The return to South Africa of a portfolio of Pretoria township art assembled by a young Australian diplomat in the early 1970s is inspiring other foreign collectors, not only of African art but also of historical documents of the apartheid era, to do the same. South African art museums are now hoping for the homecoming of some of the “lost art” of the period. The returned collection, accumulated by Diane Johnstone, a third secretary at the Australian embassy from 1973 to 1976, comprises 17 apartheid-era township scenes she describes as “some political, others simply a day in the life of places like Mamelodi”. Art experts in South Africa agree that the cream of the art depicting life in the townships during apartheid has vanished, collected by diplomats and foreign visitors and taken out of the country. “Foreign buyers with a collector’s eye snapped up the best of it and an empty space exists in South Africa’s heritage — the visual history of apartheid’s battleground in the locations,” says Michael Maapola, an artist from Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria.The Johnstone collection was handed over to the executive mayor of Tshwane, Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, in a ceremony last month presided over by Australia’s high commissioner in South Africa, Ian Wilcock. Now other foreign collectors, who have asked to remain anonymous, have agreed to give back at least some of the apartheid-era township art in their possession “provided it finds a home accessible to all South Africans”. One collector amassed writings and correspondence from notable anti-apartheid leaders, many of whom landed up on Robben Island, and would like to return it “to the most appropriate South African museum or archives”. None of the collectors are seeking payment for the art or documents, “just safe passage to a safe home”.Dirkie Offringa, curator of the Pretoria Art Museum where the Johnstone collection will be permanently exhibited, describes the loss of apartheid-era township art as “a deep void” that will be impossible to fully fill. “It would be of enormous value to South African art if those collectors returned at least some of art they accumulated in those times,” she says.Trent Read, of the Read Contemporary Gallery, says he is thrilled the Johnstone collection has come back. “These works have got to mirror to a certain extent the conditions of the times. So many of these artists died young, so much of their art was ephemeral, and if it survived at all it’s usually out of the country. “On the whole, white South Africans weren’t buying their work. So it’s good to have it back because it’s probably as good a record, if not the only one, of what the Pretoria black artists were making at the time. They weren’t being collected by the Pretoria University, Iscor, big companies or the Reserve Bank, so it fell to foreign diplomats and visitors to do it.”As a young diplomat on her first foreign posting, Johnstone endured bugged telephones and constant police harassment and surveillance, an eviction, death threats and slashed car tyres because of her friendship and association with artists from such townships as Mamalodi and Hammanskraal. In that time she collected artworks from a wide cross-section of black South African artists and inspired them to persevere in their work, often against harrowing odds. She promised the artists that when black majority rule came to South Africa — “which frankly I didn’t believe would happen in my lifetime, so I’d written all this into my will” — she would send the collection back so the wider community would see what the artists had produced.Johnstone, now a senior diplomat with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra, often wonders why — not being an artist — she became so involved with the painters and sculptors of Pretoria’s townships. “It was, I think, largely because I was amazed and found [it] incredibly inspiring that in the terrible places that were the townships of that time, places apparently without hope, in oppression and in grinding poverty … talented artists were producing such wonderful and passionate art. And in most cases they were doing so without any formal training, with very limited access to material.” The South African police of the day were anything but subtle in their reaction to her activities. They and the apartheid government took a dim view of her association with black South Africans and visits to townships. “Partly — at the height of apartheid — it was because they did not want diplomats to have such contacts; but partly too it was because the Australian government was taking a tough and, for the South Africa government of that time, unpalatable and highly activist line internationally against apartheid,” recounts Johnstone.Others in the community also took a dim view of her activities, especially when she held an exhibition of township art in her flat. Her lease was cancelled overnight.While much of the work was “struggle” art, protests against the separatist system, a lot of the work collected by Johnstone was for “the sheer quality of the pieces, not because of their politics, although some in the collection are highly political. “But it was the political nature of some works that incensed the white administration at large, and the police in particular,” Johnstone recalls. “The mere fact that they were on display on diplomatic premises also meant the international diplomatic community could also see the view of the township through the works produced by these young artists.”Johnstone’s returned portfolio comprises 17 works of township art dating from 1973 to 1975. Fifteen are classified as township art per se and two are from the Rorke’s Drift Art Commune.All artists represented are black South Africans who were befriended and supported by Johnstone during her posting to South Africa. Some of the works she bought, others were given to her.Read believes that commercially the collection is probably worth more than the sum of its parts. Maapola doesn’t entirely agree. “It didn’t matter if much of it was not technically very good. It was an expression of the times by largely unschooled, self-taught young artists battling against heavy odds.” Several of the artists represented in the collection are now well known
and recognised, including Hugh Nolotshungu, David Mbele, Fikile Magadeledla, Ezekiel Madiba and Michael Zondi.
Only one of the works in the collection is overtly political — Apartheid Kills by Benedict Martins. Several of the works are reminiscent of traditional rural backgrounds, notably Johnny Riberio’s linocuts Ndebele Dancer, Dancers and Mural; Ezekial Madiba’s humorous linocuts, especially Gossip, representing women at a village well, find humour and a universal commentary on community wives.Others distinctly reflect township life such as David Mbele’s charcoal and paint Boy with Flute. Lino was favoured by many artists because it was abundantly and cheaply available and “picture carvers”, as they were known, became remarkably adroit in the medium.”It was people like Di Johnstone that helped artists in the Pretoria area to survive and expose their work,” Maapola says. “Many of us survived because of her. She made sure so many diplomats saw our art and then they bought it. It sold for R200 to R500 a piece and that was enough for us to keep going. Today, that same art would sell for around R15 000 to R20 000, perhaps not entirely for its artistic excellence but for its historical and emotional significance.”