RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

156 | denis beckett
whose office-bearers scurried to keep in the president’s favour.
The Sowetan held a seminar to open their new offices. formal
talk was ills of oppression as normal, and roll on the aNc as
was newly sayable. Informal talk was gloom about the aNc’s
“white communists misleading our children”. I asked why
not say in public what you say in private? I got puzzled stares.
a school friend of NomaV’s asked us to expose the catholic
church. The who? Yep, the catholics were no longer servants of
the Lord, they were agents of the aNc. a prominent aNc-front
spokesman said, “If we ever get the power we want, emigrate.”
It was a trap. The aNc embodied freedom; to doubt the
aNc was to doubt freedom. even Nomavenda was caught up.
Nobody could call her timid, but she was in a double bind. She
had no confidence in aNc rule, but, as she powerfully wrote,
in the absence of liberation she couldn’t indulge the luxury of
wondering what sort of liberation she would end up with.
I had my own quiet regret. How easy it would be if the
concept of ultra-democ was on the table. We’d walk right in
with minimal resistance and no terror. This was the perfect
time; a powerful government keen to tame power before it
handed power over, a claimant strong enough to veto an unjust
taming. No such time was likely to come again.