Negotiating Identity: Urban Community Mural Art in South Africa

With the emergence of Postmodernism, questions of identity and difference came to the fore and began to emanate a significant influence on cultural productions and their interpretations. At the centre of the debate was the issue of cultural representation - in the media, visual art, history, and literature - and how representation contributes to the expression and the very formation of identity. The latter is particularly important because identity is now understood to be socially constructed rather than naturally given.

It is not surprising that these issues - while discussed globally - have particular relevance in the specific South African context. South Africa is a country undergoing a radical process of transformation, associated with which is the search for a new national identity and new models of identification for a diverse array of peoples. In the past, cultural representation was a battleground, used as a socio-political instrument to bolster ideological positions central to the system of Apartheid. Consequently, in Post- Apartheid South Africa, broad access to cultural representation was heavily emphasized: the new Government’s White Paper on Arts and Culture, for example, which is meant to guide institutions and gradually filter into every sector of society, defines that access to and participation in cultural life are not a privilege but a human right (White Paper 1996:21). Furthermore, a new awareness of the modes of representation and how these contributed to the construction of stereotypical identities began to impact on all major institutions associated with cultural representation. In the field of the visual arts, the issue of identity - its construction and deconstruction - deeply affected artists, as well as museum curators, art historians, critics and related professionals.¹ This article will examine the role of urban community murals as a specific aspect of cultural representation in this process of negotiating identities.

The almost sudden emergence and tremendous flourishing of urban community² mural art in South Africa during the early 1990s is closely associated with the country’s gradual process of socio-political liberation. Although lacking of recognition within the art establishment for its perceived inadequacies in terms of technical and conceptual sophistication and its closeness to advertisement and popular media images, mural art is a vibrant visual art practice that provides a fascinating reflection of a country in transformation and in search of a new identity. Murals provide a forum where new value systems and new models of identification in a redefined society are being publicly presented. As opposed to mainstream ‘high art’, mural art involves the participation of local communities and can - to a certain degree - be called a ‘people’s art’. It will be investigated how murals reflect racial, gender and class identities, which stereotypes are challenged or perpetuated, and how murals offer role models appropriate to the new South Africa.

Murals Artists

While the first murals were viewed with scepticism or criticism (e.g. Dubow 1992, Chandler 1996), community murals were soon lavishly praised and appreciated as a well suited and relatively cheap method for both the upliftment of dilapidated or visually impoverished urban spaces and the attainment of new objectives towards providing broad access to the production and appreciation of the arts.³ Community murals contributed to the empowerment of black communities by involving self-taught or informally trained painters, providing training opportunities, creating employment and contributing to the exposure of community artists. The experience of past under privilege was thus addressed by transforming members of the black community from passive consumers into active contributors, be it as artists who paint the mural or ordinary people who participate in determining aspects of its content.

Before discussing the specific imagery of South African murals, it is necessary to explain briefly who painted them. During the 1980s, most ‘official’ murals in the white city centres were either designed and painted by individual, usually academically trained artists, or by groups of students or trained artists from community art centres. By comparison, the ‘community mural’ of the 1990s, is painted by a diverse group of people largely drawn from the respective mural’s target community, some academically trained, most of them informally trained or self-taught. In some murals even the participation of completely inexperienced members of the general public is invited; many murals are painted with children.

By the mid 1990s, a considerable number of community mural groups had surfaced throughout the country, most of them rather informal and established temporarily on an ad hoc basis around specific events and projects. Some individual artists, such as Andrew Lindsey in Johannesburg, have sporadically but consistently been involved in mural painting since the 1980s. Schools throughout the country began to embark on mural painting ventures, particularly after 1994, and Non- Governmental Organisations (NGOs), such as Lawyers for Human Rights, organized murals, often with children as motivational or educational exercises. Other mural initiatives originated with city councils and local authorities.⁴

