For stuff that doesn't fit into 140 characters or less
*In 1995, I was commissioned by Style Magazine to write a profile of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Then, as now, he was a busy man, besieged by visitors from abroad and requests from the media. I was told he wouldn't be able to fit me into his schedule for months to come. Then his Press Secretary, John Allen, said, "Why don't you just come to Cape Town for the day, and hang out with the Arch?" So that's what I did. And here is the story.
It’s teatime in the library at Bishopscourt. Beyond the wide-open patio doors, the garden is alive with colour and birdsong, and the summit of the mountain is untroubled by cloud.
It is a beautiful new South African day. The Archbishop is in his place, and all is well with the world.
He sips his drink - Milo, with ice, in a tall glass - and he rests it on the tea-trolley, his every gesture captured on video and film by the cameras that obscure the faces of the Presbyterian peacemaking delegation from America.
He points to photographs of his predecessors and tells them a story about the bishop, the archbishop and the Very Big Dog.
His ebony crucifix bounces on his chest as he mimes the collapsing of the archbishop's deckchair, the leaping of the hound on the cassock, the frantic maid rushing in to call for help.
As he reaches the punchline - "And the bishop said: 'I'm glad'" - his voice descends to a sonorous timbre, and the room swells with raucous laughter and the sound of Presbyterians steadying their teacups.
The archbishop lets it ride for a moment, and then he points to the portrait of another of his forerunners.
This time, the story is of courage and fortitude in the face of impending death. The room falls silent.
He plays the mood like a violinist, sweeping up the scale to a lilting crescendo of hope and resurrection, ending on his three favourite words: "Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful."
At that moment, everyone in the room is in love with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or at least in awe of his infinite capacity to solicit adoration.
He claps his hands and ushers the delegation into the dining-room, where they will talk about peace and truth and justice.
I have been following in the footsteps of Desmond Tutu since early this morning.
At the unholy hour of 5.30am, I drove up the winding, leafy lanes of Bishopscourt, dodging squirrels and joggers and old men walking their dogs.
But all I could see, in a mind's-eye montage of fleeting images from television, newspapers and authorised biographies, was the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the icon of the anti-Apartheid struggle, the purpleclad prophet of the Rainbow Nation: Tutu.
Tutu forcing his way through an angry mob to save a black policeman from the necklace.
Tutu clambering into the back of a Casspir, a police dog snapping at his heels. Tutu lifting his cassock and toyi-toyiing on April 27, 1994.
Tutu spreading goodwill in a township street, wearing a fisherman's cap and a custom-made T-shirt: "Just Call Me Arch".
Tutu, alone in the moonlight in a faraway English parish, dancing like a dervish with the unbridled joy of Christmas. But it's a little early for that.
John Allen, the archbishop's media secretary, who used to pound the religious affairs beat on The Star, leads the way down a carpeted corridor lined with awards and citations and momentoes of photo opportunities.
Apart from the grinding, clunking rhythm of heavy machinery, it's as quiet as a cathedral in here.
Allen peers around a doorway, nods, and makes a suggestion. "Say, 'Hi.' "
It is the archbishop. He raises a hand and says: "Hi."
He is striding very briskly in his tracksuit and Reeboks, brow lightly varnished with sweat, going nowhere fast on a Trojan treadmill exercise machine. It is the price he has to pay for being Tutu.
Not too long ago, he felt free to walk with God on the pavement outside the security gate. Now it's 30 minutes on the treadmill every morning. Still, he remains blissfully oblivious to distraction.
His eyes are fixed on the infinite, his lips move in silent conversation. He's not talking to himself.
The day will begin with a Eucharist service at St George's Cathedral in Cape Town. There will be a staff meeting to discuss pastoral matters.
On the way back to Bishopscourt, he will record a short Christmas message at Tape Aids for the Blind.
He has three media interviews lined up for the day: two television, one print. He will entertain the Presbyterians and see a couple of parishioners.
