Ree-Joy Designs At DECOREX

 

Where Are The Last Revolutionaries Of Our Time

Where are the last revolutionaries of our time;

the dreamers who listen to ghost whispering from the past in a language of anguish?

When ours is a creativity shaped by our traumatised heritage,

how do we face the night without our binding histories?

Where are the bodies of revolutionaries of yesterday, 

to spark raging flames in souls of newly oppressed freedom’s children?

And as we approach memory that exists at the crossroads of the future and present,

without losing sight of the shifting political grounds,

can this generation pray in a different language? 

Those disposed bodies were political.

They stir through memory, under the cold sun

celebrated only by the dead who rest in acoustics of spirits that destabilise the present.

They ask:”Where are the spirits of Boikie Tlhapi and his comrades,

when their bodies lie discarded, 

into dark bowls of a merciless earth where many black bones toil for wages?

Researching Boikie

Human history has been shaped by processes of asking questions, and historical imagery, visions of cultural history that connected the past and present are essential elements for recollection of erased and censored memories.

The central node of my broader investigation into the disappearance of Boikie “Majestic” Tlhapi is predicated therefore on finding a conciliatory closure for family members, but also for the community that shaped his political awareness.

As a narrative vessel, Tlhapi’s life is a reminder that in order for transparency to take the fore society need effectively respond to complex and evolving questions of his death. As a filmmaker it has been an awakening journey of an inclusive discourse that I am to foster regarding the untruths and erasures of people in the not so distant past of white supremacist oppression of black people in South Africa.

Deeply rooted in memory and history, offering a powerful and experimental approach that encourages reflection on significant yet under-explored social histories, this article speaks against historical cliches that contuse contemporary perspectives of the past, deforming and reforming them for subaltern purposes of censor and erasure.

Ikageng is a place dense with often tragic stories and the story of Boikie Tlhapi, an activist who was “disappeared” by apartheid police, is indeed a sore spot for many people within the community, over and above his death - death as exile without return -  that continues to haunt the family.

There is now an inquest opened through The Foundation For Human rights, which aims to uncover the culprits in the deaths and disappearances f over 20 activists. This process has also affected certain processes regarding the research and development of the documentary.

The identified protagonist, Mr. George Mbathu has now been summonsed to appear in court by the NPA, and the court hearing are scheduled for April. He will stand together with Mr. Johan Venter, a former Station Commander who miraculously is still alive and residing in Potchefstroom.

And as the family anticipates recalling and speaking about the gruelling memory of their kin’s death, they have now requested that the director wait until the court case is underway, thus allowing for the film to follow the actual process of prosecuting suspects and finding compensation for the families concerned.

***

Boike’s life undeniably survived shifting political conditions marked by cycles of blatant brutality by the apartheid police force, persecution, collapse of familial unions and the disintegration of social structures. He witnessed the hard hand of supremacy slap the wits from his parents, and as an avid scholar and reader, his plight he saw mirrored in many literary works of revolutionary thinkers who continue to inspire the activists of today.

It is this light that I, Paul Khahliso Matela Zisiwe, propose an annual Boikie Tlhapi Memorial Lecture to be held in Ikageng, to commemorate the man’s spirit and intellectual propensity which fuelled his revolutionary ideologies and political acumen. This lecture will trace the loss, trauma and recovery of our collective memory of the stalwart.

As a curious storyteller whose practice investigates material histories, socio-political  and psychological issues, my research methodology to tell the story of Boikie Tlhapi entailed alternative forms of documentation (phone cameras, voice recorders and digital cameras) that highlight often-overlooked narratives surrounding places and objects, giving space to concealed voices and knowledge.

Re-assembling various documentaries in their style, the process itself reconfigures elements of the research into different modes of storytelling. Despite grappling with vast archives and narratives that reveal the complex pasts of political injustices, the research sparks urgent conversations about loss and displacement in black historical heritage while giving space to voices that often go unheard.

Taking the interviews conducted, their stories prompt reflection on historical omissions, collective memory and shape contemporary dialogue on how we can redress the past from a contemporary vantage point of socialised racism and endemic denial of white privilege by perpetrator of atrocities against black communities.

