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RURAL ART AND RURAL RESISTANCE - The Rise of a Wall Decorating Tradition in Rural Southern Africa.

Franco Frescura

INTRODUCTION

Southern Africa's rural architecture has long been associated with a tradition in wall decoration which predates the arrival of white colonialists to the region's interior. These designs are generally acknowledged to be the product of women, and have remained their preserve in rural areas right up to the present times. Given its context, forms and symbolism, it is not difficult to show that this work is a statement made by rural women in respect to their fertility, political status, religious cosmology and, in certain instances, their family lineage. Within this interplay of social patterns, however, the choice and meaning of pictorial matter plays a different and somewhat ambiguous role. Originally the rural artist derived much of her inspiration from natural or geometric designs and rendered them in monochromatic earth colours. In more recent times however, and particularly since the 1940s, their scope has been extended to encompass a wide range of colours and subjects. Many western observers have chosen to interpret this as an obvious manifestation of "cultural cross pollination" and "westernisation", thus denying its social and historical context. Writing of the South Ndebele, for example, Betty Spence and Barrie Biermann (1954) speak of the “coming of civilization” and say that:

“It is curious that these two types of design reflect so clearly the two influences to which the M’Pogga have been subjected, that of the European and the Sotho”.

while others have called them “foreign innovations” which “herald the destruction of the genuine Mapogga style”. (Battiss, Junod et al. 1958:103)

A survey of those areas where wall decoration is still practiced today, however, reveals that although many such designs are undoubtedly polychromatic and inspired by urban themes, these may, nonetheless, be linked to a wider concept of land control and the economic domination of one rural community on the part of another competing for the same resources. Thus what may outwardly appear to be an act of assimilation, and perhaps even appeasement, may, in another context, be interpreted as an act of protest and open defiance, visible only to those privy to its codification.

This paper seeks to analyse the social processes which gave rise to rural wall art in South Africa and contends that, in the final analysis, this activity is the result of black resistance to external political domination and land alienation.

FUNCTIONAL NATURE OF WALL DECORATION

It was found, during the course of current field work, that the decoration of rural architecture tended to fall into two major camps: the structural and the manipulative.

Structural decorative patterns arise from the fact that vernacular architecture in general derives much of its stylistic character from its functional use of found materials. Thus the natural textures, details and forms which are achieved in the process of construction are important, at a primary level, in determining the aesthetic nature of such buildings.

This does not mean to say that structural elements may not, in themselves, be manipulated (illustration 1). It is possible to achieve, within the bounds of any one particular technology, any number of different resolutions to the same problem. It is often the case, however, that one particular solution will tend to gain predominance in a geographical location or region and thus, with time, may become identified with the material culture of its builders. At the same time it may also be incorporated into their system of cognitive symbolism. The Zulu term inkatha, for example, refers to the timber ring or collar which binds together the apex of a conical roof structure and gives it stability. The symbolism conferred by this building element in the current political context, is therefore self-evident. Similarly, the attachment shown by the Matabele during the last century to a hemispherical grass-covered dwelling form, more commonly found in northern KwaZulu, long after it ceased to make structural and environmental sense in the mopane veld of eastern Zimbabwe, is indicative of the cultural and political identity attached to it by its builders (Frescura:1985).

It is therefore possible to conclude that, where a group living under one set of conditions develops a strong attachment to a particular style of architecture, it will, under different conditions, attempt to reproduce its more obvious and visual components by manipulative and artificial means. This is equally true in those cases where the architecture is not of their own making, but the acquisition of its aesthetics is deemed to be either desirable or advantageous to the group's interests.

On the other hand manipulative decoration may be seen to be an imposition of textures, colours and forms upon the built habitat for reasons which bear little functional relationship to its structural performance. The motivation behind such an activity may be of social, religious, mystical, political or symbolic in nature, although it is probable that, in reality, a combination of two or more of these elements will be involved at any one time. Unlike structural decorative patterns, which arise as the result of the combined efforts of both men and women, most if not all southern African rural groups consider the application of painted motifs to be the work of women (illustration 2).

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The earliest evidence of a tradition in woman's wall art was probably recorded by Burchell, who visited the Tlhaping homestead of "Serrakutu" at Dithakong in 1812, where this man's younger wife "exhibited her paintings in a manner which evinced that she was well satisfied with her own performance. They were the figures of several animals, rudely drawn, with a paint of white earth, against the front-wall of the house." (Burchell 1953)

A year later Campbell visited the same homestead and deemed the drawings to be "very rough representations of the camel leopard (giraffe), rhinoceros, elephant, lion, tiger and stein-buck, which Salakootoo's wife had drawn on the clay wall with white and black paint." (Campbell 1815)

Neither traveller included pictorial graphics of these patterns with their accounts and it was left for Campbell to rectify this omission seven years later, when he depicted the interior of a chief's dwelling at Kaditshwene, a Hurutshe town located immediately to the north of present-day Zeerust (illustration 3). This he found to be:

"...neatly finished; ... The wall was painted yellow and ornamented with figures of shields, elephants, cameleopards, etc. It was also adorned with a neat cornice or border painted of a red colour." (Campbell 1822).

