ii 
 

  

  

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 

Wits School of Arts 

 
 

 

 

  

History, Gender and ‘New Practices of Self’:  

Re-interpreting Namibia’s Independence War through the work 

of Tuli Mekondjo and Helena Uambembe 
 

 

 

Julie J. Taylor 

Student Number 1284282 

Supervisor: Nontobeko Ntombela 

April 2021 

 

 

This research report is submitted to the School of Arts, Faculty of Humanities, 

University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements 

for the degree of Master of Arts in History of Art by Coursework and Research 

Report (ACA00). It has not been submitted before for any degree or examination 

in any other university. 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



iii 
 

 

 

 

 

 

  
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 

School of Arts 

 
SENATE PLAGIARISM POLICY 

Declaration by Student 

 
  

I  JULIE J TAYLOR (Student number: 1284282 ) am a student registered for the MA in 

History of Art in the year 2020.  I hereby declare the following: 

• I am aware that plagiarism (the use of someone else’s work without their 

permission and/or without acknowledging the original source) is wrong. 

• I confirm that ALL the work submitted for assessment for the above course is 

my own unaided work except where I have explicitly indicated otherwise. 

• I have followed the required conventions in referencing the thoughts and ideas of 

others. 

• I understand that the University of the Witwatersrand may take disciplinary 

action against me if there is a belief that this is not my own unaided work or that 

I have failed to acknowledge the source of the ideas or words in my writing.  

  
Signature: 

 

  
   

 

 

 

Date:  20 April 2021 
 

  



iv 
 

 

History, Gender and ‘New Practices of Self’:  
 
Re-interpreting Namibia’s Independence War through the work of Tuli 
Mekondjo and Helena Uambembe 
 

Table of Contents 
 

Abstract and Keywords 

Acknowledgements 

List of Figures and Photographs 

Map of the Region  

 

Introduction and Overview…………….…………………………………………………..1 
Chapter Overview…………………………………………………………………………….2 
Research Origins and Positionality…………………………………………..……………...…4  

Artist Relationships, The Borders of Memory exhibition and Research Methods……..5 

Race, Art History and Art Commerce in South Africa………………………..…….…8 

The Gallerist-Researcher Nexus and Dialectic Approaches………………………...………..11 

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...……….14 

 

Chapter 1: Historiography and Art-Making 
 

Namibia Imagined: Empire, Historiographical Absences and Transnationalism…….………16 

South Africa and Namibia: Empire, Coloniality and Art History………………………..16 

Nation, Transnationalism and Patriotic Histories…………………………….…………..18 

Is the Artist an Historian? History-Making, Art-Making and the Archive……….…………..19 

Making and Gaining Knowledge through Art……………………………………………20 

Making Art With History, and Interdisciplinarity………………………………………..22 

Mobilising the Archive in Flux…………………………………………………………..24 

“New Practices of Self” in Southern African Contemporary Art………………….…………26 

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………28 

 

Chapter 2: War, Land, Gender and Spirit: Counter-Rupture in the Practice of Tuli 
Mekondjo 

 

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..30 

Disrupture: War, Exile and The Archive, Exile……………………………………………...31 

“For How Long Must We Wait?”: Accessing and Mobilising the Archive……………...31 

SWAPO in Exile: Gender, Children and Authority-Making……………………….…….34 

Burning Aftermath: Memory and Contestations for Cassinga…………………………...38 



v 
 

Stitching Namibia’s ‘Red Line’: Colonialism, Land & Space……………………..…………43 

“Photographs always escape their boundaries”: Looking at Meme Nekaya/Spiritual 

Embodiment of Meme Nekaya………………………………………………………….....….48 

Possession: Spirituality, Gender and Counter-Rupture in Performance………………..…….54 

Conclusion:…………………………………………………………………………………..58 

 

Chapter 3: Dis-Placement: The Military, Gender and the Transnational in the work of 
Helena Uambembe 

 