Two years of research, carried out in close collaboration with the family and close relatives and Boikie’s peers, has allowed for the production of a short documentary film, questioning the institutionalized narratives of South Africas historiography, particularly those concerning its past characterised by apartheid and racist policies, placing Boikie the activist as an emblem of resilience in the face of brutal white supremacy. 

Therefore, the feature documentary film envisioned after the completion of the research and development phase is dedicated to the people who perished in their attempts to fight oppression in search of freedom. It composes its melody of memories with a series of intimate narratives from those who lived along the fallen heroes, leaving lasting emotional traces.

And knowing how memory shapes not only (national) identities but also our understanding of history itself, it becomes incumbent to engage with painful remnants of the past navigating the interplay between those erased personal and collective identities.

 

***

Foregrounding personal narratives and memories, this researched filmic project became an ongoing exploration of Boikie’s multifaceted life, blurring the boundaries between documentary and experimental film through the use of abstract and poetic overlays. 

With interviews, one tends to negotiate unresolvable differences that seem endless without miniaturizing the psychic magnitude of the pain of loss, traversing psychic boundaries that limit the movement of ideas about the past and its effects on the present. The film is therefore another in the growing oeuvre of documentary films that question validity of histories and the lived experiences of black people under apartheid rule.

Together, these pieces form a rich and layered portrait of a young man who had secret political ideological leaning, involved in clandestine activities about which not even his closest kin were privy.

Was his garment construction business a decoy or a gesture of dissidence, driven by a refusal to accept the given political realities of dependence on white colonial masters?

Boikie is an epitome of a very deeply disciplined ideologue, from the reverent vein of Pan-Africanist political worldview, emboldened by an immense integrity and loyalty in covert situation. And trait this is proven true in fact by being the only one who dies on the day of the arrest.

And the circumstances as revealed through various voices, sets disappearance as a condition to reconsider the identity and beckons us to question how can we reimagine and critically investigate our current situations or positions to construct and manifest new approaches to resistance.

The presence of his absence is felt intimately by Boikie’s now ailing mother, who over the years has partially lost her hearing and speech, thus rendering her mute to even voice her discontent with the dragging saga of justice for bis murdered son. Therefore, the purpose of this research documentary film is to celebrate the man and his legacy that has yet to be brought to the fore, grounded on the fertile soil of Tlokwe’s valleys deeply intertwined with his personal and political life.

Boikie’s political and activist identity oscillates between hyper-presence and invisibility even today, when perceived from a lens of self-enrichment that is rampant among former comrades, and by exploring the landscape of his demise, we can locate our growing anxieties of crises within a world where colonial and political legacies are fused with the consciousness of our current moment and past events that are hidden beneath rock and sheets of dust.

Through Boikie’s story, whispers of lives caught in the dark and their refusal to settle, calls out from disappeared souls, guiding us toward our dim, shadowy collective conscience.

*** 

Museums - A Note On Engaging Cultural Institutions

The J B Marks Municipality and more specifically, the city of Potchefstroom which was once the capital of Die Zuid Afrika, is home to a large number of museums and heritage sites that need to be celebrated, preserved and documented for archives and posterity. 

However, the region has yet to nurture and inculcate an appreciation for its arts and rich cultural heritage, appreciating the socio-economic value the preservation of such heritage through creative practices can bring to under-resourced communities.

Over the past four years, a complex discourse has emerged concerning the ways in which cultural institutions in the Potchefstroom and South Africa at large, navigate questions of historical violence and systemic injustice in the context of colonial history. Artists, historians and academics continued to employed various strategies to urge cultural institutions such museums and heritage sites these to address these issues, often merging activism with their artistic practice. 

As much as some of these actions have brought these matters to public attention, much of the discourse continues to unfold in private, with many institutions adopting cautious or noncommittal stances. The Potchefstroom Museums And Cultural Sites Committee, The NG Museum and The Totius House Museum such institutions, who in the face of political pressure and allegiances have opted to disengage from social engagement on matters of heritage preservation and presentation to communities that were excluded from these museums and institutions.