Despite being relatively brief, these three reports, taken as a whole, reveal a number of significant factors:

That decoration then, as now, was woman's work,
That lime-whites and charcoal or soot-blacks were available to the rural artist thus giving her palette of earth colours a wide range of shades,
And that decorative patterns could be either geometrical and abstract, or figurative and representational

Despite what has been written in the past by such authors as Walton (1956) and Battiss (1958), wall art was not limited to any one particular region of southern Africa but can be considered to have been general practice, in one form or another, among most of its agricultural pastoralist groups. Baines, who visited a Xhosa dwelling near the Kabousie River in 1848 said that:

"In the mud with which the interior of the hut was plastered, pumpkin seeds had been stuck in various patterns, one somewhat resembling a snake, and then picked out, leaving their glossy scale attached to the surface of the wall." (Baines 1961 and 1964)

This must have created a pattern very similar in nature to the "dotted" drawings recorded by Mathews in this same area nearly 130 years later (Mathews 1971), a style of decoration which, in the interim, has since largely disappeared.

Kropf, who visited the same region between 1846 and 1889, struck a more contemporary note when he described how the Xhosa woman "smoothes the walls and paints them with yellow, red or white clay or uses all three colours at the same time and paints designs on them." (Shaw and van Warmelo 1972)

Campbell's report of 1820 is also important for it reveals that a series of 'I' (or "sideways-H") designs had been painted on the interior perimeter of the dwelling wall in a graphic representation of the Tswana shield (illustration 4). In view of the fact that rural communities in South Africa often refer to their chief as “the shield of the people”, a concept also used more recently in ANC symbology, it may be safely assumed that this design was used by the artist to designate the dwelling as the residence of a chief.

This means that even at this early stage, rural artists were reducing material objects to their basic forms, a concept which was not to be incorporated into modern European art until nearly a century later. Therefore the existence of a body of cognitive symbols perceived to exist in current Sotho, Ndebele and Tsonga wall art must be seen to have its roots in a rural society which precedes the development of industrialisation in southern Africa.

SOME CASE STUDIES

It is possible, in theory, for wall decoration to accommodate as many variations, based upon theme and style, as there are artists to paint them. In reality, however, the functions of rural art are governed by the same social, economic and environmental processes as those which generate rural architecture. Therefore in art, as in architecture, there are also stylistic preferences which have become established on a regional or group basis. In each instance a series of broad aesthetic principles have emerged within which the rural artist is able to create her own individual statement in terms of colour and subject matter. For the purposes of this paper we are only interested in four such regional manifestations documented in recent southern African history (illustration 5).

1. THE XHOSA-MFENGU CASE STUDY

The eastern region of the Cape, more recently designated under apartheid as the Ciskei and Transkei, has long been an area of conflict between indigenous blacks and immigrant whites. Not only was it the stage, between 1811 and 1879, of nine separate land wars, but from 1822 to 1835 it also became the home of Mfengu, Thembu and Xesibe refugees from the Mfecane. These conflicts, combined with the activities of missionaries, government agents and labour recruitment officers have all left a legacy of bitterness which manifests itself in the region to the present day in the form of a deep and uncompromising political radicalism. Although the boundaries of black-white settlement were formalised as long ago as 1913 (Davenport and Hunt 1974), these are still a matter of heated dispute.

This region also has long historical associations with grass building technology, and, at one time, the grass-thatched hemispherical dwelling was ubiquitous throughout. Although it was recorded in some areas as recently as three generations ago, from the 1870s onwards it began to be supplanted by other structures, and today it survives only in a vestigial form as an initiation hut. At first the region's builders began to raise the grass dome upon a wattle-and-daub drum wall, but from the 1920s onwards this type of roof construction began to be supplanted by a conical structure. Today this has become the region’s predominant form of rural dwelling (Frescura 1981), and while some chroniclers have attributed its introduction to the work of missionaries among the Mpondo during the 1850s (Hunter 1936), this allegation has yet to be confirmed by current research.

The form taken by decoration in this region tends to follow a set pattern, usually consisting of a whitewashed panel which covers the front quarter of the dwelling’s circumference, framing the door and spanning in height from eaves level down to an earth-coloured splash band some 500mm high at the base; the surrounds to both door and window openings are expressed in broad areas of whitewash; and sometimes a whitewashed band some 600mm high runs the length of the rear wall perimeter beneath the eaves. Further decorative patterns of an individual nature used to be applied to the door and window surrounds and, in some recorded examples, the rear westward face of the hut was rendered in a darker clay, presumably to facilitate insolation during the late afternoon (illustration 6).

This pattern of decoration, which appears to have its origins in the era prior to the mid-1920s (Duggan-Cronin 1939), but could have arisen as early as the 1900s, may be perceived to bear a close resemblance to the treatment of the exterior facades of domestic structures built by immigrant whites during the Victorian era. The conclusion that this style of design arose as a response on the part of the indigenous population to the influx of missionaries and other white settlers to the region during the last century is therefore inescapable. This is supported by informants in the southern Transkei who have attributed its introduction to the Mfengu, also referred to locally as "school people" who, as refugees from the Mfecane, were among the first in the region to gravitate into the social and economic sphere of mission stations. At one time the use of whitewash was associated with a Mfengu and a Christian identity, a supposition supported by the fact that painting and renewal commonly takes place shortly before the Christmas festivities. However, for the past three generations the painting of walls has become a common-place occurrence in the region, and today little popular significance is attached to it other than the fact that both the decoration and the cone on cylinder dwelling form have become incorporated into the local architectural identity.