In the evening, he will answer questions from the nation on Microphone-In with Nigel Murphy.
Things are not working out as planned. When he raised Nelson Mandela's hand on the balcony at the Grand Parade, like a referee announcing the champ, the idea was that Tutu, leader by default during the power vacuum of the Struggle, would disappear quietly into the purple band of the South African spectrum. He would become a pastor.
Trouble is, the transition was a miracle. Everyone knows that. No-one knows why.
So the archbishop has had a lot of explaining to do, on an increasing number of public platforms at home and abroad.
But he is a man of the cloth. He bears his burden with grace. "I am loved," he once explained, "therefore I am."
Loaded with papers and passages from Scripture, the archbishop slides into the back seat of the Camry as John Allen starts the engine.
The journey to town, in peak-hour traffic, will take about 25 minutes. Perhaps there will be time for small talk. Perhaps not.
We take a left onto the M3, easing into the citybound flow. "I take my life in my hands continually," says the archbishop, quoting from his daily text.
"Yet I do not forget Your law. The wicked have laid a snare for me, yet I have not strayed from Your precepts. Your commands are the joy of my heart."
The archbishop slips off a patent-leather shoe and extends a red-socked foot towards the gear-lever, almost touching Allen's pin-striped shirt.
"I loathe those who are double-minded, and Your law do I love. You are my shelter and my shield. All the ungodly of the earth You count as dross. My flesh shrinks from fear of You."
I catch sight of the archbishop in the side-view mirror. A small, grey-haired man in a purple cassock, cloaked in solemn meditation. It is a jolt.
The secular world slips by the window: minibuses, trucks, police cars, billboards advertising timeshare on Devil's Peak.
"And now, you priests, this decree is for you. Unless you listen to Me, unless you pay heed to the honouring of My name, says the Lord of Hosts, I shall lay a curse on you, I shall cut off your arms, fling offal in your faces. I shall banish you from My presence."
It is 7.45am. It's impossible to find parking in this town. Even the reserved spot in the courtyard of St George's Cathedral is taken.
Tutu hops wordlessly out of the car and disappears into the mouth of the church. He swaps his purple cassock for green. Eucharist.
He swallows the last of the communion wine, the inside of the chalice shining silvery light on his face.
He pauses, rests his elbow on the pulpit and contemplates his small congregation of ecclesiastical staff. A sermon is optional at this point.
Instead, he says to them: "Hello. You look fine to me." Something about the archbishop's timing and delivery makes me want to burst out laughing, but I check myself. This is a church.
Later, on Microphone-In, Tutu takes a call from a man who is opposed to affirmative action. Tutu concedes his point, but chides him for the sexism inherent in his belief that the best man should get the job.
"Ja," says the caller, lapsing into platitude, "I always say that behind every good man is a good woman."
Tutu doesn't miss a beat. "No," he says, shrill as a bird, shoulders shaking with mirth. "Behind every good man is a woman with nothing to wear."
This is crazy. Now we're parked in. And so is the archbishop.
At every step he takes from the cathedral, his path is blocked by someone else who wants a minute of his time, to hug, to shake hands, to greet, to implore, to deliver tidings.
People surround him in clusters, and his laughter peals through the courtyard.
A visiting theologian from Germany, watching from the shade of a jacaranda tree, tells me he is horrified by the sight.
But the archbishop has a simple approach to such matters. "God, I am doing your work. It is jolly well your business to look after me."
Finally, like the Red Sea, cars give way, and we head for Bishopscourt via Tape Aids for the Blind, where the archbishop will pre-record his Christmas message.
Sitting in the glass booth after a royal reception and a quick-as-a-flash photo opportunity, Tutu obliges the engineer with a sound check -"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, I'm sitting in my chair and hoping for Heaven" - and lays down his homily in one take, without notes.
Bethlehem, he says, is God's graffiti for the world: "I just want to say I love you."
Politely declining tea, Tutu bestows benedictions in triplicate on his way out.
