What Is Africa To Me

A derelict geography strewn with dead statues and monuments of colonial self-gratification, sterilised museums of European affluence and plunder, exhibited as trophies for the natives to envy or vicariously mimic. 

Africa is where they mined for fossilised relics that people their architecture, filling mausoleums with skulls of ancestors of erased civilities and artefacts of seances with divinity now desecrated.

Africa is a locale of bruised psychologies, lived double into dreams created by falsities in galleries and malls, advertised through cathode tubed LED screens, like windows spying on lives which Africa was deprived.

Africa is a mirror reflecting the tyranny showered on Mother Earth through acid sprinklers spewing toxins from mine-shafts onto fields of de-nutritionalised vegetations, an arid burial grounds of the nameless.

Africa is named after elites of trophy kingdoms built on bloodshed and diseases exported through exploratory missions ordained by monasteries and their patron lords.

Africa is home to the lost remaining among their outspoken dead, ghosts possessing children born in a new century, those speaking in tongues of misery learned from disgruntled parents.

Africa is mother and cradle to a new breed forged through spare parts stolen from ransacked cargo ships scattered on shores whitened and bleached, and her oceans wrung like an endless sheet painted with fish and coral.

Africa is mapped by jail-bird descendants of rogue royals in castles sieged through godly wars, ruins labeled for the memory of killers, a tomb for a billion dreams squandered and forsaken for the prize property.

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With a resilient pandemic of Afro Pessimism spreading to every corner of the globe, it takes artists of African descent to concoct remedies that will inoculate many more generations from that sentiment. 

And only through an elaborate exhibition of Africa as the centre of a positivist future, through exploratory questioning of the past to correct the present, can there become version of Africa that would once again be the guiding light of wisdom for the rest of the world.

That Africa, at this juncture might seem a fiction, especially when the continent is cloaked in darkening bloodstain of colonial wars, wars for liberation, guerrilla wars and the insurgency of terror that is displacing millions.

Yet, there are new horizon looming with every technological innovation, and even though Africa hasn’t tapped into the full potential of these technologies, it is best to prepare for them with robust representation of a truer and not romanticised identities, not vicarious avatars that depict Africa as should be in light of western vision of the future.

Africa to me becomes the remaining frontier for humanity to re-invent itself in regards to relations to earth as mother and home; Africa can be a breeding ground for a new humanism that does not deem humans superior to the natural but a seedling of our threatened earth.

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Heritage Re-Imagined

Articulations of national heritages through recognisable material spaces that speak to the colonial history, as well as identities portrayed in images and artefacts housed in these spaces, are contested terrains of collective memory.

This contestation implies that contemporary researchers, academics, historians, artists and communities need reconfigure these architectural sculptures (buildings) as revelatory spaces for truths that haunt that present from the past. 

And when such spaces are devoid of historical details often omitted on purpose, any construction of memory through omitted details within a historical narrative can only happen through deliberate asymmetry between these collections and the audiences they inform.

That is why most black museum visitors feel alienated by exhibitions of foreign realities that stock many of these clinical, stale heritage preservation spaces with visual priorities of the colonial vantage point.

Museums often exhibit decorated lies that black people loved their servitude, that their labor can be labelled as leisurely acceptance of their superiors’ wishes, and overlook contemporary realities fraught with racial histories of mistreated communities.

Examining archives and investigating modes of remembering as expressed by dominant white cultures, there is a penchant for dwelling on happy and jovial moments of momentary triumphs and their “perfect” familial dynamics, but how true are these representations in the face of the absence of “servants as witnesses” who could also be witnessed?

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Narratives worth remembering seem to be constructed through institutional establishments such as the many museums who are funded to purposefully exhibit only imagined archives and histories that cannot be unearthed today. 

The immateriality of missing details also hampers memory, the stories around the loss of these details also have narrative worth. 

And to destabilise conventions of these spaces by bringing alternate techniques of history construction and preservation also means including those persons whose histories have been omitted and erased.

In light of obvious insufficiencies of discourse when it come to issues to addressing past injustices, what if IMAGES, artefacts, monuments, plaques and sketches can assist minds leap out of the confines of framed histories, the box of constructed memory, where reality is viewed as though through windows of a moving vehicle?

What if this is the reality definition necessary for articulating narratives of the forgotten, the invisible, degenerates of a material world?

Are we haunted by the past or are those in the present haunting the dead, mirroring their regrets and pains with the paradoxical aim of not repeating the same regrettable occurrences?

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There has been efforts to rename so-called sites of historical importance, stripping them of names of colonial personages they represent or after whom they were named, 

In the names of wars the waged among themselves and against black people, there now are hundred of concentration camp sites that pepper this country, all devised by the machinations of colonial authorities and their brands of atrocity. 

