Stitches as sutures: trauma and recovery in works by women in the Mapula Embroidery Project.

The Mapula Embroidery Project is in the Winterveld, an area that is about 45 km (28 miles) north of Pretoria in South Africa. When Mapula (meaning "mother of rain") was started in 1991, the Winterveld was part of the so-called homeland of Bophuthatswana, and the project was intended to address the dire poverty of women in a region that was designated as "outside" of South Africa but where people's suffering was nevertheless the immediate outcome of policies of the apartheid government. Mapula has, however, seen particular development and growth since 1994, when it was reincorporated into South Africa and became part of the newly constituted North West Province. The post-apartheid government's Cultural Industry Growth Strategy focuses on the support of art projects that can generate income and foster job creation, and women in Mapula have benefited from a stress on sustainable development in a new dispensation.

Comprising initially about ten participants, the project now enables about ninety women to glean a regular monthly income from sales and approximately sixty others, who produce embroideries on a more irregular basis, to supplement earnings gleaned elsewhere. Mapula has also been recognized for its aesthetic achievements. When South African artist Walter Oltmann selected the project as winner of the prestigious FNB Vita Craft Gold Award (1) in 2000, for example, he commended the embroideries for their "dazzling fusion of imagery, color, and detail" as well as their "highly individualistic interpretations" of subject matter (Oltmann 2000:4). (2)

The earliest embroideries by members of Mapula (Fig. 1) tended to represent animals or flowers and were derived from illustrations in popular reference books on the flora and fauna of the continent or compilations of African stories or myths. Within a couple of years, however, their subject matter began to diversify considerably. In 1993, just prior to the first democratic election, women began finding sources for their embroideries in contemporary magazines and newspapers as well as posters and brochures. Allusions to South Africa's newly developed symbols of its nationhood began to appear, as did visual imagery and embroidered text that invoke advertising, popular culture, grassroots educational campaigns, and the topics of feature articles and news stories. There have also been a few recent embroideries by women in Mapula that are autobiographical and are derived from their makers' memories of formative experiences.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The works discussed here are not intended to reveal the full spectrum of subject matter used by the embroiderers, but are instead examples that are appropriate to an investigation of "trauma and representation" that is the focus of this issue of African Arts. I begin by focusing on works that represent contemporary South African political leaders and include symbols of nationhood. While these works are usually celebratory, they are by no means out of place in this discussion: People in the Winterveld suffered the impact of apartheid policies in ways that were especially invidious and traumatic, and images that rejoice in a new political dispensation are informed by that history. I follow this by examining works that deal with trauma in a more direct sense. In addition to discussing a recent cloth by Rose Kgoete that identifies a number of social problems that continue to compromise the quality of life of women in the Winterveld, I explore the meaning of various works in which AIDS, funerals, and international disasters feature as subject matter.

Women in Mapula often use imagery that is bound up with their anxieties as well as their aspirations in a transforming society. It should be stressed, however, that, while embroidery provides women with a mechanism to articulate concerns that they would feel unable to express in everyday discourse, their works do not necessarily record their experiences and attitudes directly. Indeed, the choice and treatment of subject matter is sometimes paradoxical. For example, embroideries that seem to speak of a Winterveld society that shares a commitment to dealing with AIDS are in fact the product of a "community" notable for its lack of cohesiveness and absence of capacity to unite to address issues of mutual concern.

As many of the images in Mapula embroideries are derived from published material of one variety or another, one would want to consider the relation between these "found" elements and women's lived experiences. Imagery chosen for the embroideries is certainly not a literal reflection of conditions in women's immediate social milieu, and members of the project often, in fact, represent events that they know about only through news reports or feature articles. However, women sometimes depict experiences that, while different from their own, seem to strike them as comparable. I will show, for example, that when the embroiderer Rossinah Maepa represented the funeral of ANC leader Peter Mokaba in 2002, she had in mind her own experience of attending the funeral of her brother a year earlier.

While it would be highly inappropriate to interpret women's use of pre-existing imagery as deliberate quotation and thus in this sense similar to the approach of contemporary artists working in postmodernist frameworks, Mapula works do make explicit their origins in published material. Many embroideries focusing on AIDS, for instance, include motifs and text that feature in educational posters and brochures. Likewise, Mapula works that represent news events include images that are clearly derived from magazines or newspapers, as well as text gleaned from either the headlines of feature articles or the captions accompanying their illustrations. While there is no evidence to suggest that embroiderers set out to comment on their source material, their works do nevertheless point to the ways in which the mass media may influence readers' thoughts and ideas. Indeed, as I will show through an examination of a work that represents the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, Mapula embroideries sometimes inadvertently highlight biases or stereotypes in their sources, and their choice and treatment of subject matter may end up drawing attention to the ideological underpinnings of the published material from which it is derived.

The Winterveld and the Mapula Embroidery Project

The Winterveld has a troubled history. In 1936, large farms throughout the area were divided into plots that were made available for purchase and agricultural development to black South Africans. New owners found it more profitable to rent land to tenants requiring homesteads near Pretoria, however, and population growth increased still further during the 1950s and 1960s as a result of the apartheid government's policy of forcibly removing black families from areas identified for white settlement. An apartheid policy of dividing areas of the country occupied by black people into independent "homelands" divested Winterveld residents of South African citizenship. Although 90% of the population are not Tswana speakers, the area was nevertheless incorporated into the ostensibly Tswana "homeland" of Bophuthatswana when it was granted independence in December 1977.

After it was assigned to Bophuthatswana, the population's already dire living conditions worsened. While non-Tswana people living in the area (including those who had been born in the Winterveld) were no longer designated as South African, they were also denied citizenship of Bophuthatswana; consequently, they had no automatic right to receive pensions or work permits. Poor standards of education presented a further problem. A ruling that registered schools should use Tswana as their medium of instruction resulted in the establishment of so-called private schools staffed by teachers whose levels of literacy were little higher than their pupils. The government of Bophuthatswana also failed to provide proper amenties, such as clean water, for the burgeoning population, partly because it lacked accurate estimates of the numbers of people living illegally in the Winterveld. As Sister Immaculata, who initiated literacy projects in the area during the 1980s, explains: "The population was given as about 100,000, whereas there might have been about a million people: nobody knew. So when the government did provide facilities, these were insufficient." (3)

In early 1979, a Winterveld Action Committee was established under the auspices of the Pretoria Council of Churches, and one of its agendas was the introduction of literacy and development projects in the area. This provided a framework for the Sisters of Mercy to build the D.W.T. Nthathe Adult Education Centre, which opened in 1984. (4) The Sisters also initiated a feeding program and ran two daycare centers, and the Mission provided a base for a "care group" of ninety-three women living in the area, who assisted the population with health care, applications for pensions or work permits, as well as such practical problems as transporting children to school (see Millard 1990:11).