An interesting connection made by some informants in the southern Transkei remarked upon the similarity perceived to exist locally between the white-washing of a hut façade and the fact that it is customary in this region for young mothers to smear white clay on their faces after the birth of a child. The domestic architecture of this region may be perceived to have strong physiognomatic characteristics, with the doorway representing a nose or mouth, and the windows on either side the eyes. This parallel has not escaped the local inhabitants, leading to the question whether the two practices are not, in fact, part of the same process. The young mother smears her face with white clay in order to ward off evil from herself and her baby at a time when they are both vulnerable to such influences. The dwelling is perceived to be the domain of the woman and the task of painting, or decorating, its walls is also hers. It is conceivable therefore that the twin practices of wall decoration and facial smearing are seen to fulfil the same medical and mystical functions.

2. THE HIGHVELD SOTHO CASE STUDY

The highveld region of the northern Free State and Gauteng was historically inhabited by Sotho and, to a lesser degree, Tswana-speaking groups. During the Mfecane the local population was decimated by both famine and warfare, and many of its survivors sought refuge in the mountains of Lesotho. There, under the leadership of King Moshweshwe, Sotho, Tswana and Nguni elements coalesced into a political entity which survives to the present day as Lesotho. Their former ancestral lands are now part of the Republic of South Africa where they remain under the control of a white and predominantly Afrikaner farming community. Some Sotho have since returned to these areas as migrant workers, but having no legal rights of land ownership or tenure. Until recently many were allowed to live with their families on white farms where they were given small plots of land to plant crops and build their homes. However, since 1992, they have been denied even this small access to land as white farmers, fearful of being dispossessed by an ANC government, forced them to relocate off their farms into nearby urban areas, from where they now commute daily to their workplace.

Their residences were almost invariably built in the form of a parapet or highveld dwelling, a domestic form which was introduced into Cape Town by Malay slaves during the eighteenth century and which was subsequently spread inland after 1836 by immigrant Dutch farmers. It usually consisted of a simple, elongated, single-cell rectangular unit topped by a flat corrugated iron roof sloping to the rear. Kitchens were usually built as separate units with a thatched roof, which allowed smoke from the cooking fire to percolate upwards. Door and window openings were located on the front elevation which normally faced to the north or north-east, although a small window opening could also be located on the rear wall. The facade was slightly asymmetrical, the door being placed fractionally off-centre, with small, square windows on either side, thus implying a division of the internal space into two rooms which, in reality, was seldom achieved. The basic pattern of decoration was subject to some simple guidelines: the parapet at the top and a low splash-board at the base were expressed as long horizontal bands; the two corners on either side were rendered as vertical elements; a broad surround was created about both the door and the windows which was often allowed to run into the parapet above; the parapet band was often decorated and its top profile sculpted in order to create small pediments and acroterions over the doorways and the corners respectively. Within this basic framework the Sotho artist could exercise considerable choice as to colour, graphic pattern and texture (illustration 7).

As in the case of the Xhosa, it will be perceived that the basic elements of this decorative style have strong links with the facade renderings of a late nineteenth century immigrant domestic architecture. In the interior, too, the women often recreated, in clay, crockery display shelves which were a stylised rendering of late 19th Century, English middle class kitchen fittings, complete down to the presence of linoleum shelf linings rendered as cut-out paper doilies. The frills of these finishes was often repeated externally on the parapet band, thus emphasising the essentially female nature of this dwelling decoration (illustration 8).

Significantly, during the course of current research, very few examples of decoration were recorded on the dwellings of family members living within Lesotho, although their kin folk inhabiting ancestral lands presently in white holding, decorate their homes with a great deal of vigour and vivacity.

3. THE SOUTH NDEBELE CASE STUDY

The South Ndebele are a Nguni speaking group who migrated into the South African highveld during the fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries (Van Warmelo 1930). They comprise two major branches, the Manala and the Ndzundza. The latter, generally regarded as being the junior of the two, is the subject of this brief study. When the Dutch first encountered them in 1847, they inhabited an area about their capital, Namashaxelo, situated near Roossenekal in Limpopo Province (Cooper 1978:107-123). Today most reside on white-owned farms in the Bronkhorstspruit, Groblersdal and Middelburg districts, although in the 1980s an attempt was made by South Africa’s apartheid government to establish a self-governing homeland on their behalf in the Dennilton area.

On 14 August 1882 the Pedi chief Sekhukhune II was killed alongside fourteen of his advisors. The blame for this deed was laid at the door of Mampuru, Sekhukhune's younger brother (Bruce 1976). Kruger's South African Republic (ZAR), which at the time had been endeavouring to establish its suzerainty over the Pedi, attempted to arrest Mampuru, who fled to the Ndzundza. The latter, under the leadership of Nyabele, in their turn not only refused to hand over the refugee, but also declined to pay their hut-tax, thus symbolically rejecting the overlordship which the ZAR had recently unilaterally imposed upon them. As a result a commando of between 1000 and 2000 men invested the Ndzundza's mountain stronghold at Namashaxelo in October 1882. Nine months later Nyabele capitulated and handed himself and Mampuru over to the Dutch (Bruce 1976). The Ndzundza, starved and dynamited into submission, were deprived of their lands, divided and indentured to the farmers who had fought on the ZAR commando. They were thus effectively scattered in a deliberate attempt to break their political power as a group.