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..60 

Dis-Placement: Nation, Race and Gender in the SADF 32 Battalion 

Transnational Identities and “Taking Sides”……………………………………………..62 

War, Displacement and Legitimacy in  History-Telling………..………………………. 63 

Gender, Place, Memory and Materiality in Lembrança de casa (Memories from Home)…...65 

      Gendering the Buffalo: The War always at Home and the Unspoken Tent………….…..66 

Samakaka and ‘Flagging’ Angolan-ness…………………………………………………76 

Gender, Domesticity and Violence at Buffalo…………………………………………...79 

Memory, Materiality and Performance…………………………………………………..80 

Performance, Gender and Trauma……..…………………..………………………………...82 

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………86 

 

Conclusion and Research Outlook………………………………………………...……..87 

Appendices 

1. Additional Figures and Photographs…………………………………………….91 

2. Selection of Artist Statements, Interviews and Email Exchanges 

a) Email exchanges with Tuli Mekondjo about the Red Line……………….….97 

b) Tuli Mekondjo Artist Statement for The Borders of Memory…………….….98 

c) Email exchanges with Tuli Mekondjo about Archival Permissions……...….99 

d) Tuli Mekondjo Statement about “Kaleipo Nawa”……………………….…103 

e) Tuli Mekondjo Artist Statements about various individual artworks………104 

f) Tuli Mekondjo Q&A about her “Forest Series”……………………………107 

g) Email exchanges with Frieda Lühl and Tuli Mekondjo about Windhoek  

exhibition……………………………………………………………………108 

h) Interview: Julie Taylor with Tuli Mekondjo, 21 Feb 2021…………………112 

i) Helena Uambembe Q&A for The Borders of Memory Catalogue………….116 

j) Interview: Julie Taylor with Helena Uambembe, 7 Feb 2021……………...118 

k) Q&A with Julia Rensing and Sindi-Leigh McBride, University of Basel….125 

 

 

 



vi 
 

3.  Guns & Rain Gallery Newsletters and Invitations 
 

a) Exhibition invitations sent on 9 April 2020 …….………………………….127 

b) Exhibition opening reminder sent on 15 April 2020 ……………………….131 

c) Exhibition opening Zoom link sent on 20 April 2020 ……………………..134 

d) Whatsapp exhibition invitations and Instagram Live Screenshots…………137 

 

4.  “Dilemmas, Disruption and Displacement”: materials pertaining to Lennart 
Bolliger’s online lecture and panel discussion with the artists 

 

a) Notes from preparatory meeting with Bolliger, Uambembe and Mekondjo..144 

b) Online Opening: Audience Zoom Chat Comments, 15 April 2020………...148  

c) Julie Taylor Speaking Notes for Bolliger Lecture & Panel Discussion, 21 

April 2020…………………………………………………………………..153 

d) Lennart Bolliger Lecture Transcript, 21 April 2020………………………..155 

e) Transcription of Online Panel Discussion on Zoom, 21 April 2020………..159 

f) Panel Discussion: Audience Zoom Chat Comments, 21 April 2020……….169 

g) Excerpts of Attendee Feedback about Panel Discussion 21 April 2020  

received by Julie Taylor via Email in April 2020…………………………..172 

h) Email exchanges with Tuli Mekondjo about Oshiwambo translation……...174 

i) Bolliger Lecture Translation in Oshiwambo……………………………….176 

j) Bolliger Lecture Translation in Portuguese………………………………...181 

 

 

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………….186 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



vii 
 

Abstract 

 

The biographies of artists Tuli Mekondjo and Helena Uambembe have been fundamentally 

shaped by Namibia’s Independence War (1966 - 1990), during which their respective 

families were ‘on opposite sides’. The history of this transnational war has been primarily 

told by political parties, historians and white male military autobiographers. Far less so has it 

been told by photographers and visual artists, but again this has mostly been by white men. 