The formation of Mapula was part of an initiative by the Pretoria chapter of the professional women's organization Soroptomists International to upgrade the living conditions of people in the Winterveld. A prime mover in starting the project was Karin Skawran, then professor and head of history of art and fine art at the University of South Africa (Unisa), a large distance-education university in Pretoria, and a Soroptomist, whose portfolio was "Literacy and Education." A number of University of South Africa staff assisted in the early stages, among them Janetje van der Merwe, who was then in the department of marketing and corporate communications. The Sisters of Mercy also played an important role in setting up the project. In addition to making available a room at the D.W.T. Nthathe Adult Education Centre for the embroiderers to use, they identified Emily Maluleke, a Tsonga speaker, as a local person who could supervise the making of works. (5)

Although minutes kept during meetings by the steering committee suggest that the initial aim was for Mapula to function independently, a withdrawal on the part of outsiders has never been realized. Janetje van der Merwe, who became a Soroptomist soon after Mapula was initiated and has training in the fine arts, handles the marketing of the works and provides assistance with the overall management of the project. While the project is rendered vulnerable through members' reliance on her, it needs to be recognized that the kind of growth and development that Mapula has seen since the mid-1990s is nevertheless unlikely to have occurred without her input. Van der Merwe has proved herself capable of building markets for the project and, more than anybody else, has committed her energies to Mapula and fostered relationships of trust and friendship with the women it supports.

Although only small-scale works, usually cushion covers, were produced in the first years of the project, women also began to embroider cloths in 1996. (6) Usually 3-5' (.9-1.5m) in width, cloths made possible a more detailed investigation of subject matter and thus the development of a wide variety of themes. The structure of the project has also undergone some changes. In early 1998, some women wanted to work on their embroidery at home rather than in a classroom at the D.W.T. Nthathe Adult Education Centre, and they elected Rossinah Maepa (see Fig. 3) as their coordinator. A Pedi speaker, Maepa was one of the first women to become a member of Mapula in 1991, and by 2005 was coordinating the activities of nearly half the women in the project. Emily Maluleke left the project at the end of 2001 and there have been changes in leadership of the group that continues to meet at the education center. (7) Additionally, a group of twenty-eight embroiderers who live some distance from the education center constituted themselves into a separate group toward the end of 2004. (8)

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

The subject matter of Mapula works is worked out informally. While some women always do their own drawings, others solicit assistance with design. Rossinah Maepa, who is approached by many women in her group, charges a small fee for supplying this service--normally R10 (the equivalent of about US$1.80) for a drawing on a cloth. Raymond Sibiya, a young man from the Winterveld, is paid a salary to make himself available to prepare designs for the group that meets at the school.

It is not always clear when van der Merwe has suggested a topic or when women have chosen it for themselves. Occasionally, as is the case with women's representation of 9/11, van der Merwe has received an indication from a collector that this subject matter would be of interest, and then, after meeting this request, women continue to use the theme. In other instances, van der Merwe will simply indicate that a particular kind of topic may be of possible interest to potential buyers and will leave it up to women to decide whether or not they want to pursue this suggestion. It should be stressed, however, that numerous embroideries are made without any immediate input from her. Also, when she does suggest subject matter, her motivation is not to limit women's freedom to make their own aesthetic choices but rather to increase the marketability of their works and thus to generate income for them.

Cloths are normally embroidered individually rather than by pairs or groups of women. The name of the embroiderer is written on a piece of paper that is tacked on to a completed cloth. While these markers of the embroiderers' identities have been left in place in some of the cloths photographed for this article, one imagines that most buyers would remove them. Their purpose is to identify the correct recipient for payment rather than to serve as a mark of authorship as such. (9)

When the cloths are completed, van der Merwe identifies those she feels are potentially suitable for inclusion in corporate or public collections or for private buyers on the lookout for distinctive Mapula pieces, and remaining works are disseminated to retail outlets. (10) Rossinah Maepa and Selinah Makwana (Fig. 3), a Pedi speaker who joined the project in 1993, have distinguished themselves as particularly capable in her eyes, and their works are less frequently found in shops than those of their colleagues. Selling a work without the involvement of a retailer can have a dramatic effect on an embroiderer's earnings. Van der Merwe is able to charge a private buyer or corporate client about R1500 (the equivalent of about US$250) for a work, deducting only about R200 to cover the cost of materials and thus enabling the embroiderer to earn about R1300. If, however, van der Merwe were to sell a work of the same size to a retailer, she would be obliged to bear in mind the large mark-up that the shop owner would introduce and would thus charge considerably less--perhaps R750 or R800 (which would result in about R600 or R700 going to the maker). What this means, in effect, is that an embroidery that van der Merwe perceives to be of high quality can fetch its maker an income double that paid to a colleague for a less-desirable work of the same scale.

While differential marketing on the basis of perceived quality has the potential to allow some women to establish themselves as talented "artists" and to glean more than the most basic income for their works, it is an approach that needs to be handled with caution. In the Winterveld, as in other areas in Africa where projects of this type have been initiated, an individual's too-visible success is liable to make her the target of suspicion rather than to automatically establish her as a role model. Women have supported the idea that van der Merwe should endeavor to achieve the best possible price for a cloth rather than charging a set amount for a work of a particular scale, but they are probably unaware of the implications of this pricing principle. Currently, the payment of each woman is a private matter and records of financial transactions are not made available to the group as a whole, but steps may need to be taken to ensure that embroiderers such as Maepa and Makwana do not begin to manifest obvious signs of their achievements.

