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Radical Middle | 129<br />
opened the door. Someone in the same lot started his engine<br />
and the windscreen dribbled delicately onto his lap. Gael parked<br />
outside the Joubert Street Wimpy at lunch-time on a Wednesday.<br />
Lunch-time on the Thursday the place blew up. The Mitchell<br />
cotts building, a stolidly elegant edifice two blocks from my<br />
office, was hit so hard that it had to be condemned. We’re a<br />
nation on guard duty, while if your house is burgled the only<br />
reason to call the cops is to meet the insurance formalities.<br />
for my family, turmoil has been mainly vicarious. Late one<br />
night I was cursing the yap of a neighbour’s dog when the<br />
phone rang. It was a frightened friend of Gael’s, in Soweto. Both<br />
of us tried to counsel her, against percussion in the background.<br />
rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat-a-tat, BOOM. The echoes of Soweto<br />
gunfire blasted over the phone while the dog’s sins next door<br />
paled to insignificance.<br />
Then we had a bomb warning at Dunwell. Police chased<br />
everyone out and we clustered on the opposite pavement, where<br />
if there had been a bomb we’d be showered with glass. after<br />
half an hour, action happened. Movement! In the foyer! We<br />
held our breath. We blinked. Operation Hunger’s Ina Perlman<br />
was stepping out of the building.<br />
Tiny Ina, five foot nothing, at least two conversations at<br />
once, never less than two Benson & Hedges burning the ridges<br />
of her ashtray, had in her head-down way ignored the shouting<br />
and calling and sirens and whistles. She emerged unwitting,<br />
perceived frivolous people playing some game across the road,<br />
and tottered away unconcerned, behind her customary headhigh<br />
armload of files. Bomb scare cancelled.<br />
One day I was waiting in my office for aubrey Mokoena,<br />
of the release Mandela committee and a dozen other aNc<br />
fronts. a blast shook the floorboards and I went to enquire.<br />
a pantry in the Devonshire Hotel had been hit. It was an odd<br />
sight. Some fragile wine glasses were intact in their racks half a<br />
metre away from a set of heavy steel burglar bars mangled into<br />
sculpture. a waitress was reeling into walls, eyes blank and jaw<br />
hanging. I tried incompetently to help but admirable people
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