I believe more and more that as a man I owe it to herat least to try to understand what makes her a person… — André Brink

Attempt to grasp, with the creative imagination, the past and its silences.

Violence our language. A land hostile, empty, strange: it does not talk back, remains inaccessible. Which forces this violence from us,its motive achingly pure. On and one we move through the evermore arid landscape, sowing destruction as we go (....) An orgy of blood (...) with the single purpose of leaving on that virgin barren place the scrawl of our progress. We were here to acquire, to conquer, to have, to possess: I have therefore I am. Land, you are woman. Woman, you are mine.

Specific silences imposed by certain historical conjunctions.