kagablog

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
- Albert Einstein

im coming down from being
high on a ridge
looking out on the vast landscape
of my own being
breadcrumbs crumbling
under the weight of my own
tears flowing like
a river my head
is aching..

my temple pulsates
as the sun shines

i am reminded
of crows circling
her body
swooping in
to pick at her eyes..
i remember the day they found her
broken up by the wayside,
i, a simple boy watching the flies
buzz swoop and saw
their booty..
later me being chased away
by the elders.

high on a ridge,
i see that boy
i see my own mother
leaving me there
by the airport,
the planes falling from the sky,
a sad goodbye
forever.

now as i sit and ponder
and wonder
my head aches hems and haws

i feel the stress of my pain
seeping
through my veins
my limbs my muscles
and god
this is the most pain
i have felt
in a long long time
i havent the strength
to call out
or scream out
i sit and feel
the terror
of such anxiety,

like when i saw
my mother
at the kitchen table
clutching her head
bawling out ..
loud
till the neighbours
came
and took me away.
..that is how i feel.

they say its the stress of the past
nine months
the past of my past
the fear of the future
future

im hurting now,
the pills dont make it
go away
nothing does

im blinded by my own need
to let go
let grow
into a kinder opening
cus god knows
i need it..

i know.. im not the only person who feels this way
but in my ego
eco system

its jus me and my children
and their own need
to hold and caress
and keep
life’s light alive
in their beings..
and

.. im incapable
of even doing that
..for them
right now.

Straight from its world premiere at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (KKNK) in Oudtshoorn, the cutting-edge hiphopera Afrikaaps is coming to the Baxter Theatre. It will be playing from 7 to 23 April at 20:00 nightly.

Director, Catherine Henegan, has assembled a formidable ensemble of young guns and an equally impressive creative team to help trace the origins of Afrikaans all the way back to the 1600s and follow its evolution through to the present day.

The line-up features hip-hop poet, performer and musician, Jitsvinger; composer, pianist and jazz prodigy, Kyle Shepherd; singer and poet, Blaq Pearl; hip-hop artist and activist, Emile Jansen; bassist and musician, Shane Cooper; singer, actor and dancer, Moenier Adams; rapper and break-dancer, Bliksemstraal; and poet and storyteller, Jethro Louw of the Khoi Khonnexion.

Set in a dynamic digital landscape, the ensemble, Die Argitekbekke, represents an eclectic fusion of musical genres. In true hip-hop mode this musical theatre piece employs glitches; scratches; beats; and rhymes to traverse time, while also referencing the multiplicity of traditional Cape styles like Ghoema and Kaapse Klopse.

South African-born Henegan once again teams up with film maker; director; poet; novelist; musician; and blogger, Aryan Kaganof, who takes on the role of dramaturg for this production. The two last worked together in South Africa on The Shooting Gallery, which was presented at The Market Theatre and at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown. Documentary film maker, Dylan Valley, is responsible for the video and for documenting the process with lighting by top international lighting designer, Jantje Geldof.

Afrikaaps is an international collaboration between the Baxter Theatre Centre and The Glasshouse Theatre Collective in Amsterdam, in association with ABSA KKNK, with additional support from the Performing Arts Fund of Netherlands; City of Amsterdam; and Theatre Institute of the Netherlands.

Henegan is Co-founder of The Glasshouse, a multi-disciplinary theatre collective based in Amsterdam. She made her debut as a director in South Africa in 2006 with the controversial media performance of The Shooting Gallery about a war photographer with a moral dilemma.

“With this collaboration I am excited to be bringing together artists from different disciplines made up of musicians; performers; and film makers for this theatrical event,” says Henegan.

This theatre production is part of a bigger movement of efforts to reclaim the Afrikaans language for all who speak it. There is a side to the language - the Creole birth of the language - that has been overlooked in South Africa’s collective consciousness. The role of indigenous cultures and the slave population in forging the language has generally been excluded from the history books. The Afrikaans hip-hop movement in the Cape, through voices like Jitsvinger; Blaq Pearl; and Emile Jansen, is fueled by celebrating and reclaiming indigenous cultural heritage, and defining and re-defining who the Afrikaners of the 21st century are.