Sadly, this means that communal relationship with history is being compromised, as one observes biased and single-sided endeavours to preserve colonial history over the preservation and actual resuscitation of the heritage and historical archives of people of colour in the region. 

White historical preservationists feel threatened by the encroachment of black curiosity into matters, artefacts and heritage sites held dear by the nationalist morality of the Afrikaner community, at the expense of the censored and erased histories of indigenous communities who people the region prior to the influx of settlers on their expansionist mission.

Black cultural practitioners and artists continue to struggle to access these institutions, where colonial art and cultural exclusivist morale thrives; these puritanical spaces have become havens for appreciation of white colonial history and contemporary art, neglecting the other voice less privileged.

Collectives of impassioned artists and festival organisers struggle to find municipal venues with cultural relevance because these venues cradle white heritage and history and black presence might contaminate these revered spaces. Bureaucratic strategies are employed to exhaust any efforts to utilise these spaces for contemporary artist expression as they embody the undying spirit of white supremacy.

And truly is unfortunate that the new generation of museum administrators and heritage site managers have not evolved a sense of urgency in regards to transforming these institutions into participatory and emancipatory spaces for social and cultural dialogue and exchange.

But can any contestation of a superstructure that we have inherited and which, as heritage professionals and artists, wish to dismantle entail methods that would eventual destroy the same heritage and art we yearn to preserve?

And knowing that no activist action should reach a point where they are characterized by desecration of these sites of collective memory, one wonders how; in light of the exclusivity that these sites enjoy in the face of the plurality of social narratives that were silenced.

These places were meant to to stimulate new processes of learning and understanding the diversity of our cultures, but it appears there are those shielded historical memorabilia that serves to legitimise white supremacist rule over people who of colour who needed to be forgotten and relegated to the oblivion of unrecorded pasts.

As opposed to the current protectionist stance taken by museums housing colonial memorabilia and artefacts, a discussion around new curatorial methodologies and the changing relationship between museums, artists, and audiences need be explored.

These heritage professionals aught be rethinking institutional models, forging new forms of collaboration, and expanding the role of art and heritage in public life, advancing a more collaborative and dynamic cultural exchange.

These institutions should be producing alternative forms of evidence, constructing archives that challenge dominant narratives and creating spaces for collective healing and remembrance. They must interrogate white literary practices that oppose or complicate narratives of black progress.

Yet, it always happens that with each yearly attempt to establish a festival dedicated to appreciating art and cultural output from black communities falls on deaf ears, met with blatant opposition and disregard because the festival is not Aardklop, a revue of white cultural appreciation patronised by banking cartels and white solidarity political movements.

And when a provincial Arts And Culture office and its staff are impotent to change the status quo, artists are left to take matters into their own hands, to hone independent strategies for expressing their views on socio-political issues assailing their communities. 

Arts and craft markets are monopolised by white establishments who readily have access to these institutions and their facilities, yet black artists struggle to establish their own enterprises in those facilities, left with the despondent resolve for conformation and normally such acts tend to be destructive in the long run. 

When these establishment direly need uniquely inter-historical approaches to cultural appreciation, they simply foster segregationist enclaves that stand independent of one another to the detriment of social cohesion and inter-cultural dialogue.

***

And there is always an exception to the norm as is the case with the Klerksdorp Museum, which has being at the forefront to integrating communities through its activities that range from oral history discussion and collection of archives from communities around Matlosana for preservation in the museum archives.

To date, this museum has hosted portable skills training initiates and various learnerships that enrich the community, and the institution continues to be a haven for craft markets, performances and exhibitions that explore the artistic spirit of various communities in the region.

The museum continues to present exhibitions that question records of social movements and displacement, communal resilience, and cultural memory, blending history, craft, and participatory storytelling into a dynamic mix that engages audiences of all ages.

***

Undeniably, there’s a plethora of managerially dysfunctional institutions syphoning funds for personal enrichment within the province, and MmaBana Art And Culture Foundation is a livid example of this misguided state institution that entrenches the erasure of black artistic expression in the North west province, but we watch.

