Solomon Sedibane leads a woodworking group at Ndaleni art school, 1968, unknown photographer
Detail of a Bible scene by Francis Halala and Jacob Masike, 1962, photograph by Cedric Nunn, 2009
Giraffe mosaic by Gabriel Vilakazi, 1961, photograph by the author, 2011
MAP
1.1. Southern Africa. Map by Jennie Miller
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is a study of art education in South Africa, under segregation and apartheid. It considers the community of artists and educators who came together to create at numerous places—in Bulwer near the Drakensberg, in Pietersburg in the far northern Transvaal, in Johannesburg, and especially at Indaleni, outside Richmond in what is today KwaZulu-Natal—under the considerable cloud of white supremacy and structural poverty. It is the story of a community that nurtured its own ideals and practices and promoted nothing less than a new way of being in the world. The art teachers whose stories follow have taught me a tremendous amount about creativity, consciousness, and aesthetics; I hope that I have learned some of their lessons about being as well. At the very least, I share with them the experience of being nurtured and enriched by a beloved community.
Figure A.1 Easel painting at the Ndaleni Art School, from a mural painted by Hamlet Hobe, 1960, photograph by the author
This project began in the basement of the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), with the discovery of a book about the artist Dan Rakgoathe and the promise of another archive—of his alma mater, the Ndaleni art school, a few hundred kilometers away in Durban. I am forever indebted to the incredible team of archivists who helped me find my way: Jo Berger at the JAG; Michelle Pickover and team at Historical Papers, University of the Witwatersrand; and especially Mwelela Cele, Senzo Mkhize, and Nellie Somers at the Killie Campbell Collection at the University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal. Nellie was especially generous with her time, given my limited stay in Durban and the sheer volume of the Ndaleni material. I am also grateful to archivists at the Mayibuye Center at the University of the Western Cape, the South African National Gallery, the South African National Archives in Pretoria, the University of Fort Hare archives in Alice, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. Michael Gardiner provided me with critical documentation, as did Brendan Bell of the Tatham Art Gallery, Lorna Peirson, and her former colleague Craig Lancaster.
Lorna Peirson was also incredibly generous with her time, humoring me through numerous visits and an unceasing barrage of questions. I am grateful. She passed away in mid-2015 and although it saddens me that she will never see this book, I will always remember the look on her face while I read a draft of the first chapter to her when last we met. I am grateful as well to the numerous former Ndaleni students and other South African artists who took the time to speak with me. Not all of their stories made it into this book, but each of them is responsible for whatever sense I have been able to make of the terrain of creativity in twentieth-century South Africa. All errors are, of course, my own. Special thanks to Bongi Dhlomo, for her friendship and her many lessons about what it means to create. I was fortunate that my long-standing relationship with the Steve Biko Foundation granted me the opportunity to meet and spend time with Bongi, as well as to present a version of this work at the foundation’s wonderful new center in King Williams Town, which was an amazing experience.
I benefited from presenting parts of this book to engaged and critical audiences and colleagues at Emory University’s Seminar on African History, the African History and Anthropology Workshop at the University of Michigan, the University Seminar on Africa at Columbia University, Yale University’s Council on African Studies Seminar, the Witwatersrand Institute of Social and Economic Research WISH seminar, the University of Johannesburg Historical Studies Seminar, the African Studies Working Group at the University of Notre Dame, the African Studies lecture at Colgate University, the Red Lion Lecture at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, the Northeast Workshop on African Studies, and the African Studies Association. Karen Ijumba, Jennie Miller, Sam Appel, and Mariana Arjona Soberon all played critical roles in helping me manage this material and shape it into presentable form.