These site of tyranny are often preserved by people who have an intolerable sense of self-righteousness, in the name of their “love for country and culture’, yet, this often happens at the expense of all other facts gathered around those often sinister myths of cultures being preserved.

Today there are even art collectors and gallerists who disconcertingly collect all colonial decorum of elitist art, and express a collective resilience of memory of how black artists were often overlooked by white establishments that commissioned them to make the artworks that adorn their chambers of power.

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Will restoring these mausoleums of past hateful epochs be mixed with ideological conceit - a protest where the past keeps its redoubtable landmarks and problematic narratives based on colonial traumas and misrepresentations?

And as museums are vital guide into what had been relics of colonial gratification of their tyrannical murder of people in the name of expanding their culture and preserving their own, museums are maps into the history.

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What interplay exists between contemporary mind and these architectural spaces?

A profound contemplation of delicate harmonies that exist between various experiences of history, those flawless statues and replications of historical persons, the conditions that shaped those persons’ individual and collective identities, these come into sharp focus when viewed from the lens of heritage preservationist.

How can present generation weave a multitude of possible strands from history’s unexposed tapestry without speculating on the unsavoury parts of the re-imagined past?

The permeability of history and its political demarcations of peoples who are characters in history’s play, is evident in how various people interface with artefacts and museum content. Others find pride in walking into Paul Kruger’s Office Museum while other feel trepidation and a loathing for the man who sought the oppression of black people at all cost.

Within contemporary discourse there seems to exists a scarcity of details which always seems to require speculation to fill the gaps, but that scarcity tells of a concerted censure, where the coloniser is constantly hankering after glories of wars.

Museums and heritage in contemporary South Africa sustain that lust for retelling of refreshed myths disguised as recent discoveries, but on the other hand they legitimise symbols of white supremacy, sculptures of self-serving general venerated like gospels turned dogma.

An astute social commentator, Molefi Ndlovu, once questioned the importance of these monuments in South Africa, asking whether colonial structures of heritage reservation are actual ‘rhetorical spurs or passive reminder of our country’s ‘sticky history’?

This succinct question could be perceived as an act of aggression towards falsified memorials, where monument of tyrants take precedence over the lives destroyed, with their triumphant poses and sketches of their stories are etched on walls with the good of victims.

And there are those willing to defend the mayhem their kith and kin meted on black people, in high-spirited sermons and self-glorifying speeches at Voortrekker Monument, but seldom acknowledge the black men who died building that monument of tyranny.

But does present preservationist activism consider the permanent implication of sustaining falsities through to eternity without any attempt to correct them as told by victors not the victims, to re-evaluate collections and paraphernalia of exploitation that legitimised the victor as the maker and recorder of history?

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The history of how a racist and colonial past has been received and refreshed in the present  through social hierarchies that determines the presence or absence of certain details in art, artefacts and museum collections has a role in sustaining falsifications and selective truths displayed in many of these museums.

And history as process of evaluating facts from fiction in the lives of figures of social importance can be a daunting task when executed as a form of radicalised discourse, but does that mean these monuments of antique oppressors and their deed spur renewed and critical discussions about their validity?

Those voices that remain in those remnants of the past, though belonging to different moments in history are brought together in these museums, where today is that tomorrow when their laments would be avenged.

Perception is often the basis for interpreting and reading history, and the incremental value of viewers from a wide range of cultural influences suggests and expansive constellation of truths that defy individualistic notions.

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Connecting colonial histories with human and cultural movements that fought colonial exploits, requires a new kind of questioning histories and their representations through art, curriculum and economic trends. 

The cue is taken from migratory experiences of dispossessed populations, their choice of settlements and how those settlements grew into organic communities that can extract more histories from their locations.

This extraction of new histories from immediate phenomena that affect those dispersed cultures continue to inspire the need for those narratives of life to renew themselves while flowing beyond the confines traditional education systems.

Through exploration of museums and archives, contemporary artists must excavate and uncover the immaterial, overlooked and contentious histories, in a form of re-rooting, reclaiming agency over these histories and cultural experiences of those misrepresented by these histories. 

And through sharing those strands of heritage with people from other experiences, those whose lands were colonially exploited and annexed, in a manner that translates communal and collective experiences, knowledge and practices; a renewed approach to defining history and lessons can be unveiled for future generations.

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Images captured at The Klerksdorp Museum.

A Conversation With The VOCAL Museum

Cultural connotations of absences can also include concerted erasures of creative languages or even linguistic representations of certain realities, euphoric or traumatic, but how far can languages stretch to recreate the absent?

How does art haunt idea of loss or absence? 

