RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

Radical Middle | 131
ranging from crude jemmies to intricate technomarvels, and
then invited me to go with him to a trial.
The accused were three Mozambicans, in custody. One was
Marlon Brando’s double, though in a black skin. In a break,
at the captain’s request, he told me he’d had a great racket
supplying stolen cars from Sa to receivers in Zimbabwe. One
day he got a tip-off to a big, new, rich client in Harare, and he
and henchmen went to visit. unfortunately the big, new, rich,
client had also received a tip-off – that a black man looking like
Marlon Brando was trying to lure them into a Sa police trap.
and the big, new, rich client, being a sabotage unit of the aNc,
was not very amused.
The Vehicle Theft captain rejoiced in the re-telling of this
story and was proud of his role in the tip-off plot. Brando
was extraordinarily relaxed about it, at least outwardly. What
bugged him was: “the Zimbabwe police didn’t believe us. Six
months we rotted in their shithole prison telling them we were
just decent innocent car thieves”.
a while later a bomb blew up in a toilet at John Vorster.
a policeman was injured, my car-theft captain. That night a
firebomb hit aubrey Mokoena’s office. I called in next day and it
was like walking through a swamp. What the fire hadn’t destroyed,
the fire-hoses had. Half aubrey’s files were ash and the other half
were welded into sodden blocks. aubrey was under sedation and
the captain’s family were taking flowers to hospital and I was
revolted. aubrey and the captain would be okay with each other,
or at least not trapped in a bombing war, were it not for the flaw
at the core. The flaw at the core bred bad things.
ending apartheid would mean fewer bad things, but to breed
good things would need real democracy. It was self-evident to
me, blinding. But whenever I said so I was told “be real, we
have half a century of violence ahead”. The way out would
not transmit. Whites said that ordinary majority rule was
the seventh hell and to want more of it must be eighth hell.
Liberationists said that majority rule was their property and
they’d be the ones to tell us what it meant.