Diana Wylie. Art and Revolution: The Life and Death of Thami Mnyele, South African Artist. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2008. Illustrations. 264 pp. $25.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-8139-2764-0.

Reviewed by Brenda Danilowitz

Published on H-AfrArts (March, 2010)

Commissioned by Jean M. Borgatti (Clark Univeristy)

In the words of his lifelong friend Mongane death fve years later, she "wrote down every‐ Wally Serote, Thami Mnyele's "life, his presence, thing I could remember him having said" (p. 1). was a series of little actions, soft-spoken state‐ Those words and her memories, flled out with in‐ ments, that have accumulated into profound formation gleaned from scores of interviews and meaning."[1] In Art and Revolution, Diana Wylie wide-ranging archival research, are gathered to‐ sets out to unpack the meanings of those small ac‐ gether in Art and Revolution to provide not only a tions, to tell Mnyele's story, and to rescue his life remarkable portrait of an individual and his work from "ignorance" and "indiference" (p. 1). but also a richly nuanced rendering of a crucial Mnyele, struggling to fnd his way in South period in 's history, brought to life Africa, crossed into neighboring in from the point of view of one of its lesser-known, 1979, and more or less forsook his dreams of be‐ yet signifcantly knowing, players. coming an artist when he joined the African Na‐ The short span of Mnyele's life--1948 to 1985-- tional Congress (ANC) in exile there. Seven years mirrored the trajectory of institutionalized later, aged thirty-seven, he was one of twelve peo‐ in South Africa. In 1948, the Afrikaner- ple killed by South African Special Forces in the led National Party won political power and began now infamous June 14, 1985, raid on . to introduce the structures of apartheid legisla‐ Wylie, researching her PhD in Gaborone in the tion. By1985, the frst tentative and covert steps summer of 1980, came upon an exhibition of toward negotiating a settlement between the ANC Mnyele's drawings in the Botswana National Mu‐ and the South African government, which would seum and Art Gallery where they had a profound‐ lead to the rapid unraveling of apartheid, began. ly moving efect on her. Soon after, she met the [2] Bringing her considerable experience and artist and they became friends. As she recounts in skills as a historian to the task, Wylie plots the book's preface, when she heard of Mnyele's Mnyele's life against this background. When de‐ H-Net Reviews tails of the life are scarce, Wylie invites the reader rored the experience of thousands of young South to imagine them by vividly invoking details of the Africans in the 1960s and 1970s. times. So, for example, while few facts are known The four central chapters of the book detail about Mnyele's schooling in the rural area of Mnyele's political and artistic maturation. It is a Makapanstad, north of , Wylie has delved depressingly familiar story: the young African ur‐ into the era's school textbooks to construct a con‐ banite, with an acute intelligence, a strong ethical vincing impression of Mnyele's classroom experi‐ core, a love of music, and a yearning to become ence in the late 1950s. One of the earliest legisla‐ an artist, who, doomed to a bleak future by the tive moves of the National Party government was overwhelmingly powerful machinery of a perni‐ the Bantu Education Act of 1954, designed to en‐ cious state system that provided a perfunctory ed‐ sure not only separate educational institutions for ucation, a dearth of social and economic opportu‐ blacks and whites but also the eternal suppres‐ nity, and an iron fst that could and would tram‐ sion of black intellectual aspirations and the re‐ ple the individual with scarcely a nod to basic hu‐ striction of blacks to the roles of peasants, ser‐ man rights, resorts to a life of militancy and revo‐ vants, and laborers. In school, black children lution. Wylie's telling peels back the layers of this were subjected to a litany of their own inferiority. conventional tale to tease out the particulars of Mnyele was born into the urban environment Mnyele's story. of 's Alexandra Township, a scrappy Music in the guise of American jazz was a cat‐ but vibrant neighborhood where some blacks, alyst that introduced Mnyele to the artistic life Mnyele's family among them, owned land and that hummed beneath the squalor and cacophony where, prior to 1948, an aspirant black middle of Alexandra Township. It was there in 1970 that class rubbed shoulders with sharp-edged gang‐ he was introduced to Serote, his near contempo‐ sters. Wylie, who writes discursively yet with rary and a determined and aspiring writer. "Both great precision, compacts into the book's short young men," Wylie writes, "were hungry to ex‐ frst chapter a lively portrait of Alexandra Town‐ press themselves and to see their lives from a ship, an outline of Mnyele's family background, broader perspective" (p. 35). Wylie captures and a cogent account of Bantu Education and her Serote's bold and charismatic personality that in‐ protagonist's schooling and his dawning attrac‐ spired Mnyele, gave shape to his nascent political tion to expressing himself through drawing. instincts, and led him into the wider world of Equally succinctly the second chapter covers black and white radical intelligentsia in Johannes‐ the decade that preceded Mnyele's return to burg in the late 1960s and 1970s. The third chap‐ Alexandra from his rural high school in 1965. ter provides a rich account of the heady artistic Here, Wylie outlines both the mounting repres‐ and intellectual life into which Mnyele was sion of the government's apartheid policies and plunged at this time. Wylie outlines the Johannes‐ the rise of African resistance through two princi‐ burg art world and the isolated interstices in it pal political movements, the ANC and its ofshoot through which black artists, for whom there were the Pan African Congress (PAC), formed in 1959. few opportunities, now and then emerged. Both movements were banned in 1960 and their Mnyele's work slowly gained a measure of recog‐ leaders forced underground or into exile. With a nition as he was included in exhibitions and invit‐ fne-grained yet light touch that lands on just ed to create the cover for Serote's groundbreaking about every key point of the political events of volume of poetry, Yakhal' Inkomo, in 1972. those years, Wylie sets the scene for Mnyele's Mnyele and his young artist, writer, and musician adult life--a particular life that nevertheless mir‐ friends also created their own opportunities, and