History infiltrates the present through memory and heritage, and any obsessive compulsions to unravel the limits to which history does infiltrate memory are also determined by languages utilised to construct such memories.

At the recent residency in Cologne, her engagements saw her work around diaspora memories of the concepts of " motherland", origins, or absences of origins, and Masello met with various artists who are essentially nostalgic and haunted by sentiments of home.

Their sentiments, communicated during practice-based research were premised on finding and articulating a shared horizon that tracks pathways from Africa to Europe, and this became visible through her performances and onsite encounters that evolved into participant-driven conversations about politics, culture and memory. 

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Can such voids created by absences and erasure spawn a new framework for creating imaginative multiplicities of potential definitions and new lessons which can be expressed and documented through contemporary direct reaction?

New opportunities are arising from cross-cultural and trans-geographic interactions, these searches for histories and the immediacy of the need for filling those voids created by colonial injustices prove that an interdependency between the past and present is essentially indisputable.

During her visit as a Guest Artist in Germany and through collaborative performances with Ghanaian artists, it seems Masello had found a way of bonding solidarities between culturally diverse artists fuelled by processes and products of their art making.

And I should imagine that a poetic potential of spontaneous urban engagements with curious audiences had it own thrill, but what often distinguishes exhibitionism from true creative physical interfaces such as Masello’s performances, is the impact on the psyche of the viewer.

Often professing jarring and unsettling truths, and posing critical questions gesticulated through a vocabulary that transcends language, her work still provided a dedication to the incidental and everyday surroundings of our political realities.

Artists were addressing urban material spaces, commonly used building that often retain untold memories of the past, in the midst of interactive audiences, reshaping perceptions and channelling new meanings beyond the logic of mastery and the confines of decorum.

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Can you please give us a brief background to enigmatic person we know as Masello Motana?

I come from an artistic background. My father is still writing today. Before I was born; he focused a lot on poetry ka di70s. And by the time I was growing up in the early 80s he was writing plays and ha had his own drama troupe in Soshanguve. My sister and I would go to rehearsals with him. One day, he was trying to show an actor what to do and he kept repeating the action. I got up and walked on to the stage to show what the actor what to do and became a member of the troupe. We performed at some meetings and rallies as the situation was escalating in the townships. We even had to run for cover during a performance in Eersterus. That's the environment I grew up in. Firstly, I did not have to wait to become an artist; I just became it. Music and dancing were part of it; you had to do all 3.

Secondly; the line was blurred between art and politics but what was clear was that the artist has to serve the community. I still think of art as my father and his peers did back then.

When did the urge for creative expression start to grow during your formative years as a performer and lover of culture and heritage?

Performance came first. Identity politics came second. It was a case of losing myself to colonization and REmembering. Language was a big part of that recovery. 

I left a model c school; lived for a year and then went to what some would consider a remote school in Limpopo to relearn Sepedi which i had last learnt in std2. That changed my life and outlook. I am a linguist; translator and home language coach in film and television today because of that necessary lobotomy in 2000.

I cannot stand these anthropological words we use to describe ourselves to each other. Ge e le indigenous yona, e mbora goed nie bietjie! So I prefer to say home language, that's what it is to me. I know it's not as important sounding but I am not OUTside of that INdigenous so I don't have to label it as such. One man's hut is another one's home type of thing.

How would you describe your art practice?

My art practice is about memory practice and memory. It has become about that; largely shaped by the environment I live in.

How does your choice of themes determine each characterisation (of it does at all), simply, wow do you create characters like Cyrilliana?

To create characters like Cyrilina.....well it's all got to do that with that basic mandate of responding to the environment. To use whatever tools or tricks to get a message across.

What ecosystems of knowledge influence your theatrical and literary art practice, and any special reason you were inspired by these knowledge systems?

I am influenced by the culture of black literary journals from different eras. The Harlem Renaissance; Drum era; Staffrider.

I am also a fan of Eddie Murphys commitment to character through humor and the physical layers of prosthetic. I love the content ya Chapelle and Paul Mooney. I love what Kagiso Lediga has been doing; a highlight of my career was working le yena on Matwetwe.

I love humour; costume and melody. Those aesthetics appeal to me and I tend to reach for them first in the bag.

Sun Ra said something about the costumes telling their own story. Razzmatazz joe, jy ken!

The musical component of your art, please tell us where was it moulded? How does music advance your dissidence?

How does music advance my dissidence? Interesting question. It will not advance your career in atmosphere of go ngcenga; but it will advance your arts practice. 

Artists must distinguish between an industry and an arts practice. I grew up in a township so even if my family (mama, papa le bomalome) did not play music; it was all around me.

Who are The Vocal Museum as a performance troupe? 

The Vocal Museum is a show and not a troupe so it has been played by many musicians and will continue to involve many musicians.

