Heroes: Principles of African Greatness Part 6— South Africa's Long Walk to Freedom

Join us for the sixth of 7 dispatches from "Heroes," exploring artworks from the National Museum of African Art’s permanent collection that tell the story of key heroic principles and personages in Africa’s arts and history, through art, biography, quotes, interviews, and music.

Heroes: Principles of African Greatness Exhibit Entryway (2019) by Brad SimpsonSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

A long-term permanent collection installation at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art.  


Curated by Kevin D. Dumouchelle

Heroes Exhibit Banner (2019) by Sakinya Washington and Lisa VannSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Be your best. This is the quest that the greatest of heroes model for us. Through their journeys, struggles, and triumphs, exceptional individuals exemplify values that we celebrate in tales of heroic accomplishment—epics that outlast heroes themselves. Africa’s history abounds with such tales.

Heroes Exhibit at the National Museum of African Art (2019-01-01) by Brad SimpsonSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

South Africa—A Long Walk…

When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both . . . We are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
—Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 1995 

Heroes Series 6 (2021-01-07) by Kevin DumouchelleSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Heroes and Artists  of Part 6 (4:31)

Apartheid Laboratory Installation (1995) by Willie BesterSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Freedom, as Mandela suggests, is a process—and a deeply personal one, at that. South Africa’s vaunted “long walk to freedom” over the course of the 20th century makes up one of the largest and most sweeping sets of stories within Heroes.  It suggests a struggle ongoing and not yet complete.

Nelson Mandela at 19 (1937) by UnknnownSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Nelson...

Winnie Mandela leading a march in Cape Town (1990-02-02) by Rashid Lombard/AFP/Getty ImagesSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

... and Winnie.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (2004-02-11) by Benny GoolSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Tutu...

Steve Biko (1966/1977) by Mark Peters, Liason Agency and Getty ImagesSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

...and Biko.

Brenda Fassie in concert (1976/2004) by Joe Sefale and Getty Images/Sunday TimesSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Brenda.

Heroes Exhibit at the National Museum of African Art (2019-01-01) by Brad SimpsonSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Kathrada, Sisulu, Mhlaba, Motsoaledi, Mlangeni, Mbeki, and Goldberg. Ditsie and Nkoli. This section encompasses some of Heroes’ most iconic, larger-than-life personalities—along with some whose names have not yet earned mononymic brand status (but who, it will be argued, might yet deserve it).

Heroes: Principles of African Greatness - Dispatch 6 Themes (2021) by Marc BretzfelderSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Each principal in Heroes is represented by an artwork and a specific historic African person who embodies the value expressed in the selected work. In this sixth dispatch, we explore art and heroes who are RevolutionaryWokeFlawed, and Stylish, and who embody SacrificeEmpathy, and Pride. It also includes the project’s one wholly unredeemed, Malevolent villain—as well as everyday Collective heroes.

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Apartheid Laboratory (1995) by Willie BesterSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Malevolent

Every hero story needs a villain. Apartheid-era South Africa standardized a villainous logic.

Apartheid Laboratory

Willie Bester 
b. 1956, Montagu, Western Cape Province, South Africa 
Works in Kuils River, Western Cape Province, South Africa 
1995 Mixed-media assemblage 
Gift of Gilbert B. and Lila Silverman and Jerome L. and Ellen Stern, 2017-15-1

At first glance, the piece almost seems like a stage set. 

Look closely and elements of a clinical workspace emerge. 

This is a space in which to imagine ourselves—as technician or as subject.

“I am sometimes tempted to go to the seaside and to paint beautiful things from nature,” Willie Bester has said. “But I do not do it because my art has to be taken as a nasty medicine for awakening consciousness.” 

Filled with sharp edges and menacing contraptions, Apartheid Laboratory appears to be a vision of a particularly “nasty medicine,” indeed. 

Bester’s focus is on apartheid-era South Africa and its systems of racial classifications and their unfounded claims to scientific legitimacy and racial superiority. The work centers on seven small dolls, labeled with the seven racial categories recognized by South Africa’s government at the time—“White,” “Cape Coloured,” “Malay,” “Griqua,” “Chinese,” “Indian,” and “Other Asian.” 

Black South Africans were legally excluded and instead designated residents of “Bantustans,” territorial reservations—convenient political fictions—that were politically designed to remove Black claims to full citizenship. 

Apartheid in South Africa ended in 1994. Yet, as a stage set upon which anyone may seemingly enter, Bester cautions us through this work to remain awake to how menacingly present such pretensions to difference can continue to be. 

Oppressive systems, he notes, can be built from the most mundane, and ugly, of materials. In so doing, Bester sets the stage for the consideration of Heroes’ one outright, unredeemed villain.

Hendrik F. Verwoerd - Villians in African History (2021) by Marc BretzfelderSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Hendrik F. Verwoerd

South African apartheid had many authors, but he may have been the most monstrously enthusiastic.
 