Up to 1883, the South Ndebele as a whole are reputed to have built their homes in the form of hemispherical grass domes (Van Warmelo 1930), a structure commonly associated with most Nguni-speaking groups in southern Africa. Following the defeat of the Ndzundza at the hands of the ZAR, their architecture underwent a rapid alteration, with the adoption of the cone-on-cylinder, a structure more typical of their Pedi neighbours. They did, however, introduce a number of modifications to it, including the retention of the umsamo, a feature of Nguni domestic architecture located to the rear of the hut, but now acting as a seat for the men, and the partial enclosure of the hut's front circumference with a projecting verandah. It is also possible that, at the same time, they adopted the Pedi custom of defining courtyard and homestead perimeters by means of high walls. This new manner of construction however, does not appear to have lasted more than three or four generations for, by the 1940s, the cone-on-cylinder was already being replaced by flat-roofed parapet dwellings.

It is probable that, during this latter period, the South Ndebele also began to paint the walls of their dwellings and courtyards, using a variety of patterns. Some decorations were of a textural nature; some adopted a simple geometrical motif and repeated it in various ways on a wall; some began to pick out and highlight various structural elements of their architecture; and some took a familiar object, most often a flower or a tree, and reproduced it in a stylised graphic manner. Consequently South Ndebele decoration can be seen, on the one hand, to draw deeply from a textural and geometric Sotho/Tswana tradition and, on the other, to develop a series of rules of facade decoration which break down the various structural components of the dwelling in a manner similar to that evolved by Sotho residents of the Free State highveld. Most important however, it also develops a series of patterns and images based largely upon the Victorian nature of southern African small-town architecture as well as the graphics of an urban consumer and industrial society further afield (illustration 9). These are then reproduced not only on the courtyard walls and house facades of the homestead, but also become part of a more complex system of symbology, being transferred from mother to daughter during the course of the marriage ceremony, in the form of a beaded apron. A graphic language has also been allowed to develop, similar in many ways to the Zulu bead love letter (Twala 1951:113-123), which, in some cases, has been noticed to advertise the home dweller's profession as a midwife, the husband's sexual potency, or just the ownership of a certain type of motor vehicle.

4. THE VENDA-TSONGA CASE STUDY

The region of land immediately south of the Soutpansberge, in the Northern Province, has long been the home to a number of Venda and Tsonga speaking groups. Although the former have laid historical claim to its control for at least two centuries, since the 1820s succeeding waves of Tsonga refugees fleeing the hardships of war in the east have made their way into this region. As a result the two cultures were allowed to intermingle, the Venda residing on the hill-tops and the Tsonga settling on the plains, reputedly with little conflict of interest arising between the two over their respective occupation of land. These patterns have been maintained through to the present day, despite attempts by the previous apartheid government to enforce its peculiar ideology of ethnic separatism. As a result of intermarriage between the two groups, recent times have witnessed the rise of a hybrid architectural culture which, strictly speaking, belongs to neither but draws deeply from both.

The mechanics of this process are interesting to trace. The Venda have, in many cases, retained their historical control on this land, and although the Tsonga have been allowed to develop their own political structures, their leadership has remained largely in the hands of Venda appointees. Also many aspects of Tsonga life are still controlled by the Venda, such as the important process of initiating young people into the group’s social polity. As a result the Tsonga remained, for many years, a socially and economically underprivileged group, a status which only began to be redressed in more recent times. During this period there occurred a major shift in Tsonga architecture which took it away from the more historical models recorded by Junod as late as the 1900s (Junod 1912), towards the aesthetics (but not the structural formats) of Venda settlements (Frescura 1985). Today Tsonga homesteads in this region not only display a barely masked approximation of their Venda neighbours but, through a process of cultural borrowing and intermarriage, the decorations of the one have begun to ornament the dwellings of the other.

Nonetheless, some tensions began to develop between the two groups in the mid-1970s, when, as a result of the balkanization process enforced by apartheid administrators, a large part of Venda territory was excised and handed over to a newly formed Gazankulu (Tsonga) Territorial Authority. Despite the realization, on both sides, that these tensions were owed to outside forces, in time and under the paternal guidance of Pretoria’s bureaucrats, Gazankulu began to develop an element of “ethnicity” in its makeup in keeping with its apartheid roots.

Thus, although the first decorations painted by Tsonga women followed in demure emulation the leaf and plant patterns rendered in sombre earth colours by their Venda sisters (illustration 10), during the mid-1970s they began to diverge, introducing to their repertoire a rich variety of forms and colours which, although still noticeably related to their Venda origins, have nonetheless developed a regional identity of their own (illustration 11).

SOME COMMON TRENDS

An analysis of the above case studies reveals a number of strong threads which link them into a larger pattern of social behaviour:

Gender Identity. Like their historical counterparts documented by Burchell, Campbell and Baines, the decorations described above are all the outcome of women’s work. As such they represent a statement which identifies rural women as the de facto heads of their homesteads.