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Wylie here introduces the less well-known, and and attend seminars, workshops.... These are the perhaps largely forgotten, histories of theater actual things which inform and nourish our art‐ groups like Mhloti (Tears), and MDALI (Music, work."[3] Drama, Arts and Literature Institute) that com‐ Mnyele cut short his time at Rorke's Drift and bined performance with politics and brought both returned to Johannesburg and his work at Sached entertainment and consciousness raising to the in 1974. The experience had changed him, and de‐ townships around Johannesburg in a period of ac‐ spite his disenchantment, he appears to have ac‐ tivist theater partly inspired by the successes of quired enhanced draftsmanship skills. His work civil rights movements in the United States. Politi‐ began to take on a new authority, at once subtle cal events and the unrelenting fact of state op‐ and intense. He experimented with new materials pression and control were impossible to separate and techniques to infuse his works with sensa‐ from social and artistic life. tions--the atmospheric feelings and smells of dust Groping to fnd his voice as an artist, Mnyele, and dampness that he would later recommend to who was working as a graphic artist at the Johan‐ his colleague Bongiwe. nesburg education nonproft Sached, was ofered Mnyele's world as well as his art was chang‐ funding to study at the Rorke's Drift Arts and ing in the mid-1970s. Serote left Johannesburg to Crafts Center in rural Natal in 1973. It was one of take up a Fulbright Scholarship in New York, leav‐ the few places black artists could learn a few ing Mnyele to explore new avenues of cama‐ skills and Mnyele took up the ofer only to be raderie and intellectual support. On the plus side, deeply disappointed. At Rorke's Drift he felt re‐ Johannesburg eased its local apartheid laws and moved from urban life and the pulse of the coun‐ the city's museums and libraries were opened to try's urgent debates and conficts, and isolated in blacks, allowing artists like Mnyele to experience a world that came nowhere near what he instinc‐ the collections of the Johannesburg Art Gallery tively knew a true art school ought to be. Mnyele and to explore the holdings of the municipal art li‐ would remain a frm believer in skills training for brary. Almost simultaneously, the capricious artists, setting for himself and others stringently workings of the authorities were manifested in high standards. Even as he turned more directly the arrest and solitary confnement for almost a to the life of a revolutionary, where art for art's year of Mnyele's longtime Mhloti and MDALI asso‐ sake was a luxury to be put aside until the goals of ciate, Molefe Pheto, and although the circum‐ social and political revolution had been achieved, stances were not clear, Wylie reports that Mnyele he wrote in a review of an exhibition of South himself was arrested and held by the police for African artist Bongiwe Dhlomo's work in several days around this time. Botswana in 1982: "We hail the fghting communi‐ The chapter that recounts these events is ft‐ ties that inspire Bongiwe's work. To Bongi herself tingly titled "Trying to Live an Ordinary Life in I must point out though that her pictures need Extraordinary Times." As Wylie chronicles the more concentrated working. The pictures deal complexity of the political movements, the indi‐ with serious issues of our lives but this is done viduals, and the events that were bearing down with somewhat half-heartedness.... That rubbish on Mnyele as he struggled to maintain a state of bin and the fgure next to it ... are mere shapes, equilibrium in his personal life, the reader is dead images. There's no dust, nor feeling thereof, drawn into the escalating tensions that would no wet ... no smell.... There are ways ... of improv‐ peak in the riots of June 16, 1976. This wa‐ ing our work.... We must change our understand‐ tershed crisis was the impetus that drove a gener‐ ing towards the profession. We must read, re‐ ation of young South Africans into exile and deep‐ search, travel, and practice.... We must convene

