‘Everything is mine. Only the land is theirs’
| Two exhibitions mark the centenary and continuing influence of the Natives Land Act of 1913
IF there is one moment that still haunts South Africa’s collective consciousness around land, it is the imposition of the Natives Land Act in 1913, which effectively placed 87% of the country in the hands of its minority rulers.
To mark the centenary of the Land Act, the photographic exhibition Umhlaba (from the Xhosa for land) arrives at the Wits Art Museum (WAM) this week after a run at the Iziko South Africa National Gallery in Cape Town.
Curated by veteran photographers Paul Weinberg and David Goldblatt, artist Bongi Dhlomo and Iziko’s Pam Warne, the exhibition aims to take advantage of “an unparalleled opportunity to tell stories of the land in ways that have not been told before”.
Weinberg was approached by the organisers of a conference in Cape Town on the centenary of the Land Act to stage the exhibition. “Part of me was like, ja, great, and the other part of me was thinking oh my god, what am I letting myself in for? We’re going to need lots of funding and it’s going to be hard work.
“Then I said, well, I will only do it if David Goldblatt is on board and so I called him and he immediately agreed, which was fantastic.”
With limited funds and a tight deadline, the curators called on the research expertise of Gail Behrmann, who scoured archives across the country.
The final exhibition consists of work culled from 18 archives and representing the work of more than 30 photographers including Goldblatt, Weinberg, Santu Mofokeng, Paul Grendon, Omar Badsha and Ingrid Hudson.
Dhlomo estimates that the team looked at 3 000 images over three months to select the almost 250 that make up the final exhibition.
A key discovery was the work of portrait photographer Hugh Exton, who ran a studio in Pietersburg (Polokwane) from 1895 to the 1940s. Goldblatt says the work provides a glimpse into the character of someone he believes “must have been an extraordinary man because he did very fine studio photographs, which was in itself, I think, an achievement for a smalltown photographer”.
“In particular, no matter who came to him, he treated them all with the same dignity — with no difference whatsoever that’s discernible,” he said. “They’re all posed with great care, the lighting is beautiful, the printing is great … That’s very interesting at a time during which the land act was passed.
“[The act] was a monumental thing, but it particularly set in concrete what was already long apparent in this society — that distinction that whites made between themselves and blacks and how they would divide up the riches of this country.”
Weinberg agrees that the Exton collection is “the most exciting aspect of the exhibition”.
“That just gave us a wonderful, fresh way of looking at the land, because although it’s not essentially about land, it’s portraits of people who had aspirations about the land, wherever they came from,” he said.
“They all look the same — aspiring middle class — but the difference is that those who are white have certainty around the land and those who are black have great uncertainty around their roots and the land issue.”
The photos serve as a timeline to the opening section of the exhibition, running underneath photos by largely unknown photographers that depict the reality of the situation on the streets outside the walls of Exton’s studio.
Also included is Goldblatt’s relatively unseen series of photos of sharecropper Kas Maine, whose story formed the basis of historian Charles van Onselen’s seminal book The Seed is Mine.
The title of the book comes from a quote by Maine, which also serves as a guiding epigraph for the exhibition: “The seed is mine. The ploughshares are mine. The span of oxen is mine. Everything is mine. Only the land is theirs.”
Goldblatt says of his experience with Maine in the 1980s that the sharecropper “was a great subject because he virtually ignored me”.
Weinberg overcame his fellow curator’s reticence to include his own work. “It speaks to the potential resistance of people on the land,” he said. “Kas Maine is a very positive story of how someone could have survived under such extraordinary circumstances.”
Arranged chronologically and with essays by various photographers providing breathing space along the way, the exhibition includes recent works that focus on contemporary issues around the continued contestation of land. They include recent photographs taken at Marikana by Greg Marinovich, images that Goldblatt said “were exactly pertinent to this whole question”.
“These were the marks made by the police — where they found bodies — and whether you consider mining to be a question that comes under the heading of the land or not, this was highly pertinent stuff, so we included it.
“I’ve been criticised by a number of people who have spoken to me in passing. ‘Why on earth did you include those pictures?’ And to me it’s self-evident.”
Dhlomo said she hoped that audiences would engage intimately with the photographs, which have been reproduced in their original sizes.
She said the sensors at the museum had been covered to enable viewers to get as close as possible to the material.
Weinberg emphasises that they “didn’t want this to be another depressing overview that is chronological and kind of linear and leaves you feeling terribly depressed”.
“We wanted to make it a lot more dynamic and nuanced than that. We also wanted to show the nuanced landscape in South Africa today, which is still a contested terrain. But isn’t just a monolithic story.”