It was a long and frightening afternoon in 1983 as I waited for the security police to come and arrest me. I was eight years old. Earlier that day, my eldest brother Zane and cousin Glynn had dared me to swear at PW Botha over the phone. What I didn’t know was that they’d called the number for the speaking clock, which told you the time, then handed me the landline headset to say, “PW se moer!"
I’m not sure whether I wanted to impress them or if I understood at that young age that apartheid was an evil system, but I did swear at the president. Only then did my brother inform me that the security police could tap phones and listen to your conversations.