Mekondjo and Uambembe stand out in this context as pioneers. Both artists draw on the 

photographic archive to create mixed media work, employ gendered modalities such as 

embroidery and sewing, and have a performance practice. As such, they appear to form part 

of a growing group of avant garde artists across southern African whose practices have been 

posited by Brandt (2020) as “new practices of self”, creating new historical, feminist, 

decolonial and spiritual vantage points on the War whilst resisting state-driven “patriotic 

histories”. The artists’ work goes beyond a simple insertion of black women’s voices into 

dominant or contested narratives about the past: they operate as parallel revisionists 

themselves, shaping new types of history-telling in dialectic relationships with historical 

scholarship and, in the case of Mekondjo, through spiritual practices. Drawing on recent 

revisionist socio-military histories, this research interrogates layers of absence in artistic, 

gendered and transnational perspectives on Namibia's Independence War. It also asks how 

engaging with the work of Mekondjo and Uambembe might help us address historiographic 

and theoretical absences about Namibia’s marginalised place in the South African 

imagination, and in art history in particular.  

 

 

Keywords: 
History, historiography, empire, patriotic histories, archive, war, military, exile, 

transnationalism, gender, memory, contemporary art, artistic practice, performance, 

Namibia’s Independence War, Namibia, Angola, South Africa, 32 Battalion 

  



viii 
 

Acknowledgements 
 
My deep gratitude is due to the two extraordinary and courageous women at the centre of this 

research, Elizabeth Tuli-Mekondjo Mbumba and Helena Uambembe, who have been 

incredibly generous with their time, and willing to share so many deeply personal experiences. 

Thank you; I have huge respect for you and I have grown through you. 

 

To my supervisor Nontobeko Ntombela, it has been a pleasure to work with you. Thank you 

for your many insights and your calm, grounded presence during my winding journey at Wits 

since 2015. 
 

Thanks are due to multiple others:  

 

Jo Rogge for identifying and nurturing Tuli’s talent and for first introducing us, and indeed the 

two artists to each other; Lennart Bolliger for being open-minded enough to work across 

disciplines, for entertaining my many emails and questions, and for his equal measures of 

seriousness and dry humour; Nicola Brandt for her inspiring research, encouragement and her 

appreciation of the huge energy required to drive the gallery; Bev Butkow for her unceasing 

check-ins over the past year, and her not-so-subtle reminders to ‘get on with it’; Frieda Lühl 

for her collaboration on exhibitions in the time of COVID. 

 

Dag Henrichsen, Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, Paula Nascimento, Julia Rensing, 

Christian Williams, Joe Cabrita, Jocelyn Alexander and Rob Gordon have all given of their 

time, knowledge and ideas. 

 

Catherine Boyd and Caroline Kamana, Wits peers who finished long before I will, have been 

a comforting, humorous presence throughout. 

 

Vilho Nuumbala and Gina Figueira, for their photographic and videographic support. 

 

Kate Haselden, for her patient virtual support with transcription, formatting and layout. 

 

Katharina Dierkes, for generously providing the regional map. 

 

The late John Liebenberg, for his immeasurable contribution to documenting the War and his 

willingness to make time for my interests in remembering and forgetting. 

 

Nicolas Oldert, for believing in Guns & Rain, and latterly for catalysing in me enough grief 

and anger to write this dissertation in some three months instead of nine, after I had 

considered aborting it. 

 

The lions, for their watchful presence in my dreams. 

  



ix 
 

List of Figures 
 

Front Cover. Detail from Tuli Mekondjo, Om’dilo Mo Cassinga (Fire At Cassinga), Mixed 

Media on Canvas (photo transfer, collage, acrylic, millet grain, resin and embroidery on 

canvas), 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Guns & Rain. 

 

Figure 1. Map of Southern Africa showing Namibia, Angola, Zambia and South Africa, and 

places referenced in this text. Copyright Katharina Dierkes, Maproom.  

 

Figure 2. Tuli Mekondjo, Ohango Ya Meme, Ko Mbada (My Mother’s Wedding in Exile), 

Mixed Media on Canvas (photo transfer, collage, acrylic, millet grain, resin and embroidery on 

canvas), 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Guns & Rain. 