Women in Mapula

Women joining the project are normally those who find themselves in desperate circumstances. Florence Resenga, a Tsonga speaker, provides the following account of her life prior to becoming a member of Mapula in the mid 1990s:

   I was born in 1950 in the village of
   Salboom. I did not go to school
   because of a lack of money. My parents
   passed away when I was still
   young. I moved to Louis Trichardt (11)
   in 1960. In 1964 I married Johannes
   Resenga. A few years later, Johannes
   took me to Winterveld. God
   blessed me with five children
   named Pinky, Nduma, Catherine,
   Jeffrey, and Devy. My husband
   passed away in 1989, and from that
   year I started to suffer. I began to
   sell fruit at Wonderboom station.
   The police would chase me because
   we were not allowed to sell fruit
   on the train platforms. But because
   of the shortage of jobs, I was forced
   to continue. (12)

While unique in some of its particularities, her story is nevertheless also typical of the kinds of difficulties experienced by other women in the project. Born into poverty-stricken households, denied access to a proper education, and subject to apartheid laws that restricted the mobility of black South Africans and limited their job opportunities, many members of Mapula nevertheless found themselves obliged to act as the sole breadwinners of their families. For example, Selinah Makwana (Fig. 3) is mother to seven children and has never received any support from their fathers. (13) Similarly, Dorcas Ngobeni, a Pedi speaker who joined Mapula in 1992, was abandoned by her Tsonga-speaking husband in 1998 and forced to support their three children alone. As she noted about eighteen months prior to her unexpected death: "My husband is staying with his other wife and does not care about us. I pay school fees and buy the children clothes with the money I earn." (14)

In a situation of extreme impoverishment, a project such as Mapula is likely to be perceived as a lifeline and, hardly surprisingly, it is common for more than one member of a family to belong to the project. For example, Selinah Makwana's daughter, Beauty, joined Mapula one year after her mother, when she was seventeen years old and still at school. In occasional instances, a younger woman might be the first in her family to join the project. Pinky Resenga, for example, became a member of Mapula in 1994, when she was twenty-four years old, and her mother (Florence Resenga) jobbed the project thereafter.

The Mapula project, which comprises women who speak different languages, is not envisaged by any of its members as a means of asserting an ethnic affiliation. In this regard it differs from, for example, the Chivirika project in the Mphambo Village in Limpopo, which consists of Tsonga speakers, or a needlework project in the village of Kwaggafontein in Mpumalanga, which is composed of Ndebele speakers (see Schmahmann 2000:130-34, 2001:43-62, and 2005:158-62 for background on these projects). In the Mphambo Village and Kwaggafontein, age hierarchies are pronounced and, more particularly, there is the potential for older and younger members to have conflicting objectives: While the former will often perceive the project as a means of affirming links to custom, the latter sometimes regard their participation as a step toward achieving economic independence. This distinction between the imperatives of older and younger generations of women is not operative in Mapula. In the same way that Mapula benefits an older generation of women, it offers younger women the possibility of generating earnings that, while modest, can provide basic sustenance for themselves and their children.

Symbols of Nationhood

In 2004, Selinah Makwana embroidered the words "Ten Year [sic] of Democracy--Reconciliation--Truth" in the form of a headline on a cloth (Fig. 2). Immediately below is a fist in a "black power" salute that is adjacent to the word "Amandla" and, below that, a stylized representation of the Union Buildings, the administrative center of government in Pretoria. Nelson Mandela appears in front of the South African flag and through the inclusion of the words "I love children," the cloth invokes reference to a role he frequently assumed during his term as president and in subsequent years--a benevolent host of parties for South African children and the driving force behind the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund. The current president, Thabo Mbeki, wears an AIDS ribbon and is shown at the base of the cloth. Also represented is former president F.W. de Klerk who, along with Mandela, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in securing a peaceful transition to democracy, as well as Tony Leon, the current leader of the Democratic Alliance, which is the second-largest political party in South Africa. Motifs such as a dog, airplane, helicopter, motorbike, bus, a number of smaller human figures, and a building identified as "First National Bank" (15) complete what might perhaps be interpreted as a straightforward celebration of the "new" South Africa--a country in which all citizens enjoy democratic rights, where individual hardship is ameliorated, and where differences between not only political leaders, but also the constituencies they represent, are settled amicably. If looked at in relation to the context in which it was made, however, the meaning of the work might be understood to be rather more complicated than it may at first seem.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Selinah Makwana's cloth has its origin in subject matter developed in embroideries by women in the Mapula project during 1993-94. Just prior to the first democratic election, South African leaders, most especially Nelson Mandela, began to feature as subject matter, as did such symbols as the new South African flag and the Union Buildings (Fig. 4). The introduction of large cloths in 1996 meant that it became possible to represent politicians and symbols of nationhood in the context of increasingly detailed or complex compositions. For example, an embroidered cloth that Rossinah Maepa made in 1999, the year of the second democratic election, was derived from a poster educating citizens how to vote, and its "voting house" is in fact an image of the Union Buildings (Fig. 5).

[FIGURE 4 & 5 OMITTED]

Embroideries such as these foster a pride in all things South African and, in this sense, appear to conform in a general sense with Thabo Mbeki's concept of an "African Renaissance." First articulated in 1996, Mbeki's African Renaissance was underpinned by a vision of South Africa as leading a regeneration of the continent. But what is perhaps even more notable is that many of the works seem to be most closely linked to a concept of South Africa as "the rainbow nation," a term first coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu but which conveys a sense of the endeavors to establish "national unity" by acknowledging ethnic and cultural diversity that was characteristic of the rhetoric of the ANC-led government throughout Mandela's presidency. This idea underpins those embroideries that celebrate not only black leaders such as Nelson Mandela or Thabo Mbeki but also--as is evident in Selinah Makwana's cloth made in 2004--white leaders such as F.W. de Klerk and Tony Leon. Indeed, one cushion cover, which was reproduced in a newspaper article in 1994, represented Mandela's negotiations with the right-wing Afrikaner Resistance leader Eugene Terreblanche. Equally, it underlies the juxtaposition of the South African flag and the Union Buildings--a combination that appears continually in Mapula embroideries and is seen here in Makwana's work as well as the two earlier examples by Rossinah Maepa (Figs. 4-5). If the South African flag signifies a new, all-inclusive, democratic society, the Union Buildings, a structure completed three years after the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, was envisaged as symbolizing unity among the white population specifically. As Marion Arnold points out, its architect, Herbert Baker, intended the two towers between its semicircular frontage "to represent unity between the Afrikaners and English. The prime aim of Union had, after all, been to heal the deep rift between white South Africans rather than to address black-white relations" (2005:3).(16) Selinah Makwana's 2004 embroidery is in fact rooted in the kind of political rhetoric that was popular when South African leaders were first represented in Mapula embroideries in 1993-94.

