in. “Can I take it to mean that you are about to call in the Army,” he asked. “That is certainly a possibility, although nothing has as yet been finalised,” replied the Minister, returning the half-empty cup to the small table at his side.
       “If the violence on the East Rand is under your control, why do you feel it necessary to possibly call in the Army,” asked the Ambassador, incautiously stressing the word possibly. It was a slight chance and would probably go nowhere but he was tired of being stymied at such meetings with the Minister. “Let me be clear, Ambassador,” replied the Minister, looking pained. “Minister Badenhorst and I have yet to discuss this matter formally. When I mentioned to you that further steps would be taken, I was speaking off the record so to speak.”
       This is one of his traditional gambits thought the Ambassador, flattering me by giving me access to things not yet discussed. Thokoza is a combat zone, of course they’ll call in the Army, they have little choice. “We are not sure at this point what the outcome of our deliberations might be,” continued the Minister. “Minister Badenhorst — despite what the left-wing press might think — is no hawk. He will need some persuading.”
       The Ambassador did not want to get bogged down in whether the Army would or would not be summonds to the townships. “I don’t need to stress,” he said, noticing that the Minister had just stolen a deliberately prolonged look at his watch. “That my government is becoming increasingly worried by your goverment’s perceived lack of vision. You seem to be able to do no more than respond to situations as they arrive. The vision thing — if you don’t mind me saying so — is conspicious by its absence. You are aware, furthermore, that the Prime Minister is not over-confident that she will be re-elected for a second term, and God knows what milage Labour can get out of this one.”
       It won’t have made the blindest bit of difference to the charade, thought the Ambassador, but at least I have spoken. “The British people are not ready for Labour,” the Minister said confidently. It was a confidence that the Ambassador did not feel; he found himself wondering how the Minister could sound so quietly compelling without appearing to try. Was it the years he had spent defending Apartheid? Was this the essence of diplomacy he wondered? Was it something which he applied in the mornings, which sprung mercury-like from a cool blue bottle kept on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet?
       He had felt impotent on so many occasions during recent weeks that he was feeling desperate. “I am not sure you are aware Minister but No 10 was host to Prime Minister Gelders last week. Apparently the Dutch Prime Minister made it clear in no uncertain terms that if the township violence continues, that The Netherlands, along with Denmark and Sweden, would start campaigning even more actively than it is presently doing for European and British firms to leave South Africa altogether. We have consistently and steadfastly refused to buckle under such pressures but we are embarking on a massive North Sea Oil venture with Royal Dutch Petroleum shortly and we would not want that to be threatened.”
       “I quite understand the sensitivity of the situation, Ambassador Beresford,” said the Minister, nodding his head. “You can be rest assured that things will never reach the point where our traditional allies — and Britain has been a loyal friend for a long time now — feel compromised by their support for us. If you are in contact with the Foreign Office — or Downing Street for that matter — a few assurances from me might not go amiss. This one will be sorted out by the end of the month. Of that I have no doubt.”

