Samson Mudzunga, Dzingoma, and new mythologies.

"The Coat"

   I made my song a coat
   Covered with embroideries
   Out of old mythologies from heel to throat,
   But the fools caught it, wore it in the world's
      eyes
   As though they had wrought it.
   Song, let them take it,
   For there's more enterprise
   In walking naked.

      WB Yeats

On July 3, 2004, Samson Mudzunga staged a performance called "Farewell to Drums" at his home village of Dopeni in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. He was preparing for the show "Personal Affects: Power and Poetics in Contemporary South African Art," which would be held in New York between September 21, 2004, and January 3, 2005, at the Museum of African Art and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The performances in Dopeni Village and at the Cathedral raised questions about the relationship between traditional forms of political power and the challenges of a new and "modern" political dispensation in South Africa and between "traditional art" and "high art" forms in South Africa and elsewhere.

Samson Mudzunga is a contemporary artist whose work is represented in local and international art collections, and everything that he makes is modern in that it responds to contemporary issues and contexts. He has no formal art education, and his formal schooling was limited. It is clear that his modernity is often overlooked in contemporary assessments of his work (see, for example, Murinik 2004, Coates 2001), as is the modernity of many contemporary African artists who have been taken up by the high art world. This paper unpicks the constituent elements of Samson Mudzunga's performance in Venda to demonstrate both how he negotiates his way through the metropolitan, high art minefield, and the instability of "traditional" politics in the rural areas, but in both cases, using old mythologies to appeal to the different audiences involved. That Mudzunga deliberately exploits people's expectations can be seen in the ways in which he develops his performances for different contexts.

Setting the Scene: Of Lake Fundudzi and Singo Kings

Lake Fundudzi, the only natural lake in South Africa, is central to the old mythologies of Venda. Lake Fundudzi is important in both oral and written histories and in continuing customs of the different groups who constitute the Venda. It is the origin of the world and the sacred space of ancestors. As a leitmotif, referring to the genesis myth at whose center it stands, the image of Lake Fundudzi recurs through Venda thinking about social and political relationships--reserved for some, guarded from others, and prohibited to the most powerful. Deliberately shrouded in mystery, the lake, like Yeats's coat, is hung about with old mythologies. Lake Fundudzi is the "swimming pool" of Raluvhimba (the creator), who left his giant footprints in the mountains around it at the moment of creation, while the earth was still soft. Around the lake a number of natural features are identified as belonging to Raluvhimba, including some boulders that are said to be his "drums." In Venda tradition, it is unthinkable to be a king without drums (see Stayt 1931, Van Warmelo 1932, Phophi n.d., Nettleton 1985 and 1989), and drums, the focal point of Mudzunga's performances, are among the most symbolically potent objects in Venda visual culture.

When I first visited Venda in 1977-1979, I was allowed only to the top of the mountains round Lake Fundudzi. (1) My fellow researcher, Richard Tshivhase, a member of the Tshivhase family, is a Singo royal who (like everyone, Venda and non-Venda alike, who is not Ngona or Thavhatsinsi), is prohibited from approaching the lake too closely. The first Singo king of Venda, Thoho ya Ndou, (2) is said to have disappeared into Lake Fundudzi, to live there with his court, replicating the courts of his descendants still on land. Those who ventured close could hear his Tshikona bands' music coming from the lake, the drumming on his ngoma, and his young women performing the domba. But Thoho ya Ndou was a newcomer to the lake, a leader of the invading Singo who had arrived from the north and taken control of the Soutpansberg area only sometime around 1700. (3) The Singo were the last of a number of invasions of Shona-speakers and they, together with Thavhatsindi and Ngona, make up different strata within Venda society. According to legend, culture hero Thoho ya Ndou's disappearance into the Lake and spirit occupation of the waters established Singo hegemony within a lake sacred to the earlier inhabitants, the Ngona. But the Singo were unable to take physical possession of the lake and the Netshiavha lineage of the Ngona remained the guardians of Lake Fundudzi even after the Singo invasion. Singo royalty were believed likely to die from contact with its waters, and ordinary people could be attacked by the mischievous, grotesque spirits, the tshidudwane, who inhabited its perimeter. (4) Annual offerings to the spirits of the lake were made by the head of the Netshiavha lineages on behalf of the major Singo chiefs, the Ramabulana and Tshivhase.

