I enjoyed reading your comments on South Africa. It's still a volatile situation amongst Africans so inclined to the persecution of their own. I am not easily assured by your words. Has it, as you have written, become a multi-racial state where Whites have been enshrined as senior partners in a mutually beneficial governmental structure? Political progress has been achieved, I agree, but there are those who hate the current structure and are little mollified by the "Goodwill" speeches of thwe present Government. Political and ethnic awareness is being spread. It is a gargantuan struggle to achieve an ideal.

The Government attempts to dampen the violent overtures of more militant party members. Old rivalries resurface. The ANC has problems and the pent passions of the people could easily explode into racial rioting, leaving many casualties. I have become acutely aware of the growing uncertainties of the ordinary man who languishes in anticlimactic aimlessness. Complaints of intimidation, racial discrimination and social inequalities further inflame the situation. Unease is being demonstrated in an upsurge of sabotage, violence and killings. Hoodlums terrorise passing motorists and all over the country incidents of arson, vandalism and assault occur. There are disturbing reports of lawlessness and licence. Old long suppressed prejudices are emerging and it would seem that serious tribal infighting has broken out. Blacks have been hideously maimed or burnt alive in their own homes. Such callous and wanton cruelty is hard to believe. It is apparent that some of the victims are members of political parties and rival groups. The savage murders infuriate the opposition and vigilante groups roam the townships. In some townships, the semblance of civilised order has begun to rapidly disintegrate. Agitators feed their ideology to an impressionable emergent people already embittered by the real and imagined crimes of the present Government and unrest could spread. A troublesome minority are a law unto themselves. They are hostile, resistant to change and irrevocably cemented in their old ways. They will deal a crippling catharsis to South Africa. The Government has to act to contain this violence.

Yes, at times, I feel as if I am out of step, feeling and thinking in one world and existing in another. How can I not become emotionally involved when I record what I see? If all I do is to convey the description of violence and disorder by looking upon the confusion without recording my own feelings and experience, how can they fully be judged? My words could never convey the whole experience of the picture. I find it almost impossible to translate the pictures into symbols which accurately represent them. Some pictures are so fleeting or ephemeral that I can hardly capture them in symbolic form. They are almost impossible to express in words. When I experience a picture, I am caught between its furies. I feel and observe, I rejoice and suffer. Largely, what I write is instinctive but I search for precise words. I can spend an hour on a sentence, a paragraph, even a page as I fumble with words. Writing by hand exacts more effort, its slower, giving time for second thoughts. At best, my words distort and betray the truths of the pictures because I have little understanding of what it is that I have seen. All too often it is a mad confusion of images.. Often my words only hint at what I have seen in my mind, they are rough and ready translations. I often become frustrated by the gap between what it is I've seen and my language in their recording.

I record all my thoughts with a rush of words but they do not capture what it is that I've been trying to say. It is why I work with written notes and drafts. I often find myself expressing my thoughts and ideas in a number of different ways before I am finally satisfied.

I wonder if I press more meaning into their recording than exists. It is hard to master their confusion and complexity and be able to present what it is I see lucidity. As I have written above, it is hard to disengage myself from my own feelings. It is a question of understanding and explaining their least explicable and ultimately inexplicable images. I am like a child fumbling with a complex tool that I do not understand. The images can be ambiguous and can take many forms and be on many levels. I am acutely aware of their uncertainties. I cannot handle or understand fully all which is portrayed. Barriers exist because of my own lack of knowledge and language.