RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

Radical Middle | 189
an Indian numberplate shop and asked to use the phone. Sorry,
they said, broken. I came out and looked around for What Now.
a black youth leaving the numberplate shop stopped to lecture
me, a bumpkin in need of streetlore. “You can’t ask for the
phone”, he said, “or they can only say ‘twenty cents’. You must
go in with two rand in your hand.”
I thanked him and reached for two rand, and found I had
only shrapnel; not even a busfare, never mind the tenfold
phone premium. The rain had abated and my suit had already
swum the Limpopo, so I pointed west and walked.
Halfway to Mayfair a car pulled up, hooting. I peered in
and saw a guy named rims, who we’d met a few times at his
cousin’s house in Lenasia years before. rims had been a carpet
and curtain dealer, never missing a chance to push a sale, to
the mortification of the cousin. The only time I heard rims
not talking sales was at a party after the ’76 bust-up, when he
mortified his cousin even more. Pulling a pistol from a shoulder
holster and waving it wildly he yelled: “You whites! You care
nothing for us! You hog the police to keep your suburbs safe,
way over there, miles from Soweto. and us! We’re right next
door!”
By this wet afternoon in 1989 rims had diversified. He
frowned at my soaking suit and said he had a new imported
line he could let me have cheap. He had also prospered. In case
I failed to detect that from his ten-yard car with on-board phone
and push-button everything, he gave me all the numerals the
tax man would like to hear.
reaching my office on the fordsburg border, his face fell.
“This is where you work?” he said incredulously. “Man, this is
where I started” .
That building held a rare slice of Jo’burg history. It was from
outside my huge window, its sill wide enough to sleep on, that
on March 15 1922 the bugle sounded for the last charge of the
rand revolution. But I knew what rims was getting at.
He had no education and a caricature Indian accent, and he
worked his way up and out of Indian fordsburg. I’d had a silver