THE FEMALE ART OF SOUTH AFRICA AND THE SECOND WAVE OF NEO-FEMINISM

Aneta Pawłowska University of Łódź

THE FEMALE ART OF SOUTH AFRICA AND THE SECOND WAVE OF NEO-FEMINISM

The Republic of South Africa is a world in itself and in essence it is indeed

very hermetic. For many decades South Africa has been living entirely on its

own rhythm, which was completely different from the European beat. The

concept of the separate development of human races, which was introduced

in the 19th century, found its culmination after the end of the Second World

War. This concept found its fullest practical expression in the policy of

apartheid which was introduced in 1948 in South Africa, which in essence

was a doctrine that assumed a policy of racial segregation, connected with

political and economic discrimination of black Africans and other “colored”

races.1

The idea of the segregation of races resulted in the completely new situation

that the principal dividing line in the society of the country did not run any

more between men and women (as it was the case in Europe and in the

United States of America) but it followed the person‟s skin color. Black

women found themselves in the situation which could be described as

“doubly disadvantageous” because not only the patriarchal tribal system

made them obey the rule of their husbands or fathers, but additionally they

were subordinated to the white colonizers. These cruel rules of segregation,

which divided the society into two separate groups: the small privileged

1 Starting in 1948, the Nationalist Government in South Africa enacted laws to define and

enforce segregation. The main laws were: Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Act no. 55 of

1949; Immorality Amendment Act, Act no. 21 of 1950; amended in 1957 (Act 23) – Prohibited

adultery, attempted adultery or related immoral acts between white and black people; Popula-

tion Registration Act, Act no. 30 of 1950 – led to the creation of a national register in which

every person‟s race was recorded and Group Areas Act, Act no. 41 of 1950 – forced physical

separation between races by creating different residential areas for different races.

56 Aneta Pawłowska

group of white men and women who possessed most of the wealth and on

the other hand – the vast majority of black people, who were deprived of

many rights and civil freedoms. Hence it was much better to be born a white

woman, than to be a black one. Nevertheless, daughters of both the British

and Dutch descendants of settlers were also subjected until the end of the

1970s to the prevailing authority of their fathers and husbands. The double

structure of isolation caused by the patriarchal and apartheid systems,

strangled completely the feminist movement and for many years marginalized

the position of women in South Africa.

FEMINISM IN EUROPE

In Europe the tradition of feminism, understood as the reflection on the

problem of equal status of women and men and the mutual relations

between the sexes in the society has already a long history estimated at

around one and a half century.2 In Africa, feminism came into being only in

the 1990s. The primary disparity was the completely and utterly different

historical and economic development of both continents. The dynamic

progress in the field of technology and industry, which started in Europe in

the 19th

century, along with urbanization, democratization and formation of

the civil society, gradually weakened some of the constraints, especially of

the cultural nature, restraining the woman from entering into the public

sphere.

In the 1970s, the most essential issue in feminist circles became the

perception of a woman in modern society. Kate Millet, in her book entitled

Sexual Politics published in 19703, which is often described as the “Bible of

radical feminism”, put forward an extreme diagnosis of the female situation.

She came to the conclusion that the oppression of women is the fundamental

source of all other existing oppressions: racial – as was the case in South

Africa, as well as class and sexual oppression. According to Kate Millet, the

only remedy would be to bring down the disgraceful patriarchal system of

authority, legitimized by the existence of the family, since it is through the

family and mostly on family ground that the society forces a woman into

submission and obedience. It is primarily in the private sphere and at home

that the male domination over the woman remains most visible. But in the

2 E. Malinowska, Feminizm europejski. Demokracja parytetowa a polski ruch kobiet,

[European Feminizm. Parity Democracy and Polish Women’s Movement], Łódź 2002, p. 17. 3 K. Millett, Sexual Politics, New York 1969.

THE FEMALE ART OF SOUTH AFRICA … 57

extremely traditionally-oriented African community, the idea of resignation

from the institution of marriage never really came into being, while this

concept of rejection of family values is still eagerly considered and

discussed by the western feminists.

THE UNIQUE CHARACTER OF THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL

SITUATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

The women of South Africa never made any attempts to attain subversive

and revolutionary goals. Their attitude was characterized by a large degree

of passiveness and the acceptance of the prevailing system of the

patriarchate. The problem which posed a much greater challenge for the

liberal section of the society than the need for the emancipation of women

was the struggle against the system of racial segregation, that is against

apartheid.

This constitutional and political formation ruled for nearly 46 years in the

period between 1948 and 1994. During this time, the white community –

accounting for about 15% of the total population – through consecutive

legal acts, secured complete and utter domination in all spheres of life, both

economic and political. This situation allowed the white minority full

control over the black people, even outside their places of residence,

concerning practically all private matters in human life, among other things

the conclusion of marriages. There existed a strict and absolute prohibition

of contacts of erotic nature between persons of different races. The famous

words of the former Prime Minister of South Africa, Mr. Hendrik Verwoerd,

the founder and architect of “Bantustans”4, can serve as a perfect recapitula-

tion of the existing state of affairs: “We have no desire that the Europeans

become so accustomed to the natives that they cease to perceive the

differences”5.

The world of apartheid undertook the cruel game in which the stake was not

only the complete domination of the Western culture, but also the

cultivation of the ethnic identity of white people in Africa which are both

4 Under the Apartheid system of „separate development‟ nine Bantu groups were assigned

their own homelands or bantustan. Movement outside of these homelands was strictly regulated.

When Apartheid finally fell in the 1990s, the bantustans were reincorporated into South Africa. 5 M.A. Kowalski, W kraju Burów i Zulusów [In the Land of Boers and Zulus], Warszawa

1975, p. 275.

58 Aneta Pawłowska

strongly integrated. The founders of apartheid unconsciously used the main

idea of Michael Foucault, who stated that the existence of the Others is the

necessary element for the unification of a society and for the creation of

a common cultural system.6 And this is precisely how the white Afrikaners

saw their main duty and obligation to the nation. All this suggests that the

distinct need for domination arises in fact from the anxieties and fears of

losing the homogeneity and cultural domination of the European civilization.

