Dirty Work premiered at The Market Theatre in 1984 in a double bill with Gangsters. Jon Maytham played the role of Pieter Hannekom.

The action takes place in a conference room in which Pieter Hannekom is giving a lecture.

TIME: The present

PROPS: Blackboard, duster, table or desk, picture on the wall (preferably of Hendrik Verwoerd), mirror, tape recorder, food and drink containers, briefcase, suit and tie, two army jackets, lappie (or gas mask), army beret.

LIGHTS: General cover with flicker effect for explosions and alternate state (for mimes).

SOUND: Music, explosion, machine gun fire, street battle noises, laughter, offstage noises of interruption, radio news broadcast.

Enter Piet Hannekom from the auditorium entrance. He is the last person to enter the room. Any late-comer will be subjected to a search by Hannekom who will improvise lines related to security. He wears a gentle smile as he walks to the stage, acknowledging the presence of all delegates to the conference. He places the briefcase on the table, opens it, takes out a file and closes it. Once more he gives the house a gentle smile.

HANNEKOM: Good morning ladies and gentlemen, welcome, dames en here (ladies and gentlemen), welkom. Oh, I see that we have some black delegates from our neighbouring states, Ciskei, Venda, Bophuthatswana, KwaZulu – so manene na manenekazi siyanibulisa. I hope I got that right, I’ve been practising for weeks. My first and very pleasant duty is to welcome you all here on behalf of our first citizen, the Honourable Prime Minister and his Number One assistant, the Honourable Minister of Defence, to what we hope will be a very exciting, very advanced, very informative and most historic session.

You know, ladies and gentlemen, I am sure that when historians come to write about this time, they will regard this conference as a watershed in the Post-Carlton Centre era maar ons sal die geskiedenis laat besluit nê (but we will let history decide, not so)? Both our honoured patrons send their greetings and their apologies. They had hoped to be here but they are in Switzerland on private financial business and also the British government has given them permission to visit the Falkland Islands in order to lay wreaths in memory of the Boer women and children who died there in concentration camps.