None to Accompany Me

None to Accompany Me

Empowerment to our people is taking place in the evolution of post-apartheid South Africa in 1994. The main character is the human rights lawyer Vera Stark. In this extract Vera Stalk is talking to her close friend and political confidante Zeph. Vera puts forward reasons why she should not be a member of the committee and Zeph counters her arguments. He wants her to join the committee and He doesn't agree that being on the committee will be less useful than the work she has always done.

Vera is not convinced that she should join the committee. When Vera is discussing either if she should join the committee or not, she is thinking of what would be better for her. She thinks that she could spend her time more fruitfully if she stayed at her job at the foundation which she does well. Instead of challenge herself in the national committee where she has to make important decisions, conditions for other people and the rest of the country. She doesn't like the idea of putting herself above the rest of the people .

If Vera is going to choose this job in the committee she will pay a high price for it, loneliness. This is because she will represent a lot of people and their human rights - not her own. That's why she is afraid to take all the responsibility for others and fight for them. There is not anyone to take responsibility for her and if she makes mistakes. There will not be balance between the people she will support and herself. She will lose her self-righteous by fighting for others than herself. Her friend can only support her and give his point of view.

Zeph tells Vera that she has to get through the many people's opinions and give her own. He thinks that she should fight for her own opinions and ignore the other people's opinions. This is why he used the word infiltration. But Vera tells Zeph, that this is different because the rules will be taken care of by many different persons who want's different things in their part of the country. When Vera talks about the constitution, she refers to the rules that are given to the people. These rules are going to look good and promising for the people's rights. But when it comes to practice she is afraid that the rules will only be on the papers but not put into practice in the people's lives .

Zeph tries to remove some of the weight of responsibility from Vera by saying that she only have to make the draft and that she is only a part of the big transitional council. Her grandchildren and descendants will not blame her and give her all the responsibility if things are going wrong in the end. By saying this he takes some of the responsibility from Vera but he is only close to success. He forgets to talk about the final constitution that comes out of the draft and that every person of the different regions will have their right to do that's best for their part of the country.