Amadoda on the verge (1835 - 2025)

Athi-Patra Ruga

31 Aug - 26 Oct 2024

Words by Milisuthando Bongela

Amadoda On The Verge of Ipambano, Impambuka, Isiphambano, Isiphambuka: The Clown of Fort Glamorgan [iHlanya laseFort Glamorgan] in the West Bank of the Buffalo River, 2024.

Impambuka

A crossroad Misguided
Saturday 9 May, 1835 eNciba, The Kei River

“As day broke, misty, and with occasional showers of cold rain, a living column one and a half miles in width and eight miles long began the slow descent into the Kei River, led by Henry Somerset, who had been detailed to escort them into the colony. Behind him, seated in a tilted wagon with his family, was their self-declared shepherd, John Ayliff. A long train of other tented wagons wound behind Ayliff’s. Then came some 17 000 Mfengu, and 22 000 cattle, as well as thousands of goats. The heavy mist that lay over the river at dawn swallowed each section as it entered the water, but as the sun rose, the entire spectacle was revealed, the men driving the cattle, boys the goats, women and girls laden with household possessions, all feeling their way across the bed of the stream with long staves, and singing an improvised song, ‘Siya Emlungweni’, ‘We are going to the land of the right people’, reflecting their belief that they were about to re-establish their independence as it had existed in the Natal before the upheavals of the Mfecane. To those watching this powerful scene, the obvious comparison was with the Israelites in flight from Egypt”.

- Noel Mostert, 1992

Abacand’ilizwe
The Cross Country-ers

Thursday 1 August, 2024

Harlem, New York

I haven’t left the house in days. Emotionally, I’ve been back home, in 1835 to be specific, immersed in literature, photographs and art works about the Eastern Cape frontier, its theater, its actors. Since I moved to New York this year, homesickness has become a novel pastime, having lived all my life in South Africa. Seeing said home reflected in the faces and landscapes of Athi Patra Ruga’s new series of paintings makes the weight of the yearning both comforting and burdensome. Despite the limitations of seeing them digitally, these paintings embody the paradoxical potency yokuthunuka nokuthuthuzela. Audaciously entering into the terrain of colonial expedition painters —— those pioneering brooms and feather dusters of conquest —— Amadoda On The Verge Of takes us to the scenes of the rumbling dust, ukukrazulwa nokukrazuleka, in what often appears to be behind the scenes outtakes of a 100 year land grab, seen from the perspective of the dust that was to be settled.

Historical texts about the 19th Century Eastern Cape frontier are literary museums of settler colonial racism, the malevolent benevolence of missionaries, the legacy of slavery and display the brick and mortar of the bedrock of apartheid. That the tailend of this history wags in our lifetime, that borders were still shifting in the last 30 years is the sobering and pivotal necessity of examining this particular work, which asks us to return to territories such as the Eastern Cape regions of Amathole, Albany and to both sides of the Kei River to examine iintsusa, to fetch some details needed to explore the origins of now.

For a long time, the works of colonial and wildlife painters like Thomas Baines (Jonny Fingo, Kaffirs having made their fortunes leaving the Colony) have been the de facto pre photography visual representations of the making of the British Empire. Part of their success in creating objective rather than subjective reference images for history was in their style of standardising era, landscape, flora, figures and fauna. Paintings of indigenous Australians and Africans are indistinguishable for example. Often, the distance of the perspectives of the painter to the scene was medium to wide, giving little room for nuance. Because of their appearance alongside historical texts, they had an authority of providing “the first reference point” of a historical event or person. I’m remembering my Standard 2 textbook and the images of a friendly Jan van Riebeeck landing at the cape, and how long it took for that friendliness to be unfrozen from my imagination later.

With Amadoda on the Verge, the artist —— who like me was born in Mthatha in the then unrecognized Republic of Transkei and grew up in East London —— strokes his brush to transform us, me and you from the general to the specific. To the details, not always of place, but of emotion, face and clothing, in a way that is both visually enticing and emotionally reviling.

Looking at these paintings as a person from the Eastern Cape shortens the distance between the imagination and memory. There’s an intuitive and often unconscious recognition of the place, evidenced in a painting like The Clown of Fort Glamorgan, where the birchwood tree evokes memories of being on the back of a school bus on the way to what was ‘Kaffrarian Girls High Schoovl’ in ‘King William’s Town’ for many a Derby Day in the late 1990s. We would pass Fort Glamorgan, whose brother forts Hare, Fort Beaufort, Fort Jackson, Fort Gale, Fort Cox etc are dotted around the Eastern Cape. Over time, these places have changed meaning from their origins as shields and shelter for colonists to being indigenised and disrobed of their Englishness. When you are from a place, it hardly occurs to you to question its nomenclature and its origin. But from the distance of leaving home, one day you begin to connect the dots between ‘Kaffir’ and ‘Kaffrarian. You wonder about King William and why he had a town in Africa. In the case of this work, you think about amaMfengu, who happen to be your parents. Ruga’s decision yokugoduka and return to this landscape to live in Hogsback or Qabimbola from Cape Town 4 years ago is perhaps the most striking quality of the spirit of these paintings. They are of the place they have been made, not by an explorer like Baines but by a native, who first had the idea of exploring The Clown after visiting his old primary school, which is within shouting distance of Fort Glamorgan in the West Bank of the Buffalo River.