Through the years the black African woman, as a direct and natural consequence

of The Bantu Act of 1891, was regarded as inferior and subordinate to man.7

Her possibilities of ownership and management of land and fortune

remained very limited until 1983. This problem of inability to exercise

independent control over one‟s wealth concerned equally the white and

black women, only the state of property was different. Besides that, until the

beginning of the 1980s there was practically no possibility of divorce, and

even later divorce was connected with very high costs and the problem of

social shame. Even worse was the situation of all the women subjected to

the Moslem and Hindu law, whose traditional culture always persecuted the

position of a woman (the proportion of the Indian and Moslem population in

South Africa is estimated at 7%). A characteristic feature of the whole

culture of indigenous inhabitants of South Africa (similar situation exists

among Hindus and Moslems) was the fact, existing until today, of maintain-

ing polygamous systems in the family, while the obligatory European legal

system, deprived of any privileges all successive wives (except the first

legal one).

The economic situation of all working women: white, black or colored was

equally difficult because until the 1980s, the women could expect to receive

only half the rate of the wage normally granted to men. An additional

obstacle was the impossibility of attending schools by black children, which

was the obligatory law under apartheid. As a result of the lack of access to

education, the earning potential of women was largely limited only to the

simplest jobs. The ideas and concepts of the philosophy of racial segrega-

tion are best summarized by a speech made in 1949 by Ben Schoeman – the

6 See: C. Owens, “Dyskurs Innych: feministki i postmodernizm” [Discuss of the Others:

Feminists and Postmodernism], in: N. Nycz (ed.), Postmodernizm. Antologia przekładów

[Postmodernism. The Anthology of Translations], Kraków 1998, p. 421–451. 7 See: S. Swart, “A Boer and His Gun and His Wife Are Three Things Always Together”, in:

Republican Masculinity and the 1914 Rebellion, JSAS, vol. 24, 1998, December, no. 4, pp. 12–

34 and J. Kimble, E. Unterhalter, “We opened the road for you, you must go forward”, ANC

Women‟s Struggles 1912–1982, Feminist Review, 1982, no. 12, pp. 78–79.


minister of transportation in the Afrikaner government, who declared that

“Apartheid simply means that the non-Europeans will never receive the

same rights as the Europeans; that they will never become leveled socially

with Europeans and that the Europeans in South Africa will always remain

“baas” (in other words “the masters and rulers”).

According to the researchers in South Africa‟s history, the basic cause of

the absence of any feminist organizations in this country was the fact that

the educated, ambitious white women, who would be potentially able to

establish such associations, had in fact no interest in organizing them. The

reason for this was that the white women of South Africa had a privileged

economic and social status to both black and colored, men and women. In

order to preserve their own privileged status of ownership and rule (the

white minority constituted only 15% of total population); the white women

had to defend that privileged position, together with their husbands, fathers

and brothers. There was a well-known saying that what really marked the

status of a Boer “are in fact himself, his wife and his gun”.8

Another aspect which is worth mentioning was the substantial economic

affluence among the white community. The possession of numerous black

servants was something which was treated as completely natural, even

among the relatively “poor” white families. In compliance with the diagnosis

of Simone de Beauvoir, this economic wealth produced a considerable

appeasement of the general situation and made the ill fate of white women

much more pleasant. White women of South Africa were not directly

committed and engaged in the process of bringing-up and caring for their

own offspring or in doing normal everyday housework, such as washing and

ironing clothes or cooking meals, because all these household chores were

performed by the black domestic servants and maids.

The Restrictive Land Act of 1955, passed by the white Parliament, dominated

by the nationalist Afrikaners, prohibited the black citizens of the country to

settle in most districts of the cities. The only exception was made in the case

of domestic servants, who were allowed to stay on duty at white households

or to live nearby in special “segregated areas” called “townships”, such as

the famous Soweto near Johannesburg (which is an acronym for SOuth-

WEstern TOwnship) or in Khaelitscha, which was another township near

Cape Town. This legal act, which discriminated the non-white citizens of

the country made it necessary for many black families to become separated.

8 S. Swart, op. cit.

60 Aneta Pawłowska

This unique social situation which existed under apartheid was responsible

for the fact that the oppression of women had really two versions in South

Africa: black and white, where the black woman variation was substantially

worse than the situation of the white woman. The white Afrikaner women,

in a gesture of support for their husbands and fathers, but especially as

advocacy for the apartheid policy, founded the radical paramilitary female

formation called “The Kappiekommando and The Afrikanervroue-Kenkrag”

(AVK) – which supported the so called “traditional values”, assuring the

white minority a privileged status in the society.9

On the opposite side of the playing field were the black women, who were

committed to the anti-apartheid activity, belonging to the female block of

the leading black party The African National Congress (ANC), which was

called the Women’s League (ANCWL). The members of the Women’s League

(ANCWL) actively worked, among other things, for the abolishment of the

restrictions concerning the free displacement of black citizens. A historic

event of the female movement in South Africa was the march of black

women towards the buildings of the white Government (The Union Buildings)

in Pretoria, which gathered some twenty thousand participants in 1955.

The first liberal organization of wide scope of activity was The Federation

of South African Women (FEDSAW or FSAW), established on April 7th

1954

in Johannesburg by Ray Alexander, Helen Joseph, Lillian Ngoyi and

Florence Mkhize. This organization united in its ranks, for the first time in

South African history, the women of different skin color, all struggling for

their own social rights under apartheid. During their first conference, the

Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW or FSAW) ratified a famous

document entitled The Women’s Charter – introducing the policy of the

organization which demanded, among other things, an equal status of women

and men based on a partnership in the family, the liberation of women from

the authority of their father or husband, women‟s rights of ownership in

marriage, and the freedom to work and the right to education.

The next female formation which supported the fight against the policy of

racial segregation was the Women’s Defense of the Constitution League,

better known under the name the Black Sash, formed in 1955.10

9 Ibid. 10 J. Kimble, E. Unterhalter, op. cit., p. 78.


During the period of the apartheid, that is in the years between 1948–1994,

only one woman – Helen Suzman (born in 1917) – was actively engaged in

political activity. She acquired fame by being the first woman sitting in the

nationalist Parliament, dominated by men. She was characterized by a deeply

humanitarian attitude and she always concentrated her own parliamentary

fights and debates on the problem of granting full and equal civil rights to

the black population of the country; in this context, she also noticed the

problem of women.11

After the abolishment of apartheid in 1994, the situation of women in South

Africa underwent considerable improvement. Today women already attain

quite significant successes in politics, especially the women who became

actively engaged in politics quite early and were members of the victorious

black party, African National Congress (ANC). The best examples are Winnie

Mandela – the ex-wife of President Nelson Mandela, Frene Ginwala, or

Albertine Sisulu (the wife of the well-known politician from ANC). How-

ever, the traditional upbringing of girls in the dominating system of the

patriarchate still reaps its harvest. Black women still comply with the old

custom of the so called lobola – which means that they are purchased by

their future husband from their father for the equivalent of several cows.

