Noah works too hard. Conscientious lawyer that he is, he is eternally busy. Shuffling papers from in-tray to out-tray takes up most of his time. When he has a spare moment, he talks sonorously into a machine, a process known as “dictating”.
I think he likes dictating. When we first met, he brought the practice home and became the Great Dictator with me. I quickly nipped that in the bud. If he must be a dictator, the place for it is his office.
These days his office is where he spends most of his time. At first, I had my suspicions, but his secretary is both plain and ancient.
This, I believe, is what every secretary should be. I am surprised secretarial colleges do so little to stress the point.
The ancient part takes time, I accept, but how to be plain can certainly be taught. Getting dressed every morning, a good secretary should repeat: ‘I must, I must, decrease my bust.’ Trust me, bra: if a secretary wants to succeed, she’s gotta flatten the curve.
But I digress. What concerns me is finding a cure for Noah’s self-absorption. How do I pull him out of himself? This question plagued me until I hit on a solution.
“I think we should get a dog,” I say to him, while we lie in bed.
“I agree,” he replies. “It’ll take you out of yourself. You’ve become very self-absorbed lately.” Since this was clearly not a prelude to lovemaking, I decided to remain self-absorbed for the night.
I turn a cold shoulder and feign a deep, snoring sleep. Every daughter learns this trick from her mother. How else do we cope?
The next morning, no longer miffed, I made my choice: a Swiss Shepherd. This breed has a lovely white coat, easy to tell apart from a black Belgian Shepherd or the brownish German Shepherd we used to term “Alsatian”.
When I tell Noah, he asks teasingly, “Are you becoming a trifle racist? White you like, as opposed to black or brown?”
I refuse to take the bait.
“Or nationalist, perhaps?” He knows I have a Swiss ancestor.
“Not funny,” I reply.
Pigmentally challenged
A few days earlier I had read that AfriForum has make-work jobs and reserves them exclusively for white Afrikaners. The organisation says that this helps to counter the discrimination meted out to whites, especially Afrikaners pigmentally challenged in this way.
I ask Noah whether this amounts to discrimination.
“Every decision expresses a preference,” he says solemnly. “Choose one dog and you automatically discriminate against all the others on offer — the poodles, who happen to be French, the sheepdogs, who happen to be Australian, the schnauzers, who happen to be German, and the braks, who happen to be Township.”
“Well, discrimination is a big word,” I say. “I accept I’m swayed by colour. A white dog is beautiful. But I don’t identify with whiteness in the sense you suggest, and I really don’t care about the dog’s ‘nationality’. I mean, if I had a poodle, I would hardly say ‘ici’ and ‘allez’ to it. I really feel I am not discriminating.”
“That’s not quite right,” he says. “Your intentions matter, but the effect of your choice matters too. And the effect here is that you’re favouring a white dog, and a Swiss one to boot. By making this choice, you are discriminating.
“The word is ambiguous,” continues Noah, now the lexicographer. “In its original sense, it denotes mere differentiation. This is the meaning I have been teasing you with. But now it has come to signify differentiation that is bad.”
I fall silent for a moment, wondering if, by opting for the Swiss and so favouring a nation famous only for chocolate and cuckoo clocks, I am doing a bad thing.
“If dogs were people,” I ask, “would I be guilty of discrimination under the SA Constitution?”
“Three things”
“Not necessarily,” says Noah. “For discrimination to be unlawful, the decision must be unfair. That usually depends on three things:
- First, it must be irrational. Saying a job applicant must be white is normally irrational — unless you’re casting a play about the Voortrekkers or some such thing.
- Secondly, it must involve something deep and unchangeable, like skin colour, sex, or sexual orientation. Discriminating by donning a white rather than a black shirt cannot, as far as I can see, ever be unfair.
- Thirdly, it must be the kind of decision the law can be expected to evaluate. Choosing your mate, your friends or your dog is a matter so private that the law would leave it to your personal discretion. So much should be obvious.”
“Obvious, is it?” I mutter. “It wasn’t obvious to the architects of apartheid. They told you who you could and couldn’t, you know, mate with.” I think this is a razor-sharp reply.
Noah doesn’t: he glowers, then shoots back. “Judge yourself by the standards of apartheid if you must. I do not, and neither does our Constitution.”
“Okay, back to AfriForum,” I continue. “They say they’re only reacting to being officially excluded in favour of blacks. What do you say to that?”
Noah once more becomes the jurisprude. “AfriForum’s practice selects down-and-outs by race and skin colour because, they say, they are the victims of affirmative action. BUT
- “There is no evidence that the condition of those chosen is the result of affirmative action.
- “Even if there were, AfriForum’s practice would remain unlawful for so long as the original discrimination by way of affirmative action was not itself condemned as unfair.
- “The courts have yet to take so bold a step.”
“Well, isn’t it high time they did?” I ask. “Surely affirmative action has passed its sell-by date.”
“‘Father William’ defence”
“Perhaps,” says Noah. “But I propose to plead the ‘Father William’ defence. You know …
“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”
Said his father. “Don’t give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs.
Noah can be insufferable, but I do love him. I don’t care if he is a jurisprude, a grammarian, a didact, a lexicographer, a taxonomer, a poetaster or just a pest. He’s my boy, and in future, I propose to turn a hot shoulder to him. At least until tomorrow, that is.
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