The makers of Afrikaaps set out on a mission of investigation and redefinition combining storytelling; poetry; music; and video to trace the evolution and roots of Afrikaans. As Dylan Valley, who is making the video component of the production, has pointed out, “We need to recognise Afrikaans as part of the heritage of all South Africans, and not only of one particular racial group. Together we can make Afrikaans a language of liberation! ”

Afrikaaps runs at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival from 1 to 4 April and then transfers to the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town for a short season from 7 to 23 April at 20:00 nightly. Booking is through Computicket on 083 915 8000; online at www.computicket.co.za; or at any Shoprite Checkers outlet countrywide.

this article first appeared on mediaupdate.co.za

SCENE 92 EXT. NIGHT. X.S. NIGHTCLUB
The queue has grown outside of the club. Excited people wait expectantly in the line to be let in. Arthur stands at the front of the queue. Flash comes out and whispers to Arthur.

FLASH
Keep the queue growing.

Arthur nods and he looks back at the queue worriedly.

SCENE 93 INT. NIGHT. X.S. NIGHTCLUB FLASH’S OFFICE
Flash is on his phone again.

FLASH
Famous, for fuck sakes pick up the
phone!

SCENE 94 INT. NIGHT. CLUB FICTION, LONG STREET
Cube sits alone in a corner. He is obviously feeling down. The DJ plays Gang Of Instrumentals ‘My Number One’. Cube watches the dancefloor. He sees Tashaka dancing alone to the song. Like Moratiwa she can DANCE. Cube is looking at her in a new light. He is enjoying watching her dance. The track ends. Tashaka steps outside to the balcony. Cube gets up and walks through the dancefloor to get to the balcony.

SCENE 95 EXT. NIGHT. CLUB FICTION BALCONY
Cube walks up to Tashaka. He taps her. She isn’t so sure how to react.

CUBE
I know I shouldn’t but I just found
you incredibly sexy on the dance
floor. Forgive me.

TASHAKA (unsure,drawing it out)
Thankssssssss.

CUBE
I regret all the boring time I
wasted with Moratiwa.

TASHAKA
Come again?

CUBE
Your eyes are talking to me in a language
I didn’t know I could understand.

TASHAKA
Are you making fun of me?

CUBE
Why do you think I’m making fun of
you when I tell you I love you.

TASHAKA
Boyfriend, what are you on?

SCENE 96 INT. NIGHT X.S. NIGHTCLUB BAR AREA
Big Sid has walked in. He is on the phone. Moratiwa and the Twins are dancing slightly to the beat. There is no DJ in the box. They turn as they hear Big Sid’s voice.

BIG SID
I don’t give two shits if he is
sleeping get my fucking cunt of a
lawyer up…Barns. I want a divorce
now. How do I spell that? Fuck sakes.
B for Bullshit, A for Asshole, R
for Rod, N for Nipple and S for
suck my cock.
He hangs up the phone and heads to the backroom. Moratiwa approaches the bar and speaks to Khanya.

MORATIWA
Is Famous coming?

KHANYA
I don’t know. Can I get you a
drink?

SCENE 97 INT. NIGHT. X.S. CLUB FLASH’S OFFICE
Big Sid is seated with Flash.

BIG SID
Grab a glass.

FLASH
I got to get back to the door.

BIG SID
Bullshit sit down.

FLASH
Excuse me Sid. I’m trying to make 40k
remember?

Flash leaves the office.

SCENE 98 INT. NIGHT. X.S. NIGHTCLUB
Lot approaches Flash.

LOT
We can’t hold that queue forever.

FLASH
Do you have a DJ?

LOT
What’s Famous saying.

FLASH
Famous is in Joburg. The queue stays
till we find someone to play.

He walks past Moratiwa and the Twins.

NTHANDO & HLELO (in unison)
We are bored!

MORATIWA
We are waiting for Famous.

The Twins aren’t impressed. They start heading towards the door. Flash blocks them.

FLASH
I’m afraid I can’t let you out.

NTHANDO & HLELO (in unison)
What?

