SOUTH AFRICA. South African artist Willie BESTER. He is perhaps the most highly regarded urban black artist in South Africa at the moment. His work is powerful collage/assemblage pieces that juxtapose found materials from the township with painted images. One work has bits of barbed wire, a copy of the Government book categorising the various races, snapshots of a racist attack that, according to official documents, never too place and a police officers' ammunition belt. "I made art to please the white man, pretty things for them to hang in their houses. Now I am working for myself, doing work about the problems of the townships." Well it's complicated. Best is working for himself, but most of his collectors are white. They are liberals who buy his work because it is good, but also because it helps alleviate their sense of responsibility. It's a sort of mea culpa activity. In the current climate, work by black artists in which they express their suffering is what white collectors want; you cannot please them with pictures of the Cape landscape. 1994.