And what inform your performances? Is it social episodes of upheavals, protests and general discourse on issues of public concern?

All those things influence the performances of The Vocal Museum. For example; in 2022; we featured Mak Manaka reading the Onkgopotse Tiro speech at Turfloop in 1972. I wanted to reflect on 76 through its rightful Black Consciousness lineage. So ja, ho ya ka gore di ntshang.

An installation/performance exhibited in Johannesburg recently was in a gallery, why are your performances spaces designed for specific “communal experimentations”? 

I will perform anywhere but the public spots are my favourite. The unintended audience is important for me as someone who claims to speak for community. This year we did a show ko Hammangwane ko Orlando on Freedom Day; the day before we popped up a theatre with a special invite to children and older people.

I don't want kids to think dilo tsa di bente(live music) is only for adults or for drinking places. It was very important for me to include the community including in the research and presentation.

The musicians and their roles within the musical venture seem also predetermined by your intended performance themes, why are you currently working with these specific musicians on the project?

You have to click with the people you work with. They have to understand your purpose and vision. We don't always get it right. Some people are more committed than others; ba bangwe ba nyaka zaka because music has been reduced to a commodity and a money maker as opposed to be a tool for social healing.

There’s a of processes of reclaiming, remembering and reviving the past through language and song, protesting the threat of the disappearance and destruction of the songs and the languages that both carry and are carried through your performances.

Question is how can particularities of such songs/languages in your VOCAL Museum be preserved?

Processes of reclaiming are me reacting to what South Africa is becoming; an imperial colony. So the Vocal Museum is an answer to your question. It answers the question of preservation directly.

In language; I need to make one thing clear. There are no languages disappearing in South Africa. If you go to Moletji; you won't find a community meeting about Sepedi disappearing. Ge o ka ya KwaMsinga; a go na batho ba ba tshwereng meeting ka gore seZulu sa nyella; or similarly a go na batho ba ba tshwereng polelo ko Malamulele gore Xitsonga sa nyella. This is a class issue. There are people who are actively practicing self erasure by insisting to cooperate with a white system at the expense of their identity. They even think it's cute; mxxxxm! Ke e goga bjana ka Mmankwesheng the way e ntshelekang ka teng.

And can you briefly describe the recent residency you attended, and the types of collaborative projects were born from the expedition?

There is a crisis of museums in Europe because batho ba utlwile ke bohodu ba yona. In the age of restitution; they have to give people's treasures back so they have a crisis of relevance and method. So I was invited to Cologne in Germany to showcase my museumology. I had an official program of 3 offerings

• The Vocal Museum Performance

• A Public Lecture on June 16 featuring my friend and mentor in radical 

anarchist artistry Lefifi Tladi

• A Performance of The Diaspora Experiment

For the last show I worked with Ghanaian musicians who have been based in the NRW Province for many years and a Turkish saz and our player.

My political statement was that my definition of my continent is very different to that of colonizers. I listen to the map rather than read it.

I am looking to expand and tour the experiment in the near future.

“How Do We Become Plastic?”

Art Installations have always intrigued me, mainly because they seem to intra-sensorial experiences, where artworks immerse all sense from the auditory and to the olfactory, more so when audiences are allowed to touch and taste those craft-based experiments that are interactively guided by environmentally conscious art practices.

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GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS are two sculptural pieces which I have recently been captivated by, having come across the work of artist Coral Anne, and each work depicting bodies frozen by the medium chosen by the artist, transformed into testament of what effects has plastic had on the natural world.

Her construction of these bespectacled non-verbal figurines, their expectant faces gazing in anticipation of, be it a miracle of catastrophe; contemplate how “the worship instinct” in humanity tends to seeks solace in the skies, while meting destruction on the planet we call home.

This couple of forlorn figures are sculpted works that seems to focus on observing these products of destruction, in a form of contemplative worship, a supplication to the ancestral of the future, to become cognisant of their present actions, and how they can evolve “destroyed or destructive bodies” of their own.

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And like a cage of human metamorphosis, an enclosed realm that borders the spiritual and animalistic, the installation is full of hypothetical meanings of a realm bursting with wonder and decay.

These figures - seated in a manner of childish supplication, or one with folded arms implying acceptance - are an invitation to see an animalistic perspective that shatters human stereotypes, and these are what makes this installation profound. 

These unpretentious forms wrapped in plastic transform innocence in frozen poses, where the notion of their durable death or new life inflicted by or infused with plastics, seems to birth another unnerving awareness of the permanence of our collective futile activities.

And confirming truth of man’s permanence through items such as plastic, this installation explores what human inventions and their inherent contradictions mean for the unknown dimensions impacted by human action.