They accept the constant infidelity of their husbands, excused by the still

quite common separation of families, forced by the economic situation.

They agree to sexual practices which are dangerous for their health: for

example, the so called tradition of “dry sex”, and the absence of protection

against pregnancy or AIDS – the true calamity of Africa – through the use

of condoms.

An even greater tragedy taking place in the present-day South Africa is the

widespread brutality of rape, performed by men who are universally

convinced that women are inferior creatures, completely dependent on them.

Moreover, there is a widespread myth in Africa that “rape is a cure for

AIDS”. This tragic myth results in frequent brutish and savage rapes, often

performed on little girls and female babies, even as young as THREE

MONTHS OLD!!!12

Another important problem is the very high crime rate,

due to the large unemployment among black people and the lack of life

perspectives.13

11 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, K. A. Appiah,

A. Appiah, H. Gates, Jr., (ed.), New York 1999, p. 1810. 12 According to “The RSA-overseas weekly” 20 000 children in RSA were abused last year. 13 See also: S. Lewis, Dealing with Rape, Johannesburg 1994 and N. Itano, “South Africa

Begins Getting Tough on Rape”, The Star, 24 February 2003, p. 4.

62 Aneta Pawłowska

The African feminism, which grew out from completely different economic

and cultural roots, places before itself quite different targets, such as the

concentration on the problem of the motherhood, which really defines the

black the woman in Africa (the statistical black mother usually gives birth to

6 children). It is completely self-evident that the African feminism has

a definitely heterosexual aspect. The present-day literature created by South

African women concentrates obsessively on the life problems of a society

divided by apartheid or on a society which blunderingly struggles to

reconstruct its own life again, after the abolishment of racial segregation.14

THE WORLD AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF WOMEN

IN LITERATURE

In South Africa, both black and white women writers have portrayed life

under apartheid. Black women began publishing their writing relatively late

in South Africa and even then they faced many obstacles.

Miriam Tlali is the first black woman whose book entitled Muriel at Metro-

politan, was published in South Africa in 1974.15

This book was written in

1969 but was published only five years later and even then it was first

censored and later banned. She describes the life of a young, working black

woman in the context of the fight for social matters and the equality of

rights for all races.

Nadine Gordimer was the first South African woman writer to become

a laureate of the literary Nobel Prize. All her novels concentrate on living in

a country which is deeply divided according to skin color. She was born in

1923, as an English-speaking Jew in South Africa. For this reason it seems

that she resented and resisted the pressure to conform to the white

supremacist attitudes embodied in the system of apartheid. She has been

politically active most of her life, and has often written about the relation-

ships among white radicals, liberals, and blacks in South Africa. Several novels

from among the many of the outstanding books of this author appeared in

Poland, namely The World of Strangers and The Honorable Guest. In the

novel entitled The House Gun published in 1998 she describes the domestic

violence that exists in South Africa of today after the abolishment of the

14 G. Mikell, “Feminizm in Africa”, in: Africana: The Encyclopedia of…, op. cit., pp. 738–

741. 15 M. Tlali, Muriel at Metropolitan, Johannesburg; London: Ravan Press, Longman, 1975.


apartheid, painting perfectly and graphically “the moral climate” that

dominates in the country. She diagnoses that the whole society is completely

soaked through by violence along with cigarette smoke. Her most widely-

read works are such novels as The Conservationist (1974) and Burger’s

Daughter (1979); but many people believe her finest writing is contained in

her short stories. In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Although she is one of the most distinguished of modern women writers, she

has resisted being classed as a feminist.16

The young generation of writers from South Africa, which started publish-

ing books only after the abolishment of the apartheid, concentrates on the

adaptive problems connected with the change of the lifestyle of the young

women migrating from the small towns and villages into large cities, such as

Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town etc., in order to make a living. After

the abolishment of apartheid such freedom of displacement became possible.

These young women lose the natural support of their previous community

and often feel rejected by both worlds: the old and the new.

This phenomenon is well described by a black woman writer Tsistsi

Dangarengba in her book entitled Nervous Conditions, published in 1989. In

the late 1980s, a large group of Indian women writers, such as Farida Karodia

(Daughters of the Twilight, 1986), Jayapraga Reddy (On the Fringe of Dream-

time, 1987), Beverly Naidoo (Chain of Fire, 1989) and Agnes Sam (Jesus Is

Indian, 1989), portrayed life in the Indian community in South Africa.17

THE EARLY STAGES OF WOMEN’S ACTIVITY AS PAINTERS

The contribution of women painters to the painting achievements of South

Africa during the colonial conquest was not very important. This situation

resulted from relatively difficult living conditions of the white pioneers and

quite small social demand for visual art in general. However, in the 19th

century the first women artists and women painters appeared, such as

Annabella Harness or Anne Barnard (1750–1825). However, due to the

prevailing social custom, they remained in the background of their husbands

or fiancés. The only acceptable subject matter for women painters of the

16 B. King (ed.), The Later Fiction, Cape Town 1993. 17 M. Aguiar, “Women Writers in English-Speaking Africa”, in: Africana:The Encyclopedia

of…, op. cit., p. 2018; see also: S. Arndt, The Dynamics of African Feminism. Defining and

Classifying African Feminist Literatures, New York 2002.

64 Aneta Pawłowska

Victorian period were floral motives or the paintings of birds, executed in

water-color technique or pastel. Only at the very end of the nineteenth

century, The South Africa Fine Arts Association started to organize some

regular, annual exhibitions in Cape Town, which resulted in somewhat

greater interest of the wide public in art matters. However, a genuine break-

through for the art created by women occurred during the period of modernism,

when many new, talented women artists appeared, such as Maggie Laubsher

(1886–1973), Bertha Everard (1873–1965), Irma Stern (1894–1966), Cecil

Higgs (1898–1986) and Maud Sumner (1902–1985).18

These women painters

not only enjoyed professional art education, but they also had enough courage

to present modern art with strong expressive connotation, filtered through

a prism of feminine values and sensibilities.