1901–1966, b. Amsterdam, Netherlands
Worked in Cape Town and Pretoria, South Africa

Hendrik F. Verwoerd Intro (2019) by Augustus (Gus) Casely-Hayford and Michael BriggsSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Hendrik F. Verwoerd (1960-03-29) by Nationaal Archief, NetherlandsSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

 . . . your Government, after receiving a mandate from a section of the European population, decided to proclaim a Republic on 31 May . . . Your Government, which represents only a minority of the population in this country, is not entitled to take such a decision without first seeking the views and obtaining the express consent of the African people . . . Under this proposed Republic [it is feared] your Government, which is already notorious the world over for its obnoxious policies, would continue to make even more savage attacks on the rights and living conditions of the African people.

—Nelson Mandela to Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, April 20, 1961

 · Verwoerd built a reputation in South Africa as the founder of a newspaper through which he promoted pro-Fascist, anti-Semitic, and racist ideas. 

 · Shortly after the 1948 election that brought the Afrikaner-dominated National Party to office, Verwoerd became minister of native affairs, through which he implemented much of the legal architecture of apartheid.

· After becoming prime minister in 1958, Verwoerd moved to consolidate the apartheid state. He oversaw the invention of Bantustans, reservations justified as homelands for the country’s African majority to which they were to be exiled and legally bound. Through these, he was able to fully disenfranchise Black South Africans. 

 · Growing in power throughout his premiership, Verwoerd narrowly won a referendum to turn South Africa into a republic in 1961. Ever more isolated on the international stage, Verwoerd’s government built a military police state and banned all Black political organizations.

· Assassinated on Sept. 6, 1966, Verwoerd was stabbed on the floor of the South African Parliament. 


Selections from the Heroes Playlist






Various Artists – “Izikunyatheli Afrika Verwoerd (Africa Is Going to Trample On You, Verwoerd!)”
This Land Is Mine: South African Freedom Songs. Folkway Records, 1966.
Liberation music (Isicathamiya)

Miriam Makeba – “Beware, Verwoerd! (Ndodemnyama)”
Lyrics by Vuyisile Mini
An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba. RCA Victor, 1965
Liberation music

The Notorious Green Car (1995) by Willie BesterSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Woke

“A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine.”—Steve Biko

The Notorious Green Car

Willie Bester 
 b. 1956, Montagu, Western Cape Province, South Africa 
Works in Kuils River, Western Cape Province, South Africa 
1995 

Metal, paint, burlap, glass, plexiglass, bone, plastic, cloth, wood, rubber, paper, wire
Museum purchase, 96-26-1 

Imprisoned under apartheid for loitering, the artist Willie Bester memorializes the history of harassment and oppression in South Africa’s Black settlements. The Notorious Green Car’s mesh window screen recalls police vehicles used to patrol and terrorize Black residents. Bester created this large-scale, bright conceptual work to keep the memory of such oppression alive.

At an early age, Bester made metal toy cars (draadkar), a relatively typical practice for boys of his background, though Bester’s cars were covered in metal and expressively painted. He began experimenting with painting at age 7, but soon quit to support his family.

In his late teens, Bester was conscripted into military service, which served to reinforce his experience of the country’s systematized racism. 

In 1986, he attended classes at the Community Arts Project (CAP) in District Six, in Cape Town. Working alongside other artists actively involved in the anti-apartheid struggle, Bester quickly began to shift his artistic practice (which had initially consisted of photography and painted landscapes) to align with his sharpening political consciousness.

Soon the artist was creating works largely of found materials, first in comparatively two-dimensions like The Notorious Green Car.

Steve Biko - Heroes in Africa History (2021) by Marc BretzfelderSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Steve Biko

A martyr for Black Consciousness, Biko helped to build a movement of political action—in life, and in death.

1946–1977, b. Tarkastad, South Africa
Worked in Ginsberg, South Africa

Steve Biko Intro (2019) by Augustus (Gus) Casely-Hayford and Michael BriggsSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Steve Biko (1966/1977) by Mark Peters, Liason Agency and Getty ImagesSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the Black world for a long time. 
 —Steve Biko, 1977 

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. 
—Steve Biko, speech in Cape Town, 1971

· Frustrated by the lack of Black voices in the anti-apartheid groups he observed while a student at university, Biko founded the South African Students Organization (SASO) in 1968 to resist apartheid through political action. 

 · Biko and SASO promoted the Black Consciousness Movement, which promoted Black self-empowerment and pride in the face of both the localized racism of the apartheid state and global postcolonial realities. Biko was placed under a government banning order in 1973.

· Following the 1976 Soweto uprising—in which the police brutally suppressed over 20,000 students protesting laws restricting education to the use of the Afrikaans language—Biko was arrested. While in police custody, Biko was severely tortured and beaten, causing his death. Those responsible were never tried.


· In death, Steve Biko became a global symbol of the apartheid state’s amoral violence, but also of resilience, dignity, and pride.

