No country for old myths Old myths
The craft of nation-building must be accompanied by an effective and believable national myth, in art, as in life.
Fook Island is one of the most celebrated concepts of South African abstract artist Walter Battiss (1906-1982). It is an imaginary place inspired by his travels to several islands in the 1960s and 70s. He conceptualised a land with its own stamps, currency, publications, passports and ‘fooklore’.
Much has been written about Fook Island, some suggesting he was creating a world far from the reality of apartheid South Africa. The depth, the materialistic realisation, as well as the duration of the project, also make Battiss’s Fook Island a particularly remarkable creation, even in a world where the creation of fictional worlds which parallel and comment on the very real world we live in is prevalent in much artistic creation.
In the visual arts, we have seen recent examples of the creation of ever-developing fantastical worlds, growing from one exhibition to the next, such as artist Athi-Patra Ruga’s reimagining of Azania over the last decade, and his recent exhibition at Cape Town’s Norval Foundation, exploring and recreating Xhosa mythology. Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai also dabbles in alternative realities, in worlds with different histories and founding myths. In 2017, he presented a short film, We Live in Silence (Chapters 1 – 7), a final instalment of a series he began in 2011. In the film he stages alternative colonial histories, interrogating the notion that the colonised are to think like, behave like, and fully adopt the ways of those who colonised them.
The worlds these and many other artists create are made rich not only by the visual execution, but also through the incorporating of histories and founding myths, accepted as central to these fictitious nations’ identities, motivating action and influencing expression. That national myth is of course also used by the fictional leadership to motivate their political machinations, as beautifully portrayed in Chiurai’s 2009 The Black President series.
In real life too, the national myth is one constantly exploited by governments, as well as looked to by the populace as a source of inspiration for national identity, the national brand image as it were. In fact, in recent times, governments have looked to branding experts to curate and market that national identity to citizens as well as country visitors. Think Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia campaign of the 1990s, in which his government championed the creative industries.
“The American Dream” is a concept many across the world have become familiar with as it spread through 20th century television and cinema. Indeed, for every country around the world, the narrative about the country’s past and its intention plays a big part in the story that informs a nation’s identity, their national myth as it were.
Here at home, “rainbow nation” branding popped up early, growing from that moment
The worlds these and many other artists create are made rich not only by the visual execution, but also through the incorporating of histories and founding myths.
‘The Lands of Azania (2014 – 2094)’, 2013. Thread on tapestry canvas. By Athi-Patra Ruga.
Photo below: Courtesy of The Walter Battiss Company in December 1991 when Archbishop Desmond Tutu uttered: “You are the rainbow people of God.” By 1994, former president Nelson Mandela used it in his inaugural speech.
In his 1996 paper, titled “Myth of the Rainbow Nation: Prospects for the Consolidation of Democracy in South Africa”, vice-chancellor of the University of Witwatersrand, Adam Habib, wrote: “After being coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the metaphor of the ‘rainbow nation’ soon took on a life of its own. It has been adopted by top political figures, such as Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. It has been utilised by big business concerns to exhort the broader public to buy some or other commodity in the name of patriotism. It has been advocated by a range of organisations within civil society to advance a variety of political and socio-economic causes. It has been accepted by both the national and the foreign media as the descriptive label of the South African nation. And, it has beguiled the outside world into trumpeting the ‘miracle’ of the South African transition.”
Now, more than two decades later, we’ve seen four presidents, a terribly handled HIV/Aids crisis, state capture, xenophobic attacks, VBS looting, a rising unemployment rate, and continuing economic inequality along racial lines. The ‘rainbow nation’ concept doesn’t quite inspire the same confidence it once did.
Habib continues, almost prophetically: “It is absolutely essential that a national political