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Radical Middle | 81<br />
a terrific pride in it. He and I fought like wild dogs from start<br />
to end, and fired each other from time to time, once for a full<br />
six months, but always came back with mutual relief until he<br />
emigrated to canada. even then he couldn’t entirely kick the<br />
habit, and faxed off violent diatribes about the editorial and<br />
especially artistic flaws of each edition received in Toronto,<br />
where he was becoming a world-league guru. Frontline may<br />
not live in South africa any more but it will live a long time<br />
yet in North america as an illustrative centrepoint in his book,<br />
Creative Magazine Design.<br />
circulation shot up to 11,000 in no time, and then stayed<br />
put for years. awards and prizes came and went, and in terms<br />
of journalism awards per staff members Frontline must have an<br />
all-time record. Some of these awards carried fat cheques, and<br />
the theory was that winners were meant to use the money for<br />
mind-uplifting foreign travel. The reality in my case was that<br />
the cheques invariably went into the bottomless pit of printers’<br />
bills, more than once providing a last-minute salvation and<br />
staving off the bankruptcy court.<br />
The Stellenbosch farmers Winery ran the main award –<br />
the SfW National award for enterprising Journalism, which<br />
was a hang of a mouthful and I suppose it’s their fault that it<br />
was usually described as “South africa’s Pulitzer”, although I<br />
always bridled that we had to borrow an american appellation<br />
to describe a South african activity. On one occasion when the<br />
SfW flew the family first-class to cape Town to put us up in<br />
the Mount Nelson, the queen mother of South african hotels,<br />
I asked if I couldn’t pass up on the travel and accommodation<br />
and take the cash instead. They weren’t biting but at the<br />
banquet I won two awards, including the overall prize. This put<br />
r6,000 in my pocket, which is what I had paid myself for the<br />
first two years of Frontline’s existence, and was r51, plus some<br />
cents, more than the printers were currently due. It was like a<br />
gift from above; these cheques were untouchable.<br />
Next morning, the sacred cheques in my top pocket, I stepped<br />
off the plane at Bloemfontein airport and hitch-hiked to a garage
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