‘A Just Society’ – An Artistic Narration and Interpretation of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

(Authors: Madeleine Georgette, Natalie Knight, Vol. 67, No. 3, Chanukah 2012)

EDITOR’S NOTE: From 22 August to 29 September 2012, a compelling new art exhibition documenting the story of South Africa’s transition from Apartheid to Democracy was on show at the Origins Centre, University of the Witwatersrand. Entitled, ‘A Just Society’, this comprised 48 artworks divided into four chronological parts and visually portrayed “the impacts of Apartheid and the process used by South Africa’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to deal with crimes committed during the Apartheid era”. The artist, Madeleine Georgette, had recently donated the collection to the University of the Witwatersrand, and it has since been absorbed into the university’s prestigious art collection on both its campuses.

‘A Just Society’ was curated by Natalie Knight, a leading figure on the South African arts scene of many years standing, as well as a frequent contributor on related subjects to Jewish Affairs.¹ She is also the art curator of the Wits West Campus contemporary art collection, and was the main liaison between Georgette and the university throughout the donation process.

In the pre-publicity material, she summed up the aim of the exhibition as being “to engage with students and the public…..to educate, to stimulate discussion and to provide an insight into a topic that by now should be seared into the conscience and consciousness of every thinking South African.”

The South African-born Georgette, who has lived in the United States since 1973, was in the country for the launch. During her visit, she met with the editor of Jewish Affairs and spoke about what had motivated her to embark on so ambitious and farreaching a project. Amongst the main points that emerged was that while ‘A Just Society’ does not have any specifically Jewish content, it was very much driven by her own understanding of and connection to the Holocaust, in which her father had lost almost his entire family. This had given her a particular sensitivity in terms of racial prejudice and persecution.

Georgette was particularly inspired by the manner in which South Africa had gone about confronting and dealing with its past. For her the TRC process, like the country’s post-apartheid Constitution, provided a model of its kind for the world at large to follow, and she had been “very moved, inspired and deeply proud” of what South Africa had undertaken. Whereas other truth commissions instituted elsewhere in the world have been very limited in scope, South Africans had had the courage and determination to look honestly at its past history, confront its demons and move forward through a cleansing process of truth-telling and reconciliation. She decided to donate the collection to Wits University, her alma mater, both because she felt strongly that the artworks belonged in South Africa, and as a way of giving something back to the country she grew up in. Wits was chosen to become the recipient of the gift because of the role it had played as a site of protest against apartheid: “Lecturers and students had made sacrifices in the fight against racism. They spoke, wrote, researched and protested with passion, courage and honesty through decades of resistance”.²

While growing up in a liberal household, Georgette was acutely aware that she and her family were beneficiaries of apartheid, even if they condemned it. The question was, by benefiting, were all whites to some degree collaborators with the system? Certainly, some whites protested, but could they have done more? Uncomfortable though they are, these questions have to be honestly grappled with. ‘A Just Society’ provides an imaginative, searingly honest vehicle through which this can be done.

What follows below is Georgette’s ‘Artist Statement’, in which she explains and amplifies on the above-noted themes, as well as selected images from the work itself. Image captions are taken directly from the artist’s own text. The full exhibition, with the accompanying text, can be viewed on Madeleine Georgette’s official website – http:// www.studiogeorgette.com/

A JUST SOCIETY – ARTIST STATEMENT

I shall never forget the day in October 1963, which changed the course of South Africa’s history. While I was doing my homework, an announcement came over the radio of a raid on the Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia. What followed was the arrest of seven men who ultimately would be tried along with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki for conspiracy and sabotage against the State. Those arrested were described as terrorists, communists and traitors. At dinner that night my parents, Sam and Babette Kabak, talked with fear – fear for those arrested; fear of the future; the likelihood of government crackdowns; censorship; sympathisers going underground; families fleeing the country. And so started the Rivonia Trial, then imprisonment on Robben Island and the Nationalist government’s acceleration and implementation of the draconian laws of Apartheid.

This history was part of my own history. My family and I were silent but sympathetic partners in the War of Liberation. We supported the aims and tried not to think about the means. Our lives continued virtually unchanged, though we never ceased to privately condemn the government’s policies and associated ourselves with and sometimes participated in the protest movement. My father’s entire family was eliminated in the Holocaust.

The history of oppression has touched my life and taught me that human beings around the globe have not learned the lessons of war. Instead, one group succeeds another and former victims become the new perpetrators as savage cycles of endless violence are perpetrated in the name of revenge. However, instead of the expected blood bath, South Africa consciously chose a different path – a unique courageous road to peace – to create light from their darkness.

Although I was born in New York, I lived in South Africa for the first 27 years of my life. In 1994 I was deeply moved by the relatively peaceful transition from Apartheid to majority rule when President FW de Klerk of the ruling National Party handed over the power of the government to President Nelson Mandela (of the ANC). It is this story and its message, this history and its victims and perpetrators that I chose to explore in visual terms and document, synthesise and memorialise so that the record speaks. I deliberately focused on those who stepped forward and testified.

