An artist as the ‘righter’ of the wrongs
Sabata-mpho Mokae
When a
nation emerges from an era of repression, it has to go through the process of
correcting that which had gone wrong and create a new programme for a better
future. In 2017, the post-apartheid South Africa is merely twenty-three years
old. It is a new nation, crawling out of the clutches of what the United
Nations had termed “a crime against humanity”. Any major political programme,
apartheid included, relies on the arts to get into the nation’s DNA. The arts
give such political programme wings to fly. Paintings are painted and
exhibited, music created and played, books written and read and films produced
and watched. The programme to negotiate a new order, rebuild a broken people,
will need the arts to give it impetus and be its lifeblood.
One could
ask a question: what is the role of the arts in a transition?
Writing in Mohlomi: Journal of Southern African
Historical Studies in Lesotho in 1990, South Africa-based Nigerian writer
and academic, Bankole Omotoso points to the Western critic who wishes “to see
African writing in the light of concerns of Western writing – the pursuit of
the psyche of the individual torn from the community”. May I suggest that we
paraphrase Omotoso and replace “writing” with “art in general”?
The
argument here is that the post-colonial, and indeed post-apartheid, artist is
expected to ‘right’ that which had gone wrong and produce the kind of art in
which there would be no doubt that the artist himself shares common humanity
with those he tells the story about. This argument holds water because it is
common knowledge that there was a way in which the oppressed were depicted,
through art and literature, and that the optical value of that was that the
devaluation of these people made its way into the DNA of both the oppressed and
the oppressor.
One ends up
agreeing with Omotoso that the African writer, as well as the African artist,
needs to have a political commitment to the rebuilding of what was once called
“the dark continent”. Omotoso asks a question that he suggest we, the creators
of the art intended for public consumption, need to ask ourselves: “how has
your political commitment helped … to create viable and stable institutions for
the achievement of the dreams of your people?”
Perhaps an
artist in a nation that is negotiating a new order is, in Omotoso’s words, “a
‘righter’ of the wrongs that foreign domination and exploitation have
inflicted” on his nation.
He also
urges us to create “the basis on which later generations could consume”. This
means that at the time of creating art, the artist is paying a debt to the
future. In this instance, an artist is serving future generations. He is
indebted to those who are yet to be born.
In the poem
I Will Keep Broken Things,
African-American poet and activist Alice Walker talks about keeping – and also
owning - “broken things” as well as painful memories. She says “their beauty is
they need not ever be fixed”. In creating art about the past, as uncomfortably
honestly as possible, the artist helps us to accept a past that got us where we
are. The oil-on-canvas visual narrative of Sol Plaatje by Giorgie Bhunu helps
and leads us to accept the iconic Sol Plaatje the achiever as well as Sol
Plaatje the broken man. It also facilitates our acceptance of the history of
the South African liberation struggle that is so intertwined with Sol Plaatje’s
personal history and individual struggles. It leads us into the past that we
can draw lessons and inspiration from.
In an
attempt to answer the question I asked about the role of the artist, let me
quote what Holly Daffurn wrote in Times
Have Changed: the Evolving Role of an Artist: “Art can be an escape
from reality, art can be used as a chronicle of the times, art can be something
we all can relate to, it can be a catalyst for change, art can be instinctive,
it can feed our culture, it can reflect nature, it can soothe the soul. It can
be an absolute indulgence and luxury, it can be anything you want it to be. The
role of an artist is as mercurial as the artist’s inspiration and ideas, it
changes constantly, evolving as the years churn by and adapting with the same
frenetic pace as society.”
In Noble Existence: an
oil-on-canvas visual narrative of Sol Plaatje, Bhunu is narrating the story
of one of Africa’s most dedicated servants, a literary and journalism pioneer,
the promoter of sobriety, a family man, a political activist, singer and stage
actor. In this case Bhunu is joining the band of troubadours who wrote
biographies of Sol Plaatje, from Modiri Molema in the 1960s to Brian Willan in
the 1980s. Only in this instance he used a different art form to write a
biography of Sol Plaatje, visual art. He assumes the role of an artist as the
teller of tales, a chronicler of the nation’s stories.
But Sol Plaatje did not fall from the sky, nor was he an island
surrounded by nothingness. He came from a people and his life and work became
part of a people’s conversation that has been going on long before he was born
and continued long after he was buried. It is perhaps worth noting that Bhunu
has included, among works on Sol Plaatje, those who lived and worked with
Plaatje. These include Plaatje’s father Kushumane, his wife Elizabeth, his
children, his protégé Modiri Molema, his comrades in the South African Native
National Congress and others. By so doing he has created a context, a Plaatje
context. This exhibition’s importance cannot be over-emphasized.
Thank you,
Giorgie Bhunu for this important and timely work. Those of us who appreciate
the work that Plaatje did and the lesson drawn from his life, will be forever
indebted to you.
(Mokae delivered this speech at the occasion
of the opening of the ‘Noble Existence’ art exhibition by Giorgie Bhunu at the
William Humphreys Art Gallery in Kimberley on October 4, 2017. The exhibition
is on until the beginning of November)
