He was a celebrity among the South African exiles in Gaborone. His nickname was Mars, which was what the Batswana neighbor children in Bontleng called him. Martin Wade itself was a nom de guerre. He had been significant in the National Union of South African Students at Wits and had done something spectacular enough to get himself conscripted out of turn and sent to the “operational area.” Then he had done something spectacular in the army, after which he had deserted and made his way to Gaborone. In Bontleng he lived in a genuine hovel on some kind of subsidy from the Swedes. People still in South Africa got information to him on strikes and jailings, which he published in a little mimeo newsletter that went out to different newspapers in the West, to be ignored. He was said to be ANC but sub rosa. He was myopic and wore glasses, which like his weight had an effect on me. I have a certain inordinate feeling toward revolutionaries who wear glasses, because there is the sense of how easily they could be unhorsed in the slightest physical confrontation with the enemy just by someone flicking their glasses to the ground and stepping on them. So you assume such people have unusual amounts of courage.