These somewhat indelicate creations that flake to form micro particles, like toxic remnants or memories within an object that lacks beauty, and is resistant to impermanence, these overt sculptures speak of man’s urge for immortality and the consequences of that expedition.

These GIRLS are deformed elastic abstractions offering a glimpse into a personification that gives value to both the artworks and the objects of environmental degradation, questioning whatever consumerist urges for the creation of such tools from the onset of innovation.

The artistic and conceptual value of plastic activated in these sculptures seems environmentalist, in that they avows a life to inanimate objects that have very animate impact. 

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Allegory On The Vanity Of The Spoon

Lately, I have become spellbound by a project titled Allegory of The Vanity Of Spoon, which seems an ambitious project that is increasingly architectural in its approach of physiology and shapes, objects and their value, pushing yet against the formality of social truisms we would expect from environmentally conscious artistic practice.

Setting the bar around issues of ecological sustainability, this work launches a debate around rethinking interventions that would repurpose as well as reimagine damaging materials for the future, and while the artist undertakes personal investigations of the world the surrounds us with comfortability, she reinterprets these itemised comforts as forms of vicarious destruction.

Clad in a garment made of fragments of discarded plastic cutlery formed into a highly personal inventory, the figure bears a history written with non-biodegradable objects, speaking to forgotten patterns of fashionability, materials and industrial forces that shape contemporary degradation of the natural beauty of earth.

Together with her installation in a cage signifying an analogue to a tragedy where trees, their branches suffocated by densely-layered plastic, gesture from our discarded and abandoned detritus, like characters with lost innocence, like fleeting and macabre figures textured with an eerie air of futility and fragility.

Could this be Coral Anne’s approach to artistic explorations of ecological concerns, focusing on the impact of modern consumerism, where “damage” interfaces with the polluters as identities, strangely resembling human behavioural and physical dimensions?

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Through these glossed imperfections and shrink-wrapped forms of stifled innocence, Coral Anne has captured from her surroundings, with an intent minimalist lyricism, her gaze introducing a sensitivity to the imperceptible around us, a form of searching for new aesthetic beyond a mere observation of natural vs built environments.

Images: Roger Jardine 

On The VOCAL MUSEUM

There is something unorthodox about the combination of the word VOCAL and the word MUSEUM, because one would associate museums, like libraries, with bastions of silence, and museums more specifically, would inevitably be houses of the unspeaking pasts and encased silent narratives.

And there is something liberating about the paradox induced by the analogy of a non-silent museum, an outspoken and vocally responsive space where history speaks to the present in voices disguised as those of our contemporaries.

But, I often wonder what voices would stolen artefacts be emitting in foreign museums for instance? Would they be lamenting a desire to be returned, expressing a sort of nostalgia for retuning?

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Recently having explored the European artscape through a project that hosted her in Cologne, Germany, I wanted to find out from Masello about her sustained exploration of notions of the Diasporic flow of African art and the transformation of dynamics of cultural relations between regions made distant in the past due to colonial expropriation of African poetic expressions.

I wanted to know if, her journeys are partly an exploration of other silent museums, thus positioning herself to become that voice that brings together ideas of explorative collaborations with other voices (artists), in the creation of museums of sounds?

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Masello Motana continues to carve a niche, as both a social commentator and language historian who has been advocating for the exaltation of the so-called “indigenous languages” of African descent.

Using her craft as a musical experimentalist, she contuses her expressing with various disciplines such as music and action painting, to challengeperformative intervention; question contemporary political dissonances and entrenched obscuration of popular sentiment for the gratification of a privileged few.

An array of parallels she has drawn from the work of renowned artists such as Lefifi Tladi and many SePedi Poets and singers who in a way articulate a close affiliation to African traditions beyond her immediate surrounding. 

There certainly exists a potential insertion of global dynamics of popular mass cultures into contemporary African art, without the categorisation implying an “othering of African artistic practice”.

The performative political reflections that characterise Masello’s Vocal Museum are an unruly venture into the circle of Black Existence, exhibiting how long and antiquated languages can force articulation through an artist, thus find a voice from a distant past that echo within the walled nightmares of contemporary minds.

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But what have the feathers she raffled written home about? Do they find her art as censorable insult to the system? 

Her often vulgarly ostentatious depiction of Malema, Ramaphosa and other political figures should have pissed someone off.

But, she continues her activism with a variety of movements that employ modes of dissidence which are nevertheless irreducibly entangled with realities experienced at grassroots level.

These caricatures of mock affluence, though localised by depictions of mainly South African political iconoclasts, propel new meanings into symbols of history’s icons and their gluttonous self-enrichment projects, dissecting their inflated personages to tell of a contemporary story indistinguishable from the lived and actual situation for many Africans.

