Ivor Powell, a life lived at the edge of art, journalism, politics, investigations — and a stove
It may have been a deflection of the night spent in police cells where the water, smokes and sweets in a quickly packed bag proved useful, but it was also a typical Ivor comment — wry, sharp and observant of dynamics; this time how the first rungs of a pecking order are put together on the way from police cell to court.
Ivor could have made it all about him. I clearly remember he didn’t. He just wasn’t that kind of a mensch.
Ivor had been in the centre of a shit storm, and had been for a while. He had been recruited into the newly established Scorpions with a very specific brief — to investigate apartheid-era political crimes.