Makwana's reiteration of messages and imagery used in earlier embroideries is, in a pragmatic sense, bound up with a general leaning among African artists to reuse themes and motifs. But, in repeating the basic tropes of earlier embroideries, it seems that Makwana was also looking back to a time when the idea of a "rainbow nation" and the emphasis on nation building would have been especially compelling to people in the Winterveld. The vast majority of the Winterveld population conceived of themselves as inadvertent residents of Bophuthatswana rather than proud citizens capable of enjoying full civil rights. An article published in 1983 identifies an "atmosphere of suspicion, mistrust, and non-cooperation" as well as a lack of communal cohesiveness among the Winterveld's inhabitants (Commission for Justice & Peace et al. 1983), and this description of people's relations with one another was still accurate just prior to the first democratic election. For Makwana and other women in the Mapula project, political change in 1994 signified more than enfranchisement: It spoke in addition of the opportunity to forge some sense of identity within a larger group, indeed to attain a sense of belonging. If the symbols of a new sense of nationhood that first appeared in 1993-94 are interpreted as signs of their makers' aspirations in a new political dispensation, their reiteration in 2004 might perhaps suggest that, rather than being realized, they remain to some extent unfulfilled yearnings.

Unlike provinces such as KwaZuluNatal and the Western Cape, where other political parties pose a strong challenge to the dominance of the ANC, the North West Province has been an ANC stronghold since 1994. Given the location of the Mapula project, the ANC is undoubtedly the party of choice for the vast majority of its members. This does not mean, however, that women feel no disappointment in the ruling party's lack of capacity to address violent crime in the Winterveld or to wipe out poverty and remedy people's lack of access to education.

Unlike Makwana's cloth, a work by Rose Kgoete (Fig. 6), also from 2004, refers directly to a sense of frustration with South Africa's political leadership that is presumably felt by other Mapula women as well. The work includes the embroidered passage "WHAT DO YOU DO T. MBEKI [?]" in the form of a headline, and Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela appear in the center of the cloth. Around them are various embroidered vignettes accompanied by the words "Mothers [sic] abuse," "Street kids," "No foods [sic]," "I need Education," "Stolen car," "car hijack" and "Child Molest [sic]." While Mandela points toward these signifiers of social problems, Mbeki's folded arms convey a message that he is indifferent to these difficulties and reluctant to take action to remedy them. If Makwana's embroidery might be interpreted as nostalgic in its evocation of the "rainbow nation" rhetoric associated with Mandela's governance, Kgoete's contemporaneous work is a blunt statement of disillusion with the current ANC leadership's commitment to effect radical social change in the Winterveld.

Speech and Silence

A key issue of social concern that Kgoete does not invoke in her cloth is HIV/AIDS, which is perhaps surprising since Mbeki has been widely criticized for his stance on the disease. (17) AIDS has, however, been a theme in a number of Mapula embroideries and, as with cloths representing symbols of nationhood, these have a complex relation to the experiences and viewpoints of women in the project.

Women do not normally discuss AIDS in their day-to-day discourse. A further difficulty is that women in impoverished communities such as the Winterveld are often constrained by patriarchal social and cultural norms that limit their capacity to protect themselves against HIV infection. Catherine Albertyn (2003:599-600) indicates that such norms not only deny women the capacity to refuse sex with their partners or insist on condom use, but also foster an acceptance of male infidelity as an appropriate signifier of masculinity and place value on a female's procreative capacity as a sign of "womanliness." Hence, women in South Africa "are continually making trade-offs between HIV risk and their social status (derived from culture)" (Albertyn 2003:600).

Women in Mapula first began using AIDS as subject matter in 1999, when they were exposed to workshops run as part of the Paper Prayers Project organized by Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg. Kim herman, the director of Artist Proof and the founder of Paper Prayers, points out that the intention of the project was to run workshops through existing art-making centers that would promote AIDS awareness as well as encourage participants to visualize their newly acquired understanding of the disease. (18)

A motivation underpinning Mapula women's use of AIDS as subject matter for embroideries seems to have been to remedy the silence that normally accompanies topics that are considered shameful. In 1999, when I asked Emily Maluleke about a cloth on AIDS that she had recently completed (Fig. 7), she suggested that embroidery provided women with a mechanism to articulate issues of concern that they would not normally feel able to express. Depicting AIDS and the abuse of women or children--a topic which also sometimes features in Mapula embroideries (Fig. 8; see also Fig. 6)--could, she felt, serve a therapeutic function:

[FIGURE 6-8 OMITTED]

   Before I did a cloth on AIDS, I sat
   down and thought what is happening
   about AIDS. There are some
   ladies whose children are abused,
   and they don't want to talk to others
   but just keep quiet. After a time,
   though, they just cough that thing
   out. I thought that, if we make
   embroideries that deal with these
   things, then they might feel able to
   speak out. They will then tell others
   "I didn't feel well" or "something
   happened to my child." And then
   maybe something will happen.
   Most of our culture don't speak if
   their child has been abused or if
   they have been abused. They just
   keep quiet. Then after a long time
   they became ill. But if they had spoken
   out, maybe they would have
   received help from someone. (19)

Maluleke's choice of imagery in her cloth would seem to have a specifically didactic purpose. Drawn from an educational poster or brochure, possibly one that featured in the Paper Prayers workshops, it carries a headline "PREVENT AIDS USE A CONDOM" and includes an indication of ways in which the sharing of needles and razor blades might lead to a spread of AIDS. Its inclusion of two individuals seated in a garden along with the question "What does a person with AIDS look like?" is probably intended to indicate that people who are HIV positive but have not yet developed full-blown AIDS will not manifest visible signs of their condition (Schmahmann 2000:127).

Although advocating a use of condoms may seem surprising in works produced in the context of a mission run by the Sisters of Mercy, many Catholic organizations are not intolerant of the use of prophylactics in communities where AIDS is rife (Schmahmann 2000:127). The Sisters would be all too aware that instances of HIV transmission to newborn babies are common in South Africa and that there is a lack of infrastructure and funds available to support the rising numbers of AIDS orphans.

Like the example from 1999, a cloth that Maluleke embroidered in 2000 (Fig. 9) is derived from educational material-in this instance a publication with a focus on encouraging community cohesiveness in addressing the disease. The words "SHARED RESPONSIBILITIES" appear in a banner topped by the South African flag, and underneath the following words are embroidered:

   Not to be infected with HIV
   To inform and educate others
   about HIV/AIDS
   To be part of the struggle and
   solution
   To know how to practice safer sex

[FIGURE 9 OMITTED]

This emphasis on shared responsibilities is significant. While addressing cultural norms that foster silence about AIDS and lead to high-risk behavior poses a major challenge in communities throughout South Africa, transforming people's responses to the disease can be additionally complicated in contexts, such as the Winterveld, where there is a lack of community cohesiveness and where people are generally more focused on immediate and individual economic needs. Given a tendency among people in the Winterveld to perceive themselves as competitors for limited available resources, it is difficult to mobilize residents to participate in AIDS initiatives. This became clear when, in 2000, the Paper Prayers Project involved women in Mapula in the embroidering of small cloths, for which they were paid, that were subsequently auctioned in Boston and New York. While the organizers had explained that profits generated through the auction would be used to raise monies for the local Tumelong Hospice, some women failed to grasp the point of the fund-raising drive and instead felt that these monies should have been paid to them individually. (20) While a viewer unfamiliar with the context of the Mapula project might well glean the impression from this cloth that people in the Winterveld understand the need to collaborate to address the impact of AIDS, the work is in fact dependent on an educational discourse directed at addressing the lack of such an understanding. Rather than referring to attitudes that are prevalent in the Winterveld, it speaks of those that have a tendency to be absent.