Fertility. The walls of the South Ndebele, Venda and Tsonga homestead are only painted by the wife some two years after she has given birth to her first child. Thus, amongst these groups at least, wall decoration is a symbol of women's fertility and serves to indicate her status in the community as a mother, the head of a homestead and a responsible adult.

Family Political Rights. By giving birth to her first child a woman also gains for her husband the right to participate fully in the deliberations of the group’s council of men, both as the head of the family and as a responsible member of the community. Her work therefore is a public statement to the fact that her fertility has given a voice to her family in the public affairs of the group. This factor is contrasted by the status of bachelors in rural society who, for a number of reasons, are treated throughout their lives as “young children” whose voice carries little weight in group gatherings regardless of their age. Although a rare occurrence, the homestead of a bachelor in rural life is never decorated, nor is it bound by perimeter walls, and is normally marked by a generally run down appearance,

Rites of Passage. Although wall decoration may, in principle, be applied at any time during the course of the year, in practice it will be seen that such activity is generally limited to two main periods:

in times of slow economic activity, generally winter or early spring, which also coincides with the dry season of the southern African interior.
in times of transition in rural life, such as the initiation of teenagers into adulthood, which theoretically takes place in winter, or a marriage, which may take place at any time.

Either activity must be seen to be primarily connected with the existence of women within the rural life cycle, thus reinforcing the symbolism of wall decoration as a reflection of women and their ritual.

Territoriality. Among those southern African groups who define their exterior living spaces by means of perimeter or courtyard walls, decoration plays a strong symbolic role in the creation of living areas. Recent studies conducted among Pedi groups in Limpopo Province have indicated that painting has direct links to a cosmological belief which perceives women to be inherently "hot". Homestead boundaries are seen to be similarly "hot", most particularly where two women in a polygamous marriage, share in the same division wall (Vogel 1983). These then need to be "cooled" by a process of wall smearing and decoration which, presumably also implies that in the process, a degree of cooperation will be engendered between the two parties concerned. Thus wall decoration not only serves to create statements of territorial control but, by implication, suggests that women are more than just passive partners to their men in the control of rural household space and food resources.

Heraldry. All of the case studies quoted above have tended to show, almost without exception, that a measure of heraldry is implied in the designs of rural wall art. A survey conducted in the village of Madakamba in the northern Transkei, for example, revealed that:

in virtually all cases, the dwellings in the same homestead grouping, usually numbering no more than three or four, had the same design applied to all the units.
where a daughter married and settled near her mother, she usually painted the same designs upon her dwelling as those found in her parents' home.
where a son married and settled near his mother, his wife painted the same designs upon her dwelling as those found on her mother-in-law’s home.
in one notable instance, where a daughter had married and settled near her mother, after a family quarrel the former had changed her own dwelling decorations to a completely new pattern. However, she indicated that, should reconciliation take place, she was willing to revert back to her mother’s designs as a token of respect.

When questioned further on this point, local informants admitted to there being a degree of identity implied in wall patterns but did not give it undue significance. As one young woman phrased it "I could see a drawing from the bus and take it home in my head". Therefore, although these results are not in themselves conclusive, other notable cases of implied heraldry were also recorded among other groups. Among the South Ndebele, for example, the work of wall decoration is conducted either by the mother, or by her daughters under her direct guidance. The complex patterns which are thus part of the young woman’s training are reinforced when, as part of the rites of marriage, she is presented by her mother with a partly-finished beaded apron bearing the essential elements of this same design. The daughter is then expected to complete the apron and although it may be argued that this represents a handing over of family skills, it should also be seen as a tacit contract between the two parties that the symbols of the older generation will be carried on by the next. Thus although in theory the young mother will have a wide choice of decorative patterns, in reality, her first designs seldom stray far from those she learnt at home as a child and which she carried away with her in a shorthand form as part of her wedding dowry.

Amongst the same group, it is also possible to extend the symbolism of female rights and fertility to the homestead plan as a whole. Historically the South Ndebele used to build their homes in the same manner as the Nguni-speaking groups of northern KwaZulu, and although during the latter part of the last century, they began to adopt the dwelling forms of their Pedi neighbours, some vestigial elements of their Nguni past persist. One is their use of the umsamo, a low shelf at the back of the dwelling used by Zulu women to house food, beer, pots and various household utensils, but which is also the symbolic home of the family’s shades, or ancestral spirits. This the South Ndebele have pragmatically translated into a seat, but without losing any of its spiritual significance. Another is the concept of the parents’ dwelling as the womb from which the children and hence the wealth of the family, originate, something borne out by Nguni etiquette which decrees that a dwelling should not be exited backwards as if in a breach birth. Given the existence of this kind of symbolism, then the front walls which are normally the most elaborately decorated areas become the equivalent of the wedding apron through which the family’s designs are transmitted; these shield the front courtyard or the lap of the woman; while the rear quarters which house the children and the cooking areas are the breasts where all nourishment resides Although not specifically identified as such by informants in the course of fieldwork, the implied physiognomy of the South Ndebele homestead was reinforced by the decorative links between the front walls and the beaded apron, as well as the use of the front courtyard as a private area reserved for the women of the household.