Much in Venda territory has changed, particularly since the democratic elections of 1994. Disillusionment with the old mythology that shores up chiefly privilege has crept into people's dealings with political and cultural dimensions of rural life in this former ethnic stronghold. In the late 1970s, one tarred road traversed Venda territory from west to east. It was sandwiched between the white town of Louis Trichardt (now Makhado) and the Punda Milia gate to the Kruger National Park. A gravel branch led north to Sibasa, the "homeland" government's administrative center, and the mission stations of Tshakhuma, Makumbane, and Siloam. Although rectangular houses clustered around the missions, circular dwellings in homestead complexes surrounded by farmlands were the norm. These were separated by large stretches of unadulterated bush. The Singo royalty had theft capitals (musanda), against the magnificent upper slopes of the mountains, with terraced walls and a large Khoro to greet their guests (Fig. 1). It was the very picture of romantic rural Africa, except for the single large soap-powder billboard, advertising (ironically) "whiter than white" washing, at the turnoff to Vhufuli on the road from Sibasa.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The smattering of missions and hospitals and a few modern school buildings were minor indices of change. This was part of the systematic underdevelopment and ingrained poverty engendered by apartheid, a system that entrenched the traditional rights and customs of a small aristocratic class by buying out the traditionalist leaders and conferring on them special powers claimed to be cultural and historical. (5) The house of Ramabulana was made the "paramount" house and its head, Patrick Mphephu, was appointed its chief minister and prime minister after the homeland was given "independence" in 1981. One result of the privileging of chiefly power in this modern state was that the oral histories and traditions of the pre-Singo commoners, particularly the Ngona and Thavhatsindi, were effectively silenced and to some extent effaced from the ethnographic record. However, this trend, which had started under the British, did not manage to suppress alternative histories completely, and many are now being revived.

Since 1994, urban development has profoundly altered the landscape, with rectangular houses in neat rectangular allotments along a grid of roads, some tarred, many with large billboards. The exception is the immediate vicinity of Lake Fundudzi, itself the center of a new controversy. Mudzunga is particularly dismissive of the stories about the tshidudwane, which he sees as a naked ploy to keep people who might benefit from exploiting the nearby lake. (6) New power struggles are related to the question of land distribution--with older traditions and divisions re-emerging to challenge Singo hegemony--and urbanization, which disrupts older forms of authority. These are reflected in Mudzunga's claim to have been excluded from his rightful position in the lineage of the Netshiavha, the pre-Singo inhabitants of the land (Kaplan 2000, Nettleton 2003), and the claim to be chiefs or queens among the Netshiavhas made by two women at the 2004 performance at Dopeni Village. These women, as members of the Netshaivha lineage and as "queens," were there to sanction Mudzunga's challenge to Singo authority. Whether this challenge was ultimately effective is questionable in light of later developments in the performance. But today the older traditions' challenge to Singo hegemony appears to be limited to members of an older generation among the Venda. Younger people have become more interested in Western-style education and take up aspects of local ethnic traditions more as a return to "African" than to specifically "Venda" roots, even though ethnic politics play out behind the facade of South Africa's multiculturalism.

The Dopeni Performance: Enter Samson Mudzunga and Company

The disillusionment with ethnic mythology as a source for his poetry that Yeats expressed in "The Coat" appears to be at first glance on the opposite pole to Mudzunga's exploitation of ethnic heritage. Besides campaigning for a closer observance among the youth of Venda traditionalist customs, in his performances Samson Mudzunga persistently invokes Lake Fundudzi as the place of origin for his work. In 1996 he defied the Singo-centric traditionalists by leading a sizeable contingent of people down to the very edge of the lake and threatened to bathe in the water; however, he ended up only drinking it. In 1998 and in the latest of the performances in July 2004, he again visited the lake, with an entourage, and drank the water. In the 1996 performance he was prepared, despite traditional officials' warnings, to make offerings at the lakeside, usurping the position of the head of the Netshiavha clan. Mudzunga claims, but never directly, that he should have inherited the headship through his mother and that the present Netshaivha has "stolen" Mudzunga's place. (7) In 1998 he threatened to have himself buried at Lake Fundudzi in his drum and to escape alive or reborn, something bound to get up the noses of Singo royalty. Fiddling around with the lake, or "shaking it up" is, in Venda, a deeply subversive activity, for which Mudzunga landed a two-year stint in jail in 2001-2002. (8) This saboteur of tradition, however, relies on that same tradition to give his work a historical context, a particular flavor, an African authenticity so that it becomes saleable to two audiences, one rooted in expectations set up by the metropolitan high art world, and the other in a local rural community.

