In June 1976, the month the high school students of South Africa’s largest black township, Johannesburg’s Soweto, hit the streets in protest against their inferior education, twenty-one-year-old Sam Nhlengethwa was at one of those schools. In his final year, angry and deeply frustrated by a situation that had produced numerous schools stayaways in the early seventies, Nhlengethwa was neverthetheless committed to trying to study. In the months following, with his school closed much of the time, he would head regularly for town and the Johannesburg Art Foundation, located in the white suburb of Saxonwold.
Under the direction of artist and teacher Bill Ainslie, the Foundation was one of the few places that provided space for students of all colors to take art classes. Looking at Nhlengethwa’s drawings one day, with their mixed media elements of paint and magazine cutouts, Ainslie asked him to make a portfolio of ten pieces using similar techniques. After viewing the completed work, Ainslie handed over a book of the work of the African American collage artist Romare Bearden for his student to peruse.
For Nhlengethwa, the book on Bearden was overwhelming, a revelation and an inspiration. Bearden’s works are 100 percent collage, while Nhlengethwa incorporates painted areas in all his collage-based work, but for the young artist, the affirmation of the possibilities of this medium set him on a lifetime path.
Nhlengethwa’s seminal piece, Lala Ngoxolo (Rest in Peace), was made in 1992 but looks back to the late seventies, a time of many funerals. Says Nhlengethwa of this work, “This particular funeral took place in our section of KwaThema. A young man disappeared and the next day the family was told he had been beaten to death by the police. I remember the pastor who was taking that service stressing ‘Lala Ngoxolo.’
“I don’t know how one survived. In a way it was self-therapy to deal with the matters on canvas.”
Rendered in a restricted palette, Lala Ngoxolo evokes the somber mood of the funeral in the dusty township where Nhlengethwa lived. Outside the cemetery, armed police stand guard. It was not unusual for police to shoot at angry mourners leaving a funeral, necessitating, sadly, another funeral the following week. In Nhlengethwa’s complex collage, a young Nelson Mandela gazes over his shoulder at the coffin. Says the artist of the imagery, “I imagined Mandela in prison learning the news and feeling a bit helpless because he was unable to do anything.”
Now in the collection of mining giant BHP Billiton and on display at their Johannesburg headquarters, Lala Ngoxolo recalls the sad years when on far too many Saturdays there was a funeral to attend.
Lala Ngoxolo (Rest in Peace) aka The Funeral 1992
Mixed media collage
75 x 112 cm
Collection: BHP Billiton, Johannesburg
Image courtesy of PHP Billiton Johannesburg
Photographer: John Hodgkiss
© Sam Nhlengethwa