For greater than 50 years, Sue Williamson’s artwork has been shining a light-weight on South Africa’s issues – first to marketing campaign in opposition to the apartheid state, after which to query how far the nation has progressed in reconciliation and remembrance.
However as she prepares for her first retrospective exhibition, the 84-year-old artist has a brand new pair of targets in sight: US president Donald Trump and his billionaire, South African-born adviser, Elon Musk.
After Musk railed in opposition to South Africa’s “brazenly racist insurance policies” on his social media platform X earlier this month, Trump signed an government order slicing help to the nation, accusing its authorities of “unjust racial discrimination” in opposition to white Afrikaners and providing them asylum within the US.
The order additionally mentioned: “South Africa has taken aggressive positions in the direction of the US and its allies, together with accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide within the worldwide court docket of justice.”
Talking from her studio in Cape City, Williamson mentioned: “Trump and Musk are simply gaslighting, due to the judgment of the worldwide court docket of justice (ICJ) in opposition to Israel.”
South Africa introduced a case in opposition to Israel on the ICJ in December 2023, accusing it of committing genocide in opposition to Palestinians in Gaza. In January 2024, the UN court docket ordered Israel to make sure its forces don’t commit acts of genocide, though it has not but dominated on its earlier acts. Israel has fiercely rejected the case.
“They’re making an attempt to set it up that South Africa will not be a reputable nation to carry such a case,” Williamson mentioned. “You’ll see South Africa dragged via the mud much more by Netanyahu [Benjamin, prime minister of Israel] and Trump and Musk.”
Forward of the opening of her retrospective on the Iziko South African Nationwide Gallery in Cape City on 22 February, Williamson dismissed the US claims that South Africa was expropriating land from white Afrikaner farmers.
“It’s a way more thought of course of. In the event you look again to the Land Act of 1913, when black farmers misplaced their land to whites, it’s about time that one thing was carried out to reverse that.”
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa signed a regulation final month that enables for land to be expropriated with “nil compensation” in restricted circumstances, comparable to when the land is deserted.
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Because the finish of apartheid in 1994, courts have returned land to displaced house owners in a couple of instances. Regardless of authorities efforts to purchase and redistribute land, and a few black folks shopping for farms, 78% of personal farms stay white-owned, in accordance with Stellenbosch College economists Johann Kirsten and Wandile Sihlobo.
Williamson began artwork lessons whereas working as an promoting government in New York. Nonetheless, her first activist artwork didn’t come till virtually a decade after transferring again to South Africa along with her younger kids in 1969 to be nearer to her household.
When police opened hearth on unarmed schoolchildren protesting in Soweto in opposition to the imposition of Afrikaans classes on 16 June 1976, Williamson joined a multiracial activist group that turned referred to as the Girls’s Motion for Peace. They demanded to be served collectively at segregated eating places and took their kids to white-only seashores.
In 1977, the group shaped a human chain to attempt to cease the casual settlement of Modderdam close to Cape City’s airport from being bulldozed, however the effort failed when the ladies needed to choose their kids up from college.
Williamson sketched the demolitions on postcards, accompanied by the imaginary musings of apartheid officers, comparable to: “Don’t really feel sorry for these folks.” One of many Modderdam Postcards, which have been copied to be handed out, was banned from being distributed.
Williamson recalled: “The legal professionals really wrote to Pretoria and mentioned ‘Why did you ban this postcard?’ They usually wrote again with fairly an amusing letter, saying, ‘Properly it’s not with out inventive advantage,’ which I believed was actually humorous. ‘Nevertheless it doesn’t clarify that these folks have been right here illegally, so it’s propagating false data.’”
The demolition of non-white properties remained a spotlight of Williamson’s work all through the Nineteen Eighties. After her good friend Naz Ebrahim was served with an eviction discover whereas making ready Eid dinner in 1981, Williamson gathered rubble from demolition websites throughout District Six, a central Cape City space declared a white-only zone in 1966. Williamson surrounded the rubble with six eating chairs borrowed from Ebrahim, and performed voices and sounds from District Six, in an set up known as The Final Supper.
The retrospective features a new work that includes the identical chairs, borrowed once more from the Ebrahim household, with audio of District Six residents. Williamson wished the piece to be a catalyst for change: “I used to be asking journalists to replicate on the truth that the federal government is meant to rebuild District Six and completely nothing has occurred.”
The exhibition’s titular 2013 work, There’s one thing I have to let you know, options movies of veteran feminine activists telling youthful feminine family about their experiences of apartheid. Williamson mentioned the conversations have been as necessary as ever, including she had been troubled listening to younger folks telling a radio present that issues have been higher underneath white minority rule. “I don’t suppose it’s simply in South Africa. I believe it’s a worldwide factor in traumatised societies, that folks don’t actually wish to load that type of stuff on to youngsters,” she mentioned. “It’s important to know your individual historical past to seek out your individual place in society.”
Nonetheless, Williamson, who began her profession as a journalist, mentioned her 2013 work in all probability wanted an replace: “I don’t fairly know what younger folks at this time suppose. Possibly I must make one other work and discover out.”
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