Making cloths on the topic of AIDS can play a role in fostering greater awareness about its impact and causes, but, given deeply entrenched cultural norms that frame people's social interactions and self-understandings, it would be overly optimistic to expect that producing such embroideries would simply remedy a perception of the disease as shameful. Van der Merwe has observed that when a thirty-two-year-old Mapula embroiderer died of an AIDS-related illness in October 2001 (more than two years after AIDS had been introduced as subject matter in Mapula works), there was silence among women in the project about the cause of her death and no mention of AIDS at her memorial service. (21) While women may articulate fears about AIDS in their embroideries, this is not necessarily going to result in a total openness about it being the underlying cause of the disease and death of people in the Winterveld.

The way in which the subject matter of AIDS is sometimes treated in embroideries may also suggest a tendency to deflect focus from the particularities of the disease and its impact. A cloth embroidered by Johanna Mabunda and drawn by Rossinah Maepa in 2004 (Fig. 10) has some relation to Maluleke's embroideries in the sense that it represents an "Aids Day" educational event as well as a clinic. But despite its inclusion of AIDS education slogans such as "CARE ON [SIC] PEOPLE WHO HAVE HIV/AIDS," it is in fact considerably less didactic in its focus. The syringe and razor blade that Maluleke had included in her 1999 work in combination with the words "How AIDS is spread" also make an appearance here along with a condom (in the top right-hand corner), but in somewhat abstracted form: They seem, ultimately, to be parallels to such decorative embellishments as the birds, chickens, and floral forms that are also included in the work.

[FIGURE 10 OMITTED]

Mabunda's cloth is undoubtedly aesthetically exquisite, with its array of motifs in colorful hues and its rich details. Indeed, if evaluated in terms of its aesthetic qualities, one might well argue that its departure from the obvious didacticism manifest in the cloths by Maluleke is part of its strength. However, it also suggests that, rather than promoting alertness to AIDS in the community, motifs associated with its depiction may have simply become part of a visual idiom and the topic selected because it is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as marketable. If Maluleke envisaged that a representation of AIDS could create a mechanism for articulating fears that would normally be left unspoken, it is possible that some women in the project have not in fact grasped the implications of the educational material to which they have been exposed. Alternatively, given the various culture pressures that continue to limit women's agency in protecting themselves from infection, some embroiderers probably resist thinking about AIDS altogether.

The Private and the Public

Janetje van der Merwe encourages those needleworkers who have an aptitude for drawing to use subject matter that has a bearing on their personal experiences. Rossinah Maepa has produced a number of cloths that are autobiographical in content--among them an embroidery recording the funeral of Frans Maepa, her younger brother, who was murdered on June 10, 2001 (Fig. 11).

[FIGURE 11 OMITTED]

The topic was, in this instance, suggested by Van der Merwe, who felt that making this embroidery might provide Maepa with an outlet for her grief and a mechanism to reflect on her loss. Its purpose was not, however, to provide Maepa with an opportunity to produce a permanent personal memento of her brother. Regardless of the depth of her distress, Maepa's economic circumstances would not allow her this luxury, and it is highly unlikely that she would have had any inclination to keep the cloth rather than make it available for sale. (22)

Frans Maepa's coffin is represented in the center of the cloth, and Rossinah Maepa, dressed in a red skirt and green top, supports it on the right. As I have noted in a previous discussion of this work (Schmahmann 2004:20), Maepa articulates her own emotions through writing ("Just talk to me for the last moment please the last born of my mother" "I hate the gun," "I don't believe what I see," "We will remember you when the sunrise and the sunset," "Tell me why") as well as what appear to be her imaginings of her deceased brother's thoughts ("Don't cry for me cry for yourself and your children," "Don't worry about me"). While the cloth does not spell out the particularities of Frans's death, the cloth conveys a sense that violence is rife in the Winterveld and that this creates traumas in families forced to cope with its effects.

Maepa's cloth, while having immediate personal significance, would also provide the prototype for her depiction of a considerably more public funeral a year later--that of ANC leader Peter Mokaba, who died on June 9, 2002, and was buried on June 15, the day before Youth Day, which commemorates the Soweto up risings of 1976 (Fig. 12). (23) (The date of burial was thought apt because Mokaba became a leader of the school boycotts in the north during the uprisings and later the first president of the South African Youth League (24) in 1987.) The rendition and placement of the coffins in the two cloths are almost identical, as are the pots on coal fires represented on the far right of both works. Both also have cars in their bottom left-hand corners and buildings in their top left-hand corners.

[FIGURE 12 OMITTED]

Most media reports on Mocaba's funeral focused on the implications of mourners' periodic chanting of the slogan "Kill the boer, kill the farmer" (25) which the ANC youth leader had made notorious in 1994 when he had first used it at the funeral of activist Chris Hani. A repeat of this incendiary slogan at a funeral in June 2002 was particularly ill timed. As BBC correspondent, Alistair Leithead (2002), pointed out: "On the same day as the funeral, a farmer and his wife were killed in front of their son in KwaZulu-Natal, and opposition parties have drawn attention to the fact that 900 farms were attacked and 140 farmers murdered in South Africa last year." Complaints by political parties such as the Freedom Front and the Democratic Alliance resulted in a dispute as to whether the slogan should be outlawed as hate speech or tolerated in terms of freedom of expression, and the South African Human Rights Commission was tasked with making a decision about the matter. (26) Maepa makes no allusion to this controversy, however. Also, while she had frequently represented Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki in the past (see Figs. 4-5), she chose not to show their presence at the funeral. Instead, she focuses on a little-publicized aspect of the event: Deputy President Jacob Zuma "led the mourners in two songs, saying he had promised Mokaba that if he died first, he would sing for him" (ANC 2002).

