Notes

For many years universities across South Africa have been grappling with the issues surrounding colonial and apartheid commemorative monuments, objects, and names. These issues came to the fore in March 2015, when the #RhodesMustFall movement began at the University of Cape Town (UCT) with the call to remove Marion Walgate’s 1934 bronze statue of Cecil John Rhodes that sat in a prominent place on the university’s main campus. Rhodes was a British imperialist who willed ‘his’ land to South Africa, an act that provided the setting for the founding of UCT. The #RhodesMustFall movement brought about much bigger issues surrounding the transformation and decolonisation of university space, curriculum, and culture and has led to many subsequent #MustFall movements locally and globally.

Lots 106 and 107 each represent a similar scene from 9 April 2015: the day the Rhodes statue finally fell. David Goldblatt’s lengthily titled photograph (lot 107) is a black and white rendering of the ‘dethroning’ of the statue from its pedestal by a crane. A large group of students stands by watching and recording the occasion on their smart phones and tablets. Goldblatt was a seasoned artist who documented the widespread repercussions of apartheid on the daily life of South Africans over a career that spanned more than 60 years. An interesting companion to Goldblatt’s photograph is a colour photograph (lot 107) by visual and performance artist Sethembile Msezane, then studying towards her master’s degree at UCT. In fact, looking closely at Goldblatt’s image, one can see Msezane with her arms outstretched in the mid right portion.

Her work, Chapungu – The Day Rhodes Fell, depicts a performance enacted by the artist wherein she embodied the spirit of chapungu, a bird who the Shona people believe to be an omen of good fortune for a community and the national bird of Zimbabwe. Msezane chose to portray this bird because it references the soapstone statue carved in its likeness that sits in Rhodes’ Groote Schuur estate, looted from Great Zimbabwe and still unreturned. For this performance, Msezane stood in six-inch stilettos on a plinth for four hours in the heat and sun, achingly lifting and lowering her wings at intervals while the Rhodes statue was being dismantled. Of the experience, Msezane said: ‘By the time I came down, I was shaking and experiencing sunstroke. But I also felt a burst of life inside.’¹ These are two powerful portraits of a momentous day.

^1. https://blog.ted.com/standing-for-art-andtruth-a-chat-with-sethembile-msezane/

Exhibited

Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, The Art of Disruptions, 16 June to 23 October 2016.

Framer Framed, Amsterdam, Re[as]sisting Narratives, 28 August to 27 November 2016.

Rhodes must fall UCT to Oxford by Sethembile Msezane - YouTube, accessed 20/02/23.