Saturday 9 May, 1835

Ukutsitywa kwe litye likaPhugela

Siyaaaa Emluuuungweniiiii

Among those watching the Mfengu exodus from the west bank of the Kei River —— where today sits a Shell Ultra City reststop and a lonely traffic station in a building that once marked the border between the then Republic of Transkei and apartheid South Africa —— were British Lieutenant Colonel Harry Smith and his soldiers, the governor of the Cape Colony Benjamin D’Urban and their captives: The Paramount Chief of the Xhosa people, Hintsa ka Khawuta and his younger brother Bhuru. Hinsta was being charged with responsibility for starting the 6th Frontier War —— among other things needed to justify colonial land grabbing —— which had begun 4 months prior.

There is perhaps no greater image of biting the hand that fed you than the moment that Hintsa —— who took amaMfengu in when they were destitute refugees fleeing from Shaka’s mfecane —— saw his protegés from the other side of the river, full from the sorghum he gave them, leaving to join the enemies of the Xhosa, his captors. Ruga’s mother’s people are Mfengu. So are mine. As a direct descendent of at least one of the 17 000 Mfengu emigrés, I feel at liberty to wonder about the dastardliness of what our ancestors were choosing to do on this day. Were they leaving because they were suffering among the Xhosa? Or were they attracted to the prospects of the curious new world that the British were making here? Whatever the reasons, thousands of people don’t just pick up and uproot everything for nothing significant.

In The Clown of Fort Glamorgan [iHlanya lase Fort Glamorgan] the ‘Xhosa Tragedy’ of it all is laid bare behind the patina of Union Jack blues and reds and whites. Umhlekisi akahleki. His proximity to the fence suggests the fate of amaMfengu as agency-exercising fence-crossers fenced in by both their historical indifference to ubuXhosa and their indelible Xhosaness. He has painted clown’s eyes, probably with imbola or limestone in the traditional Transkei blue limewash or ikalika. His hair is Bozo-like but it’s also the red of the Xhosa warrior’s hair and body during battle, reddened through a process of extracting ammonia from goat pee. As traders, miners and tobacco farmers, it’s said that amaMfengu brought earrings to Gcalekaland among other things cultivated over their 1500 year occupation of modern day KZN. His is thick and glistening and appears as the finishing touch of a patchworked, Frankensteined selfhood ephaphayo, but which has also surrendered to its fate.

In The Provost was also Prisoner, the same eyes are painted with imbola emhlophe, or it might be calamine in his case, this time 5 looking back at the Gcaleka land he has left or ahead at the unknown territory of the Colony, which with his labour and imagination, he is about to develop, battle with and cross many times. His gaze is not hot with certainty but on the verge: about to do something or looking at what he has just done, esiphambukweni, still indifferent. And not sorry for his paper mache loyalty. His only loyalty is to his progress.

Amadoda:
Journey to the Verge

The 6th Frontier War began in the middle of the night in December 1834. The night of the short assegais. Hintsa had little to do with it but was implicated as the paramount chief. White men were killed. White women and children were spared, to which the British responded as they had since 1811, by scorching Xhosa earth, Xhosa child, Xhosa woman and Xhosa crop.
Incited by desperate, enraged Xhosa men and subjects of chiefs Maqoma, Nqeno and Bhotomane among others, amaXhosa were responding to a series of blood boiling provocations collectively resulting from the fact of being settled upon: dispossessed of their cattle or on the verge, dispossessed of their land or on the verge, dispossessed of their leaders or on the verge, being driven from pillar to post at the whims of the Colony, which was thriving from the fat of Albany.

Inside the colony, worried about their precarious fate, the war had been stealthily licensed by Khoi Khoi subjects of the relatively new British colony, who had just learned of their impending freedom when slavery was abolished in the British Empire in December 1834, much to the annoyance of the majority of settlers and Boer farmers.
The first attack was a surprise on the unprepared settlers: “On the colonial side, there was no sympathy nor even any real foreboding. If anything, a satisfied calm had settled upon the white side of the frontier: the future looked bright, assured,” writes Mostert.

Was this the brightness eyaphandla amaMfengu?

Ukuphambana

To cross
To go crazy
Sunday 10 May, 1835
Cape Governor Benjamin D’Urban officially advances the territory of Cape Colony beyond Grahamstown to the banks of the Kei River.