FLASH
The party is about to start.

They sense a bit of desperation in Flash.

FLASH
I promise.

The Twins make their way back to Moratiwa.

NTHANDO & HLELO (in unison)
We are being held hostage.

SCENE 99 INT. NIGHT. X.S. CLUB FLASH’S OFFICE
Flash goes to the safe and opens it. He deliberates for a while and then pulls out a small scale disco ball. He holds the disco ball up high as if it were a basketball that he was preparing to dunk. A strange shimmering digital morph occurs.

SCENE 100 EXT. DAY. BASKETBALL FIELD
A teenage boy is preparing to lob the basketball into the net, when suddenly he is brutally barged into from behind. He goes down. The screen goes black.

When the screen fades up again we are looking directly into the face of the kindly FATHER/GRANDFATHER figure.

FATHER/GRANDFATHER
You did your best boy, that’s what
counts. I’m relying on you to always
do that much.

SCENE 101 INT. NIGHT. X.S. CLUB FLASH’S OFFICE
We see the FATHER/GRANDFATHER’S face looking at Flash from every single one of the little mirrors on the disco ball. Flash gazes up at the disco ball earnestly.

FLASH
Mother. I’ve never done this before,
but my back’s to the wall. I need
your help.

The disco ball changes, suddenly every dingle one of the mirrors is screening a cloud, then the clouds all coalesce into a beautiful woman’s face.

SCENE 102 EXT. NIGHT. XS CLUB ENTRANCE
Arthur looks worried about the size of the crowd. He glances at his wristwatch and turns around anxiously, hoping for sign of Flash. The crowd are virtually ready to mob the entrance, he does not look like he can keep it controlled for much longer. Suddenly the crowd starts to CHEER, very loudly. At this moment LOT emerges from within and joins ARTHUR.

LOT
What the fuck?

ARTHUR
Dunno, they just started cheering.

The two of them survey the queue that has formed in front of their club. It’s huge and stretches into the distance. Suddenly through the crowd they can see Famous walking down the queue greeting the GUYS and GIRLS waiting to go inside.
Next to Famous is Maliah.

FAMOUS
Hello there.

Lot is relieved. Mandoza’s ‘Uzoyithola Kanjani’ kicks in.

TITLE ON BLACK: 11.30

SCENE 103 INT. NIGHT. X.S. NIGHTCLUB DANCE FLOOR
Flash and Lot stand in the middle of the empty dance floor. Famous is in the booth, Maliah by his side.

FLASH
We good to go?

LOT
Sure thing boss.

FLASH
Let’s do it.

SCENE 104 EXT. NIGHT. X.S. NIGHTCLUB - FRONT DOOR
Flash and Lot exit the front door. Flash walks up to Arthur.

FLASH
Okay. Let them in. It’s party time.

Arthur steps pensively to the front of the queue where only a single red rope divides him from the hordes of PATRONS. Arthur pulls back the red rope and allows them in. The crowd goes wild. Arthur beams with pride. Flash and Lot watch the stream of people enter with delight. They pay their cover charge…

SCENE 105 INT. NIGHT. X.S. NIGHTCLUB - BAR AREA
The bartenders work in a frenzy. There is no time for breaks. People scream to be served. Moratiwa comes back from the bathroom surprised at the hundreds of punters suddenly filing through the club. Moratiwa walks through the crowd looking for the Twins. Then she sees Famous. She smiles. Maliah who is in the booth with Famous turns to him and kisses him deeply. Moratiwa sees this and it hurts. She is frozen to that spot. Famous leans into the kiss even deeper.

TITLE ON BLACK: 12 P.M.

SCENE 106 EXT. NIGHT. X.S. NIGHTCLUB ENTRANCE
Moratiwa leaves the club. The Twins with her. They get into their car and drive off down the street. No sooner are they out of the frame than Tashaka walks up and pays Arthur and enters the X.S. She is closely followed by a bewildered looking Cube.

