Read Online No Time Like the Present: A Novel by Nadine Gordimer - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Nadine Gordimer
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babies? The child she brought to her magogo , gogo , sisters, brothers, aunts, cousins in the Elder’s congregation, was a girl. How could she tell them without offence, those with high bellies and those with round heads and exquisitely tentacled miniature hands at the breast, that she and Steve postponed another child rather than taking the obligation to fecundity, because the nuclear one isn’t the only family, its brood the only children. Your time doesn’t belong to you exclusively or even foremost to own progeny. The revolution comes first because the sacrifices that were and are its right demand are for your own and all children. That’s not a plug from political rhetoric. There’s no good breeding future slaves of one kind of regime or another.
Of course Jabu’s work influences their postponement of a companion for Sindiswa. With the achievement of her LLB she has been taken in as attorney by one of those new three-name legal practices which are literally up on the board, signs of change, one with an Indian name, another with an African name, among the partners. No denying that her political CV if not her colour was an advantage in the choice out of other applicants, but that’s no reflection on the abilities she had to offer. The firm did not deal with divorce cases, the partners kiddingly accusing one another of turning down the most lucrative briefs, but was known as appearing for the defence in property disputes which used to be more or less exclusive to whites, with a few Indians who had acquired business concessions in the urban area where at one period Indians had some undetermined rights. Blacks had none. Now, anyone may own property anywhere—capitalism freed of its chains, Jake says wryly, announcing he and Isa, who always could have had that white right, were buying the house they rented—but inheritance rights were compounded by the remnant of religious or traditional law that had been recognised by the apartheid system, whether just or not. Keep the natives quiet where this doesn’t affect anyone else. Among blacks, after the husband’s death the wife has to quit their home acquired together; the house was to be passed to his brother. Jabu was Ranveer Singh’s assistant in court on one such case, taken up and instructed by a legal aid organisation as a Constitutional rights issue, let alone a humanitarian one. The Justice Centre had briefed a prominent civil rights Senior Counsel, comrade whose patriarchal white face did not match his feared cross-examination techniques. At tea recesses he was centre stage in discourse, an oratory she was too impressed and inexperienced to know an attorney should not interrupt, and her unexpected questions surprised him with their aptness to the relevance of his anecdotes to the case being heard. This young black woman must have grown up as what it meant to be black in that old regime—his big head agitated encouragement at her—the political nuances in such cases, while upholding the breach of law, not to mention (he did) preposterous breach of human dignity, one must know that from the perspective of custom, unwritten laws, by getting the verdict in favour of the complainant you are putting down Constitutional law’s feet sacrilegiously on some traditionalists. Black victims again…and without them, what sort of national unity? A legalistic-moral system seceded from it? The traditionalists believe freedom includes recognition—no, incorporation of the particular organisation of life that governed their ancestral relationships, their concepts of entitlement, before colonialism and apartheid. Apartheid dead, black president in the cabinet, members of parliament, but their traditional laws are alive. Can we afford to insult for their own just benefit members of the majority population. Answers himself.—Well we’re going to win this case.—A wide laugh, everyone joins him.—Law enforcement means taking risks—on principle.—
The other lawyers use his
Of course Jabu’s work influences their postponement of a companion for Sindiswa. With the achievement of her LLB she has been taken in as attorney by one of those new three-name legal practices which are literally up on the board, signs of change, one with an Indian name, another with an African name, among the partners. No denying that her political CV if not her colour was an advantage in the choice out of other applicants, but that’s no reflection on the abilities she had to offer. The firm did not deal with divorce cases, the partners kiddingly accusing one another of turning down the most lucrative briefs, but was known as appearing for the defence in property disputes which used to be more or less exclusive to whites, with a few Indians who had acquired business concessions in the urban area where at one period Indians had some undetermined rights. Blacks had none. Now, anyone may own property anywhere—capitalism freed of its chains, Jake says wryly, announcing he and Isa, who always could have had that white right, were buying the house they rented—but inheritance rights were compounded by the remnant of religious or traditional law that had been recognised by the apartheid system, whether just or not. Keep the natives quiet where this doesn’t affect anyone else. Among blacks, after the husband’s death the wife has to quit their home acquired together; the house was to be passed to his brother. Jabu was Ranveer Singh’s assistant in court on one such case, taken up and instructed by a legal aid organisation as a Constitutional rights issue, let alone a humanitarian one. The Justice Centre had briefed a prominent civil rights Senior Counsel, comrade whose patriarchal white face did not match his feared cross-examination techniques. At tea recesses he was centre stage in discourse, an oratory she was too impressed and inexperienced to know an attorney should not interrupt, and her unexpected questions surprised him with their aptness to the relevance of his anecdotes to the case being heard. This young black woman must have grown up as what it meant to be black in that old regime—his big head agitated encouragement at her—the political nuances in such cases, while upholding the breach of law, not to mention (he did) preposterous breach of human dignity, one must know that from the perspective of custom, unwritten laws, by getting the verdict in favour of the complainant you are putting down Constitutional law’s feet sacrilegiously on some traditionalists. Black victims again…and without them, what sort of national unity? A legalistic-moral system seceded from it? The traditionalists believe freedom includes recognition—no, incorporation of the particular organisation of life that governed their ancestral relationships, their concepts of entitlement, before colonialism and apartheid. Apartheid dead, black president in the cabinet, members of parliament, but their traditional laws are alive. Can we afford to insult for their own just benefit members of the majority population. Answers himself.—Well we’re going to win this case.—A wide laugh, everyone joins him.—Law enforcement means taking risks—on principle.—
The other lawyers use his
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