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.  

Former Scorpions boss Bulelani Ngcuka recounts how Ivor came to KwaZulu-Natal to interview him on political violence there. 

“Ivor had more information than we had. I offered him a job on the spot and he accepted… He was really not the typical investigating officer. He made a lot of contributions in our fight against crime,” says Ngcuka. “I’m really terribly sorry that he’s passed on.”

Despite having devised a strategy to deal with apartheid-era political crimes, Ivor ultimately had little institutional enthusiasm. By then, Scorpions investigations into rather plain corruption matters unsettled his political and other interests, and also he was the only one of four people identified as writers of the Special Browse Mole report into then ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma looking to topple Thabo Mbeki from the party and country’s presidency, with a dash of foreign fundraising.

Although the report had been completed in 2006, it was leaked to labour federation Cosatu in early May 2007, just as the politicking and factional fighting went into hyper drive ahead of the Polokwane ANC national conference where Zuma was elected to head the governing party.

Anyone who knew Ivor knew the ridiculousness of police claims of a high-speed chase and resisting arrest on the afternoon of 22 January 2008 — he drove infuriatingly carefully and slowly. And the arresting team’s claim of whisky-breath evaporated just like all the other charges in June when the court threw out the case. 

It had all been a sham, and in many ways a signal of what was to come in South Africa.

Ivor could have sued for wrongful arrest, harassment and much more. He did not. 

“Ivor was perhaps the most brilliant critic of his generation, an investigative journalist of penetrating acumen, and a spook. Some people see a contradiction in those three careers. I think on the contrary that they were deeply linked,” says former Mail & Guardian editor Nic Dawes.

“The genius of Ivor’s art criticism, its interrogation of unspoken things, its attention to power and representation and its close, subtle attention, shaped his best investigative work. He would never have put it this way, but an insistence on mapping injustices and realising a democratic South Africa drove everything he did.  

“There is real tragedy in the way he became a casualty of the ongoing battle for that vision of the country, but there should be no mistaking what drove him throughout. Ivor could imagine our future, and he tried to do the hard, complicated work of moving us closer to it, at extraordinary cost.”

By then the Scorpions were as good as gone. In November 2008  Parliament adopted legislation to disband the elite investigating unit, and this was signed into law in January 2009. 

Ivor returned to journalism.

From 2009 he headed the newly established investigative unit at Independent Newspapers. It wasn’t to last beyond a handful of years, amid the often acrimonious office politics that unfolded around the sale of the newspaper group in 2013, and the changes brought in afterwards.

He didn’t always get it right, as he himself would wistfully admit in that self-effacing manner that belied his intellect, wit and sharp insights not only into politics, the criminal underworld and its reaches into smuggling networks, but also art.

Conversations with Ivor could be difficult. Not because sometimes he was just stubborn, but mostly because of the range of reference and knowledge at the fingertips of this art history and philosophy graduate, lecturer, author-turned-writer, journalist and investigator. 

But the learnings were rich, even when conversations were snatched in the smokey smoking room in the Cape Town newspaper offices he went on to work in, proofreading pages on deadline.

Ivor had a knack for nourishing budding journalism talent as he generously shared his knowledge, thoughts and experience. 

“As a young reporter, working alongside Ivor was invaluable. He could quickly point out when apparent information was the work of a serial misinformation peddler — and back this up with documents,” says journalist and author Caryn Dolley, adding that he’d never put on airs as a senior seasoned investigator.

“Ivor was delighted to one day discover cake pops. I loved that this hardened investigator melted over cake pops.” 

Cooking (not baking) and food were a constant in his life with family and friends from all sorts of backgrounds.

It was an open house at the Carter/Powell home. Chiara Carter and Ivor met on a work trip to Cyprus in 1998 — Ivor then worked at the SABC — they got off the plane together and stayed together. 

“Ivor Powell was dragged into my life by my dear friend, Chiara. Unexpectedly, with no warning. At first, I thought he was trouble, big trouble, and I made it known,” says close family friend Patric Solomons, director at child rights group, Molo Songololo. 

