3 August 1986: Letter to My Father in Florida Regarding Concerns for My Safety

Dear Dad,

Sorry I haven’t written lately.  My little Brother typewriter broke down about three weeks ago just as I was leaving on a trip to East London, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town.  Since then, I’ve been writing semi-readable notes by hand which I send back to Jim Bachman in Colorado for safekeeping while keeping photocopies for myself.  Last week, I came across a Brother Typewriter store in Cape Town and asked if there was anything that could be done to fix it.  Turns out it was a minor problem, and it cost me only $27.00 to get it running again.  This is the first typing I’ve done since getting it back and it seems to work fine.    

Thanks very much for you letter of June 21.  It really helps to know that some people back in the States are interested in what I’m doing.  At the same time, tell Wanda that her concerns for my safety are mostly unwarranted – at least for the present.  [Note:  My mother died in 1981 after a long illness, and my father later married Wanda, whom he met in a restaurant where he regularly ate dinner.  Ultimately, this marriage turned out to be a fiasco for Dad but that’s a story for another time.] 

While I’ve been in some non-white areas, I can’t get into the black townships where most of the violence is happening.  The police and army won’t let white people in.  It’s not only that the government is concerned for our safety.  I feel they don’t want the rest of the world to know what is really going on in the townships, and they especially want to control the flow of information to the South African people.

Source:  https://www.telesurenglish.net/  Remembering South African Apartheid.

Much of South Africa outside the townships is quite safe except for occasional, random terrorist bombings.  I doubt that you or Wanda would avoid Interstate 95 because someone might have died there in a car crash yesterday.  Life is full of risks [Dad should have known.  He was a pilot and walked away from two plane crashes in the 1940s without a scratch!]  If accidents or disease don’t get you, old age eventually will.  

I received a letter yesterday from my friend, Mary Ann, who had just returned from a tour of Scandinavia with her husband.  She said the tour almost didn’t happen as there were quite a few cancellations “because of the terrorist scare and the Chernobyl accident” three months ago.  If you ask me, people who change travel plans for reasons like these are too paranoid.  I’m not going to take an evening stroll through Soweto Township any more than you are going to walk through Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood tomorrow night.  But I refuse to avoid all possible risks.  That’s not the way I care to live my life, thank you.

My biggest concern for myself is getting deported.  Not that I’m doing anything that would get me deported but you never know.  Hell, the government here won’t even explain to the local newspapers what its emergency regulations mean in terms of what they can or cannot print.  In my own case, I’ve gotten into a little trouble on three occasions (twice in South Africa and once in Zambia) for taking photos in restricted areas.  I could get taken in for questioning by the police and my film confiscated if I deliberately defy a law (which I’m careful not to do).  The worst case scenario would be a swift kick out to the country.  A small risk to take, as far as I’m concerned.  Deportation has been used against foreign journalists who have published articles which the government considers slanderous.  It has also been applied to foreign priests and ministers who have become actively involved in banned organizations like the African National Congress.  I’m not involved with any banned organizations, nor am I trying to publish anything about South Africa right now.  Partly, that’s because I don’t want to worry that I might say something that would piss off the government and partly because I don’t feel I have yet experienced enough in this country to be able to write about it authoritatively enough to suit me.

What concerns me more is that something I might write or say could get a local person in trouble.  You don’t have to be involved with banned organizations to hear or see things that could get people in hot water.  I have no evidence that the government is opening my mail.  It sounds like everything is getting through OK and the envelopes don’t appear to have been tampered with.  However, I’ve decided to be circumspect in writing about people I meet.  Perhaps I’ve become too paranoid.  If this government becomes more and more isolated from the rest of the world (as it certainly will be when sanctions are imposed), it will be less and less hesitant to use damning information against people it considers “troublesome”.  I don’t want to be responsible in any way for someone going to jail.

Like you, I have little use for governments.  But having been in Africa for four months, I am forced to admit that the federal, state, and local governments in the U.S. seems to be relatively benign in comparison with some of the African governments I’ve observed.  At least we have Jefferson and Madison’s Bill of Rights which is widely respected and generally followed.

Needless to say, I have been quite adept at holding my temper and keeping my mouth shut.  I don’t always enjoy doing so but it’s become somewhat of a game, as is life in general, I suppose.

As for my health, I seem to be doing well.  No problems except and small bouts of flu.  I probably have no resistance to the local viruses and sometimes I have too much wine and not enough sleep.  I’ve had little problem with my stomach, even in Zimbabwe and Zambia.  And I’ve faithfully taken my malaria pills when I’ve been in areas where it occurs. 

So don’t worry – leave that to Jewish mothers!

Love to you and Wanda,

Will