It is the expectation of the high art world that African (read "primitive") art necessarily exhibits something "ritualistic" that surfaces in the writing relating to Mudzunga's performances--according to the authors of the "Personal Affects" catalogue, there were two loose themes that governed their choice of artists for this exhibition in New York: one based in notions of identity and the other on notions "of performance and ritualized action" (Enwezor, Murinik, and Van der Watt 2004:19; see Rovine 2004 for a discussion of this issue in relation to this exhibition). Mudzunga's work is custom-made for such expectations. He is an untrained artist working from a rural base in an apparently traditional ("primitive") mode undisturbed by the theoretical complexities of postcolonial theory. If we follow Bourdieu's (1977, 1993) argument that the art world is stratified according to class and add to that the element of race within the South African context, it follows that, while Mudzunga clearly occupies a habitus far removed from that of the writers of the catalogue and curators of the exhibition, he is nevertheless able to exploit notions of "art" that emanate from the habitus of the latter, among whom, however, the distinctions of race are diminished by shared educational foundations. Mudzunga invites prominent members of the high art elite to his performances: Oren Kaplan, doing his MA research on Mudzunga; Professor Colin Richards, who has written articles on Mudzunga; artist Stephen Hobbs and art educator Kathy Coates, who wrote the Taxi art book on his work; myself, who wrote an article on his Johannesburg Art Gallery Performance for Art South Africa (Nettleton 2003); Steven Sack, at the time in the employ of the national Department of Arts and Culture and now director of culture for the greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council; Churchill Madikida, curator of the Constitutional Court art collection; Michael Stevenson (PhD in art history) and others of the curatorial team from Spier who funded the event, including the cost of the trip for the invited urban guests; (9) E TV (10) presenters; and cameraman and photographer/filmmaker John Hodgkiss, who recorded the performance--Hodgkiss being the filmmaker preferred by the commissioning team from Spier because he has also filmed Steven Cohen's work, to critical acclaim.

This segment of the audience collectively represented the voice of urban authority and endorsed Mudzunga's performances both as high art and as authentic, African art by travelling to his "home" to witness it in its "ritual" setting. Most of these visitors had no knowledge of the histories and ritual that underlie Mudzunga's performance and were, perhaps unknowingly, put in the position of being transgressors of the "traditional norms" that are clung to by many Venda speakers of Mudzunga's generation. (11) That most of the urban audience found this not uncomfortable was evident from their enjoyment of the performance as a spectacle, but a spectacle without any but the most generalized "African" points of reference. The two New York catalogues for "Personal Affects" (Perryer 2004, Enwezor, Murinik and Van der Watt 2004) make no reference to the deeper Venda traditions that gave the event its meaning in the rural context. It is the complex historical dialectic between the constructs of tradition before, during, and after apartheid that allows Mudzunga to draw a wide local audience, but it is the urban endorsement from a wider South African context that turns it into a seriously political statement.

Introducing the Drum(s) [(dzi)ngoma]

Mudzunga's performances all center on a drum: in both his first and his most recent performances, a hemispherical drum of the Venda form known as ngoma. In "Siyawela," the exhibition curated by Colin Richards for Birmingham, UK, in 1995, Mudzunga's first Coffin Drum (1994-1995) was shown alongside the first videotaped performance of Mudzunga getting into and then out of the drum, a performance subsequently rehearsed in other venues. What does the art world make of this strange and continuing business? Was it seen as a form of surrealism? A piece of the absurd? The most commonly rehearsed interpretation is that it is a comment on mortality and rebirth. But then, why the drum? How can one understand this work and its performance with the drum in purely performance terms? Mudzunga has added Houdini-like notions of escape to performances concerned with burial and rebirth, disappearance and reappearance, as reflected in Steven Nelson's account of Mudzunga's practice for the "Personal Affects" catalogue:

   Samson Mudzunga's drums are
   larger parts of performances, entitled
   Suka Africa Fundudzi, that explore
   artistic freedom and, like the
   work of Maluka, Searle, and, to a
   certain degree, Pather are steeped in
   understanding the transformative
   qualifies of ritual. In each of the two
   drums Mudzunga carved, he enacted
   a performance in which he is put
   into the drum under lock and key.
   While musicians play and people
   dance, Mudzunga emerges from
   the drum free of his chains and
   dressed in different clothes. With its
   metaphors of baptism and rebirth,
   Mudzunga's performance points
   to his artistic transformation as well
   as his artistic (and literal) freedom
   (Nelson 2004:15).

