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couldn’t communicate in any African language—allowance made by his lover, mother of their child, Jabulile herself? Had never spoken to her those intimate words that must be known to her more committing than darling my love etc., the second-hand.
    And Jabu was a teacher.
    She was surprised, curious when he announced: You’re going to start teaching me Zulu. What other tongue should he learn; it was her own. She lightly used the everyday English endearment—Darling what’s it with you?—
    A new thought.—You talk to Sindiswa in Zulu. Already she’s able to say quite a lot. Demanding what she wants…I don’t understand her. She won’t understand me.—
    Jabu laughed.—I talk to her in English too, and you do.—
    —She’ll grow up talking to me in a language she and I share, and I won’t be able to speak to her in a language that’s also hers but we don’t share.—
    —Is that so bad. Many people have one parent who doesn’t know the language of the other, that’s passed on to the child.—
    —I’m not a foreigner.—
    To have the need to bring up again, now to her—he’s a white who has earned his identity, not non-black: African.
    —So when do we begin? It’s going to be fun. I’m strict you know. What about tonight. No, we’re due at the Mkizes’, her sister’s back with the Ghanaian she’s married, big excitement. He’s some kind of special surgeon, hoping he’s going to get a post at the medical school, wants to talk to you about the university.—
    —Oh there’s no hurry, I’ve remained dumb so long, whenever you can take me on as another one of your Holy Father’s school kids.—
    So one of her father’s maxims comes back from childhood.—No time like the present. Say with me Ngingumfana ohlankiphile eckasini lika thishela uJabu? —
    —Which means…—
    —How are you going to pay me for my after-school classes.—
    —Only if you stop sniggering at my pronunciation.—Hugging her, which led him to her mouth and the deep kiss that belonged in another time of day, or rather, night.
    There was nothing playful about the lessons, however. Over the weekend he wrote grammar exercises she set, and learnt vocabulary, her selected dictionary of spoken words she judged should be the most apt for, example, interchange with his students when he brought them home; it became also a rather enjoyable exchange of roles, lecturer turned pupil. Jabu never corrected him in the students’ presence, left it to them to slap their jean-armoured thighs in applause as they could coach him, throwing in some useful near-obscenities that she vetoed, sharing laughter. This did not affect his authority as their lecturer, a kind of authority other than that of her father, which had done so much in the past for her to be equal to the present. Surely it was in her Baba’s tradition, smuggling books to her when she was imprisoned without trial, an after-hours class of headmastership and spiritual duties as an Elder in the church, that she was furthering her husband’s emancipation by giving him the ability to express himself as an African, not only by a European tongue. Once her father had spelled out for her to read, by making sequence of the words underlined in the pages of textbooks he somehow managed to get to her in detention, another maxim. ‘It is unfortunate that we use the language of the oppressor to speak for our freedom.’ She learnt afterwards those were the words of Gandhi.
    Steve was right about the ‘Alertwatch’ company whose fees the Suburb subscribed to every month; there would be among them impimpis , black traitors who worked with the apartheid army. There are not many skills of guerrilla warfare of much use in the aftermath known as peace. The only aptitude that might be useful is that for violence, and it has been taken up by the defeated army’s rank and file. Join the present version of the country’s army, but because of your past there’s no place for you there—be employed by