SCENE 107 INT. NIGHT. X.S. NIGHTCLUB - BAR AREA
Khanya serves up a combo of drinks to a bunch of ogling guys. They thank her with a generous tip. She fakes a flirtatious smile and turns to serve the next customer. Khanya freezes and looks into the face of a man she knows all too well. The man looking back is a tall, lizard of a man, greasy and overly groomed. This is DARKNERO.

DARKNERO
Hey Khanya.

Khanya tries to avoid him by going after another CUSTOMER but Darknero follows shoving the other customer out of the way.

KHANYA
What do you want?

DARKKNERO
A beer.

Suddenly a very muscular GENTLEMAN steps up behind Darknero.

DARKKNERO
And a mineral water. He doesn’t
drink.

Khanya fetches the drinks and brings them over to Darknero and his enormous friend.

DARKNERO
You owe me Khanya.

KHANYA
I’ll pay. Now please leave me I
have to work.

DARKNERO
I want my money tonight.

SCENE 108 INT. NIGHT. X.S. NIGHTCLUB DANCEFLOOR
Flash stands admiring the club and the people. He checks his watch. Flash looks over and notices Darknero talking to Khanya. She seems to be distressed. Lot walks up.

FLASH
Back me up. I have a bad feeling.

Lot joins Flash and together they walk over to Khanya’s side of the bar.

SCENE 109 INT. NIGHT. X.S. CLUB. BAR AREA
Darknero is standing by the bar monopolizing Khanya’s attention.

FLASH
Hello Nero.

Darknero spins round. His Bodyguard is close behind.

DARKNERO
That’s Darknero to you little man.

FLASH (to the body guard)
Hey Arnold.

The bodyguard steps forward and shakes Flash’s hand.

ARNOLD
How’s it going Flash? You’re busy.

FLASH
Got a famous DJ playing tonight.
How’s Kiki?

ARNOLD
She’s great. 9 years old.

FLASH
They grow so fast.

ARNOLD
You said it.

Darknero is disturbed by the familiarity between Flash and
Arnold.

FLASH
How long you been with this prick?
ARNOLD (cautiously)
Aww Flash.

FLASH
I don’t have to tell you where the
VIP room is. Take him there. Tell
him to leave my bartenders alone.

Darknero is frustrated by his lack of attention and goes reluctantly with Arnold toward the VIP room. Flash looks at Khanya and gestures for her to meet him at the end of the bar.

from “building dwelling thinking”

trouw, 26 august, 1993

it’s a very good movie. Bloody good in fact. Totally unique to have an insider’s view of the media machine at work. I’m most impressed
with the fact that you had the vision twenty years ago to shoot it the way you did. That moment unlocking the door - with the 80s glasses
and post punk hair - “strange lyrical, never before seen on film”.

The Dada jump cuts are totally in keeping. And I’ve never seen Mandela so candid and vulnerable in interview. When did you shoot that? The development with him talking about not renouncing violence and then cutting to police shooting on the parade that very day is breath taking. You’ve managed to say something interesting about the general through the particular. It’s what we’re always striving for, in fiction too.

I hope your agreement with e-tv allows you to do the festivals internationally and to sell the film foreign. Besides TV I can see it being a prescribed ‘text’ for media studies. Silverdocs will love it, and probably Seattle, Toronto, IDFA…… Big hand.

welcome nelson
2010
23min
produced and directed by craig matthew
edited by aryan kaganof
sound design by daniel eppel
theme song written by croc-e-moses and sung by alice matthew

Here I would like to assert that in Western thought in spite of the fact that we have tried to banish myth in a radical way from our conception of world and history, we involuntarily reintroduced it in a very peculiar way… the rational discourse of Enlightment [sic], which has become the dominating discourse in Western philosophy, has produced a new myth: the autonomous subject. Although modern philosophy flatters itself with the thought, that it completely freed itself from the shackles of mythology and externally imposed authority in the form of religion , many 20th century philosophers have recognized the fact that as in myth, Enlightment gets trapped into mythology with each step it takes in order to enlarge the distance between itself and mythology… this subject, who thought he was the lord of creation and the driving force of history, became a myth himself. His urge to develop and to finalize, to objectify and dominate has produced counterforces which it can no longer control.”