But the "escape" or the "rebirth" is symbolic, related to contingent circumstances of Mudzunga's recent personal history--a marriage, a jail sentence, and release. This still does not explain the use of the drum.

One has to approach this from the perspective of the other audience: the locals who are in the majority at Mudzunga's home performances. One has to turn back to a Venda history and Mudzunga's version of Yeats's coat. Mudzunga clothes himself in dzingoma, a word that is not only the plural of ngoma, 'drum', but also denotes 'mysteries', things not easily divulged. In Singo tradition, all dzingoma (drums) are replicas of one original ngoma called ngoma lungundu, (12) given to the Singo royalty by the creator, Mwari/Raluvhimba. This extremely large drum caused lightning, rain, and extreme weather conditions that helped the Singo to overcome their enemies. It could not be dropped or placed on the ground without causing extraordinary misfortune (cf. van Warmelo 1932, Nettleton 1985). It was so large it had to be carried by ten men, and it accompanied the Singo on their migration south from Zimbabwe. On their settlement in Venda, the powerful dzingoma of the Singo were passed on to the Mpaphuli line. The Mphaphuli chieftainship became "minor" in terms of political influence, but remained the ritually central Singo chieftainship as long as it retained the drums. Over the course of two centuries, however, the drums that Mphaphuli was said to guard have disappeared and replicas are held by the more politically influential chiefs, particularly the houses of Ramabulana and Tshivhase.

It is a prerequisite of their rule that all Venda kings of Singo descent have replicas of these drums, but no one else could own them (Fig. 2). Possession of such drums empowered kings not only through their magical properties, but also by symbolically embodying the lake through various details of form, materials, and relief. Most important for Mudzunga's practice is the Venda concept of Lake Fundudzi as a metaphorical womb, the origin of life. The ngoma is an image of this lake/womb, within which swims the crocodile (the king), represented in the drum by two pebbles, mmbe. (13) When they rattle in the drum, they are likened to the crying of a baby. The python writhes on the perimeter of the lake, signifying the powers of healers, of members of other lineages, of members of Venda communities politically disempowered by Singo dominance. (14) The lake and a pregnant woman's womb are both containers, and the belts worn by pregnant women, which "tie" the baby in its place, are likened to the python.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Mudzunga appropriates this drum/ lake/womb image to his own purpose. He crawls into it and out of it. He is incarcerated in, and reborn from, a drum, which often completely modifies the traditional forms and accouterments of the Venda ngoma (Fig. 3). He gives his drums doors; he lines them with Salempore cloth (called "Venda stripe" in town and considered traditional in Venda); they are made into airplanes (Fig. 4); they are bodies for man and woman, boy and girl; and some of them are beaten in performance. Mudzunga's drums are all eventually put up for sale: One in "Personal Affects" was given to the City of New York by the South African ambassador (Fig. 3). Mudzunga's drums end up as art works, truly dzingoma (in the sense of 'mysteries') for the Venda back home, on exhibition in Birmingham, New York, Johannesburg, Durban, and Dusseldorf.

[FIGURES 3-4 OMITTED]

Drumming and Dancing

Mudzunga's art drums are used in performances that involve music, dancing (Fig. 5), playing Tshikona pipes, singing praises, making offerings. Sometimes Mudzunga himself, besides orchestrating the performance, barely features. Where he does perform, he acts out a narrative with selected members of his audience, in explicit form in TsiVenda in Dopeni Village and, in truncated form, allowed to hover implicit in the wings, or played back on film, as an insurance policy against total decontextualization of the work, underpinning metropolitan performances. The drumming, dancing, parading, praise singing, and offerings are all traceable back to Venda tradition. These make the work in some sense "authentic" and "African," but they also qualify these works as contemporary performance art.

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

DziNgoma stand at the center of the performances. Most are not coffin drums with doors and linings, but traditional four-handled hemispherical drums of the type found at the khoro of every Venda khosi. This kind of ngoma is the centerpiece (Fig. 6) of every dance performance at initiations such as vhusha and domba; at every performance of the reed-pipe ensembles, the Tshikona; at rainmaking ceremonies; state occasions; in times of war; and at honoring of ancestors, all at the capitals of Singo kings.

