Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Radical Middle | 191<br />
With it came several must-be-published pictures by Juhan<br />
Kuus, including a portrait of Boksburg’s mayor, Beyers de<br />
Klerk, in his robes and his dignitas with his Bijbel. (as cover<br />
of the next-but-one edition, that picture stunned people. Little<br />
did they know. Juhan and I had been furious that Beyers kept<br />
the Bible’s “twin”, his gun, under his robes.)<br />
also I had a bucket of must-be-published super-democ,<br />
of course. I’d toned down, in response to yawns and jeers of<br />
“utopia!” but it was strategic toning-down, not defection. and<br />
for that, there was no outline but Frontline.<br />
So … lateral thinking occurred. We’d run five more editions.<br />
I’d sell the ads myself, again, and emotionally blackmail<br />
everyone who said how good it was to have off-beat voices.<br />
With only five more editions to go, they’d (1) feel guilty and (2)<br />
be so glad I was about to get off their backs that they’d cough<br />
up.<br />
The next edition was fat with ads, as per plan. (and there<br />
was one less rumble in the atmosphere: Tony was back on<br />
layout with the exuberance of re-start.) But there was also a<br />
countdown note, telling readers of the five more Frontlines.<br />
and then came the protests, with startling force. Here was<br />
the kind of audience I’d always liked to think we had but<br />
never really believed we did have. free State farmers, azapo<br />
office-bearers, exiled revolutionaries, homeland ministers, a<br />
microcosm, saying that to close Frontline was to take something<br />
out of their lives. Some said it with a lot of heat. I have the file<br />
here two years later and I have only replied to half, forgive us<br />
Lord for that which we leave undone.<br />
additionally there were calls and street-corner comments,<br />
and editorial urgings from Finance Week and Rapport and points<br />
between, and one reader, Graham Livingstone, got a communal<br />
trust-fund on the go<br />
To say I was “touched” would be wrong. I was floored. and<br />
inspired. I stiffened the aching sinews and cranked up the<br />
creaking engine and declared though clenched teeth: this time<br />
we’re going to get things going permanently.
Change language