 

Figure 3. Tuli Mekondjo, Ounona vo miita (Children of war), Mixed Media on Canvas (photo 

transfer, collage, acrylic, millet grain, resin and embroidery on canvas), 2020. Courtesy of the 

artist and Guns & Rain. 

 

Figure 4. Tuli Mekondjo, Om’dilo Mo Cassinga (Fire At Cassinga), Mixed Media on Canvas 

(photo transfer, collage, acrylic, millet grain, resin and embroidery on canvas), 2020. Courtesy 

of the artist and Guns & Rain. 

 

Figure 5. Detail from Tuli Mekondjo, Ohango Ya Meme, Ko Mbada (My Mother’s Wedding 

in Exile), Mixed Media on Canvas (photo transfer, collage, acrylic, millet grain, resin and 

embroidery on canvas), 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Guns & Rain. 

 

Figure 6. Detail from Tuli Mekondjo, Ovanhu Vo Ma Casperi (People of The Casspirs), Mixed 

Media on Canvas (photo transfer, collage, acrylic, millet grain, resin and embroidery on 

canvas), 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Guns & Rain. 

 

Figure 7 and 8. Tuli Mekondjo’s Work, Installation images from The Borders of Memory 

exhibition at The Project Room, Windhoek, 2020. Courtesy of Frieda Lühl. 

 

Figure 9. Tuli Mekondjo, Meme Nekaya (Spiritual Embodiment of Meme Nekaya), Mixed 

Media on Canvas (photo transfer, collage, acrylic, millet grain, resin and embroidery on 

canvas), 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Guns & Rain. 

 

Figure 10 and 11. Detail from Tuli Mekondjo, Meme Nekaya (Spiritual Embodiment of Meme 

Nekaya), Mixed Media on Canvas (photo transfer, collage, acrylic, millet grain, resin and 

embroidery on canvas), 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Guns & Rain. 

 

Figure 12.  Tuli Mekondjo & Hafeni Muzanima, performance as part of Operation Odalate 

Naiteke, curated by Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, Katutura, Windhoek, 18 January 2020. 

Courtesy of Julie Taylor. 

 

Figure 13. Helena Uambembe, Lembrança de casa (Memories of Home), Waterproof canvas 

and cotton (‘traditional’ Angolan samacaca fabric), (hand cut), 2020. Courtesy of the artist and 

Guns & Rain. 

 

Figure 14 and 15. Detail from Helena Uambembe, Lembrança de casa (Memories of Home), 

Waterproof canvas and cotton (‘traditional’ Angolan samacaca fabric), (hand cut), 2020. 

Courtesy of the artist and Guns & Rain. 



x 
 

 

Figure 16. Helena Uambembe, Chipenda, Savimbi, Holden and I, 2018, Photographic Print. 

Courtesy of the artist. 

 

Figure 17. Helena Uambembe, Os Buffalos, 2018, Photographic Print on Fine Art Rag. 

Courtesy of the artist. 

 

Figure 18. South African Defence Force (SADF) 32 Battalion base camp in northern Namibia 

during the Independence War, Date unknown but circa 1977-1978, Personal Archive of 

Colonel Gert Nel. Courtesy Helena Uambembe. 

 

Figure 19. Helena Uambembe, Untitled (Buffalo Heads), Waterproof canvas and organza 

(hand cut and stitched), 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Guns & Rain. 

 

Figure 20. Detail from Helena Uambembe, Untitled (Buffalo Heads), Waterproof canvas and 

organza (hand cut and stitched), 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Guns & Rain. 

 

Figure 21. Helena Uambembe, Like Father, Paper Lithography and watercolour on Fabriano 

paper, 2019. Courtesy of the artist. 

 

Figure 22. Helena Uambembe, My load I shall Carry (Prayer to Mother Njiga), Performance 

at The Melrose Gallery, 2019. Courtesy of the artist. 

 

Figure 23. The Crocodile Lover, Kutala Chopeto (Helena Uambembe and Teresa Firmino), 

performance programme for group exhibition the silences between, Goodman Gallery, Cape 

Town, 13 September 2017. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery and Helena Uambembe. 