"God bless you, God bless you, God bless you. Good morning and bye-bye."
At Bishopscourt, someone asks him how he is feeling. He lifts his purple skullcap and pats his bald spot. "Moeg," he says, turning the word into a wounded bellow. But the limelight enervates him. Maybe too much.
He is sitting on a chair in the shade of a bottlebrush tree when the cameraman from the BBC whoomphs a white light onto his face. Tutu recoils.
The programme is Songs of Praise , but he feels more like a suspect in a police interrogation room.
The producer, sitting opposite, pops her head into a black bag, checking the image on the monitor. She offers a technical explanation.
"Unfortunately, the light is necessary. Otherwise you'll look very dark."
She attempts to embellish the point. Too late. Tutu almost falls off the chair with giggling.
"But I am very dark! And very hot. Are you trying to prepare me for the other place?''
The light is dimmed, leaving just a glow of neon on Tutu's face, and red on the producer's. She fires away.
"What does Advent mean to you, personally?"
Every word trips from Tutu's tongue with relish.
"Preparation for the birth of a baby .. ." Cut. "Sorry," says the producer, "would you mind very much saying, 'Advent to me . . . ' "
He flaps his palms on his cassock. Of course. He should know these things by now. Advent. Ubuntu. Guilt. Confession. Renewal.
Eloquent, emotive, spontaneous, Tutu is an interviewer's dream. But there is only so much of him to go round. He is forced to distribute his soundbites like loaves and fishes.
Many times during the day , I will hear him saying: "If we do not open the wound and cleanse it, it will fester." "My humanity is caught up in your humanity." "People are making the mistake of thinking that freedom means licence." Yet even Tutu is sometimes at a loss for words.
When the producer asks him to encapsulate his feelings on the miracle of April27, there is only the sound of a bee buzzing, and paper rustling, and a truck changing gears in the distance. Time is suspended. Then he spreads his arms, forgetting that the camera is on a tight shot.
"Incredible. Incredible, incredible." He pauses. "Electric! You wanted to jump and to cry and to laugh, all at the same time. But maybe the most prominent thing was, 'Hey! I am free. We are all free. Black and white together.' Yes, we are going to succeed, scintillatingly, spectacularly, because we have made this transition from ..."He touches his face. "... pigmentocracy to democracy. Incredible."
He claps his hands and I steel myself against the urge to join in. One final question. It is the most difficult and challenging of them all.
"Do you feel there is anything else I should have asked you?" Tutu leaps from the chair, waving his hands, trilling in protest: "No, no, no! Please don 't try."
He sits behind the desk in his study surrounded by tokens of the adoration he craves. A signed portrait of Bill Cosby. A big red St Valentine's bear. A frog with arms in hugging position.
Forty years ago, Tutu taught English and mathe matics at Madibane High in Sophiatown. Then he entered the priesthood, inspired in part by the earth-shattering sight of a white man tipping his hat to a black woman. The woman was Tutu's mother; the man was Father Trevor Huddlestone.
Twenty years ago, after ministering in Benoni, London, and Lesotho, Tutu was appointed Anglican Dean of Johannesburg.
Then Bishop of Lesotho. Then General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches.
Then, days after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Bishop of Johannesburg. Then Archbishop of Cape Town. Where does he go from here?
Somehow, he does not feel qualified for sainthood.
"The trouble," he says, "is that people don't know me. Christianity says everyone is a saint until the contrary is proven. But the very first thing that disqualifies me ... is feeling sorry for myself. There are moments when you think, not even your wife understands you . And you have a huge bout of self-pity, which leads to self-justification. You don 't want to spend too much time worrying about whether you are holy. The thing is, have you caught a glimpse of God's holiness, and what does that do to you?"
I ask Tutu whether it worries him that his own holiness has not always been apparent to some of his countrymen.
Some years ago, when he was travelling the world, denouncing Apartheid, calling for sanctions, and telling the West to go to hell, a white woman passed Tutu in the concourse at Jan Smuts Airport.