Henk Oosterling

March 17 iLLUSEUM 19:00 - 21:00

The strange & surreal case of Riina Hanninen drew our attention … Are we caught in a time warp that brought us straight into pre-2nd-war era, when the Nazis decided which art had to be forbidden and the makers criminalized OR are we thrown back even further in history…back to the dark days of the inquisition where people, mostly women could be accused and condemned for … whatever really …..?

….Come and see the work and meet the person who recently was Persona non Grata … on trial for her art in … 2009!

The Abyss

Riina Hänninen`s death, destruction and resurrection. Riina Hänninen was an artist who lived in 21`st century. Hänninen was raised in the middle of recession in Finland, in a small town full of alcoholism, unemployment and social exclusion. This young girl had many names, and she could not write or count properly. She had an appointment reserved for social welfare officer, but by mistake she was accepted to a favoured art institution. In this institution, she first flourished until the increased control over the people resulted in everyone to search potentially dangerous people among those who were different, weird and abnormal. Her paintings became objects of fear and deranged personality. The girl was given more names; the mass murderer, the school murderer, attention seeker, fake artist, insane, monster. Place that was used to be considered free, became a prison. Art became conservative, corrupted business institution. She didn’t belong there anymore; she belonged only among the mentally insane and forgotten. The girl saw people’s hypocrisy, weakness and she opened her eyes again in isolation and worthlessness. She saw the Abyss and how the Abyss was infinite. She realized how her paintings had been trying to express it, but she always thought it as just the darkness of mind. The Abyss had been a constant presence. We could fall to it, lose the borders or search it with carefulness. It is within each one of us, the fight between the restrictions of society, morality and humanity. The Abyss has been with us since the beginning of consciousness, the question of reality, life and its purpose. In Abyss live all the dreaded words, monsters, and visions. Her expression was restricted, the fear was planted on her, the fear that you shouldn’t speak about the Abyss because society needs people to work as machines, not realize their true nature. But Hänninen wanted to know the answers to all the questions that people were afraid to ask.

These paintings are made in isolation process by Hänninen in small dark room of the attic in the border of Amsterdam’s winter sky.

This exhibition in sponsored by Finnish government to keep people silent and happy with antidepressant pills.

In 1997 UNESCO included in its Memory of the World Register an archive best known as the Bleek Collection and described thusly:

The Bleek Collection consists of papers of Dr W.H.I. Bleek (1827-1875), his sister-in-law Lucy Lloyd (1834-1914), his daughter Dorothea Bleek (1873-1948) and G.W. Stow (1822-1882) relating to their researches into the San (Bushman) language and folklore, as well as albums of photographs. Bleek developed a phonetic script for transcribing the characteristic clicks and sounds of the !Xam language which is used by linguists to this day. Although some of the material was published by Lucy Lloyd and Dorothea Bleek, a great deal remains unpublished. The material provides an invaluable and unique insight into the language, life, religion, mythology, folklore and stories of this late Stone Age people.1

The Bleek Collection does indeed offer many invaluable lessons, chief among them being how Western constructions of modernity are imbedded in tropes of prehistory and indigeneity and wedded to proclamations of science and salvage. Robert Gordon has suggested the archive be seen in the context of South Africa’s “incipient scientific nationalism.”2 The Bleek Collection was recently published in a lavish volume and accompanying CD ROM, edited by scholar and artist Pippa Skotnes. This publication, Claim to the Country: The Archive of Lucy Lloyd and Wilhelm Bleek (2007), continues Skotnes’s scholarly and artistic inquiry into the lives of the Lloyd and Bleek family and their informants and was preceded by Skotnes’s Sound of the Thinking Strings (1991) and the controversial exhibition (with catalogue) Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushman (1996). Skotnes’s latest exhibition and accompanying catalogue, Unconquerable Spirit: George Stow’s History Paintings of the San, launched in November 2008 at Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town, centers on Lucy Lloyd and the geologist/ethnographer George Stow in connection to Stow’s rock painting studies. Sustained and legitimized by exhibitions, publications, and national museums, universities, and archives, these projects have provided privileged reinscriptions of archival materials gathered during an era of cultural plunder of South Africa’s indigenous heritage by colonial forces. Skotnes’s scholarly and artistic contributions to contemporary conceptualizations of South Africa’s earliest inhabitants are immensely valuable. Her appropriation of San heritage is deeply inflected by her scholarship on the San and most particularly Bleek, Lloyd, and Stow’s interpolations of the San and early rock art painting. Her publications and exhibitions offer rich and at times competing layers of analyses that seem to position her as a keen, insightful and detached observer-scholar and then again as a romanticizing dramaturgist and scenographer. To this end, there are parallels with the endeavors of Bleek and Lloyd and renewed courtship with the constructions of Western modernity through and against African indigeneity.