Selections from the Heroes Playlist





Peter Gabriel – “Biko”
Lyrics by Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel. Charisma, 1980.
Worldbeat

A Tribe Called Quest – “Steve Biko (Stir It Up)”
Lyrics by Ali Shaheed Jones-Muhammad, Kamaal Ibn John Fareed (Q-Tip), Malik Izaak Taylor (Phife Dawg)
Midnight Marauders. Universal Music Group, 1993.
Hip-hop

Prison Sentences (2010) by Willem BoshoffSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Sacrifice

They gave the best years of their life to the struggle.

Prison Sentences

Willem Boshoff
b. 1951, Johannesburg, South Africa
Works in Johannesburg, South Africa
2010
Belfast black granite
Museum purchase, 2016-5-1

Prison Sentences reflects upon the marking and passing of time—here, the jail time served by some of South Africa’s most notable apartheid-era political prisoners. Each tablet is inscribed with the days, weeks, months, and years served by Nelson Mandela and seven other political prisoners who were initially sentenced to life imprisonment at the close of the Rivonia Trial held in June 1964.

The names and sentences completed by the Rivonia prisoners are inscribed on each tablet (left to right):  


 Nelson Mandela: 11 Jun 1964–11 Feb 1990 (9,377 days) 
 Ahmed Kathrada: 11 Jun 1964–15 Oct 1989 (9,269 days) 
 Walter Sisulu: 11 Jun 1964–15 Oct 1989 (9, 269 days) 

Raymond Mhlaba: 11 Jun 1964–15 Oct 1989 (9,269 days) 
 Elias Motsoaledi: 11 Jun 1964–15 Oct 1989 (9,269 days) 
 Andrew Mlangeni: 11 Jun 1964–15 Oct 1989 (9,269 days) 

Govan Mbeki: 11 Jun 1964–5 Nov 1987 (8,548 days)
Dennis Goldberg: 11 Jun 1964–28 Feb 1985 (7568 days)

The Rivonia Eight - Heroes in Africa History (2021) by Marc BretzfelderSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

The Rivonia Eight

The fight for freedom cost them decades.

Denis Goldberg (1933–2020, b. Cape Town, South Africa) 
Govan Mbeki (1910–2001, b. Nqamakwe, South Africa) 
Andrew Mlangeni (b. 1925–2020, Soweto, South Africa) 
Elias Motsoaledi (1924–1994, b. Phokoane, South Africa) 
Raymond Mahlaba (1920–2005, b. Fort Beaufort, South Africa) 
Walter Sisulu (1912–2003, b. Qutubeni, South Africa)
Ahmed Kathrada (1929–2017, b., Schweizer Reneke, South Africa)
Nelson Mandela (1918–2013, b. Mvezo, South Africa)

The Rivonia Eight (2019) by Augustus (Gus) Casely-Hayford and Michael BriggsSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Rivonia Trial mural (2016-11-16) by Francisco AnzolaSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against White domination, and I have fought against Black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony… 

…and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, my Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
—Nelson Mandela, Rivonia Trial, April 20, 1964

· Leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) and other anti-apartheid resistance groups were arrested at a farm in Rivonia, a suburb of Johannesburg, on July 11, 1963. The ANC had been operating underground since April 1960, after the Sharpeville  Massacre of 67 protestors by the police.



· Two defendants managed to escape from prison; the remaining eight faced charges accusing them of planning acts of guerilla warfare, accepting aid from foreign supporters, and promoting communism, among others. 

· The United Nations Security Council condemned the trial and began the process of constructing a regime of international sanctions that restricted the South African government on the global stage.


· Mandela’s final speech from the dock, in which he bravely faced the possibility of a death sentence, marked the last time the South African people heard from the resistance leader until his release from prison on Feb. 11, 1990. 

Selections from the Heroes Playlist






Ladysmith Black Mambazo – “Shosholoza”
Featuring: Bhekumuzi Luthuli, Hugh Masekela, Lucky Dube, Nokukhanya, Phuzekhemisi, Thandiswa, Vusi Mahlasela
Long Walk to Freedom. Gallo Record Company, 2006 [recorded].
Isicathamiya

Amaryoni | Ulopa Ngoma – “Shosholoza Nelson Mandela”
Isicathamiya

The Limestone Quarry (2002) by Nelson MandelaSmithsonian National Museum of African Art

Revolutionary

He changed it all.

The Limestone Quarry

Nelson Mandela 
1918–2013, b. Mvezo, South Africa 
2002 
Pastel on paper 
Gift of Cary J. Frieze, in memory of his parents Rose and George Frieze, who encouraged his love of all visual and performing arts, with additional support from of the family of Nelson Mandela, 2019-20-1

Lime quarry on Robben Island (2018-07-17) by Nurunnaby ChowdhurySmithsonian National Museum of African Art

While the stones of Robben Island brutalized his body, Mandela also used them as a site to expand the mind. Mandela was forced to work daily in a limestone quarry, where the s