The air is filled with the revolutionary spirit of old. We are energised. I am sweating, not because of the toyi-toyi alone: I am not in a good space. I am thinking about my Andiswa. Is she safe? Is she home with her mother?

I am over 900 kilometres away from home, Durban. I can’t afford another scandal like the one in Durban a week after my inauguration as president, where I was charged with driving without a valid license.

The charges were squashed because my fellow comrade, an MK cadre, took me to the Durban CBD, where we both bought drivers’ licences over the counter like ice cream on a cone. The licenses were backdated to 1995.

Advocate Visser looked me in the eye and said, “Wilfred, I have a lot of respect for your cause, but I am the prosecutor. If you can show me a valid driver’s license, you’re off the hook.”

I swiftly produced my recently acquired, albeit backdated, licence, and Advocate Visser tore up the charge sheet in front of me. His parting shot was, “You have a lot of enemies, Wilfred. Look within.”

I am thinking about that day when the chairperson introduced me in glowing terms as a revolutionary par excellence, ‘the young lion’ – his words not mine. I take the podium and dazzle my attentive audience. Politics is my game; the rest is just detail. As I take my seat, Chris shakes my hand, and the whole chamber breaks into a revolutionary song in my honour. I feel wholesome again.

When the day’s business is over we decide to go clubbing. About half of us are here, the close-knit top leadership, except Tshepo and a few others. We haven’t seen him the whole day. My Andiswa is now a blur.

We celebrate our youth with wild abandon, and in the early hours of the morning, we leave the nightclub with a crew of six coloured girls. We are all intoxicated by our democracy. Thus, we are exploring new frontiers.

* * * * *

“Comrades, I can’t find my wallet and plane tickets!” screams Tshepo as he joins our table for breakfast.

He is rattled. We are sleep-deprived, and our hangovers are visibly heavy. We promise to help him look in all the cars after breakfast. Nada. Lutho. As the leadership, we decide that Chris, as our President, must make the dreaded call to Tshepo’s Rector and plead for a new plane ticket, making up a story about cleaners who cleaned us literally.

The rumour mill goes into overdrive after breakfast. But the truth always has a way of revealing itself in its own time.

We learned before leaving PE that Tshepo didn’t take Andiswa home as promised. Instead, they went on a tryst to some cheap motel. They came back to sleep on campus after … and by the time Tshepo woke up, Andiswa was long gone.

His wallet with R1000 cash and plane tickets worth R3000 had gone missing.

***

Tell us: Are you surprised or disappointed that to Wilfred, Andiswa is already just ‘a blur’? Are you surprised about Andiswa stealing from Tshepo? Why or why not?