RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

14 | denis beckett
were often useless on Mondays. I accept that an exec’s fiduciary
responsibility is to get better service at less cost. I understand
that that’s what keeps the economy turning.
But when my phone rang late one night with brick-loyal
Wilson Msibi saying the cleaners had been given notice, I hit
the roof. Never mind corporate ethics versus economic theories,
these were Jims and Wilsons I knew, whose shaking hands I had
guided around c-a-T and D-O-G, who had clubbed together to
buy me a monogrammed leather briefcase when I left.
Two days later, in the small hours, I went to The Star,
expecting to see no-one but night-shift cleaners and security
guards. I hoped to find some committee members, to whom I
would put a plan. I felt terrible about my plan; it was treason
to the company. But deserting the cleaners would be worse. I
wanted them to go, at a set time, two blocks along the road to
the urban Training Project, the closest thing there was to a trade
union. There, eric and Jean Tyacke and Loet Douwes-Dekker,
the saints who had created this entity, would be holding a press
conference. The cleaners’ arrival would cause a flurry. They
would unfurl placards with slogans about keeping their jobs.
cameras would click. The transparent humility of these decent,
men would grip public imagination. The Star would apologise:
it was just a mistake. The cleaners would get back to work and –
bonus! – other employers would think twice before firing their
Jims and Wilsons in favour of Mervin.
It sounds neat and planned as I write it two decades later. at
the time it was terrifying. I had slogans in my pocket, foolscap
pages with short words in big letters, one slogan one page, to
be copied out. each piece of paper felt like a furnace. It was
incriminating. “Incriminating” comes from “criminal”. I, me,
was a criminal. Me??? a criminal endangering others, too. If
the cleaners opened their slogans in the street that would
be a riotous assembly, technically. could the State be that
humourless? Probably. could I be sending the cleaners to jail?
Possibly. and me, what would happen to me? Don’t ask.
What I could and did ask was where the hell were the bloody