Home Post, another of Drum's sister publications; she was given her own column and a steady salary. Here she met such noted writers as Lewis Nkosi, Can Themba, and Dennis Brutus, and experimented with her own independent writing. But her life-changing experiences at this time were that she came into contact with black nationalist political writings, especially those of the Pan-Africanists George Padmore and Robert Sobukwe. One of Padmore's books "gave me a new skin and a new life that was totally unacceptable to conditions down there," she later wrote. She met Sobukwe and found him an overwhelming personal presence. She also came into contact with jazz and jazz musicians, developing an instant crush on the young Abdullah Ibrahim, then known as Dollar Brand, who led the country's foremost jazz ensemble. The personal and political exploded in early 1960. Head joined Sobukwe's Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) a few weeks before that party led a fateful mass protest in Soweto, Sharpeville, and other black townships. The Sharpeville massacre ensued, triggering decisive political and social changes in South Africa. Black political parties were banned and thousands of activists were arrested. Head worked briefly to support PAC prisoners before being arrested herself in an ugly incident of mutual betrayal among PAC sympathisers. Although the charges against her were eventually dismissed, she soon spiralled down into a deep depression and attempted suicide. After a brief hospitalization, she returned to Cape Town, temporarily broken in spirit and disillusioned with politics. Around 1969, Head also began to suffer symptoms of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia After a year of lying low, Head reappeared in Cape Town's intellectual and political circles, associating with the multiracial intellectuals of the Liberal Party as well as with the agitators of the PAC. She began to smoke and drink. In July 1961 she met Harold Head, a well-spoken young Coloured man from Pretoria who had many of the same intellectual interests as herself. Six weeks later they were married, and on May 15, 1962 their only child, Howard Rex Head was born. The infant was marked by a slight, then-unrecognised foetal alcohol disorder, one that was to affect him throughout his life. Both Harold and Bessie wrote articles at this time, most often for The New African, an upstart monthly published in Cape Town. Bessie also wrote a dramatic novella, The Cardinals, that went unpublished for thirty years. But mostly the Heads were