Most importantly, a formally constituted group or organization focussed on mural art emerged in each of the country’s three major cities short after 1990: In Durban, Community Mural Projects was formally constituted by Terry-anne Stevenson and Thami Jali (later joined by Ilse Mikula) in 1991 (registered as a trust in 1993). In Johannesburg, Nicky Blumenfeld founded Apt Artworks in 1993, the most prolific mural company in South Africa.⁵ In Cape Town, no major independent community mural company emerged that lasted for long, but the renown local art training institution, Community Arts Project (CAP), in Woodstock began painting murals as part of their training. Both Apt Artworks and Community Mural Projects are headed by academically trained, white female artists, who although essentially making their living with mural art, feel strongly about the social empowerment value of the mural painting process and reject the ‘hijacking’ of murals by commerical advertisement interests.⁶

Apart from the few city council initiatives mentioned above, the initiative for murals in South Africa almost always comes from artists and non-governmental organisations, who then seek sponsorship from the private sector, government departments (particularly for those with an educational message) or other NGOs.

Representation as Victim and Martyr

The focus of this article, however, is not on the process of painting the mural, but on its iconography and specifically on the question as to how black people are visually represented. Two modes of representation prevail in murals painted during in the 1980s and early 1990s: the one represents black people as victims, the other as agents. Murals of the first type tend to have an accusatory tone, their objective focused on the public representation of the injustices suffered by the black community at the hands of the white Apartheid regime. In these murals the depiction of blacks and whites almost always follows simple binary oppositional patterns: black people are represented as powerless, passive, receptors of someone else’s treatment, while whites assume the active role of oppressors and perpetrators of abuse and violence. A mural painted in 1982 by students on the Fort Hare University campus, for example, depicts scenes of violence commemorating the 1976 Soweto Riots, identifiable by the above- life-size iconic image of Hector Peterson (Williamson 1989, Loubser 1989). Members of the black community are shown as innocent victims of white oppression and martyrs; the source and responsibility for their suffering is so unmistakable and universally understood to be on the part of whites that there is no need to even represent the perpetrators.

A more explicit spelling out of stereotypical role attributions along racial lines features in a mural painted by township children in Grahamstown⁷ (Figs. 1 & 2). The painting gives a shocking account of daily life experience from an innocent children’s perspective: white policemen in Caspirs, equipped with fire arms, are depicted chasing terrorised black township residents while others line the streets with their arms up in defence. Even in the early 1990s this mode of representation still prevailed, as seen in a mural painted in 1992 on the long, L-shaped perimeter wall of the former prison in the city centre of Durban, depicting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.⁸ Many of the clauses of this fundamental document are illustrated by telling a story of abuse inspired by the general level of violence and daily human rights violations and, no doubt, in some cases by personal experience of the participating artists. In the panel representing the Right of Freedom from Torture (Fig. 3), for example, a sparsely dressed black torture victim lying in a pool of blood, dominates the image, his transformation from victim to martyr is insinuated by the figure’s posture resembling the crucified Christ. Whites, on the other hand, are often shown in positions of power , for example as judges in courtroom scenes, or in the role of real or potential violators of human rights, for example as policemen in the scene depicting the Right to Be Considered Innocent until Proven Guilty.

Representation as Agents

But, as social emancipation and political liberation movements all over the world have experienced, a simple reflection of reality may not be enough to initiate change. Apart from positive models of identification, there is a need for a thorough, critical analysis of stereotypical representations and their impact on identity formation. This position was first championed by the women’s movement, when feminists pointed to the representation of women in fine art, literature, advertisement and popular culture as important ways in which the self is constructed (Risatti 1998:268). Multiculturalism, as Risatti points out, has built on this line of argument. In South Africa, Steve Biko in his ‘Definition of Black Consciousness’ (Biko in Coetzee 1998), speaks about the importance of correcting ‘false images’ of blacks, in terms of culture, education, religion, and economics and calls upon black people to represent themselves, rather than being interpreted by others.⁹ Liberation ideology thus advocates black agency, calling for a revision or even inversion of stereotypical role distributions between blacks and whites.