In Maepa's work, the deputy president is not identified in terms of his political position but rather as Mokaba's "friend," and only a small number of mourners are represented. Three passages of biblical text are cited, ones that Maepa (a member of the Zionist Christian Church, which has a wide following in South Africa) presumably considered apposite for a funeral. Apart from the South African flag that appears in the top right-hand corner, there is little in the work to indicate that this was a public event with speeches given by South African leaders that focused primarily on Mokaba's political role. Instead, Maepa emphasizes ways in which a funeral provides the opportunity for family and friends to mourn the deceased and, despite the mention of the Mokaba Stadium in Polekwane in the cloth's embroidered text, she implies that the gathering was an intimate or community affair, much like the funeral of her brother a year earlier.

In her two cloths representing funerals, Maepa has in fact collapsed the boundaries between private and public histories or experiences. First translating an event with highly personal significance into a cloth made "public" through its availability for purchase and exhibition, she subsequently interpreted a national event in terms of her private experiences rather than the pre-dominant public discourse associated with it.

Interpreting News Stories

In addition to events publicized in the South African press, needleworkers have represented disasters that have been the focus of worldwide media publicity. In 2000, for example, some embroiderers who meet at the D.W.T. Nthathe Adult Education Centre produced cloths representing the disastrous floods in Mozambique. As one example (Fig. 13) that was drawn by Raymond Sibiya and embroidered by Gertrude Thenjwayo indicates, these works placed particular emphasis on South Africa's involvement in providing assistance to victims of the disaster, including the much-publicized rescue of a woman who had given birth while seeking refuge in a tree.

[FIGURE 13 OMITTED]

While the various embroiderers who used this subject matter presumably had no personal experience of floods, the theme would nevertheless have allowed for a focus on concerns and anxieties that were more immediate to them. Every adult woman in the project has undoubtedly at some time feared that she might not have the means to feed herself or her family, and the stress placed on the delivery of maize--a staple food in southern Africa--is significant. Also, given the fact that the Winterveld is home to victims of forced removals in the 1950s and 1960s, some older women in the project are likely to have memories of their homes being destroyed as well as the traumas and upheavals that such an experience would have involved. Apart from asserting their pride in belonging to a South Africa that offers assistance to its neighbors, a focus on the rescue efforts of South African emergency teams may have enabled women in the project to ameliorate fears that they themselves might again be subject to circumstances in which access to the basic amenities necessary to sustain life is compromised.

Another tragedy--the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001--would form the subject matter of works made a year later, this time by needleworkers in the group coordinated by Rossinah Maepa, who make their embroideries at home. These include a cloth drawn by Maepa that was embroidered by Pinky Resenga (Fig. 14). While Maepa relied largely on her prior representation of her brother's funeral to represent Peter Mokaba's funeral, she presumably recognized that the attack on the World Trade Center was too removed from her experience to depend on imaginative reconstruction, (27) The various details in the work are derived from copies of Time magazine supplied to her by van der Merwe.

[FIGURE 14 OMITTED]

A special issue of Time published on September 14 and devoted to the events three days earlier provided the source for most of the imagery (Time 2001a). The image of the planes hitting the towers and the embroidered text "First impact," "American flight," "Second impact," and "United Flight 175" have their origins in a diagrammatic representation of the disaster, as does the clock face. Three figures in the bottom left-hand corner are derived from a black-and-white photograph of traumatized survivors that appears alongside the editorial, while the figure on their immediate right has its origins in a photograph of fire fighters. (Resenga, who presumably did not see the original, has translated the fire fighter's black garments with yellow bands into a jaunty multicolored outfit.) the figure toward the bottom right-hand corner is derived from a photograph of blood donors, and the adjacent words "Laying down their arms" are lifted from its caption. The candle placed between the two towers is taken from footage of a candlelight vigil, and the figure below it--although multicolored and seeming to wave a weapon--is actually based on a photograph of the Statue of Liberty in the wake of the disaster. Time also published an image of desperate individuals falling or jumping to their death. But while the victims in the photograph are tiny silhouettes framed by a large expanse of building and sky that emphasizes their vulnerability, Maepa elected to enlarge these figures, and the words "Oh God be with me" would appear to be her own interpretation of the sentiment of one of these individuals.

Maepa did not, however, limit herself to the photographs appearing in the special issue of Time, as she might well have done, but also selected imagery from subsequent editions of the magazine. While the special issue contained mainly photographs that documented the sequence of events and emphasized the enormity of the tragedy, the additional discourse she drew on offered analysis of the implications of the attack as well as the identification of its possible perpetrators. This is significant. While there is no evidence to suggest that Maepa was setting out to offer any kind of political critique, her representations of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden in the top right-hand corner of the cloth (Fig. 15) nevertheless seem to offer inadvertent commentary about the messages conveyed in news stories.

[FIGURE 15 OMITTED]

While Bush appeared in three photographs of the special issue of Time, Maepa preferred an image of the US president in a short article on him that the magazine published considerably later, on October 22 (Carney and Dickerson 2001). In this later photograph by Karen Ballard (Fig. 16), Bush is shown with a stoical expression and hand on heart, a pose that brings to mind a gesture of allegiance as well as qualities of sincerity and empathy. Bin Laden, in dramatic contrast, is shown with wagging finger, a gesture often associated with apartheid leaders--P.W. Botha in particular--and one that Maepa presumably associated with authoritarianism and oppression. The stark opposition between "good" and "evil," between an apparently virtuous leader working in a spirit of moral rectitude and an iniquitous "other" who threatens the fabric of civilization, tallies with the predominant message conveyed in American news briefings and broadcasts in the weeks following the tragedy. In the Mapula cloth, however, the contrast is made so baldly and through such simplified forms that, rather than being even remotely persuasive, it reads as a caricature of that discourse.

[FIGURE 16 OMITTED]

The caption accompanying an illustration of Bin Laden that was published in Time on September 24 identifies him as "AMERICA'S MOST WANTED" (Time 2001b:11), a phrase that Maepa has transformed into "Most wanted man." Maepa has, however, ignored the drawing of Bin Laden that this text accompanied and has instead based her portrait of him on an illustration by Edel Rodriguez in the issue of Time published on October 15 (Fig. 17). Interestingly, the illustration she chose was not of Bin Laden at all, but of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. It is plausible that Maepa knowingly selected a source image that was not of Bin Laden because it provided an appropriate prototype for showing a tyrannical individual. However, if she thought that Rodriguez's drawing of Omar was actually of Bin Laden, as is also possible, her confusion would point to a somewhat generic representation of Muslim leaders in news stories published in the West. (28)

[FIGURE 17 OMITTED]

Conclusions

Women in Mapula began to use contemporary magazines, newspapers, posters and brochures as source material for their embroideries in 1993-94. This created a mechanism for them to represent issues of current concern rather than to focus exclusively on illustrations of flora, fauna, or African myths, as they had done in the first years of the project's existence. Among the various topics that emerged were ones speaking of trauma and suffering-the impact of HIV/AIDS infection or domestic violence, the ordeal of burying a family member or friend, the tribulation of having one's personal safety and security threatened by natural disaster. My exploration of a selection of examples suggests that Mapula embroideries have a complex and intriguing relationship to anxieties and aspirations of women in a transforming society, and that they provide a forum for members of the project to articulate concerns they might otherwise feel unable to express. I also hope to have indicated that, even when women represent events they know about only through news reports and feature articles, their choice and treatment of subject matter is nevertheless often intricately bound up with their own experiences, viewpoints, and personal histories. Finally, I propose that, while this was not an intention of their makers, some Mapula works may end up pointing to the ideological underpinnings of the mass-media images from which they are derived.