 

Figure 24. Tuli Mekondjo in Studio, Windhoek, March 2020. Courtesy of Vilho Nuumbala. 

 

Figure 25. Helena Uambembe in Studio, Pretoria, April 2020. Courtesy of Alet Pretorius. 

 

Figure 26. PLAN fighters (men and women) marching with SWAPO Flag, Kwanza-Sul, 

Angola, 1977. National Archives of Namibia. Reference Number 15831. Courtesy of Tuli 

Mekondjo. 

 

Figure 27. Women working in the field, Kwanza-Sul Refugee Camp, Angola, 1983. National 

Archives of Namibia: Reference Number 13929. Courtesy of Tuli Mekondjo. 

 

Figure 28. South African Defence Force 32 Battalion dress insignia. 

 

Figure 29 and 30. Caminho de mata, caminho de flores, flores de amore (Road of death, road 

of flowers, flowers of love), 2019. Performance by Helena Uambembe, FNB Joburg Art Fair. 

Courtesy of the artist and photographer Zivania Matangi. 

 

Figure 31. Therapy for the Black man (in honour of...), Performance by Helena Uambembe, 

FNB Art Joburg, September 13-15, 2019. Courtesy of Phumlani Ntuli and Helena Uambembe. 

 

Figure 32 and 33. Improvised Event Set-up for the Online Zoom Opening of “The Borders of 

Memory” (15 April 2020) and Panel Discussion (21 April 2020). Photos by Julie Taylor. 

 
  



xi 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  
  

Figure 1. Map of Southern Africa showing Namibia, Angola, Zambia and South Africa, and 

places referenced in this text. Copyright Katharina Dierkes, Maproom. 

 

 



Introduction, Methodology and Positionality 

Introduction and Overview 

Angolan-born Namibian artist Tuli Mekondjo recounts that meeting South African-born artist 

of  Angolan descent Helena Uambembe was “like meeting myself”. The two black women 

artists’ life biographies are, to a degree, inversely mirrored, and have been fundamentally 

shaped by Namibia’s Independence War (1966 - 1990), also known in South Africa as the 

Border War, during which their respective families were ‘on opposite sides’. 

The history of this complicated transnational war - which South Africa waged to maintain 

control of Namibia, and which intersected with Angola’s civil war and mapped onto the late 

stages of the global Cold War - has been primarily told by political parties, historians and white 

male military autobiographers. Far less so has it been told by photographers and visual artists, 

but again this has mostly been by white men such as John Liebenberg, Christo Doherty and 

David Brits (Liebenberg and Patricia Hayes 2011, Mary Corrigall 2012), although white 

women such as Jo Ratcliffe and Silke Berens have also entered this arena (Nicola Brandt 2020). 

In keeping with the lack of black autobiographical and research voices that revisionist political 

historians now seek to make visible, so too have very few black artists engaged with this past. 

Mekondjo and Uambembe thus stand out in this context as unusual and significant - indeed, 

they appear to be the pioneers.1  

Historian Lennart Bolliger complicates the simplistic characterisation of two opposing factions 

in this War, showing how many black soldiers’ choices, on both ‘sides’ of the conflict, were 

often fraught with dilemmas and impossibly difficult decisions.2 Drawing on such historical 

analysis, we begin to see themes which underscore more similarity than difference between the 

two artists. Both Mekondjo and Uambembe grew up in displaced refugee communities. Both 

of them pose questions about their own ‘belonging’. Their modes of artistic practice connect 

1 There are, of course, also obvious parallels and echoes viz the minority of black women artists practicing in

southern Africa more broadly, the still-slim scholarly work on black women artists in the region (especially 
outside of South Africa), and the still-slim use of black feminist frameworks in South African art history (Portia 
Malatjie 2011), of which this study is cognisant. 
2 I am grateful to Bolliger for underscoring this point in his lecture presentation in April 2020 (see Appendix

4d), as it has become an important guiding trail in my own research. 