*

“To avoid the British taking them for hostile Xhosa, he gave the chief
who was to be their leader a European suit and the others 3 pieces of
white cloth to wave”.
If Baines’‘Loyal Fingo’, who as the Mfengu archetype is seen in profile heading towards an unknown place in the Colony or to battle amaXhosa, then Ruga’s Dyani Mfengu on the Kei River offers a moment of pause for this man who has been walking for nearly 180 years in an unknown direction. Taking Baines’ ‘Fingo’ and renaming him, Ruga’s Mfengu has paused and is posing for us to see him for the first time. His eyes have the look of respite but an undercurrent of vulnerability that knows he is not really at peace, that he is in a process. He wears the same rolled up blanket on his back, the same belt and the same rodent fur as in the original 1848 painting. But this time has larger ostrich feathers, denoting some relationship with abaThwa, the Khoikhoi, who would have likely been the only ones to wear green jackets as members of the Cape Mounted Regiment, the KhoiKhoi armed wing of the Colony, itself a kind of paradox. It’s in how seemingly resolved Dyan Mfengu is with his allegiance to ‘umlungu, emlungweni’ that troubles our often black vs white understanding of our history. That said, I see that tension in the ubiquitous alla prima format in this series that suggests Patra’s experience and confidence in localising this medium, continuing the painting tradition of the region premised by the likes of George Pemba and Gladys Mgudladlu.

Impambano

Intersection
Madness
Tuesday 12 May, 1835
While trying to escape his captors, Hintsa is killed inside a river at Harry Smith’s command. His head is exploded by gunfire, his ears cut off, his teeth removed and his body is abandoned on the side of the road to his Kingdom.
*
Ukuthwala

The hideous killing and looting of Hintsa was an act of violence that further recalibrated what was permissible in warfare from the perspective of the Xhosa world view. It’s the kind of rogue avarice that is being hallmarked in Gaza today, a disorganized and passionate land grab, rather than the polite strategic annexure Colonialism often disguises itself as. It did not hide itself in that moment of sobering brutality, in the same way that the colonial gaze is not a gaze, but always a stare, ukujamela versus ukujonga. Isithwalandwe saseGolgotha [The Crane of Golgotha] has an energy of violence, heat of the moment fervour, even sexual passion from the way that sky is painted, to the look on the sitter’s face, the way his neck is cocked. Golgotha is the ‘place of the skull’ in the Bible, the site of crucifixion. Where was this man when Hintsa’s skull was taken as a trophy to the U.K? Is he as self-possessed as he seems? His wearing of isithwalandwe, the blue crane feather crown historically awarded to the most valiant Xhosa warriors, gives the air of someone who was not awarded by his superiors but who possibly took it from a slain Xhosa, but with this seizure, he symbolically re-locates himself as an indigene of the land. As umMfengu, he takes his symbol of ‘civilisation’, the redcoat army fatigues of the British Army, and converts into the value system of shifting Xhosa manhood. The crack of the open jacket and cross on his chest may not ward off evil, but could be an invitation to innocence again, to a cleansing of yesterday and a thrust to tomorrow, to resurrection.

Bambelela esiphambanweni

Hold on to the cross
As the first Bantu speaking citizens of the Cape Colony, amaMfengu had crossed into a violent new world of self-drawing (ukuzizoba) identities as Christian converts and educated, rank-climbing, gun-wielding, boat-boarding, school-building, classist, culturally quilted people who as they co-wrote the script for modernity, became resented and despised by the Xhosa.
An air of vulnerability belongs to the young sitter in Tomorrow Belongs To Me, not unlike Dyani Mfengu at the Kei River. His recline suggests surrender or respite. He is not indoda in the Xhosa sense yet, but a man on the verge of a fringe manhood. His open jacket reveals ikhubalo, seen as a lucky charm by amaXhosa and an evil entity by amaZulu. The queerness of this ensemble, from the bejeweled hat to the pink sky spells the future that we are in, as perfect hybrids of Africa and the West. Sensible nonsense, like the diamonds in the pink
horizon, which layer us further into epic and infuriating self-making: The Republics Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei.

Siyazalana.
2 August, 2024 Harlem, NY

While riding an air conditioned 3 train on the New York City subway, on my way to supper with friends downtown, I notice a couple noticing me. The man, middle aged and handsome, is on some kind of assisted walking device. His wife, a good-looking even toned blonde smiles oddly as they plonk themselves in front of me. Their eyes have mouths
they can’t quite open for some reason, stealing glances of their vista, me.

Next to them, a delightful foursome of little girls and their mother, in white dresses with beads in their hair. Three of the girls wear thick glasses. I have not seen more sub-saharan faces and this kind of unbridled sibling joy in a while. Now it is me who is searching for eye contact. The couple across from me is itching to say something, to me, to the mother of this quartet. Then suddenly, their searching eyes make sense. I recognise the man’s black square badge from the Church of Latter Day Saints on Lenox Avenue, where these kinds of white people stick out like sore red thumbs in the heat of Harlem. They are missionaries. And then a man dressed in a blue windbreaker and tracksuit pants sits next to me, disrupting my projections. His demeanor is apologetic, his face dirty and his hands shaking. One of the missionaries wonders if he is going to touch me and my clean, pretty red dress. The man begins to mutter some things to himself. He smells himself and continues to mutter. I can’t hear him through my earphones but I can feel him, and I can feel the eyes of the other passengers looking at elihlanya labo.

My mind returns to Ruga’s clown. And I smile at the phenomenon of concentric time.