In accordance with this position, the other type of murals represents black South Africans as agents in the sense of being empowered to actively contribute to the processes and frameworks that shape their lives: Many murals painted in the townships by artists affiliated with the political struggle for liberation during the 1980s, depicted black activists with raised fists and marching in confidence, following well-known prototypes of the Mexican mural movement and other social realist models (Badsha 2000; Williamson 1989). Many of these murals were small or informal, taking into account that they would be eliminated by the state authorities days or even hours after having been painted.

This mode of representation still prevailed when the mural medium became more established in South African cities and elaborate in its content and visual language during the early 1990s, parallelling the gradual change of the political landscape. For example, in the versions of human rights murals painted in 1995¹⁰ and 1997¹¹ on what became known as the Durban ‘Human Rights wall’, the representation of black people has clearly changed in comparison to the older (1992) version: Black South Africans are now shown as competently occupying professional positions of high responsibility. In the large-scale courtroom scene dominating the entire left half of the 1995 mural, for example, black men occupy the crucial positions of judge and administrator (Fig. 4). In the 1997 version, black subjects are on the one hand shown as engaged in important constructive activities, for example as teacher or construction worker, metaphorically building the new nation; on the other hand they are depicted as happily benefitting from development and the human rights guaranteed in the new constitution.

Furthermore, where black people are shown in interaction with whites in this and many other murals of the period, the older oppressor-versus-victim stereotype no longer informs representational practice. In line with the new government’s emphasis on racial reconciliation, the relationship between black and white South Africans is now always portrayed as a non-conflictual one, emphasizing peaceful co- existence and even socializing. This mode of representation is echoed in (and perhaps partly inspired by) similar trends in advertisement and the popular media.

Celebrating African Culture

The emphasis on black agency and celebration of African culture is reflected in many other murals of the early transformation period. Icons and symbols of Africa abound, ranging from outlines of the African continent and the African colours (red, black, green), to the representation of traditional artifacts and material culture and the ever recurring image of the African musician and dancer (in line with what Ivor Powell (1995:3) has once called the ‘they got rhythm’ thesis). The so- called ‘Joko murals’ painted by Community Mural Projects in cities around the country (Umtata, East London, Bloemfontein, etc.) focus on telling stories inspired by African history, traditional beliefs and folk stories. Another mural painted by the same group in Durban represents Nomkhubulwana, the Zulu goddess of rain and fertility (Fig. 5). The gigantic figure of the goddess is depicted reaching out to a diverse crowd of people; in her contemporary dress she is clearly inspired by - and calling for identification with - the ordinary people who frequent this busy city node. Some of the fruit vendors whose pavement stalls have become a semi-permanent feature of the local street-scape have served as immediate models; they are thus memorialised, their presence is publicly acknowledged. Murals like these reveal an overwhelming need for positive images affirming black identity, for the recovery of lost histories, for the rehabilitation of African culture after decades of denigration and suppression. They attempt to contest, in Stuart Hall’s (1989:224) words, “the marginality, the stereotypical quality and the fetishized nature of the images of blacks, by the counter-position of a ‘positive’ black imagery.”

Multiculturalism

But this celebration of black African identity based on cultural heritage and tradition now partially clashed with the powerful socio-political dynamic of the newly elected government’s desire to create a unified nation state. The new South African national identity, expressed and widely popularised in the metaphor of the ‘rainbow nation,’ was to be built on an ideology of unity in multicultural diversity and racial reconciliation. In other words, while the rehabilitation and celebration of black African culture and identity was an important aspect of the project of the new nation, the larger objective was the acknowledgement and celebration of racial diversity. Mural art played an important part in disseminating the new national icons and value systems associated with a transformed South Africa. The challenge for mural artists and facilitators was to find ways of expressing this new national multicultural identity, i.e. to translate the ‘rainbow nation’ concept into a visual format, and to provide attractive, new models of identification.