3 H-Net Reviews er politicization, as their hopes of achieving free‐ joined the ANC soon after he arrived in Gaborone, dom at home seemed to fade ever further into a Medu, despite its radical political agenda, was not distant and indefnite future. As tension and po‐ openly afliated with the ANC, which at the time lice brutality continued to ratchet up, Mnyele had no cultural component. Wylie devotes the faced personal highs and lows. His work was be‐ book's ffth chapter to a fnely shaded discussion coming increasingly richer in form and content of the ANC in exile in Botswana and of Medu, the and gaining greater attention than ever; he was in layers of its operations (which ranged from edu‐ love and would soon marry his beautiful and ac‐ cation and involvement with the local community complished young girlfriend. Their baby girl was to political activism in the aid of the struggle for born in April 1977. Only months later the country freedom in South Africa) and to the diverse actors was again rocked by a defning event--the death, and personalities and their roles in the organiza‐ while in police custody, of charismatic thirty-year- tion. old Black Consciousness leader . She addresses, too, the exigencies that would Mnyele, who, a year earlier, had traveled to Dur‐ test the daily life of the revolutionary that Mnyele ban to hear Biko speak, now traveled to Biko's fu‐ was becoming. With his resolve and commitment neral in the eastern Cape. Like so many others he to his own art and to music unshaken, Mnyele was pressed to examine his own priorities. In faced the inevitable crossroads of the revolution‐ short order his marriage would begin to disinte‐ ary artist: the necessity of sacrifcing his personal grate, and, after hearing that Serote had left New needs and his own creative imperative to the York and was living in Gaborone, Botswana--a city greater good, of putting his life on indefnite hold fast becoming a nexus for exiled ANC members-- as he became a player in the events that would Mnyele quietly crossed the border from South determine his fate and the fate of his cohorts. Life Africa to Botswana in August 1979. He was not yet does not always cooperate, and Mnyele's life be‐ an ANC member, and had no education as a revo‐ came a tangle when, having all but given up his lutionary, but his fateful decision was clear. wife, Naniwe Mputa, and their baby daughter, he Wylie draws a touching and sympathetic por‐ discovered that his new girlfriend, Rhona Segale, trait of a young man facing the unknown with visiting from South Africa and soon to become a considerable uncertainty. Her own frsthand ex‐ fellow exile, was pregnant. Mnyele's own health perience of Gaborone at this time allows her to problems were an added complication. Wylie, give the reader a close-up account of the town perhaps in deference to these women and per‐ and its communities of locals, ex-pats, and exiles. haps because the motivations remained hidden Incongruously for its location in an arid, dusty, from her, does not delve very deeply into these re‐ landlocked African landscape, Gaborone, with a lationships, but two marvelous photographs of population of roughly sixty thousand in 1981, had Mnyele with each of his wives give the reader a been created rapidly on a "garden-city" model as glimpse into the intimacy and pleasure that hu‐ the country's new capital by the departing British man relationships held for him (pp. 92, 184). on the eve of Botswana's independence in 1966. About a year after the successful exhibition of Wylie describes how Mnyele, at frst tentatively his work at the Botswana National Museum and and then with growing assurance, participated in Art Gallery in 1980, as Wylie reports, "Thami un‐ the work of the arts collective Medu (the Pedi ambiguously threw in his lot with the movement" word for "roots"), newly founded by South African (p. 147). The sixth chapter chronicles Mnyele's exiles and led by Serote, along the familiar lines conversion from artist to full-fedged revolution‐ of Mhloti, his Alexandra Township group. Al‐ ary at a time when the ANC's military wing, though Mnyele (secretly as was often the case)