[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]

Venda of Mbedzi and Ngona lineages claim to have started the Domba and the Tshikona. The reeds traditionally used for Tshikona had to be cut from groves at Tshiendeulu, a place that, like Lake Fundudzi, is also subject to the control of Netshiavha lineages, this time under a female chief (cf. Kirby 1968). Singo royalty appropriated exclusive rights to have Tshikona bands, although players still had to obtain reeds from the Netshaivhas at Tshiendeulu, and the Singo maintained this monopoly until the mid-twentieth century. Since 1996 Mudzunga has regularly arrogated the right to stage both Tshikona and Domba dances, yet his bravado is not all it seems. He was able to coerce young girls to do the Domba dance in the courtyard of the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2003, where they were far from the watchful eye of the Venda traditionalists yet subject to a different kind of scrutiny, involving some degree of titillation, by an "other" and uninitiated male gaze (see Nettleton 2003). But he did not stage Domba in front of the home crowd, even though he said he would. On the other hand, he did not stage Tshikona at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, because the logistics of moving many adult male performers to the metropole are prohibitive. (15) When the whole show moved to New York, the Venda actors were reduced to Mudzunga and his first wife Dorcas, (16) although he roped in members of the audience as participants. (17)

Dopeni Village: "Burial and Rebirth"

The performance at Dopeni Village (2004) was sponsored by the Spier Estate, allowing for large quantities of beer to be brewed, meat cooked, and maize porridge prepared. This feast attracted a large local crowd. Tshikona players performed with the large ngoma (Fig. 7), invading the front court of the homestead. (18) They accompanied senior women when they arrived carrying ancestral baskets and dressed in contemporary, resplendently embroidered versions of "traditional" Venda Salempore skirts and wrappers (Fig. 8), wearing beads not used in costumes worn in traditional ceremonies twenty years ago. The women settled along a stone wall and set out an array of beadwork and traditional objects, some for sale and some intended to instruct, being laid out in a display reminiscent of the arrangement and use of objects (matano) in women's initiations (Nettleton 1989). In the "garage" (a square structure attached to one end of Mudzunga's Western-style house), the artwork drum was on displayd. (19) Here Mudzunga, seated on a chair as befits a head of the household, consulted senior women (three of his wives) seated on the floor, as befits traditional Venda wives who losha ('get down [on the ground] in greeting') for their husband in the course of the day's events. These women sang Mudzunga's praises and recited his lineage and claim to the legitimacy of his claim to the headship of the Netshaivhas, all of which were intended to establish his ethnic authenticity. In a contest, heavily weighted toward the men in a traditional social structure in which paternal authority is largely unchallenged, the women had to try to claim the space for the young girl and boy dancers to perform the Tshigombela (Fig. 9). But ultimately it was the men, the Tshikona bands, who dominated the dancing spaces, corresponding to Mudzunga's own paternalist structuring of events and power-relations within the performance and beyond.

[FIGURES 7-9 OMITTED]

Around noon everyone was called to gather on the paved court outside Mudzunga's home. (20) Mudzunga sent out his son McCoy Nemakhavani armed with a file of papers--itself a symbol of modernity, literacy, and legality--to explain the long history of Mudzunga's dispute with the present chief Netshiavha and his kinsman Lufuno. (21) Mudzunga then appeared, ankles bound by a wooden chain and lock, and made a speech recounting more of his contest with the current head of the Netshiavha lineage. Michael Stevenson then released him from bondage by unlocking the wooden lock (Fig. 10) and Mudzunga removed and delivered the chains to his liberator. It was clear that Mudzunga had choreographed, directed, and acted the whole sequence for a particular political purpose, in which he is liberated by the white presence from beyond his home politics and is recorded doing so on film. He had used a similar sequence, with the unlocking of the (same?) chain, in the Johannesburg Art Gallery opening performance in 2003, but there he orchestrated a narrative in which the curator, Pitso Chimzima, and myself deliver him from bondage (see Nettleton 2003) after he had disappeared into and reappeared from the drum. This sequence was greeted by huge applause in both venues--but in Dopeni Village it came mostly from the city audience. (22) Most of the locals remained unmoved, some even bemused, by this section of the performance.