Pantsula Dance competitions are ceaselessly held in the Matlosana region (crowds dancing their poverty away) and no theatrical play are produced, while AfriForum Theatre is  inundating white audiences with propagandist sponsored art, where their white artists are fed while black fraternities are fighting over crumbs from the table of an arts minister and his minions. 

White establishments conduct fashion shows in these cities, exposing and marketing white couture artists and their Eurocentric unsuitable fashion trends, without any input from black designers.

 

And where are the departmental heads who spend holidays in white-owned resorts, while community-based leisure and entertainment venues languish in under-resourced districts of crime-infested townships without security cartel who honed their skills in the South African military?

There are “koek-susters” and “hertzorg koekies” being sold to hordes of Voortrekker descendants each month, baked by black under-paid maids, munched with other delicacies flooding craft markets and festivals where boere culture is celebrated. Mothers and fathers unnamed, making an entire ultra-nationalist racist community rich from their labour; washing laundry for unrepentant slave-holders who perpetually undermine black effort for self-determination.

***

But, returning to museums and heritage sites preserved for settler nationalist pride, I foresee a retaliatory epoch where all preservatories of colonial history are attacked and destroyed because of their reluctance to acknowledge black presences throughout history. 

The Voortrekkers have to revisit their recollections of their journey guided by natives throughout this harsh terrain, and only through the torching of their falsified memorabilia, will they learn the truth of their unwelcome annexation of our ancestral lands.

Those snipers, religious zealots and militants who are on holiday in the African Safari, from their conscription in Israel where they killed thousands of Palestinian children, we should remind them of their vulgarity and bloodstained heritage.

Those Indians who still look at black folk as the untouchables, the Dalit, should now be taught what it means to be preservers of ancestral heritage. Africa cannot watch whites and Islamist vandalises marauding through the continent destroying any monument of an intelligence they can’t comprehend and deem diabolical. 

Museums in Potchefstroom and across South Africa continue to preserve and exhibit specific art historical lineages, deeply divisive colonial memorabilia and stolen artefacts from indigenous peoples, as well as a variety of eerie and racially derogatory samples from anthropological collections. These collections have to be reassessed, to provide tools for these colonial structures and institutions to better reflect the communities with which they share space

***

The power of visual erasure through the absences of photographic images of people of colour proves to date that it was a concerted mission to not represent black cultures in museums because they would bring into question the origins of trauma experienced by black people.

In these spaces, our perceptions are constantly called into question, reimagining collective mourning as a form of resistance against society’s expected reactions to our collective erasure, forcing us to see beyond boundaries of discomfort and pain.

Dismantling the artistic and architectural infrastructure of white supremacy housed in these museums and heritage should be our concern, but can retrieving and uncovering archives restore the erased peoples of South Africa, and re-energize the social stakes of heritage preservation within our present predicament?

Global uprisings against racism have come to the fore in recent years, and a notable shift in various heritage preservation and art institutions has been witness with the many moving toward decolonial exhibitions which reckon with racial discrepancies forged by past colonial experiences. The talk about inclusivity and diversity are rampant and 

Operative methods have been employed to redress western colonial imbalances in exhibition spaces, thus allowing for a visibility of otherwise invisible cultural byproducts from people of colour, but there persists an absence of cultural knowledge from postcolonial experiences.

Historically however, collections in contemporary art museums have preserved and revealed specific art historical lineages. These stories, however, are ultimately influenced by the social and political context in which museums collect. Over the last few years, some have deaccessioned works—a practice of collection care where some objects are routinely removed from their collections—with the specific intent to make room for works by artists whose ideas and art have been left out of the established canon, especially artists of colour.

Conversations on decolonial repair as both a tool for and a method of engagement with the current state of the world are essential if museums and spaces of heritage preservation are to become authentic vantage points that bring together real and imagined worlds, both past and present.

Interestingly, the Klerksdorp Museum has found methodologies focusing on key questions regarding collecting, archives, and museum practice, inviting audiences to share their personal objects and narratives, instead of letting our differences separate us, creating new alliances within communities.

