As a conscientious objector to military service in South Africa, Boshoff served a prison term and wrote this political tract in made-up language for security reasons. The single original page of writings is numbered 24. The remainder of the original manuscript (pages 1-23) is held by a South African Bank. The photocopied text of the 23 manuscript pages is unique and done by Boshoff. A single page provides the key to the code writing. The original page is matted and stored in a box with other drawings by Boshoff. From Boshoff "word forms and language shapes," Boshoff writes the following: Although I only began making BANGBOEK in 1978, the idea for the work originated in 1973, when I was 22. In response to a powerful religious call, I angered my parents by aborting my art studies in the final year, and instead became a lay preacher. The South African Defence Force (SADF) made things worse, pulling me in for yet another of the army's compulsory training camps. To my mind the army was doing wrong, intimidating and killing people instead of helping them. Inevitably I let it slip to my fellow recruits that I had serious reservations. When the men in my platoon informed on me, the commanding officer berated me mercilessly in front of the whole command of more than a thousand men. Thereafter I was relegated to the rank of potato-peeler. After that humiliation I completed my studies and became much more careful about what I said and to whom. My private diaries were filled with critiques of military service. I developed religious arguments, hoping that I could use them to gain total exemption from any further military training. My dissident and headstrong convictions became progressively more extreme. By 1980, when I was summoned to attend another camp, I could no longer submit to the military routine. I remonstrated with the chaplain, who was a church minister in civilian life, and persuaded him to allow me not to carry a rifle. He tucked me away at the back of the camp's operations tent to do administrative work. During this time I rewrote all the subversive opinions I had expressed in my diaries. I produced an 86-page document on a military typewriter and official paper. The other soldiers did not notice or care; they had other things on their minds. In the year following this camp I prepared for my next confrontation with the SADF. I resolved to refuse both to wear a uniform and to obey orders. A similar obstinacy shown by other conscientious objectors had earned them extended jail sentences. To prepare for just such a disastrous eventuality I designed a kind of 'spy-writing' I could use when I wanted to make private notes in jail, without anyone else being able to understand them. My typed notes were re-written at home in cryptic letters and symbols designed to resist decoding. I was hoping that the painstaking hours this kind of writing took would harden and toughen me for the years of imprisonment I might have to undergo. This enterprise culminated in the artwork called BANGBOEK, an Afrikaans pun on the word bangbroek, meaning 'scaredy-pants', but freely translatable as 'the book that is afraid'. The text is my own silent way of reinforcing my loyalty to pacifist convictions, a secretly knitted armour against the authoritarian attitudes I would encounter. The writing resembles a rain of insignificant dots, and the text is in phonetic English. The title, however, is Afrikaans -another device intended to thwart decipherment. The opening line reads: 'This is an analysis and an account of pressing matters carefully considered while I was in the armed forces ...' When I was next called up, I handed in a letter that indicated my refusal to serve, and detailed the history of all the military camps I had attended. The Board of Deferment made me wait outside while they checked my account against their files. At four o'clock that afternoon, they called me in again. My thoughts went out to my wife and baby daughter. I was really To my surprise the chairperson apologised. Their records showed that I had in fact done training camp too many. I was free to go! In 1984 I wrote a thesis for my National Diploma in Technology at the Witwal Technikon. BANGBOEK was one of the major works of art I submitted. At that time I was lecturing at the Witwatersrand Technikon, and my boss was a member of the Broederbond, the secret and elitist Afrikaans society that masterminded the politics of apartheid. Needless to say, my thesis did not reveal the real contents of the Book That Is Afraid; nor does it spell out any of the true reasons for its creation. After South Africa's change to democracy in 1994, the old military regime, with system of compulsory conscription, was abolished. I no longer see any reason why keep the true nature of BANGBOEK secret; nor do I or the book have to be afraid. The original 23 pages consisted of ink on paper drawings mounted to masonite with glue. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.