[FIGURE 10 OMITTED]

After a long interval, at the beginning of the afternoon Mudzunga had the New York drum moved down to the main court. He inspected the drum (Fig. 11), did some crowd control, issued instructions, and eventually got into the drum (Fig. 12) dressed in an old shirt, long trousers, and leather shoes. The doors of the drum closed, whereupon the drummer, a young man from Mudzunga's homestead, started up the rhythm, beating the drum into which Mudzunga had crawled (Fig. 13). The Tshikona music and dancing started once again and the audience held its collective breath. The master of ceremonies--Mudzunga's son McCoy Nemakhavani--consulted his watch and occasionally peeped in the door of the drum. The cameras rolled all the while, the dust flew, and the sound was deafening. You could smell the sweat, taste the anticipation (Fig. 14). Finally Mudzunga emerged feet first (Fig. 15) to wild cheering, ululating, and Tshikona music. He was shoeless and wore a pair of Salempore cloth shorts and a white t-shirt with the words Suka Afrika Fundudzi (23) lettered across its back, admonishing us to "Shake up Africa, Fundudzi." (24)

[FIGURES 11-15 OMITTED]

He leaped onto the drum (Fig. 16) and raised his arms, then his right fist, and shouted "Amandla" (power) and again "Amandla a Fundudzi" (power to Fundudzi), pulling in resonances of the freedom struggle (amandla awetu, power to the people), but in isiZulu, not in tshiVenda. This was all recorded by the cameramen, with assiduous attention to detail, for broadcast in a variety of forms. (25) The Hodgkiss production went to New York, along with Mudzunga's drums and works by other artists, including sculptor Claudette Schreuders and performance/graffiti artists Robin Rhode and Steven Cohen. But Mudzunga's drum (26) was the only work to be--in heavily laden, apparently authentic "African" style--sent off with a ritual performance: Two elder men said traditional prayers invoking ancestral sanction. Some of the participating Venda audience speculated that these men were of the house of Ramabulana (Fig. 17), the lineage of Mphephu. Their status is unclear; perhaps they had imposed themselves on the proceedings to re-establish Singo control. (27) They wore Western-style beige/grey foremen's overcoats, which have specific status associated with skilled workers in factories and retail. They stood with the urban curators (28) and Mudzunga to sing invocations of ancestral presence, punctuated by Tshikona piping. The Tshikona then took over and these old men danced vigorously next to the drum to finalize the blessing, and in so doing, finally subvert Mudzunga's subversiveness by reasserting traditional lines of authority. This section of the performance was not mentioned by Murinik (2004) in the New York catalogue.

[FIGURES 16-17 OMITTED]

Traditional authority had stamped its consent on the affair, but Mudzunga's version of tradition nevertheless stripped convention to shreds, asked questions, subverted and then wove all together again in a form of spectacle that simultaneously stated its modernity. In the midst of his post-drum escape, Mudzunga mingled with the crowd, still in his Salempore shorts, reminiscent of the "flat boys'" uniform, the shorts worn by domestic workers in Johannesburg in the 1940s and 1950s. These bright striped shorts are in-your-face, they mock the notion of subservience, they are not spotless white, discreet beige, or brown trousers. Mudzunga does not fit the bill of the traditionalist, but he has not adopted Western norms either.

Finale: The Return to the Lake

The stage was set for the finale. With the urbanites gathered in two vehicles, Mudzunga led an expedition to the origin of it all, Lake Fundudzi, so that it could be photographed for the exhibition. Once again he defied the tacit Singo-Netshiavha agreement on access to the lake and he drank the water (Fig. 18), (29) although compared to the long procession he led to the lake in 1996 and 1998, this was a very low-key event. Mudzunga explained that he wants to put a pleasure boat on the lake and let tourists experience its natural beauty--and this is the source of his main dispute with the chiefs. He suspects them of keeping the lake from tourists because they want to monopolize any development that happens there. All the urbanites, however, expressed horror at the thought of the lake being developed by anyone--rather they implored Mudzunga to leave it the way it is, leave it to the tshidudwane (30) who, in Venda tradition and Yeats's words, understand the enterprise of walking naked.

