Lefifi tladi biography of martin

Member of the African National Congress and uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and member of the ANC NEC

Banished person

The arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652 and the Dutch East India Company’s establishment of a permanent site in South Africa set off centuries of enslavement and colonial subjugation by the Afrikaners and the British, fighting amongst themselves through two Anglo-Boer wars for the control of the minerally-rich soil and the African labour to mine it, African resistance notwithstanding. The Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, merging the Boer republics and the British colonies. Building on the previous colonial arrangements, the National Party came to power in 1948, legislating every aspect of Black South Africans’ lives through the brutal system of apartheid, or separate development, with even more vigour. Draconian legislation was introduced in the 1950s such as The Group Areas Act, confining Africans to live in residential zones determined by their ethnicities, the Bantu Education Act, legislating Black people to be labourers for whites, and the Pass Laws Act, which essentially made sons and daughters of the soil into foreigners. Black South Africans were required to carry passbooks to show on demand and required a signature from their employer to enter white areas for work. Husbands and wives could get permission to work in distant areas of the country and may see each other once a year if at all.      

While forced removals occurred throughout the 20 century, large-scale removals of tens of thousands of families took place during the late 1950s and 1960s, particularly in urban areas that were vibrant cultural centers like Sophiatown and Lady Selborne. Homes were bulldozed and cities became mounds of ash and debris. Regardless of land ownership, Africans were moved to infertile lands like Meadowlands and Ga-Rankuwa. The removal of people from their homes, their connectedness to the land, and the people in their communities served to disrupt the social, cultural, and psychological fabric of these so-called black spots marked for destruction.

Black art is an important facet of Black Consciousness and Black artists are very conscious of their heritage

Fikile Magadlela, 1980,
quoted in Staffrider

Far too often, the South African black artists presented in this essay have been historicized as surrealists, an altogether ill-fitting label since it prizes the subconscious, the stuff of dreams. Time and again, we read translations of their work through the comfort of this familiar frame, and although several sources have printed statements like the epigraph cited above, until recently none has engaged what this meant for the speaker. Most writers have understood art through a history written elsewhere, a view that limited their ability to listen locally. South African anti-apartheid activist Steven Biko (1946-77) predicted such limitations would change when, before a Pretoria court in May 1976, his description of Black Consciousness underscored its tricontinental reach, one that included oppressed people globally, the weight of which, he said, “inevitably … drives toward what we believe history also drives to: an attainment of a situation where Whites first have to listen. I don’t believe that Whites will be deaf all of the time

~ sisgwen ~