My hope is that when the record speaks many will listen and see there can be an end to ethnic hatred and conflict; there are alternatives to violence. The viewer will note the absence of the key characters and architects of Apartheid, the War on Liberation and the creation of the TRC while their roles were critical to this history, it was how this history played out in the lives of the South African people that was my focus.

Living in the United States, I have always been conscious of racism that is persistently and pervasively present in US culture.

It takes many forms, ranging from the casual and subtle to overt and blatant. I took pride in what my homeland, South Africa had undertaken with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and wanted to explain the process and show it to the world.

I was motivated to expose Americans to the courage of South Africans to make a national effort to examine their ugly past, reveal the truth and acknowledge their history. No such process has ever been undertaken in the US and I believed it would serve the nation well to follow the brave and admirable example of South Africa.

To date, South Africa’s TRC process has been the most comprehensive and extensive postconflict resolution process undertaken anywhere in the world. It is often studied and used as a model by other countries as is South Africa’s Constitution which is cited as the most allencompassing human rights constitution in the world.

My research included books, articles and photos from the SA press, the TRC Final Report and their printed summaries of the major findings. My research assistant, Tanya Gardy, living in South Africa, was an invaluable source for accessing the SA press in an era before newspapers were online. While reading the testimony to the TRC, the horrors, secrets and pervasiveness of the crimes all became very apparent. The subject is epic and the documentation was overwhelming. The deeper I penetrated the information, the more I realised I could be involved with this project for years. In trying to grasp the individual testimonies as well as unravel the historic and legislative backdrop. I felt myself immersed in both the political and physical landscapes of the country, which under Apartheid was like no other.

I knew I had to find ways to visually describe the various aspects of Apartheid – the laws, the socio-economic effects and the cultural divisions that permeated our society and then the War of Liberation which led to a free, democratic South Africa for all. I determined it had to be done in stages and exhibited as a work-in progress, just like forgiveness.

Each phase presented its own unique challenges. In phase I, Apartheid, I struggled with how to visually convey how a country is carved up into separate areas by race with every activity controlled by legislation keeping the groups apart. How would I portray the legislation that created these racial divides? What examples could I use to make this history personal? How does one express the people’s pain in dealing with both perpetrators and victims? It was also very important to me to not single out specific people but to keep it anonymous, yet simultaneously to convey individual suffering and individual culpability.

In conceiving the works I was drawn to different techniques and materials to convey this multiplicity of perspectives and aspects of this history. The materials I used are metaphors for some of the content of the work. The Apartheid landscape was depicted primarily with collage, paint and clay shards allowing me to reflect the mélange of cultures and races, the complexity, layers and diversity of South African society.

I chose to paint imaginary faces even when I was referring to actual cases, with only two exceptions. The day pieces which I used as borders and integrated into some of the pieces, were all individually made, each with their own unique shape. The pieces were used for peoples’ names, events, dates and locations all of which I obtained from the TRC Final Report, 1998.

In order to symbolise white domination, I chose to have white text on a black ground and I removed the paint to create the words/ image. For me this was a process metaphor reflecting the forced removals of over three million black South Africans to the Homelands. The use of a border in many of the pieces references the boxed or contained existence separating the races. Finally, the importance of texture and the sonorous use of colour in this first phase of the work reveals the prevailing mood of these tragic and tortured times. Reading volumes of gruesome testimony left me obsessed with thoughts and images of who these people were. I was haunted by the pain of the victims and the evil of the perpetrators.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Special Branch (27.5″ x 18″ Mixed Media, 1999) shows the faces of imaginary perpetrators; the acronyms refer to special units of the SADF and the SA Police; to covert operations; torture centres; prisons and operations’ headquarters (From Exhibition I: Apartheid)

Target of the Regime 30″x 18″ Oil on Canvas (2000) deals with the climate of violence that prevailed in the 1970’s and peaked in the late 1980’s ultimately forcing the white Nationalist government to unban the black political parties and finally to transition into majority rule by and for all South Africans (from Exhibition II: Impact on Women and Children)

Funeral March (33″ x 41″ Mixed Media, 1999)commemorates some of those who died in the liberation struggle inside the borders of South Africa. Both overt and clandestine methods to suppress resistance and counter armed actions by opponents of Apartheid were used by the State between 1960–1994 (From Exhibition I: Apartheid)

Propaganda, 24″ x 56″ Triptych, Oil on Canvas (2002) In South Africa, between 1950-1990, there were more than 100 laws affecting media operations. These ranged from blatant prohibition of publications to the threat of prosecution for printing or broadcasting statements considered subversive (from Exhibition III:  Institutional Arrangements)

Mothers of Ten depicts my imaginary view of the grieving mothers of ten black youth, aged 14-19 who were brutally killed on June 26, 1986 by the Western Transvaal Security Branch. The youth who were suspected of being activists, had been recruited by the Security Branch on the pretext that they would receive military training and then were brutally murdered in one of the most notorious cases to appear before the TRC (From Exhibition I: Apartheid).

Should I Testify? (36″ x 36″ Oil on Canvas, 2000) is about three women attending a workshop and contemplating the decision as to whether to testify before the TRC. The TRC invited representatives of women’s organizations and the media to discuss how they could bring more women into the Commission hearing process (From Exhibition II: Impact on Women and Children).