Beyond, you can see Bantu’s bumpy and hazy hills, huts and dust. Freedom Square—a place where no doubt some bloody history—demonstrations, water cannons, tear gas, police baton charges—occurred, where students, vanguards of the revolution, wrestled their freedom from the Apartheid regime. The Doors of Learning Shall be Open! You saw the grainy news clips on TV as a child—but today, the square is sterile, empty, barren. The struggle, it appears, is over.
A scraggly, fur-matted, mewing kitten presses against the metal leg of the bench. You bend down to pet it, but it scratches your beckoning hand and runs off into the grey-green bushes behind. You observe with cold horror that its eyes have been gouged out.
In the centre of the square, signs point in higgledy-piggledy directions to Bekezulu Hall, to the Sports Field, to LAAC (whatever LAAC is), to the Staff Tearoom, Student Services. But you are seduced by the one pointing to the library. The humming machines promise sweet cool air, and you are dripping with sweat. You push through the glass doors. Inside, a vast open-plan dome, like a church, opens out. Very air-conditioned.
The library is empty. No students anywhere. But staff librarians quietly shuffle behind glass-walled offices. One woman at the checkout counter looks up as you pass her desk. You meander through the corridors of books, and then sit at a catalogue computer. You type in ‘Sizwe Bantu’.
Search results show that this university has all Bantu’s major works, in hard copy and electronic form. The Great South African Novel (2006), AfriKan Metaphysics (2007), Seven Invisible Selves (2008), The Five AfriKan Senses (2009), The Cockroach Whisperer (2010), and Cokcraco and Other Stories (2011).
Whew.
But when you search for availability, all of them show up empty. Withdrawn. Unavailable. Missing.
i Yam the cockroach who everyone ignores.
i Yam the loud fart in the elevator everyone pretends did not happen.
i Yam the spot on the teenager’s nose just before her first date.
i Yam the disembodied obscenity scratched on the wall of the church.
– Sizwe Bantu, AfriKan Metaphysics (2007)7
7 The reader will recognise several plagiarised/sampled/intertextual references, this time to Zimbabwe writer Dambudzo Marechera’s poem ‘Identify the Identity Parade’ in Cemetery of Mind, ed. Flora Veit-Wild, (Harare: Baobab Books, 1992): ‘I am the loud fart all silently agree never happened’. The phrase ‘Disembodied obscenity’ is taken from Njabulo Ndebele’s story ‘Fools’ in Fools and Other Stories (Readers International, 1986). Words, Bantu is saying, are all borrowed, recycled, used up, and all we can do is rearrange them
* * *
‘Ah, Mr Turner.’
Mpofu hands you a document, stamped and signed. ‘As we arranged over the Skype interview, Admin are very agreeable to a twelve-month contract for starters. And as soon as our little problem is cleared up, we can advertise a permanent position. And if we play our cards right, you could get it.’
‘Thanks.’
A moment’s hesitation.
‘A word of warning … we’d be amiss if we didn’t say …’ A lightning glance at Zimmerlie; a slight nod in return. ‘You know you’re walking into the lion’s den?’
It is not difficult to guess what they are going to say next. ‘You mean Makaya … ?’
Zimmerlie nods. ‘Makaya is a dangerous, vindictive man. When he hears that you are taking his position …’
‘The political minefields in this campus are complex, Timothy, very complex. We have to watch our backs.’
‘We want to protect you from the kind of spiteful attacks that occur on this campus in the name of academia.’
Are you surprised? Where have you been anywhere in the world where spiteful attacks in the name of academia do not occur? But you widen your eyes appropriately.
‘We need someone to take over a very restless class of one hundred first-year students who have been left in the lurch and messed around by … by …’
‘That recalcitrant man.’
‘And the Honours class is … how can we put this? Rather … belligerent.’
‘Aggressive.’
‘Makaya tossed all textbooks out of the window. He had got them doing silly creative writing exercises instead of studying real literature.’
‘That’s the urgency. You could start on Monday?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Of course,’ says Mpofu. ‘He has all sorts of questions. Salary, accommodation, syllabus.’
‘The details we can arrange later. The important thing is—you can start Monday, get those students off our backs …’
‘Where will you be staying?’
‘Not sure. I was thinking of eSikamanga?’
Zimmerlie frowns. ‘Thami lives in Assegai, thirty k’s north, as do many of our faculty. A large city with all the modern conveniences.’
‘Professor Zimmerlie,’ says Mpofu, ‘lives in eSikamanga. He loves it there. By the sea. A small town right on the Indian Ocean, about thirty k’s south. Those are your choices. I can put you in touch with an estate agent … ?’
‘That would be good. How are the waves?’
Zimmerlie nudges Mpofu. ‘I told you he was an Australian. Now … I know this is very short notice, Timothy, but there is a requirement of any new faculty member to … to … er … present a lecture to the staff and faculty of the university, to introduce yourself, as it were.’
‘Sure. I can do that. When?’
‘Is next Friday too soon?’ Zimmerlie wrinkles his brow.
‘No worries.’
‘Marvellous! And do you have a topic?’
‘I will. Probably something like … “Playing with Words while Afrika is Ablaze”?’
‘Intriguing. And you can have this ready for next week?’
‘Yep. Too easy.’
Zimmerlie clears his throat. ‘Is that a yes?’
* * *
You march down the dark corridor to the EXIT sign armed with The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Modern African Stories, a solid phalanx of literature to teach. The gist of it is, Makaya neglected—even dropped—literature from the syllabus, and taught instead Creative Writing. And you are here, so you gather, to put that all right.
It is no matter. You don’t care what you are teaching. You have already decided to humour these men, to glide along over these matters. Makaya, for all you know, might be quite a decent bloke. You are determined from the outset to remain above it all, as neutral as Switzerland, as wry, ironic, as Bantu himself, unsullied by politics of the academy.
But your sense of wellbeing is short-lived. A door to the left swings open, and a short, stout man bursts out and sends you sprawling. The books Mpofu has given you thud on the red polished floor. The man reaches out a hand to help you up. ‘Sorry, didn’t see you there, china.’
Double take, then smile, as if this is normal. The man has orange hair. You cannot stop staring.