I came home all steamed up about writing a novel on the South African experience. I framed it around four basic themes: (1) The Bushman moving south across the desert. (2) The coming of the Huguenots. (3) The Great Trek north of the Dutch. (4) The Mfecane, that amazing eruption of the Zulu in the 1820s. These stepping stones would bring me down to the present, where I would deal with several incidents in contemporary life which had stunned me. In no way would I be able to write about South Africa without speaking of apartheid, the system whereby the races are kept completely separated.

But when I came to draft my novel - which dealt with all these matters from the outside, as seen by a visitor - I realized this was not a satisfactory approach. The novel had to be written from the inside, and I did not at that time know enough to write in that fashion.

So I dropped the subject and wrote instead Centennial, which dealt with a land I knew well, the sugar-beet fields along the South Platte River in Colorado, and then Chesapeake, which dealt with waters I knew well. I supposed I would never know enough to go back to the South African subject.

Then a pair of wonderful accidents revived the topic. The Reader's Digest had two editors with spare time on their hands, one working in the United States, one in South Africa. Each was a citizen of South Africa. Each was a fine writer. Each knew a lot about editing and researching. And they were eager to help on exactly the kind of project I had visualized. Within four days an arrangement was concluded, and I was off to South Africa to resume my education.

... Basically, the only difference between Uys's outline and mine is that as always I want to take things slowly, avoid the big central occurrences, avoid the big cities that others can write about better than I, avoid the super-dramatic confrontations, lay emphasis upon the physical settings which enclose all of us wherever we might be, and allow the story to unfold with its symbolism implied rather than stated, and its high moral instinct in the yarn rather than spelled out in chapter headings. These are devices and principles which I have worked out over several decades, and they fit my personality and skills, and to abandon them now would be perilous. (Also, they work!)

... I am impressed by Uys's belief that there out to be two interpositions between Australopithecus and Zimbabwe; the Bushmen and the putative Phoenicians, Arabians and Ophirites. I have done no work on the Bushmen and had planned to play them down in comparison with the Hottentots, whom I want to make a strong feature as those present when the Dutch arrived.

... Naturally I would not want to attempt this important and difficult book if I did not do ample justice to the great black tribes, and I have always had this in mind from the time years ago when I studied the Zulus intensely, visiting their new lands, their old battlefields, their university and their present-day homes. But I'm damned if I see clearly how best to handle this. I had thought I would focus on the Xhosa as the people who were forced south and west by Shaka, and this still appeals. But I belatedly see that the story is only half told if full emphasis is not given to Shaka, his antecedents and his followers in addition to Dingaan. But every instinct tells me to wait on this till after the Dutch have been established. It makes for a better book, I am convinced. I am, however, open for suggestions as how best to introduce the material.

 . . . Like Uys I want to stress the Huguenot strain, but as of now I have no clear plan for accomplishing this. I deem the French influence to be rather stronger than the average writer indicates; many of the profound strains of the Dutch-Boer-Afrikaans character show a clear Huguenot component. But this can be easily worked out as the characters move across the pages.

... My Chapter V, assuming that the French do not merit a chapter to themselves but an ancillary treatment, would leap directly to the Xhosa Wars and the coming of the English as a kind of afterthought. This could be a very solid and focal chapter, stressing the confrontation of Xhosa-Dutch and Dutch-English. But I have never done much work on the Xhosa, except as they were caught in Zulu history, and would need a lot of specific work to make myself competent. I much prefer the Zulus and the Matabele, but the more I think about Afrikaner history, the more significant the Xhosa become, a fact I did not appreciate some years ago.

Then the trek, on which I am fairly well informed. I have always thought it ought to be done as the South African version of the American trek to the west, and the Russian trek to the east, and I want to place it in its proper physical setting, comparing it with those other great treks which were so much more significant in terms of numbers of people involved and miles covered, and so much less important psychologically.

I had always intended, as you know from what I told you, to bypass Natal, which meant also bypassing Dingaan, because I have always been much more interested in the trekkers who did just that. I felt that I could get all the values I wanted from the Xhosa, but what Uys said at our meeting made a deep impression on me and I have restudied this issue. Blood River is too important to be ignored, even though all my antecedents as a writer warn me to do so, and I am beginning to see how I can digress to that tragic scene and then get back on what is for me my main line. In fact, this can be done with certain advantages and should be, primarily for two reasons: Blood River is too deeply ingrained in Afrikaner memory to be ignored and is too good a phrase to be wasted; and I now think that the blacks I want to follow in the powerful later chapters ought to be Zulus.

And there my specific planning comes to a halt. (In my earlier notes I leapfrogged almost directly to the workings of the pass laws, which is too enormous a leap for a book of the kind I now visualize.) I want of course to establish the diamond theme, but not too heavily. I do not want to make much if anything of the Rhodes-Kruger confrontation, for others have done this commendably. Nor am I concerned about the Uitlanders or the fracases between the two Republics.

Whatever I decide upon this lacuna must lead to the Boer War, which I have fairly well structured. But I am not making any firm decisions because I want to see what happens to our characters in the preceding episodes: Boer heroes; English actors: Black majority.

As they move into the Twentieth Century their obligations become clearer, and I have always had this fairly well in mind: much emphasis on 1938-1945; great stress on the intellectual conflicts of the 1948-1960 period; and in the final chapter a focus on perhaps only three central figures, each of which grows out of the preceding periods.

I have already given some thought to Oursler's idea that an American enter the final scenes, and now I see that Uys had the same idea. There may be some value in this: a fresh figure, a new view, a premonition of the 1990s. I don't want to use the diamond melodramatically, but if it is well handled in the opening chapter, and then again prior to the Boer War, there could be a way of utilizing it within the limitations I set myself. At any rate, I'm think about this and have so far come up with nothing. But the idea does persist, so maybe it's a good one.

Now you know all I know and the next move is yours.

(click to read the full letter:)