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Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), was becoming bolder own dilemma and unresolved contradictions and more efective in guerilla attacks within show through" his statement of frm commitment South Africa. These successes in turn elicited ever to the goals of the liberation movement in South more draconian and desperate reactions form the Africa, and that he was "still reluctant to surren‐ South African government. Still working through der his artistic vision entirely to the revolution" Medu, Mnyele turned to creating unambiguously (p. 162). political art--usually posters promoting the cause One of the most poignant and authentic mo‐ of the ANC and openly antagonistic to the South ments in Mnyele's biography came for me in the African government--that was routinely smuggled account of his December 1982 visit to Amsterdam into South Africa via clandestine but well-traveled as Medu delegate to Culture and Resistance's Eu‐ cross-border routes. His growing revolutionary ropean counterpart festival organized by the stature was fueled by his rise in Medu. Dutch antiapartheid movement--a highly charged, By the time of the historically memorable and partisan event. On a visit to the Rijksmuseum, "he signifcant Medu-organized Culture and Resis‐ wanted to see only one painting--Gerard Dou's tance festival that took place over several weeks seventeenthcentury portrait of Rembrandt's in June and July, 1982, Mnyele was the move‐ mother. He stood in front of the old lady's image ment's chairman, and he played a prominent role for about 20 minutes, drinking in the fur-swad‐ in the events that brought together, in Gaborone, dled fgure staring devoutly at an illustration of artists, musicians, actors, and writers from the ex‐ the gospel" (p. 166). Mnyele mailed a postcard of iled community in Botswana and a broad swath the painting to his mother in South Africa and she of their radical and socially committed South later showed it to Wylie. The artist had written, African counterparts. Wylie provides a valuable "Dear Mum, when I went to the Rijksmuseum in record and a lively account of this momentous oc‐ this city of Amsterdam I was deeply moved by this casion with its centerpiece fve-day festival of per‐ painting.... I was moved very, very, deeply, and felt formances, music, and panel discussions. In def‐ very humbled to a point of near tears. And I ance of the South African government, which was thought, and I thought of you, Love, Mnyele" (p. certainly keeping a close watch on events, the 166). Here, Mnyele's voice is heard clear as a bell eight hundred delegates--multiracial, multiethnic, at a critical juncture in his life, and it captures a and multinational, exiled openly ANC-afliated depth of expression and awareness that leads "comrades" and citizen opponents of the govern‐ Wylie to interrogate the paradoxes of his position ment still living inside South Africa--"generated as artist and revolutionary. an ecstatic air" (p. 157). Although I did not partici‐ Joining the revolution had made Mnyele a pate, I remember well the excitement the festival player--a stronger and more confdent person. generated in South African university art circles Medu was giving his life a sense of purpose. At the at the time. The presence of luminaries, like writ‐ same time, he was opened to a heightened sense er Nadine Gordimer and long-exiled musicians of the power of personal expression, even though Abdullah Ibrahim and Hugh Masekela who debat‐ as Wylie, spotting the irony, puts it, he was view‐ ed the current status of South African arts and the ing "oil paintings of venerable burghers who had hoped-for future, once revolution had been ac‐ made fortunes shipping goods to South Africa and complished, underscored the signifcance of the the East Indies, irrevocably changing the lives of festival. Wylie provides a summary of Mnyele's Thami's ancestors" (p. 167). Wylie suggests that own (unpublished) conference paper, "Observa‐ Mnyele resolved these contradictions and bol‐ tions on the State of the Contemporary Visual Arts stered his position through his reading of the in South Africa," to suggest that "glimmers of his

