The Borderlands

Jo Ractliffe
31/201 Battalion Commemoration Service, Platfontein (triptych), 2012
Decommissioned Military Outpost, Schmidtsdrift (triptych), 2012
The Second Slaughter, Riemvasmaak (triptych), 2013
Hand-printed silver gelatin prints
Three panels: Decommissioned... 45 x 56 cm, 31/201 Battalion... and
The Second Slaughter... each 36 x 45 cm
Courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg

Since 2007 my photography has focused on the
aftermath of a set of conflicts that converged in
Angola in the late twentieth century, and which
South Africa was intricately involved in. Alongside
Angola’s civil war (1975–2002), Namibia’s war of
liberation (1966–1989) moved across the border
into Angola. Known to white South Africans as The
Border War, the liberation struggle was fought to gain
independence from South African rule.
Following two earlier bodies of work, The
Borderlands explores the repercussions of South
Africa’s involvement in the conflict within its own
borders. The towns of Pomfret, Schmidtsdrift and
Riemvasmaak in the Northern Cape were occupied by
the South African Defence Force (SADF) during and
after the war, but they also share previous histories
of violence and dispossession. The 1913 Natives
Land Act regulated, controlled and restricted the
movement of South Africans classified as ‘non-white’,
determining where they could live and work. Mass
forced removals followed (1960s–1980s), robbing
most South Africans of their land, communities,
traditions and cultural identities.
After the removals, Riemvasmaak was used
for weapons testing and training. Pomfret (a former
asbestos mine) and Schmidtsdrift were designated
for the accommodation of Angolan and Namibian
soldiers who had been recruited into the SADF,
fighting against their countrymen in Namibia and
Angola. After the war, facing possible reprisals from
their governments, these soldiers and their families
were relocated to South Africa. Land restitution
policy since 1994 has restored Riemvasmaak and
Schmidtsdrift to the original inhabitants, but their
return has raised complex issues about land, home
and belonging. For the Angolan and Namibian
veterans who find themselves in a new set of
conflicts with local communities and the state, life
remains precarious.

Jo Ractliffe’s photographs reflect her ongoing preoccupation
with the South African landscape and the ways in which it figures
in the country’s imaginary. Since 2007 her work has focused on
the aftermath of the war in Angola, a conflict that South Africa
was intricately involved in. Following Terreno Ocupado (2008)
and As Terras do Fim do Mundo (2010), her work The Borderlands
(2013), looks at spaces within South Africa that were caught up
in the mobilisation and aftermath of that war, but also share
more complex histories of violence and dispossession during the
colonial and apartheid eras.
Ractliffe teaches at the University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg where she works with Rory Bester on PhotoFocus,
a pedagogy platform for engaging photography across disciplines,
histories and experiences. She conducts lectures, workshops and
short courses at other institutions in South Africa and abroad,
and has initiated a number of independent public and educational
projects. In 2010 she was awarded a writing fellowship at the Wits
Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER). In 2011/12
she taught at the Salzburg Summer Academy, and in 2013/4 was
a research fellow at the Centre for Curating the Archive at the
University of Cape Town. Her book, As Terras do Fim do Mundo, was
listed as one of the Best Photobooks 2010 at the International
Photobook Festival, Kassel.
Ractliffe’s recent solo exhibitions are After War, Fondation
A Stichting, Brussels (2015); Someone Else’s Country, Peabody
Essex Museum, Salem (2014); and The Borderlands, Stevenson,
Cape Town (2013); her As Terras Do Fim Do Mundo travelled to
the Museet for Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark (2013); Fotohof,
Salzburg, Austria (2012) and the Walther Collection Project Space,
New York (2011). She was included in Time Conflict, Photography,
Tate Modern, London (2014) and Museum Folkwang, Essen
(2015); Apartheid and After, Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (2014);
Transition: Social Landscape, Recontres d’Arles (2013); Present
Tense, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2013); Distance and
Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, Walther Collection,
Ulm (2013); My Joburg, La Maison Rouge, Paris (2013); Unstable
Territory: Borders and Identity in Contemporary Art, Centro di
Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Venice (2013); Making History,
Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2012); Rise and Fall of
Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life,
International Center of Photography, New York (2012) and Museum
Africa, Johannesburg (2014–15); Topographies de la Guerre, Le Bal,
Paris (2011); Appropriated Landscapes, Walther Collection, Neu-
Ulm/Burlafingen (2011); and Figures and Fictions: Contemporary
South African Photography, V&A Museum, London (2011).