Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
118 | denis beckett<br />
in the Guardian, the New York Times, etc, and then re-quoted by<br />
the Jo’burg papers quoting the foreign papers. To the media<br />
in-group any dissident black viewpoint was automatically<br />
inauthentic and one viewpoint in particular – Prince the<br />
Honourable Dr Buthelezi – was practically radioactive.<br />
I carried no torch for Buthelezi but a one-way flood doesn’t<br />
work for me. One day someone sent me an article from the<br />
(London) Spectator by one Stephen robinson, with a scrawled<br />
anonymous note saying this was something different. So it was.<br />
I had never heard of this robinson and suspected the name was<br />
a pseudonym, as was not uncommon when some journos wrote<br />
what they did think as opposed to what they were supposed to<br />
think.<br />
robinson was rude about every politician in sight including<br />
Buthelezi, who was “nauseatingly pompous” and whose “Impi<br />
regiments are among the most thuggish operators in South<br />
africa”. But the thrust was a powerful antidote to the standard<br />
routine. The liberals were not mere pathetic joke figures; Tutu<br />
was not finally the fount of all wisdom; and Buthelezi, likeable<br />
or not, mattered. This was a nice challenge to conventional<br />
wisdom and for that reason I ran it.<br />
I credited the Spectator and sent a copy to their editor,<br />
charles Moore. This wasn’t the most orthodox lifting procedure,<br />
but all small publications know that nobody gets upset about<br />
occasional judicious liberties.<br />
I thought the liberation mafia might be unimpressed but<br />
at least Buthelezi, although not necessarily jumping for joy,<br />
would be pleased to have a small cudgel taken up for him. I<br />
underrated his legendary thinness of skin.<br />
When NomaV and I opened the summons, for r20,000, I<br />
blew up. as I saw it, this was way out of order. I resolved on<br />
the spot that we would fight it to the end even if I had to do it<br />
myself, which, in light of counsel’s fees, I probably would.<br />
I put a small item in the next Frontline to say we’d be fighting<br />
it and to invite persons with evidence to come forth. a postal<br />
strike was on and mail was being delivered by white technicians
Change language