that our absolute loyalty lies in the disobedience to power:
The circle narrows. The grandmother of a close friend — she’s as old as you are — pleads with her robbers not to be sexually violated, she even claims to be infected with a communicable disease; the nephew of a fellow writer is shot in the face, killed in his own house by a night intruder whom he mistook for a rat; the son of my eldest brother is stabbed in a parking lot outside a restaurant, the blade pierces a lung, the police never turn up, he is saved because his companion calls her boyfriend all the way in Australia by cell phone and he could summon a nurse he happens to know in Johannesburg. (The woman is on a first visit to the country; she leaves the next day and swears never to return.)Mandela’s Smile
Notes on South Africa
Breyten Breytenbach/Harper's Dec.08
