A new regular feature affirming the power of stories

I’ll paint you a city, I’ll sing you the streets. It could be any city, the city we smell, you and I. The city you imagine maybe. Or the city you knew first. The city where your heart first opened.

Mine is Johannesburg. There’s a story I’ve been telling for more than five years about that; about a big news item in South Africa, and how I was directly affected by it. I won’t stop telling it, it just has a new little twist now, an extra turn of the screw.

In 1992 I was asked by the BBC to do a documentary and to read a play of mine in my home town, the rough city, Johannesburg. The play — a solo work I had written and would perform — was to be recorded and broadcast; I would also do a documentary about going back.

I had convinced myself I could be objective. I had convinced myself that I could do a journalistic ‘assignment’ about going home.

Kevin, whom I met on the third day I was there, was a huge help. He had come to take my picture, a ‘publicity still’ to let people know about my play. It was a very hot day, and of course, Kevin said, yes, he’d have a beer. I was with a young and pretty BBC producer. I explained to her that every young white male under the age of thirty at that time would be called Kevin. She agreed she had met a lot of Kevins. But I could tell she thought this particular one was especially gorgeous. The Seventh Kevin. We had another beer.

Kevin had that dust-in-the-stubble look you get from photographers who’ve lain on the ground and ducked bullets in war zones and trouble spots. The guys who prove that a picture is better than a thousand stories. He showed us some of his photos, they were powerful and shocking; the man and his work had a depth of understanding and feeling that was extremely rare among young white people in Johannesburg. He had also been in some desperate places. There was violence and pain in the truths he captured and which would still be with us after al our deaths.

We had another beer, and Kevin said to us, ‘If you want the real South African story, you want to go to a squatter camp.’ He mentioned the name of one just outside Johannesburg. ‘I’ll take you there on Sunday at 10:30 a.m.', he said. Is yours a hired car? Yes, I said, why? Good, he said, because things can get a little hairy out there, you’re best not being in your own car. Actually it was a car my big brother lent me. His kids were growing up and, like most Daddies in Johannesburg, he had this cheapish Toyota ready for one of his offspring and let me drive it. Of course he made gags about the way I drove it.