When one considers the practice of wall painting in the larger socio-economic and political context of a pre-democratic southern Africa, this activity could be also interpreted as being an indication of the changing status of rural women. From the 1930s onwards, the widespread practice of using migrant labour in our urban areas effectively removed a large proportion of the rural male population from their families for protracted periods of time. During this time the control of resources was largely left in the hands of their women and although their society was both patrilineal and patrilocal, the absence of their menfolk began to meet at least some of the criteria for the establishment of a matrilocal and even matrilineal society (Fox 1981).

It may therefore be suggested that rural wall decoration is the outward manifestation of such a development, and although South Ndebele society has remained firmly male-orientated, the transmittance of decorative patterns through bead work and wall decoration has been documented through at least three generations of women, and is now probably entering a fourth.

Regional Identity. Although it can be shown that the indigenous architecture of rural southern Africa falls into two major settlement types not unrelated to the cosmologies of their builders (Frescura 1985), it is equally true that within this larger framework a number of smaller regional identities have also developed. Their nature has often been dependent upon the creation of aesthetic stereotypes based upon building technology, dwelling form and decorative motif. However, whilst the first two may be found to be common to a number of geographical areas, there is no doubt that in each of the case studies quoted above the women concerned have created a style of wall decoration unique to their region. Thus the work of women can be seen as a major factor in the creation of smaller social polities in this country, a fact which did not go unnoticed by the creators of apartheid. Original separatist thinking made allowance for only nine so-called “ethnic homelands”, but one can only imagine the glee of apartheid officials, when during the early 1980s, a South Ndebele tribal elite came forward and demanded recognition as a tenth self-governing state. Plans for its independence were advanced to the point that its flag had been designed and its stamps had been printed, when popular indignation led by the United Democratic Front (UDF) forced them to be abandoned. In this regard it is ironic to note that the stamps featuring South Ndebele architecture were drawn from buildings found at the open-air museum at Botshabelo near Middelburg, which are not the work of local builders but of a white anthropologist from Pretoria. This is not to doubt their validity as reconstructions (Frescura 1988b) merely to point out how South Ndebele identity was hijacked by apartheid to meet its own ethnic agendas.

Source of Decorative Material. Each of the case studies quoted above also highlight the fact that rural artists have derived their decorative motifs from the artifacts and culture of another socially, economically and politically dominant group. The Mfengu, the Xhosa, the highveld Sotho and the South Ndebele have all drawn deeply from the material culture off late nineteenth century colonial society whose artifacts they observed in the white urban areas. The Tsonga, on the other hand, patterned themselves upon the aesthetics of the neighbouring Venda upon whose lands they settled some generations ago.

POLITICAL RESISTANCE AND LAND CONTROL

A clue as to the more fundamental reasons underlying the development of a wall decorating tradition in these study areas can probably be found in the struggle for land which has taken place in southern Africa over the past two centuries, most particularly since the 1920s. Although such competition has, in the main, involved indigenous black and immigrant white groups, the Venda-Tsonga case study indicates that the control of land is also a point of contention between indigenous communities.

Despite the claims of white propagandists, it may be shown that the arrival of European settlers to southern Africa did not bring about a pax abaLunga over the region. On the contrary it is recorded that since 1811 we have seen 24 major conflicts and over two score smaller localized conflagrations. This means that, on average, one major rebellion, war or uprising has taken place in this country every third year for the past 187 years (Frescura 1988a).

An analysis of these conflagrations also makes for interesting reading. Only two were the result of internal black-on-black schisms although seven others were affairs to which only whites were invited. Their chronology also reveals that, in almost every case, they coincide with the spread of white settlement throughout the region, beginning in the Eastern Cape, fanning out onto the highveld and eventually engulfing the entire coastal belt. The reasons recorded for these conflicts are many and varied. The majority, however, were the result of competition for land between white and black rural groups. The single most important source of friction between the two, therefore, must be seen to lie in the control, or lack thereof, that each exercises over agricultural land.

The relationship between the rural activity of wall decoration and the land conflict which has taken place between indigenous black and immigrant white is not one which may be easily quantified. For one thing it is doubtful that any one person or body took the conscious decision that walls should be painted as an act of popular protest against the process of land dispossession. For another, the nature of the subject matter renders it highly unlikely that it would be openly discussed with strangers, particularly if they were white. Also, the possibility of stumbling across the fountainhead, if indeed such a thing may even be considered to have existed, is so remote as to make such empirical research virtually impossible. However all circumstantial evidence on the subject seems to indicate that such a hypothesis is indeed correct.

In every case study quoted thus far the aesthetics of wall decoration have played an important role in reinforcing (or perhaps even creating) a unique regional identity for the groups concerned. The Mfengu began whitewashing their walls at the urgings of white missionaries upon whose stations they had settled as landless refugees. The practice spread to other Mfengu occupying Xhosa land outside the mission as a statement of their identity but, as the differences between "school people" (Mfengu) and "red blanket people" (Xhosa) began to be reconciled through social interaction and marriage, wall art gained undertones of Christian religious affiliation. Ultimately, during the 1940s and 1950s the practice became identified with a wider Xhosa-speaking identity. Significantly current research has shown that a notable reduction in wall decorating activity took place in the Transkei once that region gained a measure of governmental autonomy in 1976, although this could also be attributed to the availability of more permanent commercial pigments.