They have begun to question on how to address the fragility of their collections, their care, custodianship, preservation and eventual loss in the face of the climate catastrophe, in an attempt to quantify the impact of such loss on communities. Hence their drive to digitise most of their literary collection of letters, speeches and other paper based records that could be damaged by floods or fire, for an example.

Their commendable and exemplary move calls upon the rest of those “family” museums and their administrators to question their moral compasses, to ponder the demise of their well preserved enclaves in the face of the “global cancel culture”, and all decolonial efforts that will render all falsifications of history by the coloniser null and void.

Paul Zisiwe 2025

Decolonising Memory

 

Echoes of History Betrayed

BOIKIE TLHAPI - Echoes of History Betrayed

Boikie Ramatua Tlhapi was an anti-apartheid activist affiliated with the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), born in Ikageng, a township outside Potchefstroom. His short and eventful life ended in Office Number 12, at the Stilfontein Police Station. The circumstances of his death as told by witnesses, Mr. George Mbathu and Mr. George Mogoejane, spell of a harrowing tale of torture and brutal force that saw his heart pierced by his broken ribs.

“Majestic”, as he was fondly known by his comrades, was arrested at roadblock outside of Orkney, and taken to the Stilfontein Police Station, together with a group of activists who were on their way to a night vigil in Jouberton, for another activist who was shot by the Special Branch Police.

Stilfontein, established in 1949 is a residential centre for three large gold mines and it is home to the infamous “mini Vlakplaas”, as the Stilfontein Police Station was known, established as a symbol of oppression of dissent by young activists against apartheid and white supremacy.

There is a phenomenon called “inimba yomzali” which translates to “the inner pain of parent”, but in western terms it is often termed “maternal or patronal instinct”. This intrinsic connection between a parent and an offspring in undeniably strong during birth and throughout the live of both, but it tends to be more severe when the child, the gift is taken away unexplainably and under duress.

It is as though the deceased child transmit their unrest in the land of the dead to the living parens, who are often assailed by physical and emotional distress, that often causes illness in those who happen to be in their twilight years.

This is the situation with Mme Thabitha Tlhapi, who has been ill for years following the events at Stilfontein mineshaft number 11, which is alleged to be the final resting place of his son.

Guided by conversations with many who were close to Boikie, this ongoing research behind his disappearance and subsequent death continues to open wounds for many who are intimately connected with the events, including family relatives still living without closure.

***

On the day that Boikie Tlhapi was arrested by the Special Branch, he was on his way to Jouberton for a night vigil of another activist named Vincent MPUMLWANA, who was shot dead by members of the SAP..

On Friday the 28th of March in 1986, Nicholas Ramatua ‘Boiki’ Tlhapi was arrested near Stilfontein along with others on their way to a night vigil in nearby Jouberton, where another activist had been murdered by the police. Detained under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act, he was held at Stilfontein Police Station, where he was tortured and assaulted. 

Boikie Tlhapi died on the 28th of March 1986 in Office Number 11 at the Stilfontein Police Station and Mr. Mbathu’s office was adjacent to the room that sealed an innocent man’s fate. Boikie suffered a punch from Sergeant April (Part of The infamous RIOT Unit of the western Transvaal SAP) which he blocked with his elbow, which in turn broke his rib and lodged it into his heart. Boikie disappeared after his arrest, and despite the family’s efforts, neither he nor his remains have been found.

In 1994, an inquest court returned a finding that it could not conclude that Boiki was deceased.

On 29 September 1996, Boiki’s father, Barileng James Tlhapi, testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC found that Tlhapi was assaulted and tortured by Warrant Officer Viljoen, Sergeant Makiti, and Constables Tseladimitlwa, Tshwaedi, Majaja, and Mano of the Jouberton Security Branch, holding them and senior police officials responsible for his disappearance.

The much more recently, Tony and James Shaft in Stilfontein are the final places where the badly injured and tortured of Boikie Tlhapi wis alleged to have been discarded by white policemen responsible for the apartheid systems machinations to subvert revolutionary fervour of black people during the State Of Emergency of 1985 and later 1986.

