RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

RaDical MiDDle
Chasing peace while apartheid ruled
The fringe of the anti-apartheid industry in the
old South Africa was a poor breeding ground for
Mr Popularity contestants. The (pale) Afrikaner
Nationalist rulers thought you were a tool of
the (dark) African Nationalist usurpers and
vice versa. Worse, Denis Beckett’s Frontline
magazine was grossly undisciplined. It gave
a hearing to people whom neither Establishment approved of at all;
unblushing old-guard racists and unreconstructed Zulu tribalists
and even the Black Consciousness gang. A journal like this was
not a springboard to wealth and importance, but it lent itself to an
unclichéd overview.
Canadian publisher and former Frontline designer Tony Sutton
twisted Beckett’s arm to write the overview. That was in … um …
the last millennium. Sutton was busy and forgot the book. Beckett
was busy and forgot the book. Late in 2009 Sutton was rummaging
in long-forgotten computer files – and here is the book, paradoxically
turning out to be what the phrase “breath of fresh air” was invented
for: fresh perspectives on a fascinating time; fresh thinking on the
care and maintenance of troubled countries; fresh evidence that
tilting at windmills remains a pastime of distinction
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