RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

Radical Middle | 179
Frontline was to be for everyone; active-minded people from
all walks of life, interested in the truths of their place and their
time. and true, that sort-of happened. We were a blurring of
the divisions in which we lived. But a truth of our place in our
time (maybe all places at all times) is that interest-horizons
are short. few people go for mind-stretch reading at all, and
most of those want their standpoint reflected. Our readers were
mainly white, english-speaking, liberal-ish. They wanted some
exposure to non-white, non-english, non-liberals, or why were
they with us? But not too much.
Logically, a Thapelo shedding light on witches was as
broadening as a NomaV shedding light on police raids, or more
broadening. Plenty of people wrote up raids (though seldom
like NomaV) while few people wrote up witches.
But readers loved NomaV. Many times was I told: “I feel I’m
reading my sister”. They loved Nthato Motlana, as weighty a
“black leader” as bared his soul in print. They could connect to
the Tshokolo Molakengs and Gomolemo Mokaes and Sandile
Memelas saying unnerving things that at least related to Politics
and The Whites and The Blacks and all That. But when it came
to the Thapelos and the Bensons lifting the lid on the primeval
whirlpool of superstition … well, to avoid this realm would to
my mind have been to put on blinkers. But to publish it was to
stand naked in the highway of consumer rejection and shout
“hit me!”
One night a fellow-guest at a dinner was holding forth on a
ground-breaking Spectator article by andrew Kenny. This article
was a recycling of one andrew did in Frontline a year ago. Why
would my fellow guest miss it in his own home-grown forum,
and be so proud to find it long later in in a journal built on the
in-jokes of a distant culture? He was abashed. He said “okay,
sorry … but to find the good stuff in frontline you have to wade
through all that african crap.”
That was representative. economics spoke clearly. It said:
keep away from the Thapelos. But I didn’t listen. I don’t
complain. It was choice. I got something from the Bensons