BOOK SA: your window into the 2007 Sunday Times Literary Awards. See excerpts from other shortlisted books: click the ST 07 Book Excerpts tag.
Here is an excerpt from Lewis Nkosi’s Mandela’s Ego, shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize: it’s the scene that opens chapter seven, where “ten voices” discuss whether or not to go to the 1961 “All-In Conference” in Pietermaritzburg, where it was rumoured Nelson Mandela – then a Treason Trialist – would put in an appearance.
(In the event, Mandela did address the conference, as the trial went into adjournment for a week; cf. Long Walk to Freedom, chapter 38).
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In many parts of the country that week, preparations were gathering momentum. Hundreds, no, thousands of people were going to Pietermaritzburg (to P.M.!) for the big convention – some by train, some by bus, some by taxi, some by bicycle and some on foot – in the hope of hearing Mandela speak. Many failed to arrive. Rusty, ramshackle vehicles broke down, or ran out of petrol and were abandoned on the road. At the country’s various crossroads, and at bus and railway stations, hundreds of police officers were on guard, detaining people on the slightest pretext, just long enough for the convention to come and go without them. Some were arrested for crossing the road against the traffic lights, some for urinating in public, some even for just holding hands. People were held for every minor offence, or for what was merely deemed unseemly behaviour, including kissing. They were all afterwards released without charge.
Still people came, from all over the country they came. Some took it as a big picnic and filled their hampers with delicious edibles, baskets of mangoes, bananas and oranges, chicken, roast potatoes and dumplings. People were suddenly all kindred, all kith and kin – some more kith than kin – and they were all going to the big convention!
Speak now or forever be silent. Ten Voices:
Voice 1: Okay, brother. Let me speak! Are you going to let me speak or not? What I want to know is, what’s on the agenda? If we are going to this convention I want to know the agenda.
Voice 2: Listen, comrade. Don’t ask me about no agenda. I don’t know what the agenda is. And do I care? No, I don’t care!
Voice 3: Do we have to have an agenda to go to a conference?
Voice 1: You don’t have no agenda! How can you go to a conference without no agenda? Without no nothing?
Voice 4: Ag, man, listen, don’t you know what the agenda is? You mean you really don’t know? It’s right here in this paper. Right here it says
this is going to be an All-In Conference that will issue a clarion call for a National Convention!
Voice 1: Get away! You jiving me. Man, are you jiving me? A conference to issue a clarion call for another conference to take place which will
issue another clarion call for another conference to take place?
Voice 4: Don’t be stupid!
Voice 3: He thinks he’s so cute, talking about agendas! What agenda? Here we are talking freedom, son, how freedom is to be birthed in
this lovely country of ours. We ain’t talkin’ no agendas! Do you need an agenda to birth freedom? Ag man, don’t be such a clever dick!
Voice 1: Okay. What about the M-Plan? Don’t we get to discuss it?
Voice 4: That’s agenda, ain’t it? We’ll discuss the Mandela Plan? The M-Plan. The M-Plan is ripe for discussion, don’t I say?
Voice 1: And the National Question. Brother, where do you stand on the National Question?
Voice 2: Me? I’m for the 1949 Programme. Dead or alive, I’ll always be for the 1949 Programme. Oh God, the 1949 Programme! That’s me!
Voice 1: And you, Comrade, where do you stand on the National Question?
Voice 5: On the National Question? I don’t stand, baby! I am the one who is the whole question, ain’t I? I’m the nation or nothing!
Voice 1: Okay, what are your beliefs then? What do you believe in?
Voice 5: What do I believe in? What kind of question is that, what do I believe in! I don’t believe nothing, man.
Voice 1: Well, like, you know, man, I don’t see how you can go to a convention with no agenda and without no beliefs of any kind. How you goin’ to rally the masses without no programme? How you goin’ to get what you want when you don’t believe shit? How you goin’ to frame your demands? I am talkin’ here about reasons, man. I am talkin’ about context. Philosophy. Know what I mean?
Voice 5: Okay, you want to know what I believe. I say give me freedom or give me death!
Voice 1: Wow, that’s great. Death. That’s philosophy! Give me death! I like that. Have you got guns, mfowethu, because they got guns.
Voice 5: Baba, we don’t carry no guns. We’re nonviolent. That’s the truth! At least, violently nonviolent or nonviolently violent or what-
ever! You get me?
Voice 2: We are a peace-loving people waging a revolutionary struggle with bare hands!
Voice 3: Don’t talk peace to me. Thixo! I haven’t the time! I’m on my way! I’m going! To P.M., Pietermaritzburg! And, sonny, let me tell you, I’m going to be there, dead or alive! I want to be there. I want to be counted!
Voice 6: I heard MaNtuli is going too. Are you also going?
Voice 7: Me going? My sibunu is going! What are you talkin about, me going?
Voice 6: You’re not?
Voice 7: No, I am not! You think that stupid man of mine would let me! He’d think I’m going to look for a man!
Voice 6: In P.M.? Are there any men in P.M.?
Voice 7: What do you think? Isn’t that Cetshwayo’s old capital?
Voice 8: Darling, I’m not going. Let me be frank with you. I’m full of apprehension. You know what I mean? Apprehension. That’s the
word. There’s no telling how this thing is gonna turn out. We could have another Sharpeville on our hands before we know it!
Voice 9: Shame! Me, I’m going. You bet I’m going. I want to be in the Book of Life!
Voice 10: Me too! God, I’m going! And if Nelson Mandela is there I want to take a ride on his Sweet Chariot!
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