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Radical Middle | 107<br />
nation, and free us of the attrition. He failed to agree with my<br />
prescription, but terrifically nicely.<br />
as I saw it, entrenching democracy was an avenue lying in<br />
wait for someone to pick up. Who? Whoever may be interested.<br />
I tried Mangosuthu Buthelezi. I had been in Pietermaritzburg<br />
talking to a lunch club of the local gentry. (One of few times I<br />
brought a house down. a publisher named Libbie van Heerden<br />
raised copious complications about white writers writing for<br />
black readers & vice versa, ending with “Mr Beckett, can you<br />
offer advice.” I had ear-to-ear vacuum but reflexively got out<br />
“use short sentences”.)<br />
Buthelezi’s driver was supposed to pick me up at 3 pm<br />
but arrived after midnight just after I had sunk between the<br />
Imperial Hotel’s sheets. He was rarin’ for the 250 kilometres<br />
back to ulundi and I had a hard time vetoing that and a harder<br />
time vetoing his subsequent intention to sleep in the car. He<br />
and two unexpected additional passengers ended up in my<br />
room, over the protests of the Zulu night clerk to whom black<br />
men in white men’s quarters was an offence to Our Lord Jesus.<br />
It had evidently been a long and showerless day. The three<br />
huddled on the carpet under one of my blankets and we<br />
embarked on a duel over ventilation. I’d fall asleep, wake after<br />
half an hour with a choking sensation, find the window had<br />
been closed, open it and fall asleep for another half-hour, on<br />
and on through the night. We left at six with the driver putting<br />
in practice for the world land speed record.<br />
Buthelezi was all warmth and brotherhood. I tried in vain<br />
to proselytise him into the accountability cause, and then put<br />
on my journalist’s hat and interviewed him. I thought it was a<br />
fair interview. anti-Inkatha people thought it was a pro-Inkatha<br />
interview – but then, they think any reference to Buthelezi is pro<br />
unless it carries several derogatory adjectives per each syllable of<br />
his name. Buthelezi did not think it was fair. So I was “reliably<br />
informed”, although the customary long angry letter remained<br />
absent. at the time I thought this meant he was mellowing. Later<br />
I would look back on it as an ominous silence.
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