[FIGURE 18 OMITTED]

So Mudzunga's drums made their way to New York, taking the old mythologies in encoded form, in the very fabric and facture of his objects. They, like Yeats's coat, are being worn in the world's eyes, they are being used, exploited as all forms of heritage must be until they are no longer relevant, and only then can they be discarded in favor of mythological nakedness. For Mudzunga is a modern African, living with traditions with which he can play as long as there are sufficient traditionalists, either at home or in the world of international postmodern, and postcolonial high art, to provide him with an audience. But in New York, his drums were placed within the Cathedral of St John the Divine and the Museum of African Art, both temples of one kind or another. In the performance in the cathedral he engaged the canons of the Church to become his drummers as he performed his burial and resurrection sequence, aided only by his wife Dorcas. His work had thus, in the tradition of all "art" in the West, been thoroughly de- and re-contextualized in order to take on new meanings, to deliver fresh promises of new mythologies: In the absence of understanding the traditional coat, Mudzunga performed in a mythological nakedness, far from home, and with only the self-empowered blessings of his ancestors. And it seems that it is this very nakedness which constitutes the fascination of Mudzunga's performances for art audiences, who do not know, but sense, the unplumbed depth of the lake in which he swims as he enters the drum.

[This article was accepted for publication in June 2006]

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Murinik, T. 2004. "The Artists: Interview with Samson Mudzunga." In Personal Affects: Power and Poetics in Contemporary South African Art, vol. 1, eds. Okwui Enwezor, Tracey Murinik, and Liese van der Watt, pp. 103-105. New York: Museum for African Art and Cape Town: Spien

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--. 2002. "Les rois, des lacs et des traditions. La sculture chez les Venda." In Ubuntu: Arts et cultures, Afrique du Sud, eds. H. Joubert and M. Valentin, pp. 95-101. Paris: Reunion des Musees Nationaux.

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--.1985. The Traditional Figurative Woodcarving of the Shona and Venda. PhD diss., University of The Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

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(1.) I was unable to capture the lake in the mists with my camera and better photographs were difficult to find, largely because traditionalists made access to the shores very difficult.

(2.) Different versions give different accounts, the first king being variously recorded as Dimbanyeu or Thoho ya Ndou (see Van Warmelo 1932).

(3.) The Singo invasion is thought to have occured during the break-up of the Changamire empire further north, in present-day Zimbabwe (see Beach 1980).

(4.) They are also the custodians of other significant water spots, places of wonder and awe such as Phiphidi Falls, Tshipise and other hot springs, and Manaledzi Pool, in whose wetlands grow the clusters of sacred reeds used in Tshikona ceremonies (Kirby 1968), all of which sites are also prohibited to Singu under the old laws (see Phophi n.d.).

(5.) See Nettleton 1989 for an analysis of the ways in which Venda traditional leaders systematically exploited tradition to their own advantage.

(6.) Interview with Samson Mudzunga, Dopeni Village, 2004.

(7.) Interview with Samson Mudzunga, July 2003, Johannesburg.

(8.) See Murinik (2004:101) for Mudzunga's account of this--it clearly indicates the extent to which he was aware of upsetting traditions. It is also recounted in Coates 2001.

(9.) This is one point where my account contrasts dramatically with that presented by Tracy Murinik (2004) in the catalogue for the Museum of African Art. Murinik makes no mention of the tantalizing inveiglement offered to the urbanites--one or two nights, all expenses paid at the Mphephu Spa in Venda.

(10.) E TV is the only free television channel in South Africa that is not under the control of the state broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation. It is the only one that runs an arts slot.

(11.) It is clear from the questions I was asked by members of the curatorial team for the "Personal Affects" show that I was regarded as a possible font of knowledge, a role which I am reluctant to fulfill when it is clear that Mudzunga relies on mythology to provide mystery--his form of walking naked.

(12.) This name means "the drum of thunder": Lungundu is derived from the word thundundu, an onomatopoeic word for thunder in TsiVenda. The Singo claim they received the drum as they left the Changamire Empire in present day Zimbabwe on their trek southwards to Venda (see Nettleton 1989.)

(13.) Mmbe are taken from the stomach of a live crocodile in the water by a powerful healer/diviner and the king swallows them on his investiture, where they remain in his intestines till his death; see Nettleton 1989 for a more detailed explanation.

(14.) For full details of this symbolism see Nettleton 1985 and a shorter version in Nettleton 1989. The ideas of these traditions are also discussed in Nettleton 2002 and Kaplan 2000.

(15.) Interview with Samson Mudzunga, March 2005, Johannesburg. Mudzunga also seems to feel that the Tshikona would have less relevance in the metropole than at home.

(16.) Michael Stevenson, personal communication.

(17.) In a subsequent performance in Dopeni Village in 2005, Mudzunga finally did stage a Domba dance (Michael Stevenson, personal communication). Another performance is scheduled for September 2006, in which Mudzunga has transformed the drum into a big fish which he says he is going to launch into Lake Fundudzi itself. This could be the beginning of another chapter.