This story traces the events preceding Boikie’s disappearance, covering his life as recalled by family and friends; it investigates the identities of the perpetrator of the brutal n=murder, and follows the quest of one former-apartheid police officer Mr. Geaorge Mbathu, as he grapples with revealing the action of his former colleagues.

On the 7th of March 1986, days before Boikie’s disappearance, the infamous State of Emergency imposed on 21 July 1985 was lifted. Yet one is left wondering if this move was not a mere ruse to lure activists out hiding, especially when as many as 1 416 people had died since September 1984 to March 1986. 

Incidentally, the month of March 1986 had the highest monthly figure of 171 deaths, and it was during this month that Boikie met his fate, because he was stopped at a roadblock manned by Special Branch police members who actually admitted to have been looking for him according to Mr. Mbathu.

***

Many of the black officer inherited from the apartheid era after Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1990, were drawn from eleven police forces in South Africa, with each constituted under its own piece of legislation, operating within its own jurisdiction. 

These homeland police forces had been created during the 1970s and 1980s, with the core members being drafted from the SAP. These members were either black members of the SAP, who were identified on the basis of their ethnicity, skill, and perceived loyalty to the apartheid model; or more senior white officers who were "seconded" to the homelands on the basis of lucrative fixed-term contracts. 

Street-level policing was conducted in a heavy- handed style, with bias against black citizens and little respect for rights or due process. Criminal investigations were largely reliant on confessions extracted under duress, and harsh security legislation provided or tolerated various forms of coercion and torture. 

This was the climate under which Mr George Mbathu worked since 1976 until his dismissal due to his inability to turn a blind eye to brutal policing techniques used against young black detainees. And being one who was infamously outspoken to his white superior, he was inevitably a threat that had to be disposed off, as killing him would have raised suspicion during a time political transition.

Another reality is that Western Transvaal and Buphutatswana, apart from the financial benefits of being deployed to the homelands, the founder members of the homeland forces found themselves the beneficiaries of rapid promotions, and were able to operate with unusual autonomy from the police headquarters in Pretoria - which often allowed the creation of the networks of patronage and corruption which came to characterise the homeland forces. 

The infamous police force known as the SAP was formed in 1913, the same year that the Native Land Act was introduced and enforced, and strangely, Mr. George Mbathu  joined the SAPS in 1976, when many black youths were taking arms against the apartheid system. 

This police station, over decades seems to have become a place where white mine owners can be exonerated by black brute police force while the bones of activists disposed by their apartheid police remain forgotten in the rubble of newly rotting flesh of those deemed illegal for mining the land of their ancestors.

The devastating history of the Stilfontein Police station as a centre for torture of anti-apartheid activists is well known in the Matlosana district of South Africa. Many bodies of activists who were abducted, tortures and murdered in the infamous cells of that police station were dumped into open mineshaft around the towns of Orkney and Stilfontein.

***

Built around colonial ruins are the townships of Khuma, Kanana and Jouberton, and Alabama, spaces fragmented by racial demarcations and tribal lines, mere spaces for recycled and exploited labour, residences of disenfranchised generations who took to the streets to demand equality.

Death and torture are synonymous in these regions and silence is not an absence, it bears witness to the voids left by the disappeared and perished activists, the politics of resistance and resilience; where silence becomes an echo of loss haunting the present.

And through voices of elders and memory-keepers in acts of active listening, we encounter a profound dialogue with memory, resistance and activism, where collective memory emerges as both an act of mourning losses and a gesture of hope. 

Legacies of colonial violence characterise the now dying small town of Stilfontein; an alienated landscape that is vehicle of various economic and political struggles. Social services have ground to a halt because of the retraction of mining activities, and rampant crime soaks the streets with good due to traumas of unemployment and poverty.

And approaching the evident social decay under the New Democratic dispensation, one wonders if the sacrifice of struggle stalwarts and activists have borne fruit? 

This investigation provides a framework for an ongoing conversation around advocacy and accountability and reparation for the ills of the past, provoking the artist in me to investigate criminal records and other data to deliberately track realities of destruction of the human spirit.

