It is said that the entire Marikana mess was centred around the grievances of drill operators, one of the most dangerous positions in a mine, their work romantically exemplified by this clean, non-sweating man who unknowingly just scared the shit out of me.

On 23 January 2008, 26 years after my yellow clad nightmare, I saw living people emerging from a hole, tired after their shift of noise, dust and heat. This was before Marikana, and long before the Margaret shaft in Stilfontein.

Time surely have changed since the days when children crawled through mole holes on their hands and feet, dragging baskets behind them, tied with cords around their fore heads, some of them dying there, women giving birth down there.

But even for legal miners, even today, even for grown-ups, it's a tough job, like many other jobs.

A friend who is old enough to have had to endure under the apartheid regime, certified as "non-white" during those years, pointed out the chain in "Miner I". Somehow this is the work on the exhibition which he is most drawn to. The miner looks chained to the wall, to the tunnel which drags everything to that infinite gravity of the hole.

Miner II, the shift boss, also has his time in that hole, I would imagine, although I found him organising above ground. He has greater responsibilities, but can cart back a much larger reward in his own motorcar and cleanses his pores in his own bath tub, with warm water, after the stresses of each day.
The ordinary miners' biggest hampering to his or her safety during working hours can often be traced back to the poor quality of their lodgings. They start a shift already exhausted.
Noise, dust, heat.
Cold, filth, crime.
Debt, worry.

The newspaper sheets which forms the surface on which the drawings were realised may have been a legerdemain, a showing off of my skill in wallpaper pasting, at the time of creation. I can't always remember why I chose to do things. Never the less, besides the fact that newspaper is a wonderfully receptive surface for chalk pastel, I am struck, years later    - and pleased - by its property to immediately place the artwork in an appropriate historical context.

Nothing much have changed. Yet, oh, so much have changed, so that I immediately rush out to buy more newspapers to work on, now, years later. Because who is to say that there won't be an end to printed newspapers too, someday soon.

I'm not surprised about the colour fastness of the pastel drawings. I've always had complete trust in the pure pigments of pastel, mixed by the manufacturer with the minimum amount of binding material. But what surprises me, again about the newspaper, is its durability. (Remember, this is the first time in 15 years I see these works again). The gentle yellowing of the paper give the artworks an added richness and authenticity and accentuate the figures.

I've said before that this exhibition makes me emotional.

My children, my miners. They went to Moria and back and like Bilbo am suspected of having discovered the elixir of life, forever staying young, only yellowing a little from the back, forever pulled up and out by a celestial light.