1



 

 

them and are also ‘mirrored’. Both artists draw on archival photographs to create mixed media 

work, both employ gendered modalities such as embroidery and sewing, and both have a 

performance practice. As such, they appear to form part of a growing group of avant garde 

artists across the southern African region whose practices have been posited by Brandt (2020) 

as “new practices of self”. Most significantly, both Mekondjo and Uambembe provocatively 

manifest in their work the experiences of women and children whose stories have often been 

overlooked in prevailing masculinist and party-based patriotic histories of the War. 

 

This research project poses several interrelated questions: 

 

● In considering layers of absence in terms of artistic, gendered and transnational 

perspectives on Namibia's Independence War, how might we also address 

historiographic and theoretical absences about Namibia’s marginalised place in the 

South African imagination, and in art history in particular? 

● How and in what ways do the practices of Mekondjo and Uambembe align with 

Brandt’s (2020) recent theorisation of post-apartheid “practices of self”, in order to 

create new historical,feminist, decolonial and spiritual vantage points on Namibia’s 

Independence War? 

● What is the role of ‘history’, historiography and modes of historical enquiry in the 

artists’ practice; how does history mobilise them and how they do mobilise history? 

 

In asking these questions, this project closely follows revisionist historical research that is 

breaking new ground in analysing the War, in order to better understand the experiences and 

practice of Mekondjo and Uambembe - who themselves not only also engage with some of the 

same research but operate as parallel revisionists themselves. 

 

Chapter Overview 

 

The remainder of this Introduction outlines the origins of this study, my research methodology 

and my complicated positionality as both an art gallerist and researcher, in the sensitive, 

racialised context of contemporary South Africa. 

 

 

2



 

 

Chapter 1 lays out a number of theoretical anchors for the study, outlining why the concepts 

of empire, coloniality, the transnational and “patriotic history” (Terence Ranger 2004) are so 

important for (re)conceptualising Namibia and its liberation war in the context of South African 

history, historiography and imagination. It goes on to ask art historical questions about the 

dialectic, multidirectional relationships between history, the archive and art-making. This lays 

the ground for examining the relationships between artistic practice, gendered positions and 

historical engagement, which goes beyond a simple ‘insertion’ of black women’s voices into 

dominant narratives about the past. I introduce Brandt’s (2020) theorisation of “new practices 

of self”, based on her analysis of hybrid artistic practices - often multimedia, performance-

based and/or site-specific - emerging across southern Africa in recent years. I return to Brandt’s 

analysis throughout this dissertation: many aspects of the artists’ practices are illustrations of 

Brandt’s argument. 

 

Having set out this broader framing, which explains the ways in which the historical impacts 

the personal, I turn to detailed explorations of the work of both artists. Chapter 2 traces the 

biography and practice of artist Tuli Mekondjo, examining the ways in which she mobilises 

photographic archives and the mediums of mahangu (millet) grain and embroidery to engage 

with, reflect on and gender contested histories of colonialism, war and exile. Sometimes 

responding directly to “patriotic histories”, Mekondjo brings archival photographs into “new 

discursive fields” (Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa 2019), and harnesses spirituality-based 

performances to counteract the damage wrought by colonialism and gesture towards healing. 

In these ways she articulates her own personal stories at the same time as gesturing to collective 

reimaginings of the past (and future) as well. 

 

Turning to the biography and practice of artist Helena Uambembe, Chapter 3 considers place, 

identity and materiality in her work, which presents a transnational, gendered, domestic view 

on life in, and legacies of, the South African Defence Force (SADF) 32 Battalion during and 

after the War. Like the revisionist historians which this research closely follows, and with 

which the artist has a dialectic relationship, Uambembe identifies and counters critical absences 

in narratives about the Battalion and its civilian community, and about South Africa’s 

relationship with Angola, through her use of photographic archives, textiles and performance. 

The chapter also considers sensory memory practices (Biwa 2012) and performance as 

gendered expressions for processing and re-telling traumatic, politicised histories. 

