WAYNE BARKER, ARTIST’S MONOGRAPH

By 1992, Barker was well known to the downtown
police. In those days virtually everyone with a remotely
subversive record - and certainly all conscientious objectors
- had a file kept on their activities at the notorious police
headquarters, John Vorster Square.
It was there that Barker was taken after his second
arrest. "What happened was a policeman, a big, big, white
policeman had just caught a street child for petty theft and
fucked the bejesus out of him in front of me, so I was
again faced with this whole terrible reality of do I -
can I - speak for him. Or
do I just ignore it?"
Barker lost his temper.
The arresting officer
lost his docket. Barker
spent the better part
of his week in the
holding cells, where
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he was faced with another moral question. "I was in the
cell with two far right wing AWB types who had just
murdered a black man. They had stolen his guitar and
they had killed him."
Late on the second night, the Sergeant came to tell the
one man that his brother had committed suicide, and
Barker found himself nursing the enemy through his trauma.
"Suddenly I was the only one who could help console
this guy... For hours and hours.
About death and about loss. At
the same time I was sitting there
hating him. For me it was
another big wake-up call about
what a contradiction I'm living
in, living in South Africa."