“It’s that bastard Tutu,” she said. “If I had a gun, I’d shoot him now.”
Yes, it worries him. There is a real danger, in the post Apartheid era, that Archbishop Desmond Tutu is becoming too respectable.
Whites who once despised him for attacking the Government, now admire him for attacking the Government.
"You know," he marvels, "I have heard it said that I should go and be chaplain to the Springboks. That wouldn't hVE been suggested, even in a jocular way, a year or so ago. Our spat with Nelson, particularly, was good. It made people realise that I am not a lackey of any political party, and that democracy does not mean not disagreeing. I have also heard it said, by someone in the ANC, that Bishop Tutu should concentrate on religion. It's quite extraordinary how quickly they echo their predecessors!"
But it doesn't surprise him. He understands the concept of Original Sin: it would only surprise him if people in positions of power did not succumb to the temptation to abuse it.
He is satisfied that honest moves have been made to derail the Gravy Train, but the thing that worries him even more is guns.
"The arms trade is a very real concern. The Government may be persuaded that this is a foreign exchange boost, but we are saying, if the only thing you are looking for is more money to come into the country, why not get involved in the drug trade? I mean, it's much more lucrative."
He laughs and recalls a bumper-sticker slogan suggested at a recent church conference on the subject. "Anglicans Do It Without Arms".
A loaded question. For a moment, he broods on the nature of power that comes and goes.
"In fact, nobody is indispensable. You are indispensable in a way because there is nobody quite like you, but in another sense, you are not. You are on a stage at the moment. But your act will pass, and some other actor will come onto the stage. And those of us who are Christian know that death is not the worst thing that can happen to you."
He pauses, and throws his hands up in the air. "But I'm enjoying life, man! It's great, it really is wonderful to be alive at this time and to see the vindication of the people’s hopes. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful."
The archbishop is sitting in a floral-patterned easychair in the lounge at Bishopscourt, surrounded by Presbyterians who have seen the Rainbow.
A woman in a dog-collar says, "Your Grace, I would say that just being here, and seeing the way our African brothers and sisters - I mean black Africans - are able to put aside the suffering and work towards peace, answers a problem that we have not answered in the States. You are light years ahead of us."
The archbishop nods sagely, touching the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. Then he brings the delegation back to earth.
"I hope," he says, stretching the vowel into infinity, "you are not going to be idealising us." Laughter. "Because we have very, very serious problems. We are all in need of healing. If the wound is not open and cleansed, it will fester."
The leader of the delegation presents the archbishop with a plaque and a T-shirt, and a woman knocks over a coffee table on her way to take a photograph.
Tutu points to the bottom of the garden, where Nelson Mandela held his first press conference as a free man.
"Perhaps you would like to take a look, so that you too can say, 'I walked where he walked.'"
A man calls Microphone-In to complain about the archbishop. It makes a change. He is white, and his voice is pinched with righteous indignation.
"How can you Tutu…I beg your pardon, how can you toyi-toyi in the church aisles? How can you clap and sing? Where is your dignity?"
It is not in the studio. Tutu is hooting, shrieking, almost weeping with laughter.
"I don't care for dignity! I frankly am not worried one little bit. I am an African. I am me. I will dance in Washington, I will dance in St-Martin's-in-the field, I will clap my hands and make a joyful noise unto the Lord. What makes you think that God does not laugh?"
He's laughing now. All it takes is Tutu.
And yes, she isn't wearing much, probably because her clothes are somewhere at the bottom of that pile of ironing. Never mind. She'll get around to it.
For now, this cover takes its cue from the famous US Playboy cover of Marge Simpson, which caused a stir back in 2009.
Then again, we're used to cartoon characters on the cover of newspapers and magazines in our own country.
Although at least this makes a change from Julius Malema and the President.
When I was small - this was before iPhones, Nintendos, and the Internet - I would sometimes lie on my back in a darkened room, with my eyes shut tight, trying to imagine what the universe might have looked like before the universe began.