One strategy employed in murals of the immediate post-Election period to address this challenge was the representation of ostentatiously multicultural/multiracial crowds. Many murals give the impression of grasping every opportunity to include a group of people, whose features, complexion and frequently attire or other culturally specific attributes are always demonstratively diverse. The Regional Elections mural in Doornfontein, Johannesburg¹² , for example, is composed around a family album type group picture uniting three generations of individuals in all shades of complexion, the perfect ‘rainbow nation family’ (Fig. 6).

While this strategy emphasises cultural difference, another approach emerged with images that negate and defy the very possibility of any racial or cultural classification. These murals depict human figures rendered ambiguously and often schematically with faces painted in bright, often primary, colours.This ambiguity and conscious suppression of the representation of specific racial identity reconstitutes, as Enwezor (1997:24) has put it, “the new image of the nation as something neither white nor black, but ‘a rainbow of multiple reflections.’”

On another level, this practice of defying racial identification deconstructs Apartheid style racial categorisations and reflects current academic discourses on the ambiguity, fluidity and hybrid nature of racial and ethnic identity and the critique of essentialist subject positions. In this context, much has been written recently about the constructedness of identity, not only black, but also white identity (e.g. Golden 1993). This discourse constitutes a move away from simplistic structuralist models, the recognition that a simple inversion of stereotypical role distributions, the strategy of replacing “the bad old essential white subject” with “the new essentially good black subject” (Hall 1989:225), is insufficient. Hall (ibid) illustrates this point in his article ‘New Ethnicities’ with regard to the film industry by bluntly stating: “Films are not necessarily good because black people make them.”

Hybridity

It can be argued that the iconography of South African community mural art shows a discernible shift away from the representation of the essentialist black subject - be it in the role of victim or agent - towards an emphasis on hybridity as the essence of post-colonial and post-Apartheid identities. This means that the strategy of deliberate ambiguity and schematic representation in order to suppress specific racial, as well as gender and class, identity has found a counterpart in another type of representation, which is highly realistic, not withholding but supplying the spectator with closely observed, detailed information on the identity and status of the represented subject. This approach differs from the earlier representation of multicultural ‘rainbow nation’ people in its realism and departure from stereotypical representations aimed at political correctness.

The prime example of this approach is a series of large scale murals embellishing the major train stations in townships around Durban, painted between 1996 and 1998¹³ (Fig. 7). Most panels represent realistically rendered images inspired by the immediate station or township context, replete with recognisable references to local landmarks. The scenes are populated by black township residents engaged in activities commonly observable in the public life of the surrounding township: people boarding or deboarding the train, people walking in the street, sitting in minibus taxis, fruit vendors, men drinking at a shebeen, pupils in school, labourers working on construction sites or rail road tracks. It is neither a romanticized nor an accusatory account of township life, but a realistic reflection of how community artists perceive their own surrounding: very matter-of-factly, sometimes with a humorous slant.

The hybrid identity of this urban black population is expressed in numerous ways. Scenes depicting urban life are now and then juxtaposed with panels depicting more traditional rural settings, so as to constantly remind urban residents of their rural roots and their traditional heritage. Tradition is thereby validated, providing people with a sense of belonging and perhaps addressing a sense of alienation and lost identity experienced by some township residents. But most importantly, tradition is not portrayed as necessarily located in opposition to western-influenced urban culture but a number of images represent the synthesis of both cultures and value systems: An example is the prominent depiction - at Umlazi Station - of a group of Zionists, the largest of South Africa’s so-called Independent African Churches, which merges Christianity with traditional African belief systems. The large-scale train in the same mural is topped by a pair of cattle horns and a traditional Zulu umancishana, objects used in ancestor worship, implying that this gigantic icon of modern transportation technology has been ‘secured’ through the symbolic presence of the ancestors, who guide and protect the passengers.

Murals of this kind often validate African value systems, for example by emphasizing the importance of community: There is a strong trend towards representing people in groups, whether they socialize, work or worship together; many murals depict aspects of development (provision of water, electricity, housing) or dealing with social problems (such as crime or AIDS) as a result of community effort.

