Art has been used in many cultures as a way to convey political messages to an audience, and my time in South Africa has shown me that this culture is quick to express itself through a variety of art forms. South Africa is a country rich with political history and struggle, and artists have drawn upon these events for their art, and have used their talents to portray opinions about political injustices during and after the era of apartheid. The types of art we have seen have been varied, from theatre to poetry to painting, but artists across South Africa seem interested in the ways in which art provides the artist and audience an opportunity to tell their story, and the importance of that story being heard.
We first saw this exemplified through the one act play “Four Generations” performed by Kurt Eglehoff for our class. In the play, Kurt takes on the role of his grandfather, father, himself, and his son, in order to depict his search for identity and the struggle his family faced under apartheid policies and the ideologies enforced against them based on race and class. He used his artistic ability and his own powerful story to write a play that is both deeply personal and connected to the stories of many other South Africans. Kurt showed how individuality breeds universality, as his play was easy to identify with but also uniquely his own. This is a facet of politics that can be revealed especially through art. Politics effect everyone in similar and different ways, and art provides a bridge between the two, merging the feelings of both the artist and the audience together. Lionel Davis brought this idea into reality when he helped our class create statement art pieces of our own, and we were able to express our own political ideas through our work. We worked in pairs, so we had to converge to create one cohesive piece of art, but each students individuality stood out in the presentation of the pieces.
We also had the opportunity to hear from James Matthews, a political prisoner turned poet who’s poems published from his jail cell tell of the freedom he and others sought during apartheid. His poems resonated with people in South Africa and beyond, and gave a voice to struggles that otherwise would not have been heard. His work saved him in many ways, because it helped him remember the freedom he was fighting for. “That patch of blue/precious as air/reminder of a world/free of prison bars” he writes in one poem. His poems influenced the political minds of many people, proving that something like poetry can have a lasting impact on the history of a place and people.
As an English major and Political Science minor, I have always been interested in the convergence between personal stories and political change. One persons voice can have so much power if it can be heard, and forms of art help get these stories across to an audience in an influential way. James Matthews stated that a writer should only write about three things: romance, vampires, or the sores of society. While I don’t agree that’s these are the only things a writer can explore, I do agree that the role of the writer in many senses is to reveal the negative sides of life to allow their readers to explore and challenge that reality. South Africans have certainly taken this idea and utilized it fully, as shown in the ways in which their art and political history are so blended together.
There are many different views regarding the link between art and politics. Some critics believe art should be left up to the unique ideal of the artist, art for arts sake. Others argue that “culture is a weapon of struggle” (Mda, vii) and therefore art is simply one facet used in the move towards the changes people want to see within a society. No matter where one falls on the spectrum, it is clear that for South Africa, culture such as art and literature has played a vital role in this political struggle, and that political statements will continue to have importance in South African Art even with the end of apartheid.