Often verbose and extroverted, she often upsets many with her provocative ideas that bother comforts of contemporary morality, she recalls the thespian arrogance of one who commands every stage she struts head wrapped in protest and feminist vigour.

Through stringently scripted monologues, Ms. Motana invites her audiences to reflect on cycles of botched promises, all complimentary exploitation exercised through greed and pillage, and daily consumption of media creeds as evangelical truths about a world realities.

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Forcing the mind to reconsider preconceived ideas of socially constructed falsities, is the evolving role artists like Masello accept in today’s infiltrated social psychology, to be creators of revolutionary and transitional narratives not bound by tradition, calling off the shackles of decency that respects the corrupt and vain.

Her interrogations of how vernacular experiences are communicated through languages, fostering dialogues around colonial vestiges within the sanctity of language systems, these and other barriers she continues to confronts with the lucid tongue of one intent on not only preserving but continuing to affirm misrepresented histories.

In a way, her art seems a “Decolonisation of European Languages” in both methodology and praxis, finding modes to deconstructing for instance, English, to suite and articulate localised realities - thus building a bridge between European artistic communities and the African Diaspora experiences.

And in this way, her readings of local socio-political histories, often become an immersive dissemination of knowledge so dense that at times her hour long performances often leave the viewer with a nostalgia for returning to these imaginary abstractions of flawed realities.

And in my attempt to engage with the nature and outcomes of her artistic practice, whence her opinions are emancipated from the artists herself, I asked Masello a couple of questions with the hope of uncovering more of what is beneath her expressive demeanour.

Monuments And Heritage Sites DECOLONIZED

Monuments And Heritage Sites De-Colonial

There is an unnerving trend towards the erasure of black experiences and presences during many historical events that often are memorialised in museums and heritage sites throughout South Africa.

This censored depiction of the experiences and presence of people of colour has put a veil on many pivotal instances t of blatant brutality against our people, which in turn continues to obscure our nation’s collective confrontation with its colonial past in a constructive manner..

But heritage preservation that has characterised many historical museums, though leaning towards white history and its prominent exposure, there has began a culture that sees the importance of multicultural perspectives necessary for a more holistic view of the past that continues to affects and gaunt the present and future.

The reliance on photographic materials has also become a stumbling block to unlocking many hidden secrets about the role various nation played in the evolution of this nation’s diversity.  

This can however be corrected through concentrated acknowledgement and acquisition, revaluation of artefacts and photographic or pictorial representations and reproductions of black presences during these events.

The presence of black people during The Anglo Boer War, for instance, which has largely being documented, seems to not grace many walls of colonial museums in South Africa, and could this be a concerted effort at censorship of memory to delegitimise various claims for exploitation by the coloniser?

This short piece aims to posit certain possible measures and strategies towards a reclamation of representation of marginalised presences in the historical annals of this diverse country, to reinsert the missing pages torn by censors pent on erasing traces of an entire people’s involvement in the construction of South Africa.

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Towards A New Appreciation Of Heritage Spaces

Over centuries, humanity’s mythologies have been engraved on plaques, carved in sculpture and painted on frescos of ornate architectural sites which still baffle today’s technologically advanced innovations, and these concrete testaments of grotesque tyrants and their opulence, but also as religious and sacred spaces of humanity’s interface with the divine.

Yet, when the names of towns, schools and even the ramshackle rusty bridges that span our dry rivers are being changed through some semantic cleansing of imperial names from all things African, activists need to question sentiments driving this “mass cleansing of foreign pollutants”, as deemed by new political sloganeers.

The histories of submission, oppression and loss are often overlooked when question the validity of such historical monuments, whether they espouse to commonly held ideals of a social construct, or centred around a single perspective that avows dominance of the narrator.

As a documentary filmmaker and heritage activist obsessed with authenticating stories from antiquity, my curiosity led me to begin researching the history of The Voortrekkers and their Groot Trek, from the starting point of one the first settlements they annexed to form a town now known as Potchefstroom.

This journey led me to discover that towards the end of 1838, a considerable number  of Voortrekkers settled along the Mooi River. And in November of that year Potchefstroom was laid out.  An urgent need for a church was soon realised by the initial Voortrekker community, who soon launched an appeal for contributions to a building fund. On the 26th of March 1842, Rev. Daniel Lindley thus established the first congregation in the Transvaal. 

But soon after to the establishment of the first congregation in 1842, a variety of political and social conditions led to internal conflicts with the church, and these conflict lead to factional goops who eventually decided to start their own congregations. 

These theological differences which led to the split are the root of this short inquiry into the origins of The Three Sister Churches. And it was in 1956 that another split rocked the church, when the white congregants felt it not necessary to worship with their black servants and concertante.