These lingering traces of past state sanctioned crimes have yet to find redress within the present context of an epoch of unveiling truths about the unfinished work of the Truth And Reconciliation Commission. Yet, the persistence of colonial logic when analysing displacement of people of colour from their ancestral lands fails to conceive the magnitude of the trauma caused by exploitation and imperialist policies of racial segregation and subordination of people of colour.

After 40 years of his disappearance, Boikie’s legacy is fading into obscurity at the brink of political isolation, and the notion of intergenerational justice raises the questions about reparations for crimes that transcend generations and questions about methods of finding closure for the bereaved families left without bodies to bury. 

***

 

Inextricably linked to vast networks of economic and political power, the current endemic corruption within the Matlosana Police Force, forces bureaucratic obstacles on anyone requesting access to information pertaining to previous personnel, their various case files and dockets, especially those related to activists arrested during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.

These obstacles, compounded by aggressive attitudes from the current police force, are often inherited from the apartheid era networks, and as colonial crimes pile up, an interconnected of these crimes continues to shape our devastating present and future.

And when delving into the historical roots of state sanctioned assassinations, one also discovers the recruitment of taxi owners into the Frey of political sabotage of activists and their activities. These owners, would snitch and sell many activists out to Special Branch police, and these activists would never be seen alive again.

It was during a period of drastic social and political upheavals, many young people undertook to make the country “ungovernable”, as was a clarion call by the leaders of the ANC in exile. All township protests and acts of civl disobedience  might be interpreted as a response to their attendant insecurity and ideological disorientations that came with the state of emergency of 1986.

***

With the recent announcement of an inquest into the death of a number of activists, these public hearings will certainly unveil and prosecute intergenerational crimes, addressing crimes of the past and reflecting on the intergenerational impact of those crimes on communities.

There might be some proverbial barometers of political relevance that determines which activist receives acknowledgment and acclaim in this newly emancipated nation, but personages such as Boikie Tlhapi, seem to be relegated into the voids of history, similar to the mine-shafts into which his body was disposed.

A distinguished gentleman, and indispensable dressmakers for a community mending its seams torn by an oppressive political climate, Boikie was also a lover and father, cherished by many souls who bear the loss of his untimely death. But as the South African Geographical Names Council consults with communities regarding their meticulously crafted Draft Amendment Bill, Boikie’s name will fall short of remembrance and commemoration.

***

Paul Zisiwe 2025

Decolonizing The Self

 

Colonising the self, the over-self or psyche (soul), can be a phenomenon where an individual allows their inner thoughts to be morphed into any form popularised by the masses, yielding their rational faculties to be directed vicariously by group-based notions that have been proselytised as universal truths.

It is an extensive cultural agenda that requires the individual to valuate their worth within the collective and its conceptual dialogues that redefine discussions on de-coloniality and the persistently radicalised dynamics in the symbolic spheres of social interactions.

Personal memories built alongside illusions created through media bombardments, are essential components that require to be annexed. And the fraught notion of a body at war with itself; its mind, becomes symptomatic of the condition of “colonising the self”, making one into a colony of usurped ideologies and plagiarised reality definitions.

This phenomenon occurs importantly to those discrete parts of the soul, “psyche”, whose identity and biological coherence are called into question by mainstream trends of self-observation and awareness.

These repressive processes and social systems worshipped today, specifically those that attack “forms of self-affirmation”, yield therefore such forms of inner paralyses and stoppage when the self dares retrieve its essence.

A colonised reality and memory exist in constant interplay, they merge and replace each other, memory played like an echo, constantly reassembled. When a mother neglects and is repulsed by her own offspring, yet is satiated by tending to another puritanical “messianic child; this sentiment exemplifies the colonial empathy crippling most people of colour.

Decolonising the usurped self means uncovering a history of merciless bodily control that entails disentangling oneself from all association with colonial imprints, disgusting only the anti-colonial in order to decolonise the self. 

Thoughts as imagery, sketches, and blueprints of a colonised inner self seen through a colonial lens, must be purged through rigorous interaction with all that is extra-legal in terms of western moralistic norms, carving a million voiced interpretations of pure intention.

