{"id":190489,"date":"2021-05-30T15:42:35","date_gmt":"2021-05-30T13:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/remembering-medu-the-south-african-art-collective-that-fought-apartheid\/"},"modified":"2021-05-30T15:42:35","modified_gmt":"2021-05-30T13:42:35","slug":"remembering-medu-the-south-african-art-collective-that-fought-apartheid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/remembering-medu-the-south-african-art-collective-that-fought-apartheid\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Medu, the South African art collective that fought apartheid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Medu Art Ensemble<\/a> was based in Gaborone in Botswana between 1979 and 1985. Medu (meaning \u201croots\u201d in Sepedi) played a key role in shaping South Africa\u2019s culture of struggle against apartheid<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The collective was formed by South African cultural activists exiled after the 1976 Soweto uprising<\/a> and it worked with artists back home, Botswana citizens, and some from other countries. Medu used the creative arts \u2013 visual image, theatre, music and literature \u2013 to give voice<\/a> to South Africa\u2019s liberation struggle. In 1982 Medu brought several thousand cultural activists to Gaborone for a conference<\/a> entitled Culture and Resistance<\/em>, proclaiming that <\/p>\n

\n

Culture is a weapon of Struggle. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A Pan Africanist and anti-colonial enterprise, Medu engaged with international revolutionary art<\/a> including the work of German theatre-maker Bertolt Brecht<\/a>, Vietnamese resistance poetry<\/a>, the Mexican mural painters<\/a> and Chile\u2019s muralists<\/a> who spoke back to dictatorship.<\/p>\n

On 14 June 1985 the South African military targeted Medu members in Botswana in a cross-border raid. They killed 14 people and destroyed the art-making collective. <\/p>\n

Almost lost to history<\/h2>\n

Four decades later, post-apartheid South Africa barely recalls Medu\u2019s contributions. All that\u2019s been remembered until now have been Medu\u2019s iconic posters (\u201cSmash Bantu Education\u201d, \u201cYou have touched a rock\u201d, \u201cThe people shall govern\u201d) and the individual creative work of celebrated Medu writers Keorapetse Kgositsile<\/a>, Mongane Wally Serote<\/a> and Mandla Langa<\/a>. Of musicians Jonas Gwangwa<\/a> and Dennis Mpale<\/a>. Of visual artist Thamsanqa Mnyele<\/a>. <\/p>\n

But what\u2019s been lacking is a record of the intense debates, contested cultural theory, collective understanding and shared perceptions that infused these works. <\/p>\n

In 2019 a breakthrough came when the Art Institute of Chicago<\/a> collected and displayed<\/a> Medu\u2019s posters. This was followed by a book in the form of a catalogue<\/a> entitled The People Shall Govern: Medu Art Ensemble and the Anti-apartheid Poster 1979-1985<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here, as an artist who was a member of Medu, I offer a critical perspective on the narrative that emerges from this exhibition and catalogue. <\/p>\n

The Chicago show<\/h2>\n

Doubts inevitably arise when African artworks are displayed in art institutions in foreign metropoles, far from the communities and struggles that birthed them. In Medu we believed our work must inspire resistance and envisage future liberation. What do these posters say to viewers when hung on sterile gallery walls in Chicago or London? <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
The cover of the Chicago catalogue.<\/span> Art Institute of Chicago<\/span><\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The curators of the Medu exhibit were Antawan Byrd<\/a> and Felicia Mings<\/a>, who previously researched Pan Africanist cultural struggles and took these challenges seriously. <\/p>\n

As no broad narrative or comprehensive collection of Medu\u2019s work exists, they contacted surviving Medu members, unearthed hidden histories and sought out post-apartheid cultural discourse. They wrote texts for the gallery walls and displayed paraphernalia that included magazines like Staffrider<\/em><\/a> and The African Communist<\/a><\/em>, political buttons, T-shirts, music and film clips. They organised public lectures and discussions.<\/p>\n

The catalogue<\/h2>\n

The catalogue was published a year after the exhibition closed. Without the show\u2019s objects and framing activities, the text weaves a narrative about Medu through seven essays, juxtaposed with poster images.<\/p>\n