Although not initially conducting a socio-anthropological inquiry into the history of the church itself, uncovering the story behind The Three NG Sister Churches and their impact on the ensuing politics of South Africa, provided a pivotal goal of this journey of finding ways of re-imagining historical spaces and their contemporary psycho-social impact.

And having realised how much Dutch and German architecture is in abundance in Potchefstroom, one is left to ask how much does the Germanic Heritage flow within much of the historical heritage attached to communities that evolved in the region around The Moon River.

There are connections to the Dutch and German heritage that are prevalent around the city of Potchefstroom, and this is a connection to European architecture observable in many heritage buildings which derive their various imported styles from these two European cultures.

The Three Sister - A Church Story

When I started to research for a documentary that tells The History Of The Translation Of The Bible Into Afrikaans, it was indelibly synchronised that I encountered some incredibly knowledgable memory-keepers at The Potchefstroom Museum.

  

And as there exists an insatiable compulsion to the unknown that drives every storyteller, this indefatigable urge grows with each leap forward into the archives discovered in museums such as The Totius House Museum and The Potchefstroom Military and Transport Museum, which are meticulously well preserved and located in they city.

The Potchefstroom Museum is a remarkable testament that any concerted means undertaken to preserve history and artefacts from diverse heritages throughout human civilisation, can provide any inquisitive mind a much fulfilling picture of that often misconstrued vision of the past. 

This multifaceted perspective provided by archives that range from images, audio and artworks are essential components of a puzzle that can only be solved and deciphered through tireless dedication.

The Three Sisters - A Church Story, is a documentary film created through resilient patience and guidance from people who provided invaluable insight into the history of the church.

And while the journey’s marvels lie within strides taken and distances covered, it also remains to be confirmed that indeed the path towards the destination also is a place full of history’s marvellous mysteries.

The first of these mysteries encountered is the story of how one of the oldest NG Kerk congregations in South Africa fragmented into Three Sister Churches, over a number of theological and otherwise practical reasons.

And the origins of these three sister churches, namely The Nederduitze Geformeerde Kerk (Cape Synod), The Nederduitze Hervormde Kerk (the state church of Die Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek) and The NG Kerk under Reverend Postman), remains a highly contested chapter in the history of the church.

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There are raging debates in South African politics about the necessity of preserving colonial historical sites, which are viewed as remnants and monuments built on the exploitation of Black communities. Some spheres of society have in fact opted to rename street and building in an effort to correct the censored records of history and while preserving a future identity.

And undeniably there is a narrative absence of experience of Black people in many museums and places of historical importance, the question then becomes, how can this absence take a new shape from contemporary perspective, and become noticeable without erasing the monuments and sites of historical memory?

But the truth is that as a Cultural Activist who recognises the artistic and architectural genius that went into the construction of these sites and monuments, which undeniably represent and legitimise a system of oppression and serve as reminders about our colonisers’s inter-generational tyranny - these sites and monuments need to preserved for posterity.

And this exploration is the initial step towards not only preserving colonial architecture and heritage sites, but to uncover the hidden and erased histories that should also be brought to the fore of contemporary generations.

In order for such a heritage preservation initiative to have socially tangible impact, activists need to become familiar with the art and architectural history of various European cultures and the best methodology would entail explorative excursions to various city’s that still boast incredible historical gems.

These palatable experience of the enormity and grandeur of the human creative spirit, would indelibly translate into a concerted reverence of the sanctity of heritage in any form; not neglecting or erasing emotional scars represented by these artefacts and buildings to various marginalised communities.

These heritage sites are therefore sites of living memory, and what better reverence of the lessons learned from the past than to preserve the scars and beauties borne through these monumental  reminders in sand or stone?

But can all history be favourably and amicably accepted ay its makers, victims and observers?

This indelicately loaded question haunts this journey into a dark carven of a bigoted past, based on racialised discrimination and exploitation under guise of religiosity and piety to a divine force that somehow was selective of its beloved. 

And does history truly repeat itself, or what actually transpires are rudiments, notions carried like habits that define a reinterpretation of the sordid in history? 

Or is humankind just unconsciously prone and wired with imprinted tyrannical instincts that push humanity towards destructive enterprises that decimate all in its path towards a grand utopian dream?

And how does religious fervour fuel this nihilistic propensity for self-annihilation?

Can one speculate on notions of transference of brutal urges, and collective trauma, transmitted as genetic memory markers and the present being a point of intersection between the past and present?

The invisibility of the elderly and their compounded stereotype of being dysfunction has somehow assisted the preservation of oral history, which remains fossilised in minds that require only to be heard.

Therefore, these elders embody a traditional personification of history as it is being injected into new bodies of new generational psychologies, and this inter-generational genetic memory in turn inform possible futures. 