Women painters were the first South African artists to draw attention to the

indigenous population of Africa not only in the form of some ethnographical

curiosity, but as an important subject in itself. They also began to show the

fauna and the flora of the country, seeking to find the harmony and

dissonance among the wild nature. For the first time in South African art,

the women ceased to be represented only when somebody else spoke in their

name, by using only the beauty of their bodies.

White women artists also took up the problem – very typical for colonialism

– of the mutual relations between “the white masters” originating from the

middle-class with their black household servants. This phenomenon has

practically no other such reflection in the contemporary European culture.

In South Africa of today, over one million women, mostly black, still work

as servants or maids, house-maids, domestic workers or as “domestic

maintenance assistants” – as they are nowadays ironically referred to.

Startling life stories of black women are described in South African

literature. In order to live in accordance with the state policy, forbidding

unemployed black citizens to live in a white district, domestic servants or

maids often gave up motherhood and sent back their own new-born children

to “Bantustans”. Moreover, thanks to the rejection of their own children

and family, they were able to devote themselves fully to the 24-hour, 7-day

a week work for the sake of the well-being and happiness of their white

masters. However, not all of the relations between white and black women

were marked by a brand of tragic nature. Often after many years of service,

the black women became confidantes and friends of their women employers,

18 See: F.L. Aleksander, Kuns in Suid-Afrika. Skilderkuns beelhhoukuns en grafiek sedert

1900, Cape Town 1962.


because both were subjected and had to surrender to the prevailing authority

of the husband or father. It was the man that was the real ruler of the house

and it was the man who decided whom to punish.19

These intimate and close relations between two women from different social

classes and of different races are the subject of many works. The earliest of

such portraits were painted by two artists: Irma Stern and Dorothea Kay.

Irma Stern (1894–1966), the best known female artist from the Republic of

South Africa, painted a portrait entitled Maid in the uniform (1955) and

Dorothea Kay (1886–1964) produced a work entitled Cookie, Anna Mavata.

Both artists belong to the first generation of professional women artists in

the country and were very well educated in Europe. The portrait done by

Irma Stern was maintained in the convention of deformation that was

characteristic for the painting of the German interwar expressionism. This is

not very strange, because the painter was one of the founding members of

the Novembergruppe and a close friend of Max Pechstein. The slim and

elongated face of a relatively young servant with a pointed chin was

combined with a sloping, nervous look thrown upon the viewer. This black

woman, though she is sitting upon a chair with arms crossed on her chest,

seems to speak with her own posture that it is not proper that she should sit

while her “madam” is hard at work. This portrait is not fully realistic, as

most likely this black woman had never worked at the artist‟s home. The

origin of this painting is connected with Stern‟s interest in travel and her

fascination with the primeval and wild culture of Congo; she regarded it as

“the symbolic black heart of Africa”.20

In the 1940s, Irma Stern painted

great many portraits of Congo women and she also possessed her own collec-

tion of sacral objects (especially the Mau-Mau type masks) originating from

Congo.21

The facial deformations of the model‟s face in the painting entitled

Maid in the uniform, such as the long nose, the high convex forehead

emphasized additionally by the starched white cap, and the clearly marked

bulging eyes resembling the shape of hulled coffee beans, is nothing more

than the present-day version of the tribal masks of the Dagara type from

various areas of Congo.22

Apart from the conscious reference to the

autochthonous art; an interesting element in this painting is the spotlessly

19 See: Ntombi, Thula Baba, Johannesburg 1987 and powerful movie Diaries Ghetto,

produced by Msizi Kuhlane for the Mail and Guardian Television for SABC 1, 1997. 20 I. Stern, Congo, Pretoria 1943, p. 1. 21 More about Congo art: H.J. Koloss, Art of Central Africa. Masterpieces from the Berlin

Museum für Völkerkunde, New York 1990. 22 About Dagara masks J-B. Bacquart, The Tribal Arts of Africa, London 2000, pp. 136–

139.

66 Aneta Pawłowska

white apron, which was the inseparable attribute of every black servant.

This requirement of specific “Europeanization” of the domestic servants

became extraordinarily admonished after the Second World War. The

traditionally extremely bright colored dresses of Africans were replaced

with considerably simpler and much more plain dresses, referring back to

Victorian times. The apron became the determinant of the rank and of the

social status of a particular black woman. Irma Stern could not restrain the

fear by the primal character of her own composition and decided to smooth

out and moderate the painting somewhat, by giving the servant a socially

more acceptable appearance.

The realistic portrait of the cook by Dorothea Kay is completely different.

The person that was immortalized in this painting was for 22 years closely

connected with Kay‟s house. Since 1930 she completely freed her lady from

homework chores and gained the sympathy and affection of all members of

the family, with her cheerful disposition and her remarkable cooking talent.

When the artist began to work on the portrait, the maid was already on old

age pension and quite seriously ill, so the work on the portrait was preceded

by a black and white photograph, because the cook was worried that she

would die and “madam” would not be able to finish the portrait. Thanks to

the sacrificial devotion of the black servant; Kay could continue her own

artistic passion as a woman painter and illustrator.23

So in order to repay her

own servant, she signed the portrait with the inscription engraved on the

dark background “Annie Mavata for twenty years a faithful friend and

helper”24

. The realism of this strong, statuesque woman cook, bespectacled

and sitting over a bowl peeling vegetables is free from any sentimental note.

However, the author‟s sympathy towards the pictured model can be easily

noticed and felt. The white apron and cap do not dehumanize the woman –

they reaffirm her dignity, just like a soldier‟s uniform defines his rank.

It is worth mentioning that both compositions were painted in 1955 in

Eastern Cape Province, where the activities of the female block of ANC

were quite strong, especially in Port Elizabeth (where Kay and Mavata

lived), but it seems that the difficult social and political situation of those

days did not negatively influence the mutual relations between the women

painters and their models, who were closely linked with a thread of mutual

friendship and sympathy.

23 M. Reynolds, Everything You Do Is a Portrait of Yourself: Doroty Kay, a Biography,

Rosebank–Johanesburg 1989, p. 68. 24 Ibid., p. 208.


