The man who kept impending chaos at bay

They were fearful days in 1992 and 1993. Nelson Mandela was free but not elected. Apartheid had been scrapped, the 8 pm bullhorn telling blacks to get off the urban streets had been silenced, but civil war seemed a real possibility. Guns were on the streets. At the Star newspaper where I worked in Johannesburg, an empty desk suggested not someone pulling a "sickie" but a probable victim of violence. Before mobile phones were ubiquitous, if someone was missing from work, it was presumed that they had been mugged, or worse. There was a procedure. Colleagues and the HR department would ring friends to check. Then hospitals. Then the police.

Violence was random and common. A taxi driver, dropping me off at Sauer Street where the Star newspaper was located, pulled out a gun as some black pedestrians were crossing the road. He shouted insults at them as they crossed. But the days when blacks were simply intimidated were thankfully drawing to a close. They too had guns, and pointed them at the driver. This was lunchtime, broad daylight. I begged and pleaded with the driver to put his weapon down.

From my desk by a window, I saw three people killed in four attempted bank robberies over a period of two years. The extreme right wing group, the so-called Afrikaner Resistance Movement, known as the AWB, had support among the military top brass. Rumors of military action against the "betraying" de Klerk government were constant.