It was a self-defeating exercise, one that has flummoxed many a Zen Master and French Existentialist over the years, because the mind is designed to contemplate anything but the nothingness of pre-existence.
When you try to think about nothing, you wind up thinking about the fact that you are trying to think about nothing, and then your head starts to hurt and you get up and stumble into the light in search of meaning and something to eat.
But still, I can picture the void, the blank slate, the heavy, fuzzy canvas of the universe before it erupted into being. Unless it was brought into being, of course, but please, my head hurts enough already.
Anyway, today I saw that image in my mind's eye again, only this time I wasn't lying in the dark, I was walking in it, one unsteady step at a time, my eyes wide open, seeing nothing, guided only by the tap-tap-tap of my cane on the ground, and the calm, soothing voice of of a man who was as much at home in this world as I was lost in it.
"Move towards my voice, carefully now, and watch out for the little step," said Hanif, our guide, who I also couldn't see, and who couldn't see me or anyone else in our stumbling, fumbling party of five.
He was the blind leading the blind, he told us with a laugh, through the blackened inner space of a sensory experience called Dialogue in the Dark, at the Sci-Bono Centre in Newtown, Johannesburg.
We had left our cellphones in a locker in the lobby, to keep us from instinctively reaching into our pockets to shine a light from their screens, as the door shut out the day and we wandered into deepest, darkest night.
I even had to hand my glasses in for safekeeping, and my first thought was, but how am I going to see? Which was exactly the point.
Dialogue in the Dark is an exercise in the art of seeing without seeing, of insight without sight, of focusing and sharpening the senses that are usually subordinate to vision.
We define the world by the way we see it, to the extent that we use seeing as a synonym for understanding, if you see what I mean.
So when, suddenly, we can't see a thing, we are adrift, astray, helpless, at the mercy of our other senses and the kindness of strangers.
A few shuffling steps feels like a journey across the cosmos; a little step up or down feels like a climb up a mountain or a descent into a pit.
We tend to think of black as the absence of colour, but really it is the presence of all colour, in such heavy quantity that it seems to suck the oxygen as well as the light out of the air.
We think we know what darkness feels and looks like because we are used to the electricity going out, or because we sometimes camp out under the stars.
But even Eskom and the Milky Way leave room for pinpricks of luminescence, and the hope that we will remember this time where we left the candles and the matches.
Real darkness, real blackness, is oppressive, all-enveloping, almost audible in its molecular density, its cloaking weight of nothingess. You can't see your hand in front of your face. You can't see patterns, or shapes, or breaks in the landscape.
You know where "down" is, because you are walking on it, but all your spatial cues and clues are gone, and you may as well be anchored on the edge of a black hole on the outskirts of the universe.
Then, slowly, you start getting used to it, you start using your other senses to touch and feel and hear your way around, and for a little while - about 45 minutes - you learn what it is like to live in a world without sight.
You learn not just by walking, but by talking, because this is a dialogue, and the best part of it is when you find your way to what you are told is a bench, and you sit down to talk with someone you only know by voice, and who only knows the world through four out of five senses.
But Dialogue in the Dark is by no means a dark, sombre, or pedagogic experience. It is moving, exhilerating, funny, enlightening, and a little scary.
You come out of it with your eyes open, maybe properly open for the first time, and more than that, with your mind open to other worlds and other ways of living.
I won't spoil it for you by telling you what you feel and experience and hear and touch, but I will just say there is a part of it near the end that took me back in a curious way to a famous scene from the first Star Wars movie.
Go and see for yourself, without seeing for yourself, and you'll see exactly what I mean.
*Dialogue in the Dark is on at the Sci-Bono Centre in Newtown, Johannesburg. For more information:http://dialogueinthedarksa.blogspot.com.
Our guide, Hanif Kruger, and his Golden Retriever, Orli
There is a road in Johannesburg, in the heart of the northern suburbs, called the William Nicol Highway.
