Art by Rock Hard African Women

Oftentimes, mass acts of violent rebellion primarily driven by youths are viewed as counterproductive and nihilistic. But it is important to note that this isn’t always the case, as three major examples in African contemporary history demonstrate notably: the anti-colonial theory of violence proffered by Frantz Fanon that galvanised Algeria into civil disobedience and warfare during the colonial era; the Arab Spring that gripped North Africa and parts of the Middle East in 2011; and the #RhodesMustFall movement that rattled South Africa in 2015.  Each of these instances of mass rebellion were largely youth-driven and shook the political status quo in their respective countries, leading to sociopolitical reform and fervent collective contemplation.

In this sense, rebellion in and of itself becomes a thoroughly creative act, a measure to shake up jaded and monolithic political edifices in urgent need of transformation as atrophy and retrogression set in within the body politic. Youths often excluded or marginalised in key decision-making bodies and processes are left with no option but to revolt. And in the act of rebellion, they are not only offering their voice but also their signature as an essential component of the body politic. When dominant political structures become unresponsive to the needs and aspirations of the majority, when they become complacent and incapable of growth and innovation, then the rebellion of youth and other segments of the populace becomes not only unavoidable but also desirable. Indeed, the desirability of revolt as a creative act is the line of thinking behind this discussion. Revolt as a massive glitch in the polity can also be viewed as a rite of purification, a collective cleansing of the communal being before renewed energies are unleashed for social reconstruction.

Having established that the physical act of actual revolt could sometimes have therapeutic and reconstructive properties, it is important to note that Africa has produced many contemporary female artists whose works stand as testaments to powerful creative agency within the continent and defiant feminist sensibilities.

“Strike a woman, strike a rock” (imbokodo) is a Zulu proverb that became popular after the 1956 women’s march to Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest the apartheid pass laws. It is possible to explore other equally productive meanings of rock art by rock hard people and, in this instance, the San communities of Southern Africa come to mind. The San, also known as “the First People”, can be found principally in Angola, Namibia, Botswana and, of course, South Africa. Centuries ago, they mastered the art of making paintings and engravings on rock surfaces. These works of art were not merely decorative. They tell stories, communicate healing and enact rituals for communal wellness and cohesion. In spite of colonisation and various forms of oppression, these works of art have endured and this attests to the strength and resilience of the people who created them. Indeed, San communities are littered across the Southern African region despite mounting challenges, and their survival represents a broader African narrative of durability and adaptability. Their story forms the essential backdrop to this article on women who struggle against all kinds of dispossession: political, cultural, economic, and sexist, among other types of oppression.

The work of two black South African photographers, Zanele Muholi and Ingrid Masondo, can be construed as efforts to debunk the misrepresentations of the black African woman by centuries-long colonial imagery, on the one hand, and — in spite of the constitutional recognition of gay rights — within the matrix of a largely homophobic, patriarchal, post-apartheid South Africa, on the other. Within colonial consciousness, the black female body was preposterously exoticised, anaestheticised, and hypersexualised. By being thrust into a vortex of unruly instincts, the black African female was grossly violated in more ways than one.

Sarah Bartmann was an unfortunate indigene of what eventually became South Africa who was enslaved to be paraded in the freak shows of London and Paris during the nineteenth century on account of her well-endowed posterior ( a contemporary equivalent would be the Brazilian Butt Lift – BBL). Bartmann was constantly dehumanised, abused, and subsequently left for dead for no reason other than her natural physical attributes. Judging by her horrendous ordeal, it would appear that at the often perverse heart of Euro-modernity was an implacable impulse to enslave, violate, and finally exterminate.

In their work, Muholi and Masondo seek to subvert colonialism’s visual enslavement and abuse. Even in postcolonial times, this visual misappropriation and denigration persist in a variety of ways, from the fashion industry’s rigid and unwritten policies of control, manipulation, and exploitation, to rabid sexual abuse and enslavement in several societies across the world. Muholi and Masondo, therefore, address the continuing traumatisation of the black female and her body by society writ large. Not only is her body controlled and policed in numerous ways, her images and identity are also subjected to the same means of subjugation and exploitation. The physical and emotional injuries form the basis on which Muholi, in particular, explores the various manifestations of victimhood. In a good number of her photographs, Muholi is able to wrest power away from her masculinist oppressor, thereby asserting her own strength, resilience, and individuality.

In March 2010, Muholi’s work together with that of Nandipha Mntambo generated considerable controversy following an exhibition titled Innovative Women that was staged at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg in August 2009. Lulu Xingwana, the then Minister for Arts and Culture, described the photographs on exhibition as “pornographic” and orchestrated a walk-out while opposition politician Annelie Lotriet called the minister a homophobe. Muholi and Mntambo had sought to educate the South African public about what it meant to live as a lesbian in their country. Xingwana, on the other hand, had been offended by their work. Xingwana claimed that the photographs abolished the boundaries between art and pornography and a spokesperson in her ministry defended the minister’s stance in relation to the “pro-lesbian exhibition”. In offering her views, Xingwana argued that the photographs could not be said to advance the cause of “moral regeneration, social cohesion and nation-building”. Some critics simply labelled her remarks as “crude fascism”.