***

Existing without any political bearing on reality is near impossible, and obscuration and reclusivity have often been misconstrued for living a marginal existence that has no impact on a social dimension. Yet, the colonised self morphs and exists in liminal spaces, a chameleon who wear a kaleidoscopic personage which is reflected and projected on self-organized practices.

For an artist, should there be a vocabulary of seeing the self and extricating the self from the milieu, as a shadow membrane; an aesthetic-political freedom reaffirming much more lucid ways of how the real world appears to an abstracted self.

Does decolonising the self counter the colonial project enraging many woke people? Or is it a way of (dis)membering oneself in order to (re)member the self, not as a suspension of lucidity, but a way of reclaiming the shattered psyche that judges the shadows we occupy?

***

Bravely staring into the gulfs of the psyche is daunting, especially when escapist methods have been employed to construct an illusory self, that purports to exist beyond the confines of coloniality. Rupturing the membranes of memory is traumatic in itself, but it is the essential route to truer self-rediscovery after absentia.

Emerging from this distortion and disfluency, the self translates its freedom on the premise of destruction of the colonial norm as a retirement for a self-centred d-colonial project. This deliberate effort to reassert  poetry to the discordance of the psyche allows for a wealth of generative forces. 

The forces in turn mould the soul into potentialities for transformation that can be transmitted to others as a form of intermediation. This new self, a hybrid of tensions in the silent emptiness discovered after shedding the illusory and colonised self is a gateway to a new silence beyond the boundaries of dogma, an echo of metaphors that emerged from the darkness of subservience.

The flood of time stirring awake after being displaced from the truer self, thus reaffirms life surging through cracks in walls built around the colonised self, trembling with each astonishing experience that reconfigures all reality around. 

Through this assemblage of psychic infractions and immersive mirages, a ghost in the mirror of the mind observing the alienated self through smoky eyes emerges, granting wishes from the grave not blinded by clarity. This reassembled self guides a new evolution of the soul, illuminating with an intensity that unsettles the resilient potential for transforming the preconceived notions of self in a constructed reality.

Khahliso Matela 2025

music inside

vibrating and haptic, 

visual and immaterial, 

embodied and disembodied,

with ceaseless grace 

like aural sculptures in vapours of time

the music inside swells.

with hums in a capsule

lured to their demise in collective joy 

not as denial or enchanted parenthesis, 

but as a conscious and active resistance 

to the depressive order of the lower world,

the music inside, a remedy as much as a tool. 

a room

a room that lives 

in indispensable shadows

and parallel snapshots of half dreams

amid a cascade of fragmented allegories of vision

gestures of lived thoughts

iterations of mythical undoings

crafting a recursive choreography 

witnessed through tears

in this room 

a grotesque comedy of forced oblivion

and fluid contemplations of synthetic fetishes

scrambles for lost reminders

about forgotten sounds of wonder

in this room 

filled with poly-vocal re-imaginings 

revealed through tinted glass

art the fragility of awkward objects

secured like wooden hearts in ragged ribcages

akin fragments of utopias distorted by blindness

fibres of destiny unreel with each gaze

translucent materiality draped in past disquiet

pressed against panes of a wasteland

and as this room eats its way 

through forests of dreamtime images

in muted violence stuck on wooden floors

slinking in and out to mimic the mischief of clocks

awaits yet, another room 

Drowsy Gods And Spoilt Demons

when the land becomes a mother,

folded by the sky timidly

in an age of loneliness,

her anxious gaze prompts us 

to experience unembellished self-forgetfulness

like faultless men at the mercy of the sea

***

and when rises a disregarded room above the waters,

an adrift matter like a memory playing live

stalled in dormant conversations that look like forests

prophetic and reclined, tenderly trivial

yet an exemplar against amnesia,

it beckons us to sink our teeth into our skins to bleed patterns of wit into illumined soils

***

and in an art of a drowning man,

his mother - her girdle bound his neck;

in his eyes is observed a placid sea

thrusting back by a million deposited souls,

soaking to receive immortal honours

among drowsy gods and spoilt demons 

Black Mind.