Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

Five years ago, Ricky Burnett came up from the Newtown Gallery in Johannesburg and said he could make Hlungwani famous and send his work all over the world. Hlungwani got excited and told Burnett to take everything, and Burnett took everything. At the end of the retrospective, Hlungwani, enraptured by the adulation he had attracted, gave Burnett permission to sell everything. Hlungwani’s work went all over the world, and he became the most famous black artist in southern Africa. But when the great monuments from the New Jerusalem were sold, Hlungwani felt the spirit go out of him. Defeated and lost, he climbed down from his hill and left the stone citadel. Hlungwani says he has been betrayed and curses Burnett; Burnett says he has taken good care of Hlungwani and that if he didn’t want to sell the work, he shouldn’t have offered it. In 1985 Burnett had staged an exhibition called Tributaries, which flew in the face of the received wisdom that South Africa had no artistic activity outside white circles. Featuring artists from Venda and elsewhere, the show began to break down the solid wall between black and white artistic experience. “Tributaries was our Armory show,” said William Kentridge. But it can be hard to find the line between amplification and exploitation of these “authentic” artists.

We found Hlungwani sitting in the shade between the legs of a giant devotional figure, carving a stack of angels. He started to tell us about his vision: “I’m rebuilding the Garden of Eden.” We expressed interest, and he said, pointing ahead, “You go up that hill until you see God, and then you will find it just on the other side, among the trees.” On the hill, we found God. Hlungwani had carved an entire fallen tree with a complex many-featured face (dozens of eyes, several noses); in the garden beyond, we found more carvings. Hlungwani told me that I must go and look the snake in the eyes. He sent me to the edge of the hill, where a ten-foot white piece of wood sat on several little wooden props. I looked at the butt end of the wood and came back. “It’s the snake,” he confided, “and it was in the ground and on the ground. That’s where the evil comes from!” he almost bellowed. “I dug it up and I am keeping it off the ground, and so now there will be peace. Peace in the New South Africa and in the world.”

He brought out two carvings. “I have something for you, for your spirit. This one is finished.” He showed me an angel. “It’s perfect. This one is not for you.” He picked up the second one. “This one is not finished. I am giving it to you so you can finish it from your own spirit.” I looked closely at the two angels. “Use your brain! Give him a face yourself ! This angel is full of love! Tell the people in America all about it!”

People in Venda still talk about Nelson Mukhuba. His surviving sculptures are astonishing: graceful and alive, as though the spirit of the wood had been released from it. When the Venda craze was just getting under way, the Market Gallery in Johannesburg offered Mukhuba a one-man show. Everyone in the Johannesburg art world went to the opening, for which Mukhuba himself had traveled down from Venda. Into the room he danced, among the swanky crowd with their glasses of white wine. He was wearing a high-peaked cap and walking on stilts, and from top to bottom, he was almost twelve feet tall. He had brought drummers from Venda, and as they drummed, he danced through the opening, incredibly lithe on his stilts; to add to the spectacle he blew fire from his mouth. The exhibition was a raging success.

A month later, on a sunny day in Venda, Mukhuba took a panga, cut down the trees around his house, killed his wife and children, set fire to his home and all his remaining work, and hanged himself. Some people say that Mukhuba just went mad. Some say that a spirit came for him. Many think that it was a muti death, that someone had cursed him. Perhaps it was the chief, who, some people say, was not pleased to see all the money and attention going to Mukhuba. Perhaps it was some other artist. Or perhaps it was the violation of a way of life that occurs when a rapacious market and a naïve artist come into contact. Everyone in Venda still talked about Mukhuba, but no one spoke about the circumstances of his death. In Venda, sangomas, witch doctors, are still held in awe. Some are much loved, but those who have misused their powers are stoned to death. “I am always thinking of Mukhuba,” Mabasa told me, and her big smile left her face for a minute, and she looked dark, and I was suddenly frightened.

On Seeing and Being Seen