1 - Introduction

Summary

In December 1979 I was working in the Cape Archives. Together with a number of other researchers, I would often drink coffee at about 10.30, not in the Gardens Cafe, then the usual resort of Cape historians, but in a small coffee bar in a nearby arcade. I suppose that, in the heart of summer, it was cooler than under the trees in the open air. Now, before their move to the old Roeland Street gaol, the Cape Archives were in the centre of the city, very close not only to the South African Parliament but also to the law courts. One day, as we came out of the cafe, we passed a group of about five people. Leading them was a tall, fairly elderly man who was walking, slowly, upright and sedately. The others were all shorter than he was, or at least they made themselves appear so. They were all dressed in the robes of barristers, and I suppose that if I had been sufficiently attuned to the niceties of legal dress, I might have noticed the details which distinguish the chief from the acolytes. But I did not need to have such additional signs to recognise the hierarchy within that little group, as they walked through the passage after having come down from the advocates' chambers higher in the building to the court.