RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

90 | denis beckett
8
Poisoned Powderpuffs
In 1983 the Transvaal president of Inkatha’s Youth
Brigade was an engaging scooter-driver named Matthews
Sibanda. Matthews dropped in to Frontline in spare moments
on his rounds and spoke soulfully of his yearning for peace and
tolerance. Now and again he’d give me a handwritten article,
often on a piece of cardboard or the backs of used envelopes.
Some of these I rewrote with Matthews standing at my side,
and I published a few. I was pleased to have them. Frontline
was meant to be about hearing voices that didn’t come from
paneled studies with encyclopadiae. and Matthews, baring
his soul over tea, was as sympatico a guy as you could hope to
meet, though when he put pen to paper you could doubt this
was the same person.
I ran a “Looking Back” series which got politicos to advance
the clock by twenty years and describe what had happened.
Matthews thought this a fine idea and pitched up with one of
his cardboard essays. His imaginary twenty years had ended