RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

178 | denis beckett
that day’s paper. He said it would have been a better piece but
they’d made him take bits out for being irrelevant and long. I
said that irrelevant worked for me and so did long, if the writing
was right.
Terry unilaterally, asking no permission that was bound to
be refused, started moonlighting for Frontline, and gave us his
best stuff. It was not only I who said that, so did the sports
journalism awards. Terry’s sports column in the nation’s leastsports
journal became an institution to our egg-head readers
and an institution to the sports world’s judges. Never was I
prouder than when I in my penguin suit took the stage at the
premier sportswriter function (Terry was not always keen to
attend these things), to receive his award on his behalf and
brandish it to cheers and laughter from sportspersons who
knew that I knew no more sport than they knew constitutional
theory. (Poltergeists made me ham up my ignorance, too, such
as by asking, while they dissect a great rugby moment, “is this
in cricket or is it in soccer?”)
Terry was a high point in the Frontline firmament. I made sure
there was a large desk between us when I had editorial quibbles,
but peace ruled. I rated writer’s rights as highly as he did. It’s
a deep sorrow to me that he has vanished – literally, no-one I
know knows where he may be. I do not have the feeling that it
is a happy vanishing, and I do have the feeling that I caused him
disappointment. He asked me to help him get a book published. I
tried – didn’t I try! – and I got a large amount of “it’s brilliant, but
not viable in the Sa market”. I think Terry thought I could pull
rabbits out of hats, and I let him down. Which he never did to
me. Several times that I doubted I could afford another edition,
Terry arrived with copy that had to be published.
Thapelo Masilela, too, with inside tales of feuds and witches
in the villages of the north. Thapelo, with Benson Ntlemo, and
Gibson Mvubelo, Nape a’Motana, Nana Kutumela and others,
lifted lids on the nation around us. This was Frontline’s mission;
my self-imposed mandate, what I wanted. But aaaarrrghh!, it
was costly.