5 H-Net Reviews utopian promises of the Marxist cultural historian Mnyele's life in Gaborone draws to a close, the Ernst Fischer, and came to believe that violence reader is given a sense of the impending dénoue‐ was "the necessary prelude to bringing about a ment. new human centered, because collective, society" Wylie begins her seventh chapter with the (p. 168). Yet the revolution was slow in coming words "Thursday, 13th June 1985" and she relates and in the meantime South Africa was intent on the events of the fateful day in slow motion and destabilizing her neighbor countries in order to close-up detail. Focusing frst on Mnyele as he limit the growth of revolutionary movements goes about his day, making his preparations to close to home. leave Gaborone, Wylie moves on to recreate with In 1983, now joined by Segale, mother of their rising tension the movements and motivations of toddler son who had been left in the care of her the twelve victims-to-be so that they become indi‐ mother in South Africa, Mnyele traveled to Angola viduals and not merely names. She likewise de‐ for military training. Wylie draws a revealing pic‐ scribes the convoluted hierarchies of the South ture of the ANC training camps in Angola, beset African police with its militarized so-called Spe‐ by tensions, tough conditions, and low morale cial Branch; the army (South African Defence among the rank and fle. As her story builds, she Force or SADF); and the intelligence service, tells in page-turning prose how, back in Gaborone, which, in consort, would plot and, through their knowing they were under constant surveillance operatives, carry out the elaborately planned by South African agents, Mnyele and Segale and coming raid, code-named Operation Plexi. Al‐ their ANC comrades lived the revolution, con‐ though some of the sources are unreliable and stantly looking over their shoulders for South even contradictory, Wylie has gone to extraordi‐ African government stooges and informers. Hav‐ nary lengths to piece together an accurate ac‐ ing tracked down and interviewed several lesser- count of the night's events. Having begun the known participants in the drama of the times, chapter by introducing the fated twelve victims, Wylie uses their testimony to show Mnyele as a she returns to describe their slaughter, carried resolute recruiter, teacher, and hands-on trainer out by a force of sixty-three heavily armed South of converts to the cause, despite his vulnerable in‐ African soldiers and police who crossed the bor‐ ner core that seems never very far from the sur‐ der secretly (most likely, although not proven, un‐ face. With her storyteller's nose close to the der the averted gazes of the Botswana authori‐ ground, she enlivens this history's big picture in a ties). Starting with Mnyele, felled down by heavy compelling and fascinating narrative of its foot machine gun fre within seconds of desperately soldiers. racing out the back door of his house in the early As South Africa signed political accords with hours of June 14, Wylie describes one by one the neighboring Swaziland and Mozambique, fates of each of the eleven other victims. It is a Botswana's position as an ANC haven became in‐ chilling account, and Wylie tries to make sense of creasingly tenuous and Mnyele's posters became it by examining the states of mind of the perpetra‐ increasingly strident and militant. In May 1985, tors and their handlers, the all-round confusion warned by the Botswana government that their that accompanied the night's events, and its lives were in danger, many ANC exiles, Mnyele repercussions and outcomes. among them, prepared to leave Gaborone. Mnyele Wylie's story does not end with Mnyele's and Segale were hastily married and less than death. Three codas could almost form a separate two weeks later Segale left for Zambia where book, or at least discrete journal or magazine arti‐ Mnyele was to follow her. As the chapter of cles. They cover the exhumation of Mnyele's re‐

