Artist who defied apartheid to work in South Africa celebrates huge breakthrough

When Sabela Mahlangu began as an artist, he needed a permit even to go to his studio.

Now celebrated as a master craftsman, with an exhibition on show in London, the journey to recognition for his prints and etchings has not been easy.

Born near Johannesburg in 1951 shortly after apartheid began, as a toddler he and his family were among the 3.5 million Black Africans forced from their homes into townships, which were segregated neighbourhoods often far from their previous homes.

As a young man, he was expected to find low-skilled manual work.

But he knew he had a talent for art, first explored at high school and later at the prestigious Rorke’s Drift art college, founded by Swedish missionaries with the aim ‘to nurture the unique artistic heritage of Africa’.

Sabela told Metro of his frustration after learning the tools of his trade and graduating only to be told by an official: ‘You’re still young, you must go to the factories!’

The country’s legal system at the time sorted people into four racial categories which codified where they could live and work, who they could marry, and even where they were allowed to travel inside and outside the country.  

Police would regularly check Black people’s papers to see if they were authorised to be where they were and doing what they were doing, which meant Sabela could even be arrested for doing art in his township without documentation.

Sabela told how he once queued up every day from Monday to Friday at a municipal office to obtain a ‘daily labour certificate’ proving he was authorised to work as an artist, but would get to the front only for the ‘official to simply go out and have tea or chat with his friends’.

He was eventually given paperwork after another Boer official he met with in his own township thought of himself as an artist too, and was excited that Sabela’s work might bring tourism income. 

But he still had to continually reapply and be ready to show his documents to the police, in just one example of how the white majority controlled and harassed the Black population.

This experience informed the title of his latest exhibition, ‘If you are Black, you’re not simply an artist’ which tells of the barriers to creating which white artists did not experience. 

It is on display now at Stratford Library in Newham, east London, where Sabela told Metro: ‘In South Africa, the government was saying, you can be qualified to be an artist but it doesn’t matter, you cannot do it.’

His technique of etching on multiple copper plates, adding a single colour to each etching, and then printing them together, can take years to produce a single work. 

The process is laborious, with the experimental technique including using nitric acid to create texture.

With such a technical and time-consuming process, he needed a way to make the work commercially viable to be able to continue, but even after gaining the permit there were many barriers.

For someone to have even had a chance of their work appearing in a gallery during Apartheid, ‘you must be somebody who is acquainted with a white artist’, he said. 

Until the system ended officially in 1994, it was also very difficult for Black people to travel out of the country, as special permits were required for this too.

In 1996, Sabela relocated to Forest Gate in east London with his wife Judith, a nurse.

The grandfather-of-two, whose three children still live in South Africa, has been perfecting his printing method since he began working in the 1960s and his prints showing daily life he saw in townships are being celebrated as part of Black History Month, after being exhibited at the Africa Centre previously this year. 

Now recognised as an important emerging artist, Sabela has sold works to practically every university in South Africa, the United Nations permanent collection in New York and the British Museum.

In an academic article, Sipho Mdanda of the University of Johannesburg called him an ‘introverted genius’ whose mastery of printmaking has ‘benefited artists across the colour line in spite of stringent apartheid laws’. 

He continued: ‘Against complaints expressed by his contemporaries about the lack of studio facilities in the township, Mahlangu built his own working space at home in Kwa-Thema, where he often worked with Vuminkosi Zulu. 

‘Such initiative was informed by his pressing desire for freedom to pursue experimental work outside the syndrome of white-help, which robbed many black artists of independence and self-reliance, based on white tutoring and patronising charity notwithstanding operating within the limitations associated with using white artists’ studios.’

Sabela Mahlangu’s latest exhibition can be seen at Stratford Library until October 30. 

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