Can artistic “appropriations” of indigenous
cultural forms deconstruct or at the very least
interrogate the constructed modernities imposed
upon the term “indigenous”? This essay considers
a single artist’s — Garth Erasmus — relationship
to contemporary conceptions of indigeneity in
South Africa (Figure 1). It is guided by two key
questions: How are contemporary understandings
and perceptions of indigeneity bound up in
the “what” and the “when” of South African
modernity; and Is indigeneity a trope of modernity,
and if so, whose modernity? Historicizing the
naming and appropriation of indigenous cultures
in South Africa offers critical insight into the
larger interrogation of African modernity. Two
observations are set forth herein; firstly, that in
terms of “indigenous,” modernity and prehistory
(or the premodern) are codependent; and second,
that those artists who appropriate indigenous
cultures through a lens of “critical extinction”
risk reproducing a paradigm of Eurocentric
modernity.
While South Africa is the self-proclaimed
cradle of humankind,3 the indigenous people of
southern Africa have long been imagined as living
examples of prehistory.4 The continued display of
the dioramas of non-Eurocentric
South African tribal [sic] groups that include
life casts situated in historicized environments at
the Iziko South African Museum perpetuates this
view.
The prehistory has and continues to play a
seminal role in South African national identity.5
Indeed, in South Africa, constructions of
modernity are contingent upon prehistory
narratives as much as they are on the premodern.
According to Robert Gordon, “While [South
Africa’s first peoples] have been socially marginal,
symbolically they were [and are] central to a
number of different ideological constellations.”6
In the European “age of discovery,” assumed links
between “modern savages” and stone-age peoples
of Europe were common. “Modern savages” were
“found” at the “uttermost ends of the earth” and
the South African Cape represented just such a
place.7 Voyages to these distant parts represented
a kind of time travel for which Europeans “made
the crucial substitution of space for time.”8
But for European settlers living in proximity
to the indigenous peoples of South Africa, the
mythologized temporal distance became a critical
replacement for spatial distancing. European
modernity was produced by the collapse and
distortion of time such that simultaneous presents
were rendered chronologically distant and through
such reductive exercises, a process of “othering”
was begun.
South Africa’s earliest inhabitants are
commonly called the Khoikhoi (KhoiKhoi) and the
San, the former cast as pastoralists and the latter
as hunter-gathers. Although movement among
the early inhabitants and between these modes
of living took place, modernist narratives created
separate myths and derogatory names — the
Hottentots and the Bushmen — for the Khoi
and the San, respectively.9 Distinguishing huntergatherers
from pastoralists served the ideological,
unilinear trajectory of cultural evolution, and
secured the San’s place as first primitives. The
clicks that dominate the languages spoken by
the Khoi and the San were the subject of early
European derogation and marked them as a
lesser race, between human and beast.10 European
illustrations of Cape inhabitants rendered them
variously as savage, wild, exotic, and indolent.11
Khoisan is a blended term that, in its contemporary
use, acknowledges the mutual fates of the Khoi
and San peoples of South Africa, displaced and
greatly decimated by European colonization.
As with “Bushmen,” revived popular and civic
usage has not dispelled debates about proper
nomenclature and land right claims, nor eased, in
Skotnes’ words, the “tangled lines of inheritance
that characterize Khoisan identity today.”12
Artist and San scholar Pippa Skotnes suggests
that, “The final dispossession of the Khoisan
came with their assimilation into Afrikaner life
and their classification along with others of (as
the state perceived it) ‘mixed blood’ as ‘Cape
Coloured.’”13
The dispossession of these indigenous
peoples by European settlers suggests that the
Khoisan problematic is not easily positioned under
the themes of Africa and modernity although