On the other hand, the same murals frequently contain references propagating typical western bourgeois values: the private ownership of a family home with garden, connected to electricity supply and equipped with telephone lines and western consumer goods and appliances, as seen, most prominently, in a panel at Kwamnyandu Station in Umlazi or at the Doornfontein mural in Johannesburg. A mural at Umlazi Station reminds people to be punctual, while yet another, a still-life composition carrying the caption ‘Education - the food of the nation’, integrates pen and pencil as symbols of conventional western schooling with references to traditional Zulu culture (Fig. 8). In scenes depicting an urban setting, people are always dressed in western clothes appropriate to their respective societal roles and employment situations, reflecting their class identity and aspiration towards assimilation.

Identity Formation

A case study investigating the impact of community murals on their target audience¹⁴ suggests that there is a very high level of identification particularly with such realistically painted images, in which people actually see themselves reflected. The realisation that certain types of murals can thus be potentially powerful instruments in conveying direct and subliminal messages to spectators and contribute to the process of their identity formation, warrants a closer look at the representation of blacks and the positions they are shown to occupy in the new South African society.

While on the one hand it can clearly be noted that the representation of blacks has markedly changed from victim to agent, it is likewise evident that the number of roles black people are seen to play span a limited range: Black Africans are very frequently represented engaging in activities of entertainment and socializing, such as playing music, dancing, drinking in a shebeen, chatting or simply doing nothing. When depicted working, they occupy positions as labourers dressed in blue overalls, often engaged in construction work or vendors selling from informal stalls. Only the occasional representation as teacher hints at a higher level of education and professionalism. Apart from these urban roles, black people are represented in traditional roles, often romanticized and placed in rural settings from which all traces of western ‘contamination’ have been erased: elders smoking a pipe, women hoeing in the field, men hunting or guarding cattle.

There are only few exceptions in which black South Africans are seen in new or unconventional roles, such as managerial or professional positions, or capacities that emphasize the intellect over the senses and physicality: one example is the above mentioned 1995 human rights mural depicting a black judge, another, more recent one, is a mural in the East London township of Mdantsane, where black men are seen to occupy an office equipped with modern electronic communications technology. However, it must be noted that the nouveaux riches and the new black elite of managers and professionals with strongly bourgeois aspirations that has emerged in South Africa in the past few years is virtually unrepresented in community mural art.

It could be argued with Bourdieu (Fowler 1997:18) that black artists as members of these communities have internalised their social conditions as part of their habitus and contribute to reproducing social structures through images that perpetuate rather than challenge stereotypes. However, the rationale behind such representations is perhaps more likely the desire for artists to realistically reflect their community, in other words, represent what they perceive to be the common reality of the majority of their people, who form the target audience of these murals, rather than the exceptional experience of a small elite. While some murals appear to be primarily autonomous paintings intended to beautify, most seem to seek a connection with the spectator; they want to inspire people to engage with the image, to be able to relate to and identify with it. Mural artists know that people like to see themselves and their own experience represented - more so perhaps than being confronted with role models and visions as to what someone else believes they should be aspiring to.

The Gender Perspective: the Macho Male

Not only do South African murals develop or disseminate racial stereotypes, but - perhaps even more importantly so - murals also convey direct and subliminal messages about gender relations in the new South African society. The image of the black South African male imparted by mural art frequently focuses on his physical strength and vitality, as well as his role as agent in relation to the female. A mural on the perimeter wall of a multisport complex in Guguletu, for example, shows images of black sportsmen with well-developed athletic bodies, headed by the slogan ‘Build your mind and body with sport’.¹⁵ Images of black athletes recur frequently in South African murals, as are those of scantily clad traditional hunters and warriors and muscular construction workers, sometimes, as in Rustenberg¹⁶ , shown with bare chest, exposing a brawny body (Fig. 9). The macho male turns violent in a human rights mural in Clermont¹⁷ or in the domestic abuse awareness mural in Manenberg¹⁸ . In both cases the abusive male is inconspicuously looking and well-dressed, approaching the victimized female character and her children with whip in hand.¹⁹