[This article was accepted for publication in June 2005.]

References

Albertyn, Catherine. 2003. "Contesting Democracy: HIV/AIDS and the Achievement of Gender Equality in South Africa." Feminist Studies 29 (3):59-615.

ANC. 2002. Daily Briefing to South African Press Association (Sapa) on June 15. http://www.anc.org.za/anc/newsbrief/ 2002/news0618.txt.

Arnold, Marion. 2005. "Visual Culture in Context: The Implications of Union and Liberation." in Between Union and Liberation: Women Artists in South Africa, 1910-1994, eds. Marion Arnold and Brenda Schmahmann, pp. 1-32. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Carney, James, and John F. Dickerson. 2001. "A Work in Progress." Time 158 (October 22):43.

Commission for Justice & Peace, Archdiocese of Pretoria, and The Winterveld Action Committee of the Pretoria Council of Churches. 1983. A Profile on The Winterveld. (Pamphlet)

Leithead, Alistair. 2002. "Row over South Africa Funeral." BBC News, June 17. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/ 2050188.stm.

McGeary, Johanna, and David Van Bierma. 2001. "Inside the Conspiracy: The New Breed of Terrorist." Time 158 (September 24):38-46.

Millard, Sue. 1990. "Winterveld: The Festering Disgrace on Pretoria's Doorstep," Pretoria News February 1:11.

Nhalpo, Thuli, and Sapa. 2003. "'Kill the Boer' Slogan Is Hate Speech--Tribunal." [Johannesburg] Star, July 18.

Oltmann, Walter. 2000. "Judge's Statement." FNB Vita Craft Now (exhibition catalogue), pp. 4-5. Pretoria: First National Bank.

Schmahmann, Brenda. 2000. "Making, Mediating, Marketing: Three Contemporary Projects." In Material Matters: Appliques by the Weya Women of Zimbabwe and Needlework by South African Collectives, ed. Brenda Schmahmann, pp. 119-36. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

--. 2001. "Developing Art Projects via a Public Commission: Needlework in the Mpumalanga Legislature." De Arte 64:43-62.

--. 2004. Through the Looking Glass: Representations of Self by South African Women Artists. Johannesburg: David Krut.

--. 2005. "On Pins and Needles: Gender Politics and Embroidery Projects before the First Democratic Election." In Between Union and Liberation: Women Artists in South Africa, 1910-1994, eds. Marion Arnold and Brenda Schmahmann, pp. 152-73. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Time. 2001a. 158 (September 14).

--. 2001b. "Starting Time." 158 (September 24):11.

(1.) The FNB Vita Craft Competition, which was first held in 1995, is the major craft competition in South Africa and is one of various First National Bank (FNB) Vita awards for the creative and performing arts. The competition is organized in cooperation with the National Crafts Council of South Africa and includes an exhibition.

(2.) Since 1994, works by Mapula members have begun to feature in the permanent holdings of South African art museums and local corporations. Furthermore, works by Mapula have been used in the context of official or government-sponsored events. In 1998, for instance, they were used as backdrops at the ambassadorial reception for the South African soccer team in France, and the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology has selected works by Mapula for inclusion in official displays of South African art overseas, such as the "Celebrate South Africa" festivities held at the Oxo Tower in London in 2001. Mapula works have also been included in number of temporary museum exhibitions. While some of these shows were surveys of contemporary South African art or art by women, others focused on needlework specifically: "Embroidered Impressions" held at the Pretoria Museum in 1995 and on the Greek island of Naxos the following year, is one example, and "Material Matters," an exhibition held at five major galleries in South Africa in 2000 and 2001, is another.

(3.) Sister Immaculata, interview conducted by the author, Pretoria, South Africa, April 3 2002. I cite this interview and give a similar synopsis of conditions in the Winterveld during the apartheid years in Schmahmann (2005:165-168).

(4.) Sister Immaculata commented on the choice of the name for the center: "I went to Ireland on a trip in 1986. When I came back I discovered the place was now called D.W.T. Nthathe. The reason for that was that Mr. Nthathe was in the old Bop [Bophuthatswana] government and was in charge of education. And the only way we could get it registered was to name it after him" (Sister Immaculata, interview conducted by the author, Pretoria, South Africa, April 3 2002).

(5.) My information about the circumstances of the founding of the Mapula project has been gleaned from informal conversations with Janetje Van der Merwe as well as formal interviews with her conducted in Pretoria, South Africa, September 12, 1999 and April 1, 2002; also interviews with Karin Skawran, Pretoria, South Africa, April 3, 2002, and Antoinette du Plessis, another Unisa staff member involved with the project in the early years, Pretoria, South Africa, September 15, 1999.

(6.) In Schmahmann 2000:124, I note: "Initially these cloths were conceptualized as items that would be placed on a table. A central motif would be surrounded by smaller motifs that were arranged to accommodate viewers who would be positioned at various points around the table. If cloths of this type were hung on a wall, some motifs would be upside down. Since 1998, however, most of the cloths have been structured in the manner of 'pictures' designed to he placed on a wall: although they contain no loops to facilitate hanging, motifs are set out in such a way that the cloth has a 'top' and a 'bottom.' The 'table top' form is now used only occasionally."

(7.) Dorcas Ngobeni took over her role as coordinator of the group who meet at the school. Sadly, Ngobeni died after suffering a stroke in 2003, and Doreen Mabuse took over as group coordinator.

(8.) At the time of writing, this newly formed group had not yet elected a coordinator.

(9.) No record is kept of the person who may have devised the design for the embroiderer, however, and my identification of Raymond Sibiya and Rossinah Maepa as the author of certain designs is the outcome of research.

