Privately, Brille was very philosophical about his head wounds. It was the first time an act of violence had been perpetrated against him but he had long been a witness of extreme, almost unbelievable human brutality. He had twelve children and his mind travelled back that evening through the sixteen years of bedlam in which he had lived. It had all happened in a small drab little three-bedroomed house in a small drab little street in the Eastern Cape and the children kept coming year after year because neither he nor Martha ever managed the contraceptives the right way and a teacher’s salary never allowed moving to a bigger house and he was always taking exams to improve his salary only to have it all eaten up by hungry mouths. Everything was pretty horrible, especially the way the children fought. They’d get hold of each other’s heads and give them a good bashing against the wall. Martha gave up something along the line so they worked out a thing between them. The bashings, biting and blood were to operate in full swing until he came home. He was to be the bogey-man and when it worked he never failed to have a sense of godhead at the way in which his presence could change savages into fairly reasonable human beings.

Yet somehow it was this chaos and mismanagement at the centre of his life that drove him into politics. It was really an ordered beautiful world with just a few basic slogans to learn along with the rights of mankind. At one stage, before things became very bad, there were conferences to attend, all very far away from home.

‘Let’s face it,’ he thought ruefully. ‘I’m only learning right now what it means to be a politician. All this while I’ve been running away from Martha and the kids.’

And the pain in his head brought a hard lump to his throat. That was what the children did to each other daily and Martha wasn’t managing and if Warder Hannetjie had not interrupted him that morning he would have sent the following message: ‘Be good comrades, my children. Co-operate, then life will run smoothly.’