It is named, I believe, after Sir William Nicol Highway, a bureaucrat and politician of the variety whose legacy lives forever on in the lane-markings.
It is a famous road, stretching all the way from the Tuscan settlement of Fourways, to the English country village of Bryanston, to the grand baronial fortress of Hyde Park Mall.
Along the road itself, there is not much to see, although there is a point, as you head into the dip near Bryanston High School and the Bryanston Shopping Centre, where you can enjoy a nice steroscopic view of the two Johannesburgs: the Dubai-like cloudscrapers of Sandton to your left, and the jagged District 9 skyline of the Joburg city centre to your right.
Then the robot turns green, and it's clusters and office parks and pummice-stone salesmen all the way.
But this week, a little miracle took place on the traffic island that bisects this unlovely and much-travelled strip of macadamised tar.
Seemingly overnight, a platoon of naked, spindly trees blossomed into a blaze of colour, red and green and orange and pink and yellow blooms bursting against the icy-blue winter sky.
An unseasonably early harbinger of Spring? A student prank? The first, subtle signs of an alien invasion? An act of random kindness by a stranger with a ladder and a bakkie-load of industrial hair-netting?
No, as it turned out. It was a branding campaign by the Breakfast Show of 94.7 Highveld Stereo. But still, I smiled, dammit.
And these trees, when Spring really comes, will look even prettier, reminding us, in our fast cars, glued to our cellphones, that there is beauty to be found even on a noisy, bustling highway in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.
A very short and alarming video of what happens when the Noonday Gun goes off on Lion Battery, on the slopes of Signal Hill in Cape Town. Press pause to buffer, then press play. Stand back, and do not walk in front of the gun. Thank you.
This pic is upside-down. Please stand on your head to see it as nature intended. Thank you.
I had always known there was a little town called Ladismith, which I had naturally assumed to be an incorrect spelling of Ladysmith.
The town with the proper spelling, of course, is in north-west KwaZulu-Natal.
The town with the slight mistake, I can now reveal, is in the Klein Karoo region of the Western Cape province, just off the R62 between Montagu and Calitzdorp. It is a long way, and at some point you have to stop to fill up and get something to eat. So we stopped in Ladismith.
There is a petrol station in the main street, which appears to be the main attraction in Ladismith, judging from the number of cars and bakkies that were there. A storm was about to break, the sun forcing its way through barrages of rolling cloud to paint the light in a silvery glow.
There were three flags flying on tall masts, their lanyards clinking in the gusts, a French and a British and a South African. The rainbow flag was threadbare and serrated at the edges, as if it had been rescued from a battle.
I strolled across the road, waiting for the schoolchildren on their bicycles to pass, and I walked into a shop called Karoo Vine, which had a giant green bottle of wine as its monument, and a chalkboard advertising Wyn Wine Port Olywe Olives Cheese Kaas Nuts Biltong. I wasn't really looking to buy. I just wanted to stretch my legs a little.
The lady behind the counter looked up and greeted me with a tra-la-la of the purest Afrikaans I had heard in a long time. "Vriendelike welkom, Meneer," she said, sticking prices on goods with slim, elegant fingers, "en hoe gaan dit met U vandag?"
I was taken aback for a moment, because the default in-store greeting in the city where I come from is an icy glare and a thin-lipped nod that lets you know you've just been profiled as a potential shoplifter. Then I regained my composure and answered the lady in the purest Afrikaans I could muster.
"Nee, dit gaan baie goed, dankie, Mevrou, en met U?"
We had a brief conversation about where I had travelled from and what I was doing in Ladismith, and then she gestured at the shelves and invited me to make myself at home. I felt like buying something after all.
I picked a packet of droë perskes and a dried peach roll and some Karoo biltong, and I took them to the counter and put them down.
The lady smiled her thanks and added up the tally, which was R54 exactly. I handed her my credit card. Her shoulders sank, and she sadly shook her head.
