RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

196 | denis beckett
talked loud and caustic, needling police, needling afrikaners,
needling people who wear uniforms and take orders. as far as
the cops could see, this lot were my gang, there to support me,
one breath telling me what a hero I was to give Buthelezi strife,
next breath sneering about Dutchmen and hairybacks.
When someone said “check those fuckin’ fascists, dying to
break black heads”, I jolted, looked again, saw men milling,
chatting, leaning on their bakkies, tilting faces to the sun, and
lost my cool. Suddenly, there almost was the violence the police
were there for, but within a defence team.
Inside the court there was a similar disjunction. Inkatha’s
ready recourse to the axe was as disgusting to me as to anyone,
but I didn’t see good-guys/bad-guys. Inkatha pangamen were
terrified – of Xhosa rule, of rebellious youth, of their worlds
turning inside out, of aNcs catching them alone. They had to
hear “the new world has space for you.” Not “shut up, vanish,
you’re relics.”
The worst of Inkatha was horrible but the best was
marvellous. You could visit a KwaZulu school at 8.05 and find
classes full, teaching happening, the syllabus being covered.
Public accounts were intact. Hardly any hands were in hardly
any tills, olde-worlde courtesy was at apotheosis. Zulu culture,
at rest, was a wonder, though when confrontation entered it
leapt to instant boil. When all this dignity was locked to the
reign of the ballot, these guys would fly.
flying is not what I was doing in Bloemfontein. Try as I might
I could not find it in my soul to regret that word “thuggish”, but
when the chief Justice folded his papers we knew we’d lost.
It would be months before judgment was official. These were
not good months. When we found a long-sought small piano
for our oldest child, the youngest broke down. We couldn’t see
why. We had to wait for the sobbing to abate: “What’s the good
of a piano if Buthelezi takes our house?”
I had been sanguine about funds, after in the last round being
offered more than we needed. This time, the case was finished
and I’d lost, and the money was going to Buthelezi’s lawyers.