When the call came, Maisie Beukes was alone in the keeper’s quarters. Cecil had already gone on duty even though it was only five o’clock. The call, she knew, would be from the Signal Office in the port. It should have been no different from any other routine call – to relay messages, to list supplies needed, to send news, to report on the light.
Sometime in early May 1982, Mike Fuller called me. “Listen, we’ve been invited to perform in Soweto at the Jabulani Amphitheatre,” he said.
Taken aback, I asked, “How come?”
“Well, ‘You’re So Good to Me’ is a big hit on the Radio Zulu charts,” he offered.
“Radio Zulu?” I shot back, astonished.
“So, do you want to do it?”
Prologue
'Maud? Was I boring you so much that you'd rather stand outside in the dark?'
A woman calls to me from the warm light of a cluttered dining room. My breath curls towards her, wet and ghostly, but no words follow. The snow, sparse but bright on the ground, reflects the light on to her face, which is drawn tight in an attempt to see. I know, though, that she can't see very well, even in the daylight.
De Wet Potgieter has been a reporter for 38 prolific years, working in English (Sunday Times) and Afrikaans (Beeld), and both in print and television.
He is the author of Contraband – South Africa and the Illegal Trade in Ivory and Rhino Horn, Total Onslaught and The Eleventh Hour.