In 1994, that is just at the decline of apartheid Claudette Schreuders (born in

1973) created a portrait of a black nanny, impressive in its simplicity, show-

ing the complicated condition of a human being. This woman artist, who

comes from Pretoria from a typical Afrikaner family, appeals in most of her

compositions to traditional Christian stereotypes associated with the poses

of Catholic saints, skillfully combined with genuine African iconography.

The Family Tree was assembled based on an album with some old photos of

the Schreuders family. This is a cycle of polychrome wooden sculptures,

employing the typical medium of the various artifacts connected with native

art. The use of this material makes the painted figures, which have their

equivalents in the family of the artist, clearly refer back to the wooden

figures representing the white colonizers, universally produced starting from

the 19th

century until today, by many tribes of Western Africa.25

A special

feature of these figures was a distinct classification and simplification,

thanks to which they became for the natives an exemplification of certain

stereotypes, connected with the appearance of the white doctor, policeman

and land owner. And simultaneously these figures presented “the ambiguous

aliens” as the Europeans were regarded on the black continent.26

The sculpture

entitled Mother and Child produced by Claudette Schreuders, shows a young

black woman dressed in simple apron of a nanny, holding in her arms a white

baby with golden hair.

The woman‟s pose is an exact replica of an image reserved in Christian

iconography for Madonna holding in her arms the baby Jesus Christ. This

work shows perfectly the close intimacy of this short-lived relationship,

during which the white baby becomes a substitute child for the African

woman, who is deprived of her own offspring, brought up separately in the

black township, far away from her mother. However, this close link wastes

away, when the child grows and goes to school and the sensitive nanny

becomes redundant as she becomes treated as too primitive. Schreuders

comments on this work with the statement that in her album with family

photographs the only image of a black person was the photo of her foster-

mother, who holds her in her arms.27

The difficult, but many a time also amusing and comical relations between

the white middle-class woman and her black servant are depicted perfectly

25 I. Bargna, African Art, Milano 2000, pp. 231–232. 26 H.M. Cole, Icons: Ideals and Power in Art of Africa, Washington D.C. 1989, p. 12. 27 F. Herreman (ed.), Liberated Voices. Contemporary Art from the South Africa. The

Museum for a African Art, New York, 1999, p. 166.

68 Aneta Pawłowska

in the extraordinarily popular comic strip, entitled “Madam and Eve”, which

was contrived by Stephen Francis. It was presented for the first time in 1992

when apartheid was approaching its end, in the daily newspaper “Weekly

Mail” and it still regularly appears today. It was also reproduced in numerous

book editions and it even became an extremely popular TV sitcom. The black

maid whose name is Eve soon became a symbol of the voice speaking in the

name of the vast crowd of present-day domestic servants.

THE DECLINE OF APARTHEID AND THE GROWING IMPORTANCE

OF WOMEN’S ART

White women artists in the 1980s bravely undertook the problem of the in-

adequate relations between different human races in Africa. The most

interesting representatives of this small generation are Jane Alexander (born

in 1959), Penny Siopsis (born in 1953) and Sue Williamson – who all make

installations and montage photos. A little older Wilma Cruise (born in 1945)

uses clay as her artistic medium. Clay is very strongly connected in Africa

with the tradition of craftsmanship, usually executed by black women.

A good example of this may be the local artist Noria Mabasa from the tribe

Venda.28

Cruise examines the power of expression possessed by clay sculptures,

usually of female body, in order to show its deformation, mutilation and

lameness as an expression of the experienced trauma. At present the best-

known accomplishment of the artist is a statue executed in 2000 – a monument

commemorating the march of black women in 1956 on Union Buildings

(Parliament) in Pretoria – Strike the women – strike the rock: wathint′ abafazi,

wathint′ imbokodo.29

Jane Alexander30

is connected with Johannesburg, the biggest and richest

city in South Africa. She studied art and graduated from the University of

the Witwatersrand. The artist often presents her works on the international

forum. She took part in many exhibitions of South African art at home and

abroad, among others at the 5th Biennale in Havana in 1994, the Venice

Biennale in 1995, and at the exhibition in Paris entitled Un art d′Afrique du

Sud. Nowadays she is a lecturer at Michaelis School of Fine Art of the

28 See: P. Magubane, African renaissance, text S. Klopper, Cape Town 2000, pp. 140–145. 29 M. Arnold, Women and Art. In South Africa, Cape Town 1997, pp. 110–113. 30 See more: I. Powell, Jane Alexander: Sculpture and Photomontage, Cape Town 1995,

pp. 16–17.


University of Cape Town.31

In her sculptured works or montage photos, she

frequently takes up complicated topics dealing with the crisis of the

consciousness of being a white African and related to the political situation

of the last two decades. These problems were an inspiration for a great

number of works created in the 1980s, especially such celebrated works as

Butcher Boys, produced in 1985/86. This composition presents three figures

of life-size human beasts, scary mutants with horns, sitting on a bench. This

sculpture represents Alexander‟s objection and resistance towards the

apartheid and the growing mutual cruelty and atrocity, dominating in inter-

human relations. These abuses occurred most strongly especially among the

white brutal police and the black protesting majority. Other compositions

with a strong expression of support for political independence include:

Identity and Alterity connected with the exhibition Fault Lines: Inquiries

around truth and reconciliation from Cape Town in 199632

and the cycle

Integration Programme. The compositions of the artist from this period enter

into the midstream of the critical art which wrests us from the automatism of

seeing and thinking brings to light the hidden structures and relations within

which we work not always consciously.33

In her works after 1994,

Alexander invokes the problems connected with the abuses of women and

the rapes performed on the female body, as in the moving sculptured

mannequin made from plaster, entitled Stripped (“Oh yes” girl)34

, from

1995. The slender woman shown there with her eyes fully closed and a half-

opened mouth, arms freely hanging along the body and crossed feet, imitates

the posture of Jesus Christ on the cross. Her completely nude body bears

traces of cruel violence, rape, and sexual abuse and becomes an equivalent

of the martyr‟s death of a new Jesus Christ-Woman. Equally impressive is

a cycle of montage photos entitled Lucky Girl from 1999, concerning the

deformation of young girls‟ psyche by the media requirement of eternal

youth, beauty and smile.35

Change in the approach of the white community of Africa to the problem of

both women artists and the problem of apartheid was evident in the exhibition

31 See: http://people.africadatabase.org/en/person/2083.html. 32 She was one of the participant in this cultural and poetical event. This involved artists and

writers from South Africa and the rest of the world discussing and reading work reflecting on

issues of truth, justice and reconciliation. 33 Pointed out by P. Piotrowski, “Obraza uczuć. Odbiór sztuki krytycznej w Polsce” [The

offence of emotions. The perception of critical art in Poland], Nowa ResPublika, marzec 2002. 34 S. Williamson, A. Jamal, Art in South Africa – the Future Present, Cape Town, Johannes-

burg 1996, pp. 22–23. 35 Ibid., pp. 24–25.