6 H-Net Reviews mains and their ceremonial reburial in South of an artist Mnyele would have been had he lived? Africa in 2004 (in a fnal chapter titled "Where is The irony that he died as the struggle was on the Home?"), Wylie's quest to discover his killers' mo‐ brink of achieving its goal is not lost on her. Nor is tivations (in an epilogue subtitled "The War of Val‐ the reality that that goal is not entirely the one of ues"), and (in an afterword subtitled "Art and Rev‐ social harmony and community that her hero olution") a discussion of what a truly political art would have envisioned. might be. In each of these vignettes, the book is di‐ Art and Revolution is neither biography, nor rected to specifc questions: "Whom did this event history, nor political theory, although it joins to‐ [the exhumation and reburial] resurrect"? What gether these genres and disciplines so that the could Wylie learn from face-to-face encounters stitches hardly show. It is a book about art and po‐ with his killers? And "what might Thami's sacri‐ litical liberation in twentieth-century South Africa fce mean?" (pp. 211, 236, 249). and it introduces readers to a large cast of charac‐ For Mnyele's family--his eighty-four-year-old ters, many of whom would otherwise have re‐ mother, his former wife, his widow, and his mained in the shadows. It is a book crafted daughter--the reburial brought resolution and a around personal memory that interrogates collec‐ form of reconciliation. For his former comrades tive memory. It is a story told with both sympathy who spoke at the memorial service and funeral and dispassion. It is an archive, for Wylie has that followed, it was an occasion to relive the done the artist's legacy the invaluable service of struggle now that change had come. To the politi‐ tracking down widely scattered works, which she cians, it was an occasion for myth making and ju‐ presents, illustrates, and analyzes with great care bilation, and a reminder that, even in a newly and insight. Most important, it is a book of histori‐ democratic South Africa, transformation was in‐ cal heft that will resonate with those who lived complete and utopia remained elusive. Wylie, the period and at the same time provide the per‐ who was present at these events, which were two fect introduction to the frst-time student of South years in the planning and unfolded over four Africa's recent history. days, provides a vivid and sometimes acerbic eye‐ Notes witness account. [1]. , "Thami Mnyele: A In seeking out Mnyele's alleged killers, Wylie Portrait," Rixaka: Cultural Journal of the African asks herself what she might hope to learn. She National Congress, no. 3 (1986): 4. fnds two very diferent men. One, now prosper‐ [2]. The minister of justice made early over‐ ing and hunting animals in place of men, appears tures to the imprisoned in 1985. unrepentant. The other, apparently deeply intro‐ See Saul Dubow, The African National Congress spective, now understands his role as a pawn in (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2000), 97, and the power struggles of others. white South African business leaders met with the Finally turning to South Africa in the twenty- political leadership of the ANC in Lusaka. See frst century, Wylie muses on the outcomes of the Mark Gevisser, Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred history she has written, putting it in the context of (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2007), 502. two other twentieth-century upheavals--the Rus‐ [3]. Thamsanqa Mnyele, "Thoughts for Bongi‐ sian and Mexican revolutions--and the vexed we," Rixaka: Cultural Journal of the African Na‐ question of political art. "Revolution" is a big tional Congress, no. 3 (1986): 30. word, to be used with caution, and Wylie interro‐ gates the rhetoric that surrounds it. This line of in‐ vestigation brings her to speculate on what kind

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Citation: Brenda Danilowitz. Review of Wylie, Diana. Art and Revolution: The Life and Death of Thami Mnyele, South African Artist. H-AfrArts, H-Net Reviews. March, 2010.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24251

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