As he left the Minister’s office he ran the tips of his fingers along the sandstone bricks of the Union Buildings, a gesture contemplative, boyish, resigned. He had been posted to South Africa because he had been considered a bright young thing. But that was several years ago. Of late he had the impression that he had been left to ferment in the African heat, left to turn plummy and world weary like his career dictated he should. This might just be some bizarre right of diplomatic passage he had thought. Now he was not so sure.
       He never ceased to be amazed by the intensity of the Highveld light. He once told an English guest that it bit rather than welcomed you, but the man had looked away in silence. The light was of such a pitch that objects, buildings and trees looked as though they had been sharpened, filed clean. Perhaps this is what drove the men of South Africa to take up arms and go about killing each other with the jovial callousness that seemed to be the prime characteristic of this godforsaken country. Perhaps it was when the light got too much, when the light convinced all that there was no God, no theology, no form of politics or economics capable of withstanding its relentless probing, that they started to sniff for each others blood. Perhaps it was when the light and the empty blue sky created the impression that things would float free of the earth’s surface; that there was no compelling reason for them to be rooted, that reason went out the door and men started following some atavistic imperative that brought its own lusty rewards.
       As he drove back to the compound he was reminded of a days walking on the South Downs, not far from his family’s home in Winchester. It was a fine day in early summer and the earth was obediently cowered beneath the wide sky. As he ascended through forests of wide-armed oak and elm he came upon the South Downs track, skipping across the crest of a hill. The crest was draped with a field of golden barley, half a man tall, and he remembered thinking that he wasn’t in the South of England at all but in Tuscanny, walking a white road to the nearest hill town. He stayed walking across the Downs for many minutes, memories folding into memories — measuring cups packed into each other — experiencing the first sweat under his armpits and on the inside of his thighs, feeling the strength of his calves and looking forward to the thermos of tea he had packed, before he realised that the Embassy was hosting a lunch for a group of artists funded by the British Council and he was already late.
       One of the recipients of Council funding, Davis Ledwaba, was sitting opposite him. Ledwaba painted a heavy, dully literal art, the most cheerful colour in which was usually the pale yellow of police vans and Casspirs. The Ambassador found himself asking if it was kindness or cruelty that was putting Ledwaba through a course at the Chelsea School of Art. How would he cope with the loneliness of London in the wintertime? The tightly-packed skies and the hopeless brown of the January river; five o’clock night and not a word uttered to a black stranger faceless beneath his raised collar like a tortoise in the rain.
       Baldwin, the compound chef, had made his famous beef curry for the occasion, a lunch involving Harriet and the Ambassador, Ledwaba and another artist colleague, Sipho Batswedi, and several British Council worthies. Margaret Grosvenor, the woman responsible for these questionable acts of kindness, was a helpful, busily maternal sort who insisted on calling the Arcadia Woolworths a Marks and Spencer, a woman who managed to deny in a variety of ways that the tree she was most likely to see in the mornings was a jacaranda and not a chestnut. The Ambassador disliked her intensely and arrogantly believed that he managed to disguise that this was the case.
       “You do have a passport, don’t you Davis,” she was saying to the figure hunched over his food at the other side of the table.
       “I have a passport yes,” came the eventual reply.
       “Does the same apply to you Sipho?”
       “Yes Madam, I have my passport too.”
       “So tell me Davis,” said Harriet gamely, pre-empting a question from the Ambassador. “Are you looking forward to your stay in London?”
       They were sitting outside. The garden was flush from the previous night’s rain and light was draining out of a big sky. The Ambassador could hear the scraping of cutlery against the Embassy dinner-service. “I am,” he replied. “I am looking forward to it,” and he paused, gathering sustenance. “Also I am looking forward to seeing the Big Ben.” A ripple of relief pulsed outwards, drifting across the summer lawn towards the rosebeds and the peach grove behind. “As well I am looking forward to the Tower of London and the House of Parliament. “The Houses, the Houses of Parliament,” said the British Council woman before Harriet managed to shoot her a sideways glance.
       This moth-like sortie into the limelight seemed to have left the artist temporarily exhausted and he returned to wiping the remains of curry from his plate. The Ambassador looked at the man’s weathered collar and considered his grovelling replies. Did he think that he was answering questions from the back of a classroom, like some O-level candidate in some draughty Northern comprehensive? The Ambassador noticed his hand-me-down tie and felt a tremor of distaste ripple through his body. He sipped at his wine and tried to work out if the protest artist who painted the inert body of Hector Petersen in one form or another over and over again was so subtly patronising that he had barely noticed. Perhaps he was not pretending. Perhaps he answered all questions addressed to him by whites with a pride normally associated with little boys in grey shorts answering “capitals of the world” correctly. He felt like saying something, something such as “you’re condescending to us, aren’t you Davis, you are playing a game called ‘the black ingrate’ at our expense?” but let it pass. It would not do to make a scene. And although he remained calmly civil through the rest of the meal the Ambassador could not stop wondering if Davis the protest artist was not as threadbare of intellect as his clothes managed to suggest.

       “Davis Ledwaba can hardly be held responsible for your feelings of uselessness,” said Harriet as she was climbing into bed.
       “Of course he can’t,” the Ambassador admitted ruefully, noticing that she was wearing her satin pyjamas. “Its just that he seems as much a part of the intractable problems of this country as anyone else. The hand-me-down clothes, the inability to look one squarely in the eye.”
       “But you know why that is. He’s hardly fair game for your frustrations with the Minister.”
       “Davis Ledwaba’s lack of self-esteem is sinister — I hate the way he plays the beaming kaffir routine, it irks me deeply.”
       “You’re being a bit O-T-T don’t you think darling?” she said, and pulled up her nose at him in the way she knew that he liked.
       He knew this meant that she was getting bored with the conversation.
       “I just wish we could meet as men,” he said. “As equals. I wish relations weren’t so polluted, so mutually wary. Master and Servant. Servant and Master. And so it goes on.
       “You are a member of her Majesty the Queens Diplomatic Service,” she said, putting on her best Speaker of the House voice. “As such you are expected to be impartial and honourable at all times, never to make scabrous judgements about the darker races — although you might feel otherwise — never to lust after their ripe women, and never to beat them at their own games. Remember, when in times of doubt, think of the flag, Maggie’s handbag and Whitehall on a rainy day.”

       In the newspaper the following morning the Ambassador read of a fire that had gutted most of the Thokoza community centre. The article explained that the local civic had been meeting at the centre at the time. Two men had been burnt to death in the fire, and three were in hospital with serious burns. Arson was suspected. In addition, a projector, a hallfull of plastic chairs and several canvasses by local artists Davis Ledwaba and Sipho Batswedi had been lost. The Ambassador was not sure he had read the names correctly so he went through the article again. When he was sure he took off his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He felt shame settle on him like a black winged bird. He rubbed his forehead and looked down on where they had had yesterday’s meal. He wanted there desperately to be carefree twittering in the garden but look as he might he could hear and see nothing.

boontoe

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