70 Aneta Pawłowska

whose curator was Janet Goldner, entitled South African Mail: Message from

Inside36

, organized in January 1990. For this exhibition, over 200 women

artists of different races and skin colors prepared 400 works in the format of

a postcard. They used various artistic techniques including: paintings,

photographs, drawings, imprints, compositions made of coral beads, collages

– both flat and three-dimensional – and written statements. This exhibition

was the result of cooperation between South African and American artists.

The main presumption of the organizers was that the exhibition would put

an end to the cultural boycott of apartheid and it would send a message from

the inhabitants of Africa to the rest of the world that art wants to promote

a new “culture of liberation”. The mail cards revealed the current living

conditions of women and communities in the Republic of South Africa and

the hope for the creation of a new, democratic, not racist society.

The next significant evidence of transformations occurring in the reception

of women and womanhood in the Republic of South Africa, already after the

abolishment of apartheid in 1994, was an exhibition organized within the

framework of the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in June 1998,

entitled Bringing up Baby. The curator of this exhibition was a woman and

a mother – Terry Kurgan, who bravely undertook the problem of mother-

hood37

, its fears and hopes, the relations between the mother and the child

and the right to abortion, granted to the women of South Africa in 1996 by

the Termination of Pregnancy Bill. This problem was presented as seen

through the eyes of both women and men, both black and white. The result

of parliamentary debates over the legality of abortion and the above-

mentioned exhibition was a public demonstration which eradicated the taboo

concerning sexuality and the private sphere. Through a comprehensive and

all-embracing media campaign, the conservative society of South Africa was

forced to confront such important matters as sex, rape, incest, pregnancy,

and giving birth or single motherhood. The problems which were until then

only discussed at home, in household spaces, kitchens and bedrooms, came

out of the closet and became an object of general and national debate. It is,

however, characteristic of South African feminism that none of the works

and compositions assumed the position of Simone de Beauvoir or of the

feminists of the second wave, who bluntly, confidently and definitely

rejected motherhood, seeing in this act of resignation from motherhood the

only means of escape from the trap of womanhood, through the abandon-

36 http://www.janetgoldner.com/sa/sa.html. 37 In exhibition was also explored the subject positions of the black woman and her son

who are separated while she is caring for that “white infant” pointed out by Ntombi, Thula Baba

op. cit.


ment of the role of reproducers.38

The most impressive work in this context

is a composition by Ruth Rosengarten, entitled Secrets and lies, from 1998,

describing in a combined block of 33 related works of images and texts her

own misfortunes and failures, connected with the impossibility of becoming

pregnant and of having a child.

THE ARTISTS OF THE YOUNG GENERATION

The dominating subject in the works of the representatives of the young

generation born at the end of the 1960s is connected with the rising crime

rate in the country and with the feeling of the constant threat of losing one‟s

life in a stick-up, robbery or car-hijacking. Lisa Bryce (born in 1968), who

in 1990 experienced the horror of a robbery in her own house, during which

a member of her family was heavily wounded after having being stabbed

fourteen times, tries to find her own way of recovering emotional equi-

librium after the experienced trauma and to deal with her sense of violation

in her installations with such telltale titles as Make Your Home Your Castle

from 1995, What is a Home Without an Armed Mother from 1995 and I’m

Safe I, II, III , from 1996.

Veronique Malherbe (born in 1968) also became gradually interested in

femininity and her own biology. Initially, the artist surrendered to the fascina-

tion with the difficult topics reflecting the horror of living in a community

undergoing transformation, such as the growing crime rate and violence,

murders, rape. In her installation Monuments to Folly from 1995 she expressed

her protest and horror concerning the much publicized death in 1994 of

Kennedy Kondile, a dancer from the Civic Theatre. Her motto of this period

was the ascertainment that “I want people to be disturbed because they

should be…”39

because people in South Africa are appallingly insensitive

and chillingly blasé about murder and violence. As a creative act and also an

expression of her own growing fear of violence, she left South Africa on

a voluntary emigration to London. However, today, after returning to South

Africa again, the artist chose another option for her own activity and after

the birth of her son, she describes her works as B.B. (before baby) and A.B.

(after baby) since 1998, suggesting in this way that for a woman the fact of

having a baby is as important as the birth of Jesus Christ is important for

38 Cf. S. Firestone, The Dialectics of Sex, New York 1970. 39 S. Williamson, A. Jamal, op. cit., p. 120.

72 Aneta Pawłowska

Christians. This idea is expressed by the composition entitled Preserving

Purity – an installation hanging from a steel chandelier, with lights and

glass bottles, supplemented by photographs which supply the documentary

evidence of the mother and baby during their first mutual year together. This

work attempts to preserve forever that short duration of time, that fleeting

and transitory moment that will soon end because inevitably the child will

soon grow.

Another group of artists are the representatives of the younger generation of

white women, fascinated with the traditional culture of Sub-Saharan Africa,

which will be soon forgotten and will remain only a relic of the past, such as

Minnette Vari (born in 1968) and Belinda Blignaut (born in 1969). Blignaut

is an artist who creates posters, installations, and films. One of her films,

entitled In Duty of the Ancestors, which was produced in 1995 for BBC,

shows her in a small village near the border with Mozambique, participating

in an initiation ceremony, normally reserved for young black girls. The half-

naked artist, together with a group of black girls is painted and drinks water

and herbal hallucinogenic elixirs, in order to perform consequently the

ceremonial of unification with the spirits of ancestors, so important for the

indigenous black community. According to Blignaut, life and ceremonies

accompanying it, intermingle and as such should be explored by performers.