"O, ek is jammer, Meneer, maar ons neem nie kaartjies nie." She pointed at a small sign saying Jammer Geen Kaarte No Cards Accepted on the side of the cash register.
I did not have any cash on me, so I smiled my apologies and turned around to put the goods back on the shelves. Then she quickly added: "Maar U is baie welkom om met 'n EFT te betaal, Meneer."
I suddenly forgot the Afrikaans for "really", and I said, "really?" She laughed and said people who came to her shop from afar often paid her by Electronic Funds Transfer, and in all the time she had been running the shop, she had never once had someone not pay her after promising that they would. "Really?" I said.
And she wrote down her bank details on a small piece of paper, with R54 and her name, which was Elsa, and her cellphone number below.
She wrapped up the perskes and the peaches and the biltong and wished me 'n wonderlike dag en 'n veilige reis verder.
I walked out into the main street of Ladismith, in the Klein Karoo, between Montagu and Calitzdorp, and I saw the rainbow flag flying, and the clouds passing overhead. And I thought to myself, this is a good place, with good people. And I wasn't just thinking about Ladismith.
*In case you're wondering, yes, I did EFT Elsa the R54 when I got back to Johannesburg.
*I wrote this piece for a book entitled "SA 27 April 1994", about what happened in SA on 27 April 1994. It is an almost entirely accurate account of what transpired on that historic day, perhaps the only Public Holiday in the history of South Africa when we didn't all go to the mall, the beach, or the braai, because we were too busy standing in the queue to vote for the right to go to the mall, the beach, or the braai in peace and in freedom.
Wednesday, April 27, 1994, dawned like just any other Wednesday, April 27 in the history of the new South Africa.
As the sun rose on the colours of the new South African flag, with its black, green, and gold symbolising the African National Congress, and its red, white, and blue symbolising the flags of many other nations, a new spirit of hope and reconcilaition began to spread through the land like wildfire.
In the tranquil garden suburb of Illovo, Johannesburg, Mrs Blanche White, a freelance fashion buyer and qualified madam, picked up her telephone extension and asked her maid, Gladys, to meet her in the dining-room for an important announcement.
"Gladys," she said, "today is a very historical day in the history of the new South Africa. It is the day of the first democratic election, a day on which people of all creeds, colours, and races will join hands and go to the polls together to cast their vote for peace and freedom. Please keep me a place in front of you in the queue and I will join you in seven and a half hours."
Across the bustling freeway, in the throbbing township of Alexandra, Mr Jeffrey Mpuli, a freelance entrepreneur and small businessman, set up his ironing-board outside the local community hall and began hawking a wide range of fruit, vegetables, cooldrinks, digital watches, hubcaps, election posters, baptismal certificates, IFP stickers, and unused ballot papers in packs of 150,000.
Meanwhile, just outside the busy metropolis of Bloemfontein, at the world-renowned De Brug military base, squads of highly-trained and disciplined soldiers of the National Peacekeeping Force were donning riot shields, full-face helmets, flak jackets and spare ammunition belts in preparation for a full-scale battle with their superior officers over salary deductions and the lack of a decent pub on the premises.
Further inland, in the small maize-rich town of Ventersdorp in the Western Transvaal, a battalion of heavily-camouflaged Boer freedom fighters drew up in a screeching convoy to occupy an important regional polling station, only to be told to go to the back of the queue because no-one had arrived to open the polling station yet.
All across the country, the hard-working men and women of the IEC (Incompetent Electoral Commission) were battling against considerable odds to remember what they had done with 80-million regional and national ballot papers that had been there only a moment ago.
And yet, despite the obstacles and setbacks, the mood in party political circles was one of cautious optimism that the day would turn out to be a triumph for the democratic process, except at the headquarters of the Pan Africanist Congress, where the mood was one of cautious pessimism that the day would turn out to be a triumph for the democratic process.
Already, the SABC's Election '94 Channel 1, broadcasting in English, Zuu, Pedi, Setswana, Venda, Tsonga and Unrelenting Waffle, was crossing over to Barbara Folscher in Cape Town, who reported that it was cold and wet and that people were standing in a long line to vote.
