RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

Radical Middle | 205
straight from Tuynhuys, the State President’s cape Town
residence, where he had accompanied his boss, the visiting
editor of the Telegraph, to meet fW De Klerk.
The party was humming pretty well, and Bloemfontein was
back of mind, and in an irresponsible moment I bet Stephen that
he couldn’t do the hat-trick, a third lawsuit from a third article.
Stephen said fine; he was about to leave Sa for Iraq, he’d do a
valediction for the next edition. Gael and andy commented in
short words, that I’m sure are libellous.
It happened that april 1 fell on a Sunday, a couple of weeks
later. We were going to lunch at the Duncans’ new home,
a beautiful Herbert Baker in The Valley road, old Joburg’s
classiest address. This house gave me anxieties, over how andy
was to pay for it if I ate all his time.
We arrived very mournful. andy came to greet and was
alarmed: “What’s wrong?” he said, “what’s happened?”
We’d agreed that Gael could summon more credibility than
me. She said sadly: “Haven’t you seen the papers?”
andy shook his head.
Gael looked funereally at the ground and sniffed, “Winnie
Mandela’s suing Denis”.
When andy recovered, there was laughter all round, but it was
laughter too soon. Two months later the legal representatives
of chief Hudson Ntsanwisi, chief Minister of Gazankulu,
requested me to kindly supply r50,000 in compensation for a
report by Benson Ntlemo on Ntsanwisi buying votes by giving
members of his parliament official cars. I phoned andy with
the news and he said, “Man, you can’t fool me with that again,
I’ve already heard it.”
Well, that was the third lawsuit, and the last. The suit fell
away without much strife.
unfortunately, so did Frontline.