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Radical Middle | 85<br />
that if the racists were allowed their uniracial tea and biscuits<br />
there’d be less burning and belittling? Surely there was a better<br />
way to brotherly love than pistol-point? could there be a life<br />
beyond anti-apartheid, a “post-anti-apartheid”, or “after postapartheid”,<br />
where people lived in harmony without necessarily<br />
pretending to colour-blindness?<br />
While these questions tumbled in my mind, the question I<br />
most often had to answer came to look ever more wrong: “are<br />
you for the whites or for the blacks?”<br />
Once at the union of Jewish Women – toughest taskmasters<br />
in town, weekly meetings, no wriggling off their hook, and for<br />
thanks they gave you an envelope with two ten-rand notes –<br />
I argued that the aNc were entitled to see equal citizenship<br />
as the dawn of legitimacy, and the conservatives were entitled<br />
to want a community life unswamped. an old lady afterwards<br />
gave great thanks and enthusiasm and said, “The only thing is,<br />
I don’t know if you are for Mr Treurnicht or for Mr Mandela.”<br />
There you have it. Who are you “for”? Not what are you for? I was<br />
“for” changing the basis by which directions were determined.<br />
This was not a “for” that anyone recognised.<br />
Frontline tottered forth, dropping drips of the slowly<br />
crystallising gospel according to Beckett into the minds of a<br />
select, which is a nice word for small, readership. But while this<br />
pursuit became my own main mission it mercifully did not, yet,<br />
stunt Frontline’s increasingly nice reputation for rounding up<br />
worthwhile contributors.<br />
freelancers were the name of the game and Frontline’s were<br />
eclectic. Some – blacks especially – got the mainstream press<br />
excited. around 300 Frontline articles were re-published by<br />
someone else, a thing I could never get straight in my mind. I’d<br />
spend an eternity beating and bashing a freelance contributor<br />
into refining a piece of work, and often after the tenth or so<br />
draft rewrite it myself, and then the Cape Times or The Star, or<br />
occasionally the Spectator or Algemeine Zeitung, would phone<br />
and offer fifty rand to lift it. This was good for getting-onthe-map,<br />
though the big introductory rePuBLISHeD frOM
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