I arrive at the coffee shop early. As I sip a milky café latte I wonder how I am going to write this story. Is it a story that I will write? I write fiction, this is non fiction. Will this be a story? This is about a man, a real live man who breathes; he eats, he loves, he thinks. Fiction is so much easier than the real. I create people; they do not share a coffee with me. Questions come into my head as I sit at the table. I take out a note book and write them down; it makes me seem professional, earnest, a real writer. I jot down words, black ink on white pages. Possible angles: A good looking young man with an enigmatic smile who, against all odds, fought his way out of an apartheid childhood; denied the fruits of being pale, pallid, a political commentator, a cutting edge Johannesburg newspaper? His face will betray no emotion as his voice tells me why he wrote a book on Thabo Mbeki; ‘the battle for the soul of the African National Congress (ANC)’, the perfidy to a cause, the betrayal of a people who hoped, the idealist, the dreamer. What about a cynical perspective, he knew that a book that did not depict this African renaissance hero, Mbeki, in a flattering and congratulatory light, would sell? There are a lot of hagiographic renditions of this leader; there is even another coming up, the official biography. Ronald Suresh has allegedly been paid a huge advance for words that he has not yet written – an esteemed politician, the saviour, the erudite educated academic, in touch with global concerns. So he writes something contrary, less than favourable, he knows that there are a lot of people out there who will buy this book, the disillusioned, the white man who believes that he is disadvantaged? But maybe I must just write the few words that he tells me, and you, the reader, can understand, or not understand, simple expressions gleaned at a coffee table.

William Gumede walks into the café. It is a trendy Joburg café where the haute couture gathers for a breakfast coffee, the coffee, after all, is excellent. And yet they really go there observe, to linger with other eminent Joburg people who are drinking a morning coffee. Important meetings; ‘what movie should we make to day, truth and reconciliation, how much whiter can you be than the whiteness in the Castle Larger advertisement, how can we sell BMW’s to the young cool black executive?’ William Gumede is not tall, maybe just a little taller than me. He has some hair on his face, not a full beard, just some hair that gathers down the sides of his face and chin. He has bright white teeth and a wide open face that is inviting; it makes me want to talk to him.

He has two sons, they are young. He is married and lives in a house in the suburb of Greenside, Johannesburg. He is writing a dissertation in order to become a doctor. He is registered at the London School of Economics, a prestigious London university. He is clever. He is good looking. He has a beautiful face. His body is lithe. He believes in democracy, he believes, not in socialism, but in social democracy, the kind of democracy that Tony Blair once believed in. He thinks that the poor must be taken care of, fed, given social grants, and he knows that there is more than enough money to do this. He also knows that Thabo Mbeki knew this. But Mbeki also knew that once he obtained his powerful position, he would change the tenor and illusions of the ANC; he would construct an accepted first world discourse in an Africa that can not be rehabilitated. And so William Gumede wrote about how the ANC lost its soul, lost at the famous National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting where the reigns of power were handed over. And he wonders why this happened. And he knows why it happened. So he tells the story. He gives others his knowledge, knowledge is power. He knows, as he sits and sips his coffee, that he can do little, but he can impart information; this is his skill, he is able to use words. And so he wrote a book, an inspired book, so that others can share his entitlement, his authority, his power of knowing.

“What is social justice,” I ask him?

“Social justice means that people have a house ….”

“A four- roomed house in a township where there are no trees and no water and an outside toilet,” I interject?

“A house where they can live, shelter from the outside elements.”

I pull my leather jacket around my shoulders; it is cold even in this trendy café.

“Social justice means that there is a safety net for the poor and the vulnerable. People won’t just fall off the edge, into a chasm; suffer and die at the bottom of the cliff face. They will fall into a net; it will catch them and give food to them. It will nourish their children. And social democracy means that their voices are heard. They will be able to speak of the safety net they need, they can tell the powerful that they have no water to drink. It does not matter what it is that they say, their needs maybe inconsequential to me or you, and yet they are crucial to the person who speaks this. A mechanism for social dialogue; the right to be heard. This is social democracy.”

“And this kind of social democracy, the kind that you describe, where can one find it,” I ask?

“Northern Europe, places like Holland, and Ireland, it works, or worked, well there.” he replies.

Holland; I think back on when I visited Amsterdam. A small country where people push the  truth. A perfectly democratic parliament, perfect prostitutes, perfect cocaine. People don’t starve in Holland, and they all have shelter, unless they choose not to, if they choose to rebel then they are cold in winter, they are responsible for themselves. And they can speak about how they want to be responsible, a communication is made, and it is heard. Or is it, I wonder?

“And Mbeki betrayed this understanding of social justice,” I say? “But I often think that this kind of system is an illusion, people think that they are being heard, they speak and some of their ideas are accommodated, their desires fulfilled. But yet the outcome, the end agreements, what is settled on, this is what the rich and the powerful wanted all along. Whatever it is, is achievable anyway, however it is attained. In this kind of system it is realized by making people feel heard, but if they were not heard the outcome would have been the same. So did Mbeki betray this understanding? Or did he just put in place an acceptable social justice, tripartite dialogue, there are no transgressions; a western ideal. What about a different Africa? A different voice?”

“What is African,” he replies? “I am not sure. What does African really mean; there is no history to draw from? I have to rely on a western understanding, I have no alternative.”