Bourgault (1999) in her evaluation of HIV/Aids murals criticizes the muscle bound male character who is shown carrying a bucket and distributing condoms in an Aids mural at Fort Hare.²⁰ She points out that research suggests skewed gender relations and an inordinate amount of male power to be at the root of the AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa, if not the whole continent. Acknowledging this problem, the Aids awareness organization, DramAidE, according to Bourgault, is even planning to run workshops aimed at exploring South African concepts of masculinity “with a view to aiding society to devise a ‘kinder, gentler, (read less sexist, less misogynist) South African male.’ It may be that muscle men images will not survive the new definition. And aloof fathers, fathers uninvolved with children, could also disappear soon from the new gender script.” (Bourgault 1999: no page number).

The Representation of Women

It must be pointed out, that, unlike rural, traditional mural art, which is the sole resort of women, the urban, contemporary murals under consideration here, are painted by groups of artists of mixed gender, but frequently predominated by men. This may account for the fact that images of males far outnumber images of females in the average South African urban mural²¹ . This male predominance of painting teams means that images of women and images referring to the relationship between the sexes are usually painted by men, invariably instilling their own ideas about how women should be represented.

As Elleke Boehmer (1995:225) has observed in her research of colonial and post- colonial literature, it appears that “whereas men are invoked as leaders and citizens of the new nation, women are widely regarded as icons of national values, or idealized custodians of tradition.” Although, according to Boehmer, this gendered picture began to change from the early 1970s on, partly as a result of the Women’s movement, similar observations can be made in a number of even fairly recent South African murals: For instance, the above mentioned Durban mural representing the gigantic female figure of the Zulu goddess Nomkhubulwana, is meant to personify and validate traditional African beliefs and emphasize their relevance in the contemporary urban context. In an AIDS awareness mural in Guguletu,²² a multicultural group of people, representing the South African ‘rainbow nation’ is depicted holding hands in their united struggle against the dreaded disease (Fig. 10). The enthusiastic leader of this group is a middle aged black woman who is prominently wearing the new South African flag as a kerchief, suggesting a reading as ‘mother of the nation’. The most common female icon is the mother- and-child image with its connotation of nurturing, protection, fertility and growth.

Colonised women, according to Boehmer (1995:224), are often doubly or even triply marginalised: they are disadvantaged on the grounds not only of gender but also of race, class, and in some cases, religion and caste. While liberation movements tended to encourage agency of the suppressed colonised subject, this encouragement did not necessarily extend to the colonised woman. The irony of the independence period, according to Boehmer (ibid), was that many of the old forms of exclusion were reinforced by the pressures of national liberation.

In South Africa, Post-colonialism is often equated with Post-Apartheid, a contention which is not entirely unproblematic, just as the struggle against Apartheid differs in many respects from anti-colonial liberation movements elsewhere in Africa. Although the majority of the leaders of the Struggle in South Africa were male, some were also female, and the general role of women in the Struggle was not seen as an insignificant one. This legacy partly informed the attitude of those who drew up the constitution of the new South Africa, which enshrines gender equality, and is meant to filter into all levels of society. Mural art reflects this attitude towards women to a certain extent. For example, a voter education mural in Pietermaritzburg defies gender specific behavioural expectations by propagating the right of women to vote, even against their husband’s will. Such murals can help forging new identities for women.

Nevertheless, in line with Boehmer’s observation, the majority of murals in South Africa reflect a different picture: Images depicting rural scenes always portray women performing traditionally female tasks, such as cooking, hoeing the field, and grinding the maize. In murals thematising the urban situation, the division of labour follows older western (i.e. pre-feminist) modes of representation: women are depicted in activities related to child care (nursing, feeding or otherwise attending to small children), house keeping (sewing, washing, shopping) or employed in a very limited range of occupations, mostly as informal vendors, sometimes as nurses or teachers.