The controversial Minnette Vari, practising multimedia art, lives in Johannes-

burg, the richest city of South Africa. The artist undertook the primary task

of fighting against and destroying walls and borders, which so strongly

define the African consciousness40

. Apart from the fundamental division

determined by skin color and the social and economic division associated

with it, there is a whole series of other divisions: racial, ethnic, cultural,

religious and the partition of the community into women and men.41

Vari alters and obliterates her own European identity – with the aid of

a computer she changes her skin color, her own facial features and hair to

give herself a Negroid appearance. She generated her naked and unbridled

photos, amazing the viewers with her animal-like femininity, presented on

gigantic size billboards entitled Self-portrait I, from 1995. The next composi-

tion, taking up the issue of “strengthening one‟s identity” was a Zulu post-

card from 1995, where the author performed a change of her own identity to

40 Ibid., p. 98. 41 Cf. K. Michalak, “Czarny. Kolory apartheidu w fotografiach” [Black. The colors of apartheid

in photography], Format, no. 44/2004, p. 62.


that of a black woman, dressed in an authentic Zulu dress. Her ambition is

to go out beyond art because as Vari describes it herself, “art must operate

beyond constrains of morality”42

. The artist, who breaks the obvious and

self-evident norms, transforms herself into a black woman, together with the

humble agreement to her doubly difficult situation. Vari tries in this way to

restore the image of a human being, showing that in reality the body and its

biological determinants are unimportant, but what really matters is human

identity immanent in every person.

THE ART OF BLACK WOMEN

In the period of the apartheid, the art of black people was put in the category

of folk art and craft. The first black woman who came into being as

a professional artist was Gladys Mugudlandlu (1925–1970), though in fact

she was an autodidact. Since 1960 she regularly exhibited her works in

Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. Her paintings and drawings invoked the

colorful folklore and the mythology of Zulu tribes and her youth in

Mugudlandlu in the country regions of Ciskei. The second in the sequence of

black women painters is Helen Sebidi (born in 1943)43

, who obtained her

artistic education at the Johannesburg Art Foundation44

under the direction of

Bill Ainslie, and is sometimes regarded as a representative of figurative art.

The main reason for the small number of black women working profession-

ally as artists was the lack of access to education for black people, due to

the ban which was introduced in 1953 and lasted until 1994.45

The small

circle of professionally educated black women artists in South Africa

includes Tracy Payne (born in 1965) based in the coastal and liberal Cape

Town. In spite of many difficulties, Payne succeeded in 1987 in obtaining

a diploma at the Department of Arts at the University of Cape Town. In her

42 S. Williamson, A. Jamal, op. cit., p. 100. 43 M Arnold, Helen Mmakgabo Mmapula Sebidi: Standard Bank Young Artist Award

Winner 1989, Catalogue Johannesburg 1989. 44 More abort role of Johannesburg Art Foundation: A. Pawłowska, “The Roots of Black

Post-Apartheid Art in South Africa”, Art Inquiry, vol. VI, Łódź 2004, pp. 85–87 and F. Herre-

man (ed.), Liberated Voices. Contemporary Art from South Africa, The Museum for African

Art, New York 1999. 45 The Bantu Education Act (no. 47) of 1953 widened the gaps in educational opportunities

for different racial groups. H.F. Verwoerd, minister of native affairs, said black Africans “should

be educated for their opportunities in life,” and that there was no place for them “above the level

of certain forms of labour.”

74 Aneta Pawłowska

works she concentrates on the subject of kitsch and sensation presented in

by hyper-realistic drawings of androgenic women and men, usually white,

surrounded by an air of auto-eroticism and violence. She invokes the image,

desirable in modern culture, of “a sensitive and very feminine man” and

“a very strong, muscular and male woman” and the phenomenon of trans-

sexuals. Anyway, since the differences between femininity and masculinity

actually have a cultural character, then “it is really difficult to decide what

really distinguishes both the sexes apart”. The negative diagnosis of the

human condition at the end of the 20th

century leaves no doubt; the man (the

woman? the hermaphrodite? the transvestite?) is shown like some object

from a pornographic movie. And according to many radical feminists,

sexism is considerably deeper-rooted than racism, because the domination

of men over women determines the basic and fundamental model for all

remaining types of discrimination. Another topic touched upon by Payne,

visible in the pastel entitled Sebastian from 1994, refers back to Christian

iconography. Saint Sebastian was shown in the pastel as a young trans-

vestite, dressed in black lace underwear, with ruby-red lips and a circumcised

penis of considerable size. The contemporary “martyr” of the sexual revolu-

tion is about to be handcuffed to a pipe in the bathroom in the course of an

orgy of forbidden love. His professed sainthood is confirmed by a shining

halo above his head. Through the reference to the canonic iconography of

Catholic saints, the artist introduces her observations concerning the life of

sexual minorities into the main stream of interests of feminists, who attempt

to demonstrate that “the patriarchate always had a supporter in God”46

. The

artist rebuts any accusation that her art is simply obscene with a brief

statement: “and if it‟s low and shallow art? – then fuck that!”47

THE CURRENT FORMS OF FEMALE ART IN SOUTH AFRICA

Bridget Baker (born in 1970) is an individual and separate phenomenon

among the women artists in South Africa. What is so amazing and unusual

in her art is the departure from the classical canon, connected with such

themes as racism and violence, to a completely private and intimate world.

The artist, who grew up in Cape Town, obstinately returns in her works to

her childhood memories, especially to the trauma connected with the death

of her father when the artist was only four years old. The only preserved

46 K. Millet, Teoria polityki płciowej [Sexual Politics], Warszawa 1982, p. 65. 47 S. Williamson, A. Jamal, op. cit., p. 115.


photograph of that time shows the young Bridget and her father at a swimm-

ing-pool during a swimming lesson. This ephemeral memory, which actually

does not exist because the artist was really too small and does not remember

her father at all, induces Baker to produce numerous versions of the so-

called “swimming cuffs” – a child‟s toy used during swimming. The work

entitled Inflatable from 1995, shows this swimming device wrapped in

sheep‟s wool (her father was engaged in wool trade), which from a certain

distance and perspective looks as if it was in the shape of a human heart (her

father had died from a heart failure)48

. Another composition invoking the

safe world of her childhood years is So it Goes, from 1996. It presents four

containers with the ointment Vics Vaporub, the most popular medicine for

all children‟s indispositions and illnesses, whose intensive smell brings back

many joyful remembrances. But the artist destroys this safe childhood world

by submerging under the ointment, deeper and deeper, until it disappears

completely, the only remaining photo of herself with her father during the

swimming lesson. Baker, who is only occupied with the reading of her own

past, belongs to a small group of South African artists who do not concentrate

on the problem of apartheid and the coexistence of the different races. That

concentration on deep feeling and analysis of her own experiences and

emotions makes this artist a completely exceptional and unique figure on the

art scene of this country.

