RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

Radical Middle | 121
This was an area where ultra-democracy constantly got
stuck. If you argue “politics”, people expect you to be for or
against some group or ideology. I was arguing that the basis on
which politics was conducted was unsound, and fixing it meant
making it super-sound rather than less unsound.
But that’s the future. No-one on Buthelezi’s side was thanking
me for my earnest theoretical justification of his right to a
political existence, and many on my own side were scandalised.
after a Defendant meeting in Pietermaritzburg, Buthelezi’s home
turf, a group of activists offered a tour of the townships. It was a
wonderful day and the skies were blue and the grass was thick
and the mealies high, and things looked like how the world was
meant to be, except for the burnt-out houses.
On the edge where edendale township fades into rural
KwaZulu, we walked a dusty track with green hills towering
all round and tobacco-chomping peasants going about their
peaceful business and greeting us with a courtesy that we take
for granted and most of the west calls “old-world”, and came
to a smashed settlement, newly destroyed. One of our guides
showed the mealie-field where two bodies were found and the
outhouse where the grandfather was slaughtered and the shed
where the mother and two children met their ends, and so on.
It was pretty emotional and we squatted on rocks in silence
for a calming smoke. a woman from one of the monitoring
agencies said: “That’s what’s wrong with your theorising – the
warlords.”
I said, “So how do you cope with violence?”
She said “Hit squads”.
I asked what stopped the hit squads turning into new
warlords. She said when Inkatha was disposed of there’d be no
further need for hit squads.
a row followed. To her, my approach was a distant luxury, for
some time after the awfulness had been straightened out. To me,
to cope with warlords you thrust power at the people, make the
structures of order answer to voters, this afternoon preferably
and tomorrow morning next best. Whatever structures answered