RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

Radical Middle | 77
put together. Better, Braamfontein was the nation’s greenhouse
of socio-pol ideas. It had all the extremes plus the official
opposition’s main redoubt.
So it also had the Special Branch. By then we were supposed
to say “Security Police”, so of course “Special Branch” was
set in stone, and when we passed the ultra-fortified “import
agency” above the German husband-and-wife camera repairers
we’d show people where the Special Branch were.
Jorissen Street was used to its rare brand of local sights.
Overnight, once every few months, the Diakonia side parking
bays were occupied by traffic cops and portable no-parking signs.
We knew that some time in the day there would be a bellowing
of sirens and a motorcade would swoop up, motorbikes at the
front, blue lights flashing, a police car or two, a plain black
tinted-windscreen job, then a super-special imported model
as long as two hearses. The big car would halt at Diakonia,
and from the back emerged the President of Bavaria, foreign
Minister of Ivory coast, crown Prince of Norway, or Kabaka of
Buganda, being given maximum government co-operation to
visit Bishop Tutu, who the government simultaneously treated
as Public enemy Number One.
at a slightly lesser frequency the same parking places were
full from very early in the morning with white or pale-green
Opels. What you then did was, you checked shoes. Legend
had it that white shoes were high fashion among the Special
Branch, and I can vouch that when the street was full of Opels
the pavements saw lots of white men with white shoes, and at
some time in the day a (white) Mercedes would pull up and
three men in (grey) suits would alight, waving search warrants
which they may proceed to serve on Tutu but more probably
on Beyers Naude of the christian Institute, who had an office
in Tutu’s building.
I moved into an office euphemistically called “Suite 402,
Dunwell.” I didn’t know what was a suite about this. It was four
short walls with a window overlooking Jorissen Street. ravan
Press, in its heyday as South africa’s lefty publishing house,