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Radical Middle | 209<br />
and dry toast and he said he’d be gone by the end of the year<br />
and none too soon. He was right by three days.<br />
In Bonn and London as well as Paris I spoke to africa-experts<br />
large and small and punted the faith. Back home, I figured, the<br />
soil was infertile. everybody had a blocking-point. The aNc<br />
fronts had eyes only on picking up the reins when the Nats<br />
laid them down. The homeland contingent were as keen on<br />
free ‘free elections’ as Genghis Khan. The Nats were adamant<br />
that ‘one-man-one-vote’ was the end of civilisation, and shook<br />
their heads and walked away when I said, No, the beginning.<br />
The Progs blew fuses at the concept of a morality beyond ‘nonracialism’.<br />
Moreover, I had rashly (though correctly) said that<br />
if the cornered government saw full democracy as the way to<br />
go, it needed no permission to introduce it. Going to the people<br />
with no holds barred is going further than “negotiations”. and<br />
there went fuse No 2: “You can’t impose democracy! You reach<br />
it by consensus!”<br />
abroad, people saw straighter, fewer parallax problems. Or<br />
so I reasoned. and the foreign input on South africa had run<br />
out of steam: “Move away from apartheid”. It was a dirge, going<br />
nowhere. They wanted us as a working, stable, nation and not<br />
merely as a “non-apartheid” nation. So it was simple, I’d tell<br />
them that the better South africa lay on the far side of the target<br />
they were looking at. They’d think it over, they’d say “Oui!” or,<br />
if they liked, “What ho!”, and new meaning would creep into<br />
the urgings directed at Pretoria from across the seas.<br />
On May 1, 1989, I visited the British philanthropist David<br />
astor. a well-intended intermediary had been certain that he<br />
would leap to back my “logjam-breaking” initiative.<br />
I sat in the most aristocratic London parlour I had seen<br />
outside the movies, and I sang my song. astor stifled some<br />
yawns, and said, “Why make things so complicated? Just oppose<br />
apartheid, like the aNc, that’s all that’s needed.”<br />
Walking back to Buckingham Palace Hotel, a mid-level place<br />
with a view over its namesake’s stables, I realised that today<br />
was five years since I first sabotaged Frontline.
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