WORKS created by black South African artists during the apartheid era and now scattered around the world are being found and returned to South Africa.
The Ifa Lethu Foundation, whose task it is to find and return these works, has to date identified 170 artworks in countries as far apart as Australia, Sweden, Canada and the US, and is negotiating to repatriate them with the aid of private donations and a R4,5 million government grant, reports Business Day.
As black artists struggled to sell their work through the official gallery system of the apartheid era of the 70’s and 80’s, much of their work found its way abroad as it was acquired by foreign diplomats, business people, journalists and private collectors. The whereabouts of many of these works, and how many there are, are unknown.
A total of 47 artworks, owned by two former Australian diplomats, Diane Johnstone and Bruce Haigh, have already been returned. While Johnstone and Haigh returned the works free of charge, the foundation is raising money to buy back works from others.
The CEO of Ifa Lethu is Narissa Ramdhani, who heads the African National Congress archives project, which seeks to return for archiving all historical material about the ANC which has found its way overseas.
A selection of returned works was exhibited in 2004 and 2005 in Pretoria. An exhibition is planned to tour the country, not only to galleries and museums, but also venues in remote villages.
Many of these artists are relatively unknown and their work often of little merit, but Ramdhani believes the art is of great historical value since much township art of that time was destroyed by the police or taken abroad.
The collection of returned works include pieces by artists such as Michael Maapola, Ezekial Madiba, Fikile Magadledla and David Mbele.
Maapola, known for his drawings of prison scenes and police clubbings, was harassed for years by the security forces, reports Michael Wines for the New York Times. He was imprisoned in 1988, and in 1989 an arsonist torched his studio in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria.
While Maapola (67) is today an established artist in South Africa, other township artists such as Thami Mnyele met with a violent end. Mnyele, a graphic artist from Alexandra, who also documented apartheid’s abuses, went into exile in Botswana in 1978. In June 1985 South African soldiers raided his home there and killed him.
According to Wines, Ramdhani, who lived in Connecticut before returning in 1993 to South Africa, saw a Mnyele artwork depicting an anti-apartheid protest, hanging in the boardroom of a New York Bank. Ifa Lethu hopes to enter into negotiations to return the work to South Africa.