The feminist art in South Africa, as I have attempted to show above, is not

predatory; it does not emphasize the differences between the sexes, it does

not attempt to amaze or shock the viewer with liberated sexuality of the

female body. In that case, one may ask, is it indeed still feminist art at all?

Or is it simply art conceived and created by women? Can one speak about

feminism at all in a post-colonial country? Is it legitimate to discuss

women‟s art in the country where for nearly fifty years human rights were

trampled upon and broken almost every day, through the use of the

apartheid doctrine and race segregation?

It is really difficult at present to give a univocal reply to the above-mentioned

doubts. An additional fact which repressed the social life of women was the

typical stand of patriarchal communities, which placed the women on the

social margin, completely ignoring the claim that “the first condition for the

liberation of a wife is the inclusion of the whole female gender into the

public sphere”49

.

48 Ibid., pp. 124–125. 49 F. Engels, The Origin of The Family, Private Property and the State, New York 1972, p. 17.

76 Aneta Pawłowska

The most important aspect of women‟s art in South Africa today seems to be

its interest in the problem of rejection and the mechanisms concerning

exclusions, equally of black people and the enslaved women, both black and

white. These mechanisms have been strongly supported by culture and by

the country‟s inhabitants. By showing the differences through the medium

of the body, not conforming to the obligatory ideals, the art of women

shows what the patriarchal culture rejects. Hence the frequent showing of

various taboo spheres: sexuality, disease and dying.

Women‟s art is not truly revolutionary, but it exposes and uncovers the

various hidden aspects of life; it makes the obvious not so evident, especially

in the visual sphere. It uses the human body as the focus point for concentrat-

ing on the main problems. It stands up in defense of an individual human

being, irrespective of his/her skin color, showing the tangled and confused

culture of the modern South African society, simultaneously post-colonial

and post-apartheid, and at the same time subjected to the post-modernist

rules of the game.


Dorothy Kay, Cookie, Anna Mavata, 1956

78 Aneta Pawłowska

Irma Stern, Maid in Uniform, 1955


Belinda Blignaut, The Ceremony of Initiation, 1995

Jane Alexander, The Butcher Boys

80 Aneta Pawłowska

Tracy Payne, Sebastian, 1994


PROBLEMY NEOFEMIZMU DRUGIEJ FALI A SZTUKA KOBIECA

W REPUBLICE POŁUDNIOWEJ AFRYKI (streszczenie)

Republika Południowej Afryki to świat hermetyczny, przez dziesięciolecia żyjący własnym

rytmem odmiennym od europejskiego. Zapoczątkowana jeszcze w XIX wieku koncepcja

osobnego rozwoju ras ludzkich kulminację uzyskała po zakończeniu II wojny światowej, cze-

go wyrazem był wprowadzony w 1948 roku apartheid, czyli doktryna zakładająca politykę

separacji i dyskryminacji polityczno-ekonomicznej Afrykanów. Sytuacja segregacji ras spra-

wiła, iż linie podziału w państwie biegły zarówno pomiędzy ludźmi białymi i czarnymi, jak

mężczyznami kobietami a mężczyznami. Kobiety czarne znalazły się w sytuacji podwójnie

niekorzystnej, gdyż poza patriarchalnym systemem plemiennym oddającym je pod zarząd

męża lub ojca były dodatkowo podporządkowane białym kolonizatorom. Owe okrutne reguły

podziału społeczeństwa na uprzywilejowanych ludzi białych i pozbawionych wielu praw i

swobód obywatelskich ludzi czarnych sprawiały, iż dużo lepiej było być kobietą białą (jed -

nak i one pozostawały pod dominującą władzą ojca lub męża, aż do końca lat siedem-

dziesiątych XX wieku). Czarna kobieta afrykańska przez lata pozostawała pozbawiona moż -

liwości posiadania i zarządzania majątkiem oraz ziemią czy kształcenia się.

W zakresie sztuk plastycznych tworzonych przez kobiety przełomem był okres moder-

nizmu, gdy pojawiły się takie artystki, jak: Maggie Laubsher (1886–1973) czy Berta Everard

(1873–1965), Irma Stern (1894–1966), Cecil Higgs (1898–1986) oraz Maud Sumner (1902–

1985), posiadające nie tylko profesjonalne wykształcenie artystyczne, lecz także odwagę, by

prezentować sztukę nowoczesną o silnym zabarwieniu ekspresyjnym, przefiltrowaną przez

pryzmat kobiecych wartości i wrażliwości. Kobiety jako pierwsze zwróciły uwagę na rdzenną

ludność Afryki nie w charakterze ciekawostki etnograficznej, lecz traktując ją podmiotowo

(Doroty Kay oraz Irma Stern).

Dalszy rozwój sztuki kobiecej wytycza walka, jaką podjęły kobiety artystki z aparthei -

dem: m.in.: Jane Alexander (ur. 1959), Penny Siopis (ur. 1953) oraz Sue Wiliamson wykonu-

jące instalacje i fotomontaże oraz Wilma Cruise (ur. 1945), której medium pozostaje zasad-

niczo glina. Gwałtownym wyrazem zmian zachodzących w podejściu białej społeczności

Afryki do problemu zarówno kobiet artystek, jak i problemu apartheidu była wystawa pt.

South African Mail: Message from Inside ze stycznia 1990 roku, piętnująca życie w nieludz-

kim systemie.

Obecnie zarówno Czarne, jak i Białe artystki (Veronique Malherbe, Lisa Bryce, Terry

Kurgan) koncentrują się na problemach związanych z płcią oraz rozwojem przestępczości

kryminalnej i pandemii AIDS. Ich artystyczna działalność od strony formalnej jest zbliżona

do zachodnio europejskiej.

THE FEMALE ART OF SOUTH AFRICA AND THE SECOND WAVE OF NEO-FEMINISM

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