Similar patterns may be established for the Tsonga whose precarious land tenure led them to adopt the architectural aesthetics of the neighbouring Venda and for the highveld Sotho and the South Ndebele whose land is currently in the holding of the very farmers whose colonial architecture they emulate in their decoration. It is again important to note that Sotho residing in Lesotho seldom decorate their walls whilst a marked reduction in wall decoration was noted amongst the South Ndebele with the establishment, in the 1980s, of an autonomous South Ndebele tribal authority immediately north-east of Pretoria. Since the onset of democratic government in South Africa in 1994, this activity has virtually disappeared.

The connection between wall art and black political protest was also made by Julian Beinard in the course of research conducted in the Johannesburg suburb of Western Native Township in the 1960s. In his findings he described how the first decorations, consisting of basic patterns and animals scratched on the mud plaster, were applied between 1918 and 1930 by baKwena (Tswana-speaking) residents. The practice reached its peak between 1950 and 1962, during which time "Decorations on plaster walls (became) very popular with many variations on a limited number of themes." (Beinard 1965:184-193)

At that time two major decorative themes began to emerge. The first, and probably the most common, laid particular emphasis on the corners, opening surrounds and base of the house façade. Often the remainder of the wall surface was filled with square, diamond and “razor-blade” designs. These are patterns so similar to the South Ndebele and Highveld Sotho case studies described above as to warrant no further comment. The second used the sun in a number of variants, either as a set of bold radiating lines reminiscent of the Japanese flag, or simply in a stylized format. At that time white observers attributed this design to the aesthetic influence of a peculiar brand of floor polish, an insulting inference that black people were all employed as servants and therefore derived artistic inspiration from their servitude. It also denies the importance of the sun as a symbol of rural cosmology and black nationalism, something which was not ignored by the Pan African Congress in the early 1960s when it incorporated a set of bold radiating rays overlaid on a map of Africa onto its own battle flag. A third design that was recorded, but not specifically remarked upon at that time, was the creation of painted quoins, about an arch which some houses had over their verandah openings. Depending upon the social perspective used, the result could be interpreted as a wheel of industry, one of the symbols used by the ANC to signify progress (Beinart pers comm 1989). Given the oppressive nature of South African society during that time, one cannot blame Beinart for having suppressed such details in his publications.

Ultimately, in 1962, the black residents of Western Native Township were forcibly resettled from their homes into the newly established suburb of Moroka in Soweto. The new inhabitants of the suburb, now renamed Western Coloured Township, did not have the same political links and did not bother to maintain these decorations. As a result, within a short time, these had all disappeared (Beinard 1977:160-182).

THE CHRONOLOGY OF RURAL WALL DECORATION

There is little doubt that, like the women of the Transkei who whiten their faces in propitiation of ancestral spirits, there is an element of appeasement in the practice of wall decoration. The use of western building technologies and house aesthetics may well be attributable to pragmatic reasons such as economics and ease of construction, but the use of decorative patterns acquired from another group, stretches beyond this into the field of symbolism and social practice. However, one needs to question whether such a message of overt appeasement is not, in reality, an act of subvert resistance. Generally speaking, the use of borrowed wall designs is limited to the outside façade of the dwelling or the homestead concerned. Internal walls are normally rendered in a simpler monochromatic style linked to the decorative motifs of earlier generations, which stand in sharp contrast to the complex polychromatic work of recent times. The latter’s chronology of development places it firmly into a time when formal resistance to white political dominance was at a low ebb; when the effects of the rural land acts were beginning to become evident; when rural poverty was beginning to spread; when rural women began to find their men being channeled in increasing numbers into a system of migrant labour; when whites across the spectrum of political opinion saw blacks as being voteless, dispossessed and landless in perpetuity; and at a time when formal black resistance was limited to an ANC which had but recently adopted a more confrontational stance. It was during this time that rural women took up the cudgels of their people’s struggle and began to decorate their homestead walls, making statements about their social conditions and creating images of regional and political identity.

This chronology tends to vary considerably from region to region. Among the highveld Sotho for example, it is certain that the basic elements were present in a rudimentary form before the 1930s but the practice did not begin to gain momentum until the decades before and during the Second World War. Certainly, the use of industrial pigments, did not begin before the 1950s. In the Transkei, on the other hand, the practice predates the onset of apartheid and is linked to both the land wars and the work of missionaries. Consequently, it probably began in the early 1900s and reached its peak during the rural Poqo rebellion of the 1960s.

The South Ndebele are recorded to have used a basic pattern not dissimilar from their Sotho/Tswana neighbours at a relatively early stage, but little if any decoration of import was taking place when Duggan-Cronin visited their region in 1937. It is doubtful that he, of all people, could have failed to record its existence had it been present in any way. On the other hand by the time Barrie Biermann, Betty Spence, Margaret Stewart-Larraby, Dick Findlay and Alexis Preller had begun their documentation of Ndebele architecture in the early 1950s, their art had already reached a highly qualitative level of development.

