I remember a tug deep in my hair, on my scalp, stroking as a cold round heavy drop of water. My hair felt as though it had been pulled by tight gripping fingers. I walked back to No. 870, climbed the stairs that led to the door of the Room-of-my- Birth. Before entering, I heard the sound of well-oiled cars approaching. A convoy of about six cars emerged from a side street and stopped in front of our gate. I turned to look. These were security police cars. The opening and closing of their doors started to sound one after the other. I could not count the bangs because they were all coming down like the hands of a possessed drummer. I had just stepped through the door when I felt underfoot that the foundation of our house was shaking as a result of the stomping of the feet of the security police into our yard.

These security people had raided my home before, not only once or twice. At some stage they were coming for one of my uncles. When he fled the country they started to come for me, a humble scribe who sometimes would be thought of as hiding guns when wielding only a pen. They were fools who were fooled by foolish informants, and they paid for false information. But they were clever too, since resistance would always begin with a word, a leaflet, a page, a pamphlet, a plan, a poem, prose, propaganda, thoughts: all tools of revolution.

The habits of the security police were easy to read. They had had a tough time in the 1970s of Bra Steve and his group. They had vowed that in the 1980s they would tighten their hand and crush activism: they would be careful of exerting too much pressure. Too many beatings and too much violence could result in unpleasant repercussions, such as political trials that would attract crowds and media attention. Or deaths in detention would again cast them in a bad light. So they imposed an imaginary fence of fear around the township. According to them, all the undesirables were those people who were not residing in the township, but would come into the township from time to time.