At the Mfolo West polling station in Soweto, Mrs Mavis Mfolo, 93, was telling a BBC television interviewer that she had been standing in the hot sun for three and a half hours and she did not see why she should let him into the queue just because he was a foreign journalist.
However, when he showed her his Britsh passport, along with an official IEC Press Release stating that anyone who had been resident in the country for more than five minutes was entitled to vote, Mrs Mflo agreed to stand back and let him go first.
On the other side of the city, in the picturesque industrial suburb of Alberton, Mr Fanie de Wit, 22, a self-employed panelbeater and rugby prop-forward, was overjoyed to find himself at the front of the queue after a gruelling yet invigorating wait of six hours and 25 minutes.
As he showed his identity document/Book of Life/temporary voter's registration card/firearm license to the IEC official at the door, Fanie felt a sudden surge of newfound patriotism and a shared sense of destiny with millions of his fellow South Africans.
Suffused with positive energy, Fanie fought to stem the unfamiliar moistness in his eyes as he put his hands under the ultraviolet light and returned the greeting of the friendly IEC official sitting behind the table.
Then, with a profound spirit of liberation leaping in his heart, he waited patiently as the friendly IEC official at the next table sprayed invisible ink all over his fingertips.
From there, it was just a few short steps to the friendly IEC official at the next table, who stamped Fanie's identity document with invisible ink before telling him to come back in four and a half hours because the ballot papers had not arrived yet.
Meanwhile, on thousands of television sets across the country, the SABC's Election '94 Channel 2 was crossing over to Gary Alphonso in Ulundi, who reported that it cloudy and overcast and that people were standing in a long line to vote.
But at a crowded polling station in the sprawling township of Vosloorus in the hyphenated province of Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging, international election observers had to be called in to defuse tensions as a group of furious IEC officials stood around blaming each other for leaving 252,000 Inkatha Freedom Party stickers behind at the office.
Fortunately, after several tense hours of negotiation, it was unanimously agreed that polling should go ahead without IFP stickers on the ballot papers, seeing as the ANC was going to win the election anyway.
On the other hand, in the remote district of Vergenoeg in the far Northrn Cape, polling officials were delighted to discover that rolls and rolls of Inkatha Freedom Party stickers had arrived as ordered. Unfortunately, there were no ballot papers to go with them.
After a series of urgent cellular phone calls to the IEC's elite 24-hour standby operation squad, who weren't in at the moment, it was unanimously decided that anyone who wanted to vote for a party other than the the IFP should just write their party's name in the blank space around Chief Minister Magosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi's head. Neatness would be taken into account.
Meanwhile, the SABC's Election '94 Channel 1 was crossing over to Danie Hefers in Pietersburg, who reported that it was dry and hot and that people were standing in a long line to rent an Arnold Schwarzenegger video.
As the historic day moved towards its logical conclusion - the declaration of another public holiday to cope with the backlog - the beleaguered IEC called an international media conference to dispute allegations that the election was turning out to be the biggest bureauratic shambles in South African history, next to the counting of votes after the election.
At the plush Gallagher's Estate Conference Centre, midway between Midrand and Halfway House, an expectant hush fell over the gathering of lightly dozing media personalities, as an IEC official took the podium to announce that the conference would be delayed for up to three hours because the computers were down, and in any case, someone had just taken the podium.
But for all these minor hiccups, hitches, and bungles, millions of South Africans from all walks of life could only agree that Wednesday, April 27, 1994, had been one of the most moving days in the history of the nation.
"It's incredible," said Mrs Patience Mabandla, 66, of Alldays in the far Northern Transvaal. "I've only been standing in this queue for five and a half hours, and I've already moved 3.2 metres closer to the front. I'm definitely coming back tomorrow for more."
*From "SA 27 April 1994", published by Queillerie and compiled by André Brink.