The catalogue arranges posters by theme: political resistance, music, women\u2019s struggles, June 16th 1976, workers, and struggle heroes. This foregrounds imagery and slogans over creative interpretation and vision. Clenched fists read as clich\u00e9 or symbol, rather than lived experience of the struggle. Posters for murdered comrades become \u201cheroic depictions of activists and freedom fighters\u201d, not cherished memories of real people.<\/p>\n

In the text, a brief overview of Medu\u2019s history is followed by South African poet laureate Mongane Serote\u2019s own experience of shaping Medu as a cultural project of the exiled ANC. While this story forms a core part of Medu\u2019s history, it skips over other contributions to Medu\u2019s dynamic mix. Like vibrant debates with Black Consciousness<\/a>-aligned cultural activists in Gaborone, Medu members\u2019 underground work with the ANC\u2019s military wing, and cross-fertilisation with groups creating struggle art inside South Africa.<\/p>\n

Ming and Byrd discuss the aesthetics of Medu graphics, finding similarities with early Soviet art. But Medu consciously traced its aesthetic roots to Pan Africanist and African diasporic cultural theory and practice. We looked to social philosopher Frantz Fanon and African writers Wole Soyinka<\/a> and Ng\u0169g\u0129 wa Thiong’o<\/a>. To pre-colonial and anti-colonial African art. To the art of Mozambique\u2019s Malangatana Ngwenya<\/a> and South Africa\u2019s Dumile Feni<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Medu\u2019s women\u2019s movement poster.<\/span> Judy Seidman\/Medu Art Ensemble<\/span><\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A chapter from South African curator Khwezi Gule<\/a> views Medu through the cultural gaze of post-1990 South Africa. Gule maintains that Medu\u2019s slogan, \u201cart is a weapon of struggle\u201d, has been \u201creduced to a blunt tool for propaganda\u201d. He argues that \u201cweaponising art degenerates into crass sloganeering\u201d as artistic vision buckled under ANC compromises, white privilege and the commercial art market. Gule concludes today\u2019s generation must fashion their own, different, rebellious culture.<\/p>\n

By contrast, South African author and scholar Ashraf Jamal<\/a> holds that Medu\u2019s democratic discourse and praxis bred hope and belief, emerging from and inspiring Southern Africa\u2019s liberation struggle. He concludes that \u201cMedu\u2019s struggle cannot be solely framed through its historical placement in the 1970s and 1980s. The idea and spirit that inform it also predate and exceed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Read more: Art as a weapon in South Africa’s liberation struggle<\/a> <\/strong> <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\n

The final essay, Collecting the Posters<\/em>, by South African collector and gallerist Warren Siebrits<\/a>, gives yet another perspective. Siebrits was conscripted into the apartheid army in 1988 and deployed to military intelligence: \u201cOne of our unit\u2019s main tasks was to destroy \u2018subversive enemy propaganda posters\u2019.\u201d After 1994, he hunted these now rare posters to place them into today\u2019s art world \u201cby purchase from private collections and book dealers and while travelling to Botswana\u201d. He does not explain that these posters were personal copies saved by Medu member Marius Schoon<\/a>, whose wife Jeannette Curtis Schoon and 6-year-old daughter Katryn were killed<\/a> by a 1984 letter bomb in Angola. Siebrits bought the posters from their surviving son, exhibiting them in his Johannesburg gallery before donating them to the Art Institute of Chicago. This traumatic history of the posters speaks sharply to Medu\u2019s meaning then and now.<\/p>\n

The catalogue and the exhibition aim to provide and prompt \u201cnew scholarship on Medu\u2019s courageous and consequential work\u201d. The first steps towards reclaiming Medu\u2019s legacy have been taken.<\/p>\n

There is still a long road ahead.<\/p>\n

Source: The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Medu Art Ensemble was based in Gaborone in Botswana between 1979 and 1985. Medu (meaning \u201croots\u201d in Sepedi) played a key role in shaping South Africa\u2019s culture of struggle against apartheid. The collective was formed by South African cultural activists exiled after the 1976 Soweto uprising and it worked with artists back home, Botswana citizens, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":190490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[3257],"class_list":{"0":"post-190489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa-news-2","8":"tag-mypr","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/remembering-medu-the-south-african-art-collective-that-fought-apartheid-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}