(10.) This is by no means done in an ad hoc fashion. Van der Merwe makes still further discriminations, sending works she regards as being of better quality to outlets such as the Kim Sack Gallery or Arts Africa in Johannesburg rather than to less-established shops. Some of the embroideries--normally those that Van der Merwe regards as least impressive--are marketed at the Magnolia Dell Fair, held monthly in Pretoria. While showing works at Magnolia Dell affords the project little prestige, it provides opportunities for Mapula women to do the selling themselves and thus to have some immediate contact with buyers.

(11.) The name of this city was changed to Makhado in 2003. Previously in the Transvaal, it became part of the Limpopo Province after the first democratic election. Makhado is in the far north of South Africa, close to the border with Zimbabwe.

(12.) This commentary is from an unpublished document by Florence Resenga. In 2001, Janetje van der Merwe encouraged women in the project to write their live stories, whether written by themselves, if they were literate, or narrated to a literate friend who would transcribe; fifteen documents had been produced by early April 2002. Women in the project assisted each other in producing these transcripts, enabling those who are entirely illiterate as well as those unable to write in English to be included. I have edited this passage slightly.

(13.) Selinah Makwana, interview conducted by the author, Winterveld, South Africa, April 2, 2002. Interpreted by Phyllis Dibakwane

(14.) Dorcas Ngobeni, Unpublished transcript of life story, 2001-2002. See note 12 above.

(15.) Makwana was one of the embroiderers who showed work when Mapula were winners of the FNB Vita Craft Gold Award in 2000--hence her identification of this institution in particular.

(16.) The association of the Union Buildings with not only colonialism and white rule but also patriarchal power was challenged famously on August 9, 1956. Women marched to the Union Buildings to present a petition to the apartheid leader, President Strydom, protesting the notorious pass laws, which restricted the movement of black male South Africans and had been extended to include black women. This march was commemorated in a monument that South African artist Wilma Cruise made in collaboration with architect Marcus Holmes and was inaugurated on August 9, 2000. A multimedia installation that includes a Zulu grinding stone placed on a bronze plate, it is in the vestibule of the building. This site is important. As Arnold observes: "The vestibule, defining the north-south axis of the building, offers a view of Meintjies Kop to the north and the city to the south. Thus the site assumes particular significance for Cruise's installation: while celebrating South African women it is also intended to symbolize reconciliation between black and white in a new South Africa" (2005:26). In a sense, then, Mapula women's reworking of the Union Buildings in their embroideries tallies with the challenge to white as well as patriarchal power that had been manifest in the 1956 march and, subsequently, in the memorial by Cruise and Holmes.

(17.) in 2000, Mbeki supported dissident scientists who questioned the link between an individual's HIV-positive status and his or her development of AIDS and made confusing claims that AIDS is caused by poverty. His controversial views were a topic of focus at the 13th International AIDS Conference, held in the South African city of Durban in July 2000, as was his refusal to make anti-retroviral drugs available to HIV-positive pregnant women or rape victims on the grounds that they were poisonous. It was only in November 2003 that the South African Cabinet approved a plan to make anti-retroviral drugs available at low or no cost to the population, the aim being to reach about 1.2 million people by 2008.

(18.) Kim Berman, telephonic interview conducted by author, March 10, 2005.

(19.) Emily Maluleke, interview conducted by author, Winterveld, South Africa, September 15, 1999.

(20.) A contrast might be drawn between the Mapula women's response to this initiative and that of women in the Chivirika Embroidery Project in the Mphambo village in Limpopo. The Chivirika embroiderers, who often collaborate closely in the making of works and pool resources, also have a strong commitment to developing their community. In that context, the Paper Prayers initiative was extremely well received and the monies raised through the auctioning of works were used to give the embroiderers training to be carers of AIDS victims.

(21.) Janetje van der Merwe, interview conducted by author, Pretoria, South Africa, April 1, 2002.

(22.) As it happens, Van der Merwe purchased the work for her own collection.

(23.) Born in Mankweng near Pieterburg (now Polekwane) on January 7, 1959, Mokaba was detailed twice under the Terrorism Act, first in 1977 and again in 1982. Tried in 1983 for his activities as a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, he was sentenced to six years on Robben Island but his conviction was set aside and he was released in 1984. Elected to Parliament in 1994, he was Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism during Mandela's period in office and a member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC from 1991. While it is generally believed that Mokaba's death was AIDS related, the official explanation was that he had contracted pneumonia resulting from a respiratory problem. This probable masking of the circumstances of his death is not surprising. Mokaba was one of the authors of an ANC document promoting dissident views of AIDS and was eventually requested to discontinue denying the existence of HIV and claiming that antiretroviral medicines were poisonous.

(24.) This body became the ANC Youth League after the unbanning of the ANC in 1990.

(25.) The literal English translation of the Afrikaans word "boer" is simply "farmer." It is, however, sometimes invoked in colloquial speech to imply a white Afrikaans-speaking male with right-wing leanings or a traditionalist identity.

(26.) On July 18, 2003, the findings of the South African Human Rights Commission was released, with Professor Karthy Govender announcing that "The slogan 'kill the farmer, kill the boer' as chanted at an ANC youth rally in Kimberley and at Mokaba's funeral is hate speech as defined in section 16(2)(c) of the constitution" (Nhlapo and Sapa 2003).

(27.) Although Maepa had focused on plane travel in works made a few months earlier, these did not lend themselves to adaptation for a representation of the attack on the World Trade Center. An invitation from the Department of Arts and Culture to attend the "Celebrate South Africa" festival in London could only be accepted if she were able to obtain a passport at short notice. In a cloth in which she articulated her anxiety that her travel documents would not be produced in time, Maepa included the words "Take me without a passport please" alongside a woman--presumably a self-representation--who seems to look towards a plane that she had, at that stage, seen only from a distance, in a subsequent cloth she recorded various details of her trip and placed particular emphasis on her excitement at experiencing air travel for the first time (see Schmahmann 2004:40).

(28.) Maepa's representation of Mohammed Atta on the top left hand corner of the cloth would appear to be indebted to an article appearing in Time on September 24 that investigated the conspiracy and the people possibly involved (McGeary and Van Biema 2001). The caption to the photograph of Atta in Time was cautious, indicating that he was only alleged to be the pilot responsible for the first impact: "Suspected as the pilot who hit the north tower, he had lived in Germany and studied aviation in Venice, Fla." (McGeary and Van Bierma 2001:38). Maepa, however, has removed the word "suspected" and instead labels her portrait with the words "as the pilot who hit the north tower." By making such an adaptation, she indicates--completely unintentionally--how speculations reported in the media can readily be misinterpreted as fact.