In order to reclaim a degree of authenticity, both photographers (especially Muholi) explore notions of female agency outside the traditional assumptions of heteronormative culture and, accordingly, terms pertaining to mothering, beauty, exposure, vulnerability, and strength acquire new meanings.

In other parts of Africa, this recuperation of female agency is undoubtedly more difficult. When Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues was to be staged in Uganda in 2005, the goons of patriarchy promptly swung into action. The then Minister for Information and Broadcasting, James Nsaba Buturo, claimed the play could not be staged in Kampala because the morals of society would be undermined. The Ugandan Medical Council offered its support, stating that the play promoted lesbianism and homosexuality. Arguably, this impeded the drive for women’s empowerment in a country ravaged by war in the north where underage girls were forced into domestic and sex slavery and were routinely raped. Rather than conceal this deplorable state of affairs, Ensler’s play would have provided a fresh way of viewing skewed gender relations. 

The play itself has female emancipation as its main subject matter. It discloses what society would rather not confront about the female. In the play, two women hold imaginary mirrors to their genitals and discuss the location of the g-spot, the enticing and fleshy layers of the labia, the sensitivities of the nerves of the vagina,  the ineffable pleasures obtained from sex with both men and women, the traumas of rape, and the hidden verities of female sexual pleasure. Their frank exchange touches upon the core that patriarchy strives to protect and conceal. Instead of admitting its inexplicable fear of the vagina, the patriarchy has created elaborate institutions and practices of control to disguise what it would rather not confront. 

The aborted attempt to stage the Vagina Monologues in Kampala is one of countless incidents attesting to the fear of the vagina and the need for strict social control. Not only was the fear of female genitalia demonstrated by the organs and agencies of patriarchy, there was also an explicit disapproval of same-sex affairs. In Ensler’s play on the dilemmas of female agency, the Ugandan state apparatus saw the possibility for an unacceptable emergence of gay rights politics. In this regard, it was at least correct in assuming that feminist politics leads to the reorganisation of both public and private spaces. Under feminist politics, the borders of both the body and sexuality are irrevocably transformed.

It is easy to be seduced by South Africa’s Tracey Rose’s preference for revolt which often trumps the demand for sufficient critique. Rose once attempted to defecate in full public view of her MA class at Goldsmith College, London, during a performance of “Shittin’ Bullion” and understandably received a dismissive reaction. Rose, it was claimed, “despised the UK”. There is a long history of anti-art movements and forms of conceptual art that embody both formal and informal aspects of revolt and creative experimentation. John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, produced cool and ironic anti-art statements that startled art audiences in the 1960s.

Rose, in a famous creative performance, urinated on the wall that divided Israel and Palestine to generate mixed feelings that prompted political awareness, consternation and revulsion. Such rebellious performance art elicits strong reactions to her stance and her views.  Traditionally, Rose is interested in issues of race, gender, and sexuality as she has demonstrated over the course of three decades of making art professionally. 

There is, arguably, at least at face value,  a curious mix of fierceness and whimsicality in Rose’s creative explorations. There is also a sense of outrage that unsettles the strictures constructed by the external eye. The female body, and more precisely, the black female body, delimited by age-long colonial injunction, is meant to be ravished and devoured without caution or restraint. Exoticisation, otherisation, rape and plunder have been the predetermined destiny of the ideologically captive black body, both male and female.

For centuries, black women have been disenfranchised by both colonial dynamics and patriarchy. But Rose’s art seems to offer a fervent resistance to this kind of historic violence, one that invariably denudes the female spirit of vitality and individuality. Her art is not about seeking political accommodation and justification. On the contrary, it is a distinctive search for personal and social uplift regardless of the odds.

It is necessary to consider the reality of the invisible South African coloured (in South Africa, this means mixed race) woman. Perhaps the issue is rather more complex than that of mere public recognition. It is probably more about exploitation and manipulation. A subjugated female obviously poses no threat to a predominantly sexist status quo. Rose unequivocally resists the tyranny of patriarchy. But she does it with a fierceness and an unwavering single-mindedness. There can be no half measures here and her art hollers unabashedly about her intention to be free and to transgress the boundaries society invariably imposes on black women.

And so Rose would have us believe she may be just our most insufferable gadfly. She is somewhat akin to a feral creature that promptly destroys our carefully fabricated – albeit often artificial – social arrangements – unlimited, uncontrollable and perhaps even slightly unhinged. In total, she could very well be your worst possible migraine.

The three major artists – Muholi, Masondo and Rose – discussed here are ultimately concerned with the politics of the private; indeed, ostensibly larger civil liberties are related to what we do in the secrecy of our bedrooms and how this shapes social behaviour and our capacity to resist bigotry, venial myopia and hypocrisy. As such, what is done in the privacy of the bedroom determines not only our future but also the state of public health, civil liberties, and collective evolution. In this manner, the distinction between the private and the public becomes blurred or even abolished. And this is why an artist such as Muholi bares her innermost secrets for others like her to find validation and personal redemption.

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