RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

154 | denis beckett
spoiled for NomaV by repeated silly knocks at her name.
It was in a way funny and in a way sickening. The Sowetan
could screech for a week when it nailed a random white guy
saying something racist about blacks. But let it come to humble
Vendas and the Sowetan slipped seamlessly into disparaging
metaphor.
Now here was Winnie, the apostle Paul of anti-apartheid,
whacking Patrick Mphephu, chief minister of Venda.
Mphephu was an extra-derided figure even by the standards
of homeland politicians. He had once used the word “did”
where he meant “do” and for ever more the black papers
poured sarcastic “dids” over him. a touch harsh, I’d felt. If an
english-speaker had done the same it would be bypassed as a
slip of the tongue. Yet journalists whose own english was not
always beyond improvement made a trivial stumble in a third
language an added ground to scorn a collaborator.
Mphephu was widely viewed as not very bright. (Lebowa’s
chief minister, cedric Phatudi, telling me why an alliance plan
was held up, leaned over conspiratorially and stage-whispered
in his magisterial Oxbridge tones, “Poor dear Patrick; I expect
somebody is still trying to read him the constitution.”) But
much Mphephu-bashing was Venda-disparaging in disguise.
If Nomavenda had been Nomaxhosa I wouldn’t see Winnie
making a great play on “Matanzima’s carol Mathiane”.
Ismail ayob was right and the fuss blew over as fusses do.
Six months later NomaV re-ignited it, and a year later again,
with refresher courses on the blood-spilling hobbies of Winnie’s
boys. But to the broad public received Wisdom remained that
the football club was a church-style youth group, until the
death of a boy named Stompie Seipei.
Stompie became famous in death, and NomaV was vindicated.
Soweto’s cosa nostra even disowned Winnie for a while until
they needed her name and personality again.
Winnie was charged, for kidnap. Kidnap? The child was
dead. There were mutterings that if this was anyone else the
charge would be murder. a year or two later, my neighbour on