Finally, there is no doubt that the emergence of a polychromatic tradition of wall decoration amongst the Tsonga coincides with the excision of Gazankulu from Venda and its establishment of a separate territorial authority. Its links to a recent ideology of ethnic separation are therefore inescapable.

THE FUTURE OF RURAL WALL ART AND DECORATION

It is not easy to make projections regarding the future of the wall painting tradition in southern Africa. Given the fact that many of the social and economic inequalities which historically gave rise to it are the subject of revision and redress under the country’s new Constitution, it appears likely that the motivation for such an activity has either already been lost, or is likely to be dissipated once a viable housing programme is put in place for our rural areas. One of the first victims of such a move would undoubtedly be the more obvious and visible elements of rural material culture, such as local decorative patterns, building textures, dwelling forms and ultimately regional architecture as a whole.

The choice, quite obviously, remains in the hands of the builders as well as the artists themselves. If, for example, the practice can be reduced to a manifestation in aesthetic terms of the status and role of women in rural society, then its survival can be safely predicted for as long as it continues to fulfil a pragmatic and functional role in their daily lives. The concepts of marking the times of transition in the family or even creating a sense of continuity in gender identity for the women themselves may be sufficient reason for this to happen. Many parallel examples may be quoted from other cultures to support this generic assertion.

On the other hand if the symbolism of wall decoration is connected entirely to a wider concept of political resistance and land tenure, then the question becomes more difficult to answer. We do not know for example to what degree the new South African Constitution is going to supersede regional ethnicity and relegate it to the same closet as apartheid and other ghosts of separatist ideology. The obvious intention of an ANC government is to redress the economic inequalities of the past on a more equitable regional basis, but to date the various regions have responded to these plans in different ways. Also, the full effects of dismantling the powers traditionally accorded by rural society to their chiefs and other tribal authorities must still be felt, and the degree of support that these enjoy amongst a normally conservative constituency must still be assessed. All of these factors, taken singly or as a whole, could either reinforce or remove the reasons for its survival and bring about its demise.

One factor which has yet to be taken fully into account but which can play a leading role in resolving this issue is the growth of tourism as a lead sector in our economy. The impact that the disappearance of rural architecture and its decorative textures from our national landscape will have upon this industry is potentially disastrous. Rural society is a storehouse for the decorative motifs and traditional craft work which gives our nation its unique African flavour, and unless it is treated as a non-renewable resource, the time could well come when airport tourist shops and other commercial concerns become the custodians of our national heritage. In view of the fact that most of these artists and crafters are self-employed, the impact that this will have on our economy is predictably negative.

POSTSCRIPT

This paper is the result of research conducted over a period of some twenty years. Many of the issues it raises were the subject of an accumulative process of conference papers, invited seminars, prolonged discussions with colleagues, and many, many glasses of lousy wine, before the wide range of data gathered could be harnessed into a sensible argument. Even today, I am still not satisfied that it reflects my final words on the subject. Before its last publication in 2001, this paper underwent a number of drafts and migrations. It initially appeared as Fertility, Politics and Art, in Journeys of Discovery, edited by Rosalie Breitenbach (Grahamstown: The 1820 Foundation, August 1988. 136-144). It was then submitted, in a much revised form, to Social Identities in the New South Africa, under the title of Rural Art and Rural Resistance: The Rise of a Wall Decorating Tradition in Rural Southern Africa. (After Apartheid: Vol 1, Editor Abebe Zegeye. 2001. 99-125). For reasons I do not know, its publication was delayed, and by the time they printed it in 2001, it had already been published in Culturelink under the same title (Culturelink. Institute for International Relations, Zagreb, Croatia, Special Issue 1998-99. 151-170). For reasons best known to themselves, Culturelink also stripped it of its graphic illustrative content. In the interim, some of its ideas appeared in Conserva under the title of Wall Art of Status, (Conserva, Vol 3, No 2, April 1988. 12-15), and as a photo-essay in Monitor under the title of Symbols of Power, (Monitor, June 1991. 60-65). I am not in the habit of submitting the same paper to different publishers, and sincerely regret any confusion that might have arisen as a result.

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Decorative rope patterns, Natal Nguni homestead, Mpembe, KwaZulu, c1981.
Venda homestead, Mutele, northern Venda, 1989.
Campbell: Interior of Tswana chief's dwelling, Kaditshwene (near present-day Zeerust), c1820.
Campbell: Portrait of Tswana warrior bearing I-shaped shield, c1820.
Map, showing areas of study under discussion.
Examples of wall decoration, Ciskei region, c1979.
Stereotypical example of flat roofed dwelling, Highveld region, during the 1970s and 1980s.
Examples of highveld wall decoration, c1980.
Examples of South Ndebele wall decoration which use the basic elements of Victorian residential architecture as a theme. KwaMatabeleng, Bophuthatswana, c1951 and 1981 respectively.
Examples of Venda wall decoration (top), northern Venda, 1989; and homestead wall sculpture (bottom), Sambandou, central Venda, c1980.
Examples of Tsonga wall decoration (top); and homestead wall sculpture (bottom), northern Gazankulu, 1987-9.
Beinart, 1977: Wall decorations, Western Native Township, c1950-60.