 

3



 

 

Research Origins and Positionality 

 

This project lies at the confluence of multiple streams. Firstly, in my longstanding interest in 

southern African and Namibian history, and in particular the socio-political histories of its 

northern border, where I spent many months conducting my MPhil and DPhil social science 

research and fieldwork between 2003 and 2006 (eg. Taylor, 2007, 2008, 2012). Secondly, in 

my role as a gallerist and curator at Guns & Rain, a gallery that I founded in 2014 to support 

emerging artists from southern Africa, and particularly from ‘under-represented’ countries 

such as Namibia and Botswana.3 Third, wearing that same hat, I initiated and curated an 

exhibition titled The Borders of Memory, hosted online by Guns & Rain in April 2020, 

presenting the work of artists Tuli Mekondjo and Helena Uambembe. Lastly, despite growing 

up across 5 different southern African countries between 1980 and1994 - Zimbabwe, Angola, 

Zambia, Namibia and South Africa - the artists and I share a generational inheritance, growing 

up in the shadow of difficult colonial histories, and with our parents’ generation often choosing 

to stay silent about the past. This places me in a complex set of intersecting relationships with 

the artists, with whom I share a passion for engaging with this history. 

 

In the sections that follow, I attempt to engage critically with my various positions in this 

research, in the context of art history, art commerce and race in South Africa. Reflexive and 

situated approaches to this kind of research necessarily highlight the partial, intersubjective 

nature of any knowledge that we produce, and makes us sensitive to the social dynamics of 

power (cf. Steven High 2009). Furthermore, as Sharlene Khan and Fouad Asfour (2018: 202) 

write, “the tasks of enunciation and representing—for all players in the visual arts feld—are 

full of responsibilities to both oneself, larger communities, and previous histories”. Indeed, it 

is difficult to overstate the urgency and sensitivity of this in a deeply divided and fraught 

contemporary South Africa. Before exploring those themes in more depth, I briefly explain my 

research methods, which have largely been enabled through my role as director and curator at 

Guns & Rain gallery.  

 

 

 
3 The gallery has worked with artists from South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, eSwatini 

and Nigeria. 

4

https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?7aIEVn


 

 

Artist Relationships, The Borders of Memory exhibition and Research Methods 

 

This research has been premised on a close working relationship with Mekondjo and 

Uambembe, developed over a period of two years. The cultivation of collaboration and trust 

with the artists has been important, in both my role as gallerist and researcher; this falls in line 

with dialogic and participatory approaches to knowledge building, at the same time as 

acknowledging the limitations of aspirations towards ‘shared authority’ (cf. High 2009, 

Michael Frisch 1990, 2003). Whilst this study draws on a variety of research methods, which 

I outline below, dialogic approaches are central to both my practical method of inquiry and 

theoretical approach. 

 

My primary sources include dozens of informal communications and meetings with the artists; 

a small number of semi-structured interviews (oral and written) with the artists; studio visits 

with the artists, both in person and online; a fieldtrip with Uambembe and Bolliger to the SADF 

memorials at the Voortrekker Monument, Pretoria; two online panel discussions hosted by 

Guns & Rain gallery; informal and formal consultations with historians Bolliger, Professor 

Jocelyn Alexander and Dr Christian Williams; and informal consultations with researchers in 

the field including Dr. Nicola Brandt, Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja and Julia Rensing. 

 

I first met Mekondjo in February 20194, having been aware of her work for some time 

beforehand through artist Jo Rogge at the NJE Collective. Rogge introduced Mekondjo to 

Uambembe the same weekend5, with their mutual war histories in mind. I invited Mekondjo to 

start exhibiting with Guns & Rain soon afterwards. Preparation and execution of multiple 

exhibitions and art fairs in the period 2019 - 20216 has allowed me to develop a close 

relationship with Mekondjo in particular, more so than Uambembe. I met Uambembe in 

October 2019 and concurrently I connected her with Bolliger, who had recently finished his 

 
4 I helped facilitate sponsorship by an art collector for Mekondjo’s performance at the Investec Cape Town Art 

Fair 2019. 
5 Tuli Mekdonjo, pers.comm, 19 March 2021. 
6 These included Suffrage, Women’s Group Show, Johannesburg, 2019; 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, 

London, October 2019; Investec Cape Town Art Fair, February 2020; ARCO Lisboa, Portugal, Online, May 2020; 
The Borders of Memory Windhoek edition in collaboration with The Project Room, Namibia, June 2020; and 
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London, October 2020, as well as other 3rd party collaborations such as 
with museum Frac Nouvelle Aquitaine, MÉCA, Bordeaux, France, February 2021. 