It could, in fact, be argued (with some caution in view of the relatively small number of examples), that urban mural art to a certain degree repeats the stereotypical Madonna-whore dichotomy which informed the representation of women in late 19th century European painting: There are, on the one hand, the ‘good’ images of women, almost always associated with tradition or with entrenched societal value systems and their conventional female role attributions, depicting women on their own or with children, performing tasks connected with child care or house keeping. When shown in the presence of men, the man occupies the role of agent, while the female is seen in a role of assistant, subservient to the man (e.g. the mural at the Butterworth Development Centre painted under the coordination of Andrew Lindsey). A variation of this theme is exemplified by the accident scene in the Telkom mural in Mdantsane (co-ordinated by Thabiso Khetsi), which represents the woman shouting out helplessly, while the man takes the initiative to help the injured person, and the male child walks off to the telephone to call the ambulance.

In such images, women are usually represented as motherly types, inconspicuously dressed and unerotic. In marked contrast, the other type of female representation portrays the woman as seductress: always young, slim, highly eroticised, wearing a mini skirt, skimpy top or showing off her well-shaped behind packed in tight fitting blue jeans (e.g. Umlazi Station, Fig. 11; Bloemfontein²³ ). Agency is implied to be on the part of the woman, while the man in her presence is subject to her allure, his potential response invited by her seductive appearance and behaviour.

These stereotypical images are informed by - and perhaps intended to critique - western popular media representations and values of sexual libertarianism, which lead to the erosion of traditional morality. Most of these images of women are represented in urban settings, but a mural panel at Tembalihle Station in KwaMashu, is cast as an entirely traditional rural scene. Reflecting local custom, a young man dressed in traditional Zulu attire is shown meeting a woman at the river in an idyllic rural setting. However, the woman is represented completely naked in violation of traditional Zulu taboos. While an image of this kind may be read to convey a moralising message, implying that the negative impact of Western values is penetrating even into the most remote rural areas, the eroticised nature of the representation may also reflect a certain taste on the part of the painter or catering to a perceived demand among the local township audience. Images of this kind invite comparison with the art of the urban painter in other parts of Africa, who thrives on the interaction with his immediate environment, not only in terms of the sources for his imagery but also the content of his paintings, inspired by stories and topical issues disseminated in newspaper articles and more informal channels of communication (Vogel 1994).

The work of the contemporary African urban painter, although at first sight blunt and obvious in its message (a charge that has also been levied at South African mural art), is often, at closer examination, rather ambiguous, allowing for multiple readings and inviting the participation of the viewer to create the preferred meaning²⁴. Urban painting has long been shunned by the western dominated art establishment, because it is functional and market driven, i.e. painting defined not as autonomous art, but as a means of making a living, which may often involve the practice of repeating popular themes. The same applies, to a certain degree, to South African murals. However, urban painters do express their own artistic tastes and set their own priorities, albeit within much narrower confines than the academically trained international artist. Well-known urban painter, Cheri Samba, in Kinshasa, for instance, has developed an obvious taste for nudity and eroticised female imagery, which he negotiates around the obstacles of public morality and official censorship by finding thematic excuses (such as criticism of adultery) that allow him to include his favourite image, the luscious seductress (Jewsiewicki 1994).

Conclusion

Whereas the contemporary African urban painter ultimately survives on selling his art and thus caters to the tastes of his clientele, which may include foreign tourists seeking originality, South African murals, on the other hand, want to communicate with the community in which the painting is located. A community mural intends to beautify, educate and reflect issues of concern to the community. In order to ‘reach’ the target audience, mural artists are inclined to employ engaging images that people relate to because they identify with the human figures or themes represented. For this reason, mural artists, by and large, are likely to stay within accepted social codes for behaviour, both in terms of race and gender relations, rather than employing transgressive imagery which may be perceived as offensive. Many murals therefore appear to confirm rather than challenge prevailing stereotypes of race and gender identity.

However, while many murals seem to reflect the level of consciousness in the respective community (e.g. Umlazi Station murals), others intend to raise it (e.g. human rights murals in Durban and elsewhere, particularly the early examples) . While the former type of mural seeks to portray a range of identities existing within the community in order to acknowledge and validate them, the second type suggests new models of identification. It can be suspected that the personal and professional experience, racial and educational background, and the socio-political convictions of the mural facilitator, as well as the specific composition of the painting team play a significant role in this process. This correlation between the mural artists and the respective imagery represented in the mural, is an aspect that would be well worth investigating further.