both are critically present. Notwithstanding
their long history of social, political, and cultural
engagement with Bantu peoples, the indigenous
peoples of southern Africa are and have been
repeatedly situated apart from black Africans
for ideological, economic and political gain .14
The indigenous people are treated very much
like the “discovered” hominid fossils used to
support claims that South Africa is the “cradle
of humankind.” They are located within “Africa”
but as relics of “prehistory” are considered not
per se “African” i.e. “black African.” The issue in
question here is specifically the African identity
and modernity of white South Africans, which
was contemporaneous yet deemed superior rather
than parallel to other modernities within the same
location.15 To quote one noted South African
archaeologist, “All people who populate the world
today are descended from people who originated
in Africa […] The San or ‘Bushmen’ of southern
Africa are descended from those individuals who
stayed at home and did not emigrate to seek their
fortunes elsewhere.”16
South African archeological studies long
served two mythic constructs. First, that the
prehistory evident in southern Africa could be
sequenced back to Europe and second, that South
Africa’s prehistory was indelibly linked to the San,
a modern/contemporary ethnically designated
group who were seen as living relics of southern
Africa’s prehistory.17 As archaeologist Nick
Shepherd poignantly argued, colonial archeology
was practiced “without knowing or wanting
to know anything about African people, per
se — least of all the African present — [and] doing
archeology involved looking through a present
landscape […] to find the traces of an imagined
past lying below.”18
Artistically speaking, South African-born
Walter Battiss (1906-1982) is a good example of
this trajectory. Acknowledged today for looking
to South African rock art for source material at
a time when most white artists were looking to
Europe for inspiration, Battiss claimed to not
understand the black man and to find in Bushmen
a vestigial Adam.19
I was trying to find out what came
before the Europeans came, take what I
could from it, change it and build on it.
This was something that was completely
misunderstood. People thought that all
I was doing was imitating the Bushman
or just extending Bushman art or
prehistoric art, but that is not what I
was getting at at all. I think it is really
necessary to make it quite clear now
that what I had recognized was that
in all of us there is still some aspect
of primitivism — the vestigial Adam.
There is still some of the primitive
man in all of us, and we as Europeans
were perfectly justified in taking what
we wanted from our ancestors, and I
looked upon the Bushman as rather a
minor form of this big background,
because the white people had ancestors
who had lived in caves, and [there are]
white people within civilization living
primitive and simple lives today and they
still retain something of that outlook
which the artist admires. I am going into
some detail about this but I think there
is a complete misunderstanding in South
Africa over what a South African artist
should use. I think he should use what is
about him, what he finds there, that he
should use it as a European.20
South African discourses on indigenous
culture that center temporal distance are laden
with modernist conceptions of extinction and
acculturation and often preclude contemporary
exigencies. However, artist Garth Erasmus, whose
performance, soundscapes, and visual art have for
some years focused on South African indigenous
history and culture, revises an interest in
indigenous narratives in South Africa that presents
a dialectical challenge to such assumptions (Figure
2). Erasmus’ work represents an inversion or
refutation of modernity’s constructed relationship
to a “primitive” indigenous past. His concept of
the indigenous is neither temporally nor spatially
distant; rather it suggests that the social temporality
that matters most is the present condition.
In many ways, South Africa’s present is
symbolically conditioned by the success of
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a
comprehensive process of social healing relative
to apartheid-era atrocities. Yet South African