William Gumede smokes a pipe, just sometimes. The image of a scholar. Fine curved lips around the stem of a pipe. “But I only smoke outside when I am at home,” he says. “I have two small sons, and I don’t want to wreck their lungs with the pollution of my pipe smoke.” An acceptable perspective as to how children should breathe. In Greenside there are buses and cars, but the pollution is less than it is in Soweto. People only light fires for decoration, not for warmth, they switch on the electrified heater if they are cold. Children should not live surrounded by swathes of smoke. “They will go to a good school, not good as in expensive,” he says “but good in that they will be educated, they will be taught to think.”

“I wonder if anyone can be taught to think.” I say, “Maybe they will just be taught to understand their thoughts within a specific context; they will learn the suitably identifiable meaning of truth.”

He laughs. “What else can I do,” he replies? “I wrote the book in order to discover the truth. I know that it is my truth, a truth within the accepted discourse that surrounds all of us.”

“But you know, as an academic, as a writer, that there is no truth,” I say. “What is the truth, your truth,” I ask.

“I must believe in truth,” he replies. “Of course I am not sure what it is. But I like to think that what I have written in my book reveals a part of the truth, the truth for me, my interpretation. And because I believe in that truth, I want to impart it to others. It is significant that I am able to do this, rather than the truth itself being significant. I think that we are all too complacent, the rainbow nation of complacency, and I like the idea of being able to tilt that complacency. Not to push people over the falls, but to try and persuade people that there are other waters, other pools. The best writings, for me, are those that are written by the writers who lived in the former eastern block. The difficulties experienced in communities, the fractured families, the deficiencies, the ghastly lacks. The struggle against obstacles. People are creative, they wondered how they could do things differently in order to survive, they made it work, if only for themselves. Maybe this is what I want to achieve through my book. I want people to realise that there are ways out, not that I give them a gun; I give them a voice, a different way of understanding, of thinking. The power to articulate something for themselves, a release of sorts.”

“What are my interests outside of politics and academics? Sport, I love rugby.”

And yet for black people in this country rugby was the game of the white supremacist,” I say. “The sport of the Cambridge colonist, muscle against muscle on a cold and misty Oxford field.”

“Strange that you say this,” he says. “Rugby has always been played by black people in this country; it was just outside of the mainstream. In a way I envied those who were able to play in the mainstream, but yet we played the game nonetheless. I love the sweat of the rugby field. My brother plays rugby now. He is able to play in the mainstream, he is part of it. My idol was Serge Blanco, a star, the captain of the French rugby team, he was black. A black man making it to the pinnacle in this sport, he was an icon engraved in my head; the greatest player in the world. “

“The need to belong,” I say, “to belong to that world and yet remain outside of it. What you are doing now; you belong to the world of politics and critical thinking, and yet, in writing the book, you placed yourself outside of it. It is similar to your admiration for the black French captain of a muscular team, leading the world, and yet he was outside of it, he could never be inside, it was impossible.”

“Do you ever want to write a novel” I ask. “You write with eloquence, the language that you use is not traditional academic language that is untranslatable unless one is aware of the rhetoric, the jargon? I think that you have a creative power, the power of imagination. In fact maybe you did write a novel, others may say this, after all what is fiction, just history that has never been written or read? And you write history.”

He laughs, “Maybe one day I will write a novel, an imaginary tale. I like the words of Canetti and Calvino. Who was it that said it, Salman Rushdie I think, in a review on Invisible Cities, ‘Why should we bother about Calvino a word juggler, a fantasist, in our age in which our cities burn and our leaders blame our parents? What does it mean to write about non existent white knights, or the formation of the moon, or how a reader reads, while the neutron bomb gets the go-ahead in Washington, and plans are made to station germ-warfare weaponry in Europe? …. The reason why Calvino is such an indispensable writer is precisely that he tells us, joyfully, wickedly, that there are things in the world worth loving as well as hating; and that such things exist in people too.’ Maybe one day I will write a novel where joyfully and wickedly I can spread the truth of social justice, hatred of the unjust, a love of being in the world; the laughter and the caring and the hope and the sound of people speaking. Maybe one day….”  He laughs again and sips his coffee.

“Do you have a hero who was, or is, a writer,” I ask?

“If I think about it I have a few heroes, but the one that comes to mind most often is Frans Fanon.”

“The Wretched of the Earth,” I ask, “an appraisal of colonialism in Algeria?”

“Yes, I like him because of his fluency, his simple expression, but more than this I like his ideas, they are refreshing, if you call violence and emasculation refreshing. He could have been part of the mainstream, he was a psychiatrist. Sartre wrote the foreword to his book. He was well known and read. And he could have leaned out and said okay, ‘I’ll go for what they want to read, I will write it, and I can’. And he didn’t. Do you know that he died of cancer at the age of thirty four? He could have gone to the United States for treatment, who knows maybe it would have helped him, but he refused, and he died. Not many people remember him now, the odd sociology lecturer who gives the book to his students, but not many. And I like it that Fanon did not give up, he would not give in. He remained outside the system that he despised. Politics overwhelms me, there is nothing that I can do but write, and I do. And maybe I can give to the ‘wretched of the earth’ in this way. Beauty and violence, lyrical academic writing, words that resonate. I too will not give up.”

We get up from the table. “I am not sure what I am going to write about you,” I say, “maybe nothing at all, maybe the love that you have for your children, maybe just how you smile.” We shake hands. William Gumede leaves the restaurant. He walks back into a world where there is no social justice, but maybe, just maybe it will, someday, be there.