	The term ‘community’ must be defined and problematised at this stage. Thornton and Ramphele (1988) have defined the term with regard to the specific South African context thus: “In South Africa, as elsewhere, the term ‘community’ is used to denote aggregations of people who have something in common, such as a common residence, geographic region, and shared belief, or who claim membership in a common lineage structure, or who are distinguished by similarities of economic activity or class position.” (Ibid:30). In the common usage of the term, however, ‘community’ seems most frequently to refer to black people. Community murals, by implication, are then murals painted by black artists for a black audience. This does indeed apply to many, if not most, murals in South Africa, but there are also numerous murals painted by racially mixed teams of artists, co-ordinated by a white facilitator and located in urban centres or suburbs, where the potential viewers consist of an everchanging, diverse crowd of passers-by, fragmented along racial, ethnic, gender, religious and class lines. It is still not meaningless to speak of ‘community mural’ in such cases. Community here can be defined in broader terms, referring for instance to the residents of a larger geographic region, or in more specific terms, referring to the ‘audience community’, the group of people who view the mural, take note of its form or content, or show an interest in existence. The fluidity of the concept ‘community’ is particularly problematic when mural artists, facilitators and journalists claim that a particular mural benefits ‘the community’. As with any so-called community development or community empowerment project, there will always be some who dissent, others who don’t care and perhaps a few who may actually be disempowered / disadvantaged by the venture. This is not to discredit claims of empowerment, but to introduce a note of caution and a critical reminder of the complexity of the issue.


	In Cape Town in the early 1990s, for example, the city council established the mural group Come & Play to paint murals on creches and other public buildings, as well as perimeter walls in the townships in an attempt to combat the spread of graffiti. More interestingly, the city of Johannesburg initiated the painting of a series of murals as part of the annual Arts Alive Festival from 1992 to 1995. The programme was originally organized through the Johannesburg Publicity Association under the coordination of Christopher Till, but later became more independent. These murals, facilitated by Andrew Lindsey in association with Nicky Blumenfeld from Apt Artworks, differ significantly in size, quality of execution, and content.


	While simple, fairly small scale muralised advertisement has been common in the townships for a long time, a number of advertisement agencies in Johannesburg have recently resorted to very large scale, flashy, professionally designed and commercially painted murals for the purpose of advertising a product. Furthermore, a considerable number of private, commercially driven, mural enterprises have emerged in the last few years, who only involve professional artists or graphic designers. These murals do not pretend to empower communities or serve any function other than beautifying the area. The iconography is often drawn from the popular media industry (e.g. popular children’s characters) or relates to the enterprise that commissioned the respective mural (e.g. the series of surf shop murals in Durban, always depicting illusionistic scenes of surfing).


	“Further implications of Black Consciousness are to do with correcting false images of ourselves in terms of culture, education, religion, and economics. The importance of this must not be understated. There is always an interplay between the history of a people, i.e. the past, and their faith in themselves and hopes for their future. We are aware of the terrible role played by our education and religion in creating amongst us a false understanding of ourselves. We must therefore work out schemes not only to correct this, but further to be our own authorities rather than wait to be interpreted by others. Whites can only see us from the outside and as such can never extract and analyse the ethos in the black community.”(Biko 1984:363).


	This is particularly obvious in case of the paintings that adopt a comic strip style or contain several episodes of one story. As Jewsiewicki (1994:145) points out: “As no sequence is imposed among the images, the viewers must create one, adjusting it to suit the meanings they give to each element. It is possible to twist these meanings, to contrast tem with their variants, and thus to observe them in a temporal dimension of one’s own. Time becomes a category created by the observer. These works reintroduce the factor of contingency, chance, surprise, into space and time.”

Ijele: Art eJournal of the African World (2001)

ISSN: 1525-447X