I am fortunate that colleagues and friends across continents and campuses have contributed to this work and the living that produced it. In South Africa, Cedric Nunn, Elza Miles, Joey Kok (who helped so much with translations!), Berno Schneider, Anitra Nettleton, Laura Phillips, Jacob Dlamini, Sekibakiba Peter Lekgoathi, Achille Mbembe, Nafisa Essop Sheik, Stephen Sparks, Natasha Erlank, Juliette Leeb-du Toit, Andries Bezuidenhout, Irma DuPlessis, Brown Maaba, Mwelela Cele, Sarah Emily Duff, Shireen Ally, Thembisa Waetjen, Goolam Vahed, Simphiwe Ngwane, Omar Badsha, Clive Glaser, Keith Breckenridge, Catherine Burns, Khosi Xaba, Obenewa Amponsah, Nkosinathi Biko, Julie Parle, Vanessa Noble, Councilor Thulani Shabalala, and so many others were critical interlocutors and friends. While writing this book, I lost my friend and mentor Mbulelo Mzamane; I treasure the memory of describing this project to him when last we met.
This book was conceived and written during a period of personal and professional transitions. The project developed first at Cornell University, and I am grateful to colleagues there who offered advice and encouragement. I need especially to note Salah Hassan, who took the time to tutor me on the history of twentieth-century African art. Support for my initial research was provided by the Society for the Humanities and the Institute for the Social Sciences, both at Cornell.
Since 2011, I have been fortunate to call both Brooklyn and Yale home (with plenty of Metro North in between). I’m grateful to the Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies and the Whitney Humanities Center for supporting my research, as well as to the latter’s Hilles Publication Fund for helping defray the costs of producing this book. A hearty thank you to Ian Shapiro for his support, again and again. Colleagues at Yale have been generous with their time and suggestions; I am grateful to Anne Eller, David Blight, Paul Sabin, Kate Ezra, George Chauncey, Paul Freedman, Francesca Trivellato, Alejandra Dubcovsky, Rohit De, Julie Stephens, Jenifer Klein, Jennifer Van Vleck, Jenni Allen, Albert Laguna, Ned Blackhawk, Rosie Bsheer, Laura Engelstein, Greta LaFleur, Mike McGovern, Katie Lofton, Naomi Lamoureaux, Steph Newell, Louisa Lombard, Kate Baldwin, Jonathan Wyrtzen, Joanna Radin, Michael Cappello, Chris Udry, Richard Anderson, Joshua Rubin, Matthew Keaney, Samuel Severson, Efe Igor, Thuto Thipe, Keri Lambert, Nikita Bernardi, Py Killen, and many others. I offer special thanks to Bob Harms, Alan Mikhail, and Ben Kiernan, each of whom read the manuscript carefully and offered vital interventions. Thanks also to the amazing staff in both the History Department and the Macmillan Center. I am grateful to Dana Lee, Denise Scott, Caryn Carson, Liza Joyner, and especially Lina Chan for her patience with my inept bookkeeping. Beyond New Haven, I have been lucky to be able to stay connected with old colleagues and mentors and to develop new networks. For advice, critiques, assistance, and camaraderie, my thanks to (in no particular order) Tom Spear, Clifton Crais, Jim Sweet, Neil Kodesh, Mark Hunter, Johanna Crane, Priya Lal, Meghan Healy-Clancy, Jill Kelly, Liz Thornberry, Khwezi Mkhize, Anatoly Pinsky, Paul Landau, Laura Murphy, Rian Thum, Jon Soske, Andy Ivaska, Brian Rutledge, Leslie Hadfield, Emily Callaci, Tyler Fleming, Carina Ray, Lauren Jarvis, Robert Vinson, Minkah Makalani, John Mason, Kim Miller, Naaborko Sackeyfio-Lenoch, Elizabeth Perrill, Shannen Hill, Kathryn De Luna, Kristin Phillips, Pier Larson, Butch Ware, Michael Panzer, T. J. Tallie, Marissa Moorman, Joshua Cohen, Chris Lee, Dennis Laumann, Mamadou Diouf, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Sean Hanretta, Noah Tamarkin, Jon Glassman, Jeremy Foster, Michelle Moyd, Jeremy Braddock, Mukoma wa Ngugi, Suman Seth, Mindy Smith, Guy Ortolano, Jenny Mann, and many others. Working with Ohio University Press has been a comfortable homecoming in itself; my thanks to the entire team, including Rick Huard, Beth Pratt, Gill Berchowitz, Nancy Basmajian, Joan Sherman, Samara Rafaert, two anonymous readers, and, of course, Jean Allman, Allen Isaacman, and Derek Peterson. Portions of this book were previously