(18.) The presence of a light delivery vehicle in the forecourt for a large part of the performance is only one of many elements destablizing the picture of rural Africa that many would expect from the performances.

(19.) The drum had been produced by Mudzunga specifically for display in New York, with a second promised but not yet completed, although it is implied by Murinik (2004) in the catalogue that both drums were completed before this ceremony--at the behest of Michael Stevenson, a UCT PhD graduate and Cape Town Art dealer--and paid for (as was the whole trip) with money from the Spier Arts Foundation.

(20.) The decorations of this courtyard include a ceramic bulldog, a Kermit the frog, and a carved figure by Mudzunga, atop a mound next to the internal courtyard pool, a miniature Lake Fundudzi used by Mudzunga in earlier performances (see Coates and Hobbs 2001).

(21.) Murinik (2004:103-105) provides a transcript of part of what was a rambling presentation in the form of a typical rhetorical address which mixes praises with disclaimers.

(22.) Murinik (2004:103) records that Michael Stevenson acted the part of liberator, but she does not pay any attention to the home audience at all.

(23.) It is interesting to note here that the girls who dance in the Tshigombela group wear t-shirts sponsored by the Department of Water Affairs that admonish wise use of water.

(24.) Murinik's account of the escape from the drum is worth quoting in full, because it presents a pidgin version, such as those that Ben Amos (1977) suggested abound in tourist art, of the performance and because it is inaccurate in many of its details:

   Again, his timing is perfect ... the new drums are
   taken down to another setting, below the house, and
   Mudzunga is ready to continue his performance. The
   extraordinary Tshikona dance starts up again--a complex
   arrangement of pipe trumpets played to sound
   out a progressively hypnotic sequence, like pealing
   bells, impeccably coordinated with simultaneously
   complex dance moves. Mudzunga arrives in the center
   of the drumming circle, around which the dance
   is happening. He is wearing long grey pants, a long-sleeved
   cotton shirt, and brown leather closed shoes.
   He opens the door of the drum and manoeuvres
   himself inside. The door of the drum closes. And
   Mudzunga is officially "gone." The crowd rushes
   forward to see, aghast. The music starts up again and
   the drum that Mudzunga has just entered into is initiated
   and played.

   Tensions are high, the music is reaching a feverish
   pitch; at least fifteen or more minutes have passed
   since Mudzunga disappeared. And then as spontaneously
   as it closed, the door of the drum shoots
   back open. Carefully somebody emerges: he's wearing
   a white t-shirt that says "Suka Afrika Fundudzi,"
   short, stripy pants, echoing the fabric that lines the
   drum, white socks, and brown shoes. This is the new
   Samson Mudzunga (Murinik 2004:105).

(25.) These include an art film--equated with the Steven Cohen's filmed performances--filmed by John Hodgkiss, filmed interviews, and footage for E TV's arts program.

(26.) Or drums--at the time it was not certain that Mudzunga would get file second one out of the tree trunk in which it was still buried at the time of the Dopeni Village performance. He took Stevenson to see file tree to reassure him and in fact two drums were eventually displayed--see Perryer 2004 2:48-51. Both drums are reissues of earlier forms by Mudzunga, one a ngoma, one an airplane.

(27.) In an interview with Mudzunga in March 2005 in Johannesburg, Mudzunga could not tell me who the men were who had sung the praises with him--not in the sense that he did not know who they were, but in that he claimed to be unable to identify them as being from HaRamabulana. I encountered a similar vagueness from a woman at the performance who was claimed to be a chief, a queen in the area--she was unable to identify which area she claimed to be in charge of. Such claims to authority have arisen only since 1994 and many of them are considered quite suspect by various different factions within Venda ethnic politics. Pitso Chirazima recorded some of Mudzunga's views on traditional authority at the time of the Johannesburg Art Gallery performance (Chimzima 2003; see also Kaplan 2000 for an analysis of the politics of earlier performances).

(28.) Tracey Murinik and Churchill Madikida (curators), and Michael Stevenson (as the commissioning agent from Spier).

(29.) And one of the vehicles gets stuck in the mud and has to be lifted, pulled and negotiated out--apparently there are always mishaps at the Lake when he does this.

(30.) Tshidudwane are described by traditionalists as malevolent spirits inhabiting the environs of sacred watering places, who are naked, sometimes partial human bodies, but are always frightening at best or murderous at worst (see Phophi n.d.).