But what he describes as Ivor’s quiet charm, brilliant mind and amazing cooking, disarmed him. “I got to know Ivor as an unconventional father and family man. All his kids adored him and his sisters.”

Those legendary, much joked-about long lunches became much lengthier because Ivor started cooking, always way too late, taking his time and a few detours to chat with friends. Lunch planned for 1pm often turned into eats at 4pm, but Ivor’s Moroccan meatballs, nasi goreng and a range of spicy dishes, including some seriously delectable fish cakes, were well worth the wait. Every time.

A not-small cupboard in the kitchen was full of spices, and Ivor, being that generous soul, recently gave a fellow cook friend many of those. 

Food, art, literature and an admittedly eclectic taste in music and a passion for soccer — that was Ivor. 

In 1995, Ndebele: A People and Their Art was published, and throughout the book, his journalism art featured. It was an art review that, after five years of lecturing, brought Ivor into journalism, in the first-ever edition of the Weekly Mail in 1985.

“He brought a rare knowledge, insight, eloquence and passion to the job and set a very high bar,” says founding editor Anton Harber, recalling some scoops as Ivor moved into investigative work.

“Most notable was the confession of (Almond) Nofomela, the police assassin, as this was the first break in the chain that led Dirk Coetzee to break away and blow the whistle on what became the world-famous Vlakplaas exposé of police killings.”

But in the informal Sunday soccer league, Ivor was “Gauloise Powell” as he continued smoking while chasing the ball for Gotsq FC, or the Gramsci on the Southern Question Football Club. 

“We were not very good, but we had a lot of fun,” said Harber, adding, “I missed him when he went into the Scorpions and always felt his heart and soul — and his real talents — were in his culture writing.”

In the early 1990s came a stint as political editor at the Vrye Weekblad, whose then editor Max du Preez today edits a relaunched Vrye Weekblad. 

“Ivor was an absolute genius. In my view he was the best arts writer that South Africa has ever seen. It was quite extraordinary… Ivor was a special guy. Soft, but with the hard core of a journalist,” says Du Preez.

And that core of reporting meant Ivor also broke some of the first stories on the controversial multi-billion rand arms deal signed off on in the Mbeki administration.

The struggle with alcohol and nicotine was real. In 2015 Ivor had to be rushed to one of Cape Town’s public hospitals — medical aid having long been abandoned as a luxury — where he picked up a superbug infection that left him at death’s door. 

Friends begged, pleaded and pulled strings to get him transferred to Groote Schuur where nurses and doctors ensured recovery. But this experience left Ivor deeply suspicious and antagonistic towards hospitals and doctors.

Ultimately, lungs racked by emphysema, he stopped smoking for good. But the flagon of sherry, alongside some other dop as part of the lockdown stash, remained in a private cupboard.

Often frustratingly slow, Ivor also was somewhat chaotic, often just ignoring the admin of life. With money, he was generous to a fault when he had it, which was less often in recent years.

But as his son Nicholas says, “Ivor was always unconditional in love and praise.”

Ivor was just as likely to be behind the cooking pots as on the sofa watching soccer, or reading a book in a quiet spot in the house. Or behind the keyboard writing the occasional art review and commentary.

Ivor’s health was poor and it deteriorated in the past three weeks or so. On Wednesday he got up, joked, drank some tea, then collapsed and died. In some ways it seems he set the terms of his passing — at home, on his own time.

That’s Ivor. 

Caught up in the messiness of charting a democratic South Africa, he paid a heavy price. But his was a life lived, despite the contradictions, with brilliance and quiet, unshakeable integrity. 

Born in Kimberly, 23 August 1955. Died in Cape Town, 18 August 2021.

Survived by his children Jason, Zara-Moon, Rafael, Gabriel, Allegra-Lucy and Nicholas, partner Chiara and sisters Marlene and Louise. DM