A Guest of Honour Read Online Free

people who live alone, and brought back with him from the town—a child bulging with favours from a party—all the anecdotes and gossip of the Independence celebrations, producing, in a clinging fluff of supposition and rumour, bits and pieces of real information and opinion about Mweta’s position and the sort of team he had gathered around him. Another tray came out under the trees, this time with whisky and gin. An old black Labrador with corns on his elbows stood slowly swinging his tail before Dando as he talked. Jason wouldn’t bring home any golden fleece, believe you me (Jason Malenga was the new Minister of Finance); no, it wasn’t a bad thing that the British Chief of Police wasn’t being kept on, people always judged by the Congo, the idiots, but the African deputy, Aaron Onabu, was perfectly capable of taking over from that dodderer anyway; Talisman Gwenzi was first class, and a real Mweta man, David Sambata was an unknown quantity for Agriculture, what black knew a thing about agriculture, anyway; Tom Msomane was a corruption risk—there was reason to believe there’d already been something shady over a land deal for a community development—but he was from the right tribe, Mweta knew he couldn’t attempt to hold the show together without at least three Msos in the cabinet.
    Dando pulled ticks off the dog’s neck and burst them under his shoe while he drank and dealt out judgements. Out of a kind of jealousy of the new young men from Britain and America who were so careful to show their lack of colour-feeling by avoiding tainted words and addressing people by polite forms, he recklessly used the old settlervocabulary that reflected an attitude he had had no part of, ever. Roly Dando could say what he liked: Roly Dando hadn’t “discovered” the blacks as his fellows only yesterday. “Of course, Mweta has to hand out a job to everybody. Every pompous jackass from the bush who filled his pipe with tobacco bought with dues from the local party branch. They’re all heroes, you know, heroes of the struggle. Struggle my arse. Edward Shinza’s one of the few who did his stretch and got his head split open that time by Her Majesty’s brave boys, and where’s he—back in the Bashi Flats among his old wives, for all I know, no one even mentions his name.”
    â€œBut Shinza’s here for the Independence ceremony?”
    Roly glared. “Nobody gives a damn where he is.”
    â€œBut he is in town, now?”
    â€œI don’t know where the hell he may be.”
    â€œYou mean Edward’s not going to take part in the celebrations? That’s not possible. He’s not come up to town?”
    â€œYou can see he hasn’t been given a cabinet post. I don’t suppose he’s going to turn up for the honour of standing in the crowd and waving a flag, eh?”
    â€œBut that’s ridiculous, Roly. You know Shinza. He knows what he wants. I had the impression he’ll be ambassador to U.N. Give time for Mweta to shine on his own for a bit, and any tension between them to die down. Of course he should have got Foreign Affairs. But that’s between the two of them.”
    â€œYou might ask Mweta, if you get a chance to talk to him, ask him if he isn’t going to find a piddling little job somewhere, something with a decent label to it, for poor old Shinza, he was banging on the Colonial Secretary’s door with a
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while Mweta was a snotty picannin singing hymns up at the mission school.” Dando glowered pettishly over his third or fourth gin and ginger beer. He was given to putting himself on strange mixtures. He would drink one for several months and then switch, for similar good reasons (it was more digestible, it was less likely to produce an after-thirst) to another.
    â€œOh Mweta’s not like that.”
    â€œYou know Mweta. I know Mweta. But there’s the President, now. If