Mother Tongue

In the 1940s a remarkable visual renaissance began to take shape in South Africa. The Ndebele are a people of Nguni origin, living in the Highveld to the east of Pretoria. Before the Apartheid years, they lived in and amongst other ethnic groups and were in danger of losing their spoken language, which was loosing ground in favour of the more prevalent Sotho-Tswana language. This became the impetus for the Ndebele cultural renaissance, driven by the effort of Ndebele women who, while unable to write, posessed a highly articulate architectural and visual language. The women understood lessons learned from the adornment of the body, and reapplied what they knew to architecture. This is how from the 1940s to the 1980s, a distinct visual identity was formed to defend against the disappearance of a spoken language.

This vibrant art form came into being during a time when Ndebele culture was under considerable pressure. The Ndebele minority were initially forced to work as indentured labourers at the turn of the last century. As a result they became labourers on Boer farms, before being moved onto the government grid at KwaNdebele. The housing format of the grid was a method of control and power, and culturally impactful as the Ndebele people traditionally lived in a formation that showed respect across position age and gender. The art form that emerged can therefore be understood as partly political protest, and partly as a way to give the scattered group’s language a visual identity.

At the time, it was the Ndebele women who stepped in to keep their culture alive. Ndebele women used the female coming of age ceremony (known as ‘ugutombisa’) as a means of keeping their folklore and language alive. The ceremony was accompanied by decorating one’s home, and this led the Ndebele to develop their visual language across beadwork, mural painting, sculptural embellishment and formal gardens. 

Extract from the Geometric Issue. Words by Peter Rich, images by Ed Suter.