SIXTEEN

Nandi has a powerful aura about her which grabs you by the throat the minute you come across it and leaves you choking for more. She is aptly named. She is named after the mother of Shaka Zulu and she looks royal and elegant. She is a queen. She looks like she is fit to give birth to princes and princesses. Legend has it that after the death of his mother King Shaka almost destroyed his kingdom by issuing a decree that anyone who was found not mourning the death of his mother should be put to death. The nation mourned until they could mourn no more. So thousands and thousands of subjects were killed in one of the darkest periods in the Zulu empire. It took one brave man to bring King Shaka to his senses. And now Nandi looks fit to be celebrated and mourned with passion even in her own lifetime.

She has a sunny disposition about her that makes people want to bask around her vicinity. Her skin is soft and bronze. Her tender neck is thin and finely chiseled as if it had been inserted much later after creation to enjoin her head and body. Her body is thin and light as if it is too tiny to carry the power of her enormous spirit. She has an aura of antiquity about her that reminds one of Queen Nerfetiti.

She is dressed in a flowing fine linen dress that goes up to the hem of her knees courtesy of Trish. Her sandals which display her delicate tiny feet are made up of fine leather. She has a light denim bag wrapped around her shoulders. She wont take it off even at a table, it is part of her look. She reminds Graphit of the words he once had to recite on a stage play from the proverbs of Solomon:

“She makes herself coverings
Her clothing is fine linen and purple
Her husband is known in the city gates
Taking his seat among the elders of the land
She makes linen garments and sells them
She supplies the merchant with sashes
Strength and dignity are her clothing

Graphit has never felt this way, he is overwhelmed by her. He wants to get married to her and take his seat among the elders of the land and be known in the city gates.
He sits mesmerized on the carpet with Trish and Deep listening to Nandi read from Deep’s manuscript. Graphit watches Nandi like a star-struck kid seeing a movie star for the first time. Never in his entire life had he been taken by a woman, he is convinced. She had been reading undisturbed for a full thirty minutes. They sit on the carpet leaning on the walls.
“All the characters have no names” Trish observes.
Nandi stops and looked around the table as if to remind herself of their names.
“Its because Johannesburg has a way of stripping you of your identity” she responds “people become descriptions, mere labels”

Graphit is amazed. The woman knows the book better than the author. It was as if she had read the manuscript in a previous life. He tries to guess her star sign. His work as a stage performer had required him reading a lot of star signs to get an insight into characters and their behaviour.
“And all the characters are so dysfunctional” Trish persists with her critique.
“The whole world is dysfunctional; does it cease to be real? Nandi asks.

“Johannesburg is sick” Nandi suddenly declared. “What Johannesburg needs is a health shop”
“A vegetarian shop? Trish asked and seemed to be thinking of something. “A vegetarian shop, of course that’s brilliant, you will feed Johannesburg and I will clothe her”

Deep is skeptical about the number of vegetarians to be found in Johannesburg. But Nandi is adamant it is better to cater for a few vegetarians who would live longer than feed millions of meat eaters who would die earlier.
“People need to be taught how to eat again” she maintains.
“Lets change the world into wine” Graphit suggests as if to himself.
“What was that about wine? Deep asked.
“Its something I read, no it’s something I heard from one of my directors, he said it was a line from some Nigerian writer, Ben something where they are talking about changing the world into wine or something” he explains.
“Do you know the name of the book? Nandi is curious.
“I remember the book because I liked the title, the book is called Dangerous Love” he searches her face a bit as if scrutinizing it for some untold clues, “ you are a virgo right? he asks his face beaming with new found revelation.

“How did you know? She is obviously impressed. Her whole sunshine turns to shield Graphit who basks under her glory. Trish smiles knowingly at Deep who just sighs in relief, hoping Graphit would finally stop sleeping with his maids. Graphit rises up and takes Nandi by the hand leading her to the balcony. She follows like a docile horse being led to water.
“I read that most Virgo’s are vegetarians, that they are tiny and intelligent, that they love reading and writing. But there is something else they did not mention about virgos”
“What is that? Nandi asks eagerly.
They are now standing on the balcony holding hands and facing each other. They are so close to each other they could feel each other’s breath.
“That they are beautiful beyond measure” Graphit says searching her eyes. Nandi is bowled over and feeling weak in the knees. She wishes he could pick her up and take her to the sunset.
“There is also another line from that book by Ben something, the line goes like this: “something has been stolen from all of us”
Deep and Trish, who had followed them halfway through the balcony watch in fascination. Deep feels like an intruder in his own flat.