Conflicts within religious sects have haunted and marred devotional instincts in mankind since time immemorial, but it seem these differences and animosities are finding new ways of resurfacing in contemporary ideological discourse.

 

New age morality, altruism and philanthropic efforts to eradicate poverty, and pseudo-environmentalist zeal being observed in the face of damage caused by our species, resulting in global climate catastrophes has made zealots of many, but the truth seem to be that humanity espouses to a vision of a heaven that is beyond earth’s demise. 

It appears believers and a chosen few are toiling to destroy their present home through belief systems that promise another home beyond the stars.

Has religion created a selfish humanism that only sees our presence on this planet as transitory and meaningless, therefore whatever villainous actions of exploiting the earth for our collective gain as not a direly detrimental concern, considering that we have a splendid home tucked in immaculate heaven?

Are South African Colonial Heritage Sites Worth Preserving?

This question had been burning my gut prior the devastating fire that tragically claimed 74 human lives, and gutted a historically infamous NATIVE AFFAIRS (NdabaZabantu) building on 80 Albert Street in the centre of Johannesburg. 

Besides it being another monument of black repression which saw fathers denuded in front of their sons, and black people relegated to influx control measures that were orchestrated by the apartheid regime, the building remains a heritage site and an architectural, material space for a collective memory of apartheid’s draconian policies. 

As this building was allegedly housing predominantly black unrecorded foreigner migrants, there are a variety of sinister sentiments that have surfaced, questioning reasons that brought the residents to their demise.

Issues of how municipal authorities have neglected and mis-managed the maintenance of social infrastructure, and more specifically the majority of vulnerable heritage buildings in most inner-city neighbourhood has now come under spotlight. 

And undeniably, there is a lack of concerted institutional efforts to safeguard such buildings from illegal occupation because municipalities have no sustainable plan for suitably housing a growing population that is rapidly being swallowed by globally devastating economic tsunamis sweeping away and crippling livelihoods.

Yes, the building was allegedly illegally occupied, but there are a vast array of social conditions that simmered to give us this sour brew of tragic events and venomous sentiments. 

And again, it is a building with a sordid history, which today burned with souls of many descendants of those fore-bearers who were once demarcated and deemed illegal squatters on the streets of the majestic metropolis of Johannesburg.

And as we contemplate the loss and mourn the lives lost, there also remains of a swarm of enquiring souls that remain as “the spirits of the place’. 

Those souls of father and mothers who were once granted permits or prison sentences within those corridors, their souls and sweat still linger on the walls, such as those souls that were sacrificed recently, adding to a population of uneasy souls that will haunt the building to eternity.

With this sense of paradoxical sadness and anger, I am reminded of a conversation I had with an official of The Arts And Culture Department of a certain municipal, who expressed the feeling that it would be of no great impact if old “apartheid museums and relics or heritage sites” were burned or just vandalised by illegal squatters who would destroy that  brutal history of the oppressors.

This absurd remark, sadly implied a variety of socially held sentiments about the preservation of heritage sites “inherited from the oppressor”, and many historians and heritage practitioners are grappling with how to navigate such a contested terrain of bones and graves that will remain mute if not uncovered and preserved.

Will restoring and preserving these mausoleums of past hateful epochs be a conceited effort at appeasing ourselves or a genuine endeavour to appease spirits who were once and those recently dehumanised in the most cruelest of manner?

Is it also a form of protest to keep these redoubtable landmarks that legitimised where supremacist oppressive policies; or does our collective disdain for racist policies of the past vindicate any action to damage any remnant of that history in the form of monuments, churches and house museums?

Will sentiments of radicalised bigotry be choreographed into ideas that manifest in  defacements, arson attacks and sheer vandalism of such spaces of historical significance?

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Buildings, artefacts and images are mute yet indelible witnesses of silent lives that thrived or suffered in now derelict and destroyed spaces. This remains one of the motivating ethos of this explorative journey into ruins of museums and galleries guttered by vandalism and negligence.

Large collections of variegated historical art are also autographs of the past that needs to be seen, and not housed in polished collector’s mansions, in order for them to offer a meditation on questions of oppression and racism that continue to jolt us to reconsider historical depictions of righteous missionaries with a noble covenant of spreading their enlightened religion to heathens of a Dark Continent.  

Buildings are indeed a form of story of what a country, a system of power wants to express, they are ridiculously pampered museums that are reminders of tyrannical rulers and their ideologies.

And these buildings often left scars on the minds and souls of those who were exploited muscles that erected their polished testaments of superiority; these building need to be preserved not grandiosity or idolatry of the coloniser, but as a visible reminder of the blood and sweat our black forebears shed while erecting these monuments.