5

https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?TiOtou


 

 

doctorate on the 32 Battalion7 and was already aware of Uambembe’s earlier work. In a strange 

but perhaps unsurprising twist, I learned that Bolliger’s research assistant Dino Estevao - who 

grew up in the 32 Battalion community - was Uambembe’s brother-in-law. 

 

Not long afterwards in December 2019, I broached with the artists the idea of a two-woman 

exhibition focused on the legacies of Namibia’s Independence War. It seemed obvious to 

collaborate with Bolliger for the exhibition as well, given his ongoing research in the field. In 

January 2020 I spent several days with Mekondjo in Windhoek, and attended her performance 

at the College of the Arts. In March 2020 I visited Uambembe’s studio for the first time, at 

Arts on Main in Johannesburg. 

 

My conceptual and practical curatorial preparations for The Borders of Memory necessitated 

frequent (often daily) verbal and written communications with the artists over several months.8 

To give a sense of these communications, Mekondjo regularly shared  - and continues to share 

- new information that comes to light about her family history, including visits to old friends, 

discoveries of new photographs, her archival visits, news article links and so on. In turn, on 

occasion I helped her navigate access to archival information, for example, at the Mayibuye 

Archives in South Africa.9 I also introduced her to other researchers such as Williams, and 

shared relevant historical material with her such as academic journal articles and references, as 

I did with Uambembe. Last but not least, in the case of Mekondjo, I also gave her feedback on 

her artwork, which in some cases changed its final manifestation. 

 

The April 2020 opening date for The Borders of Memory coincided with the start of the 

COVID-19 pandemic and South Africa’s hard lockdown, meaning that I had to immediately 

re-imagine and adapt the exhibition and related programming, taking it entirely online. Indeed 

COVID-19 presented new opportunities to innovate around non-traditional forms of 

exhibition-making and knowledge-sharing and -building. I stand in line with public historian 

Michael Frisch’s (1990) assertion that, such engagement “should be not only a distribution of 

knowledge from those who have it to those who do not, but a more profound sharing of 

knowledges, an implicit and sometimes explicit dialogue from very different vantages about 

 
7 Bolliger and I shared the same doctoral supervisor, Africanist historian Professor Jocelyn Alexander, who first 

alerted Bolliger and I to our mutual interests. 
8 This communication has been ongoing, albeit with less intensity, since the exhibition. 
9 See Appendix 1c. 

6



 

 

the shape, meaning and implications of history”. To this extent, I would argue that an online 

exhibition and programming actually fostered a more meaningful public engagement with the 

history central to the artists’ practice.  

 

My revised exhibition programme included not only a Zoom video ‘opening’ together with the 

artists10, but also Instagram Live video visits to each of their home-studios11, and a history 

lecture on Zoom by Bolliger followed by a panel discussion between him and the artists.12 

Whilst these events were conceived under the umbrella of Guns & Rain, they doubled up as 

research opportunities for additional information gathering, deeper engagement with the artists 

and, importantly, ways in which the artists could speak directly to their own work, rather than 

it being spoken about or over by a curator. In addition, taking the exhibition programming 

online allowed us to engage with enthusiastic international audiences, both academic and from 

the art world, which fostered ongoing discussions and exchanges about the artists’ work.13 

  

Not long after the The Borders of Memory opened, we decided to present a physical iteration 

of the exhibition in Windhoek as well; Mekondjo’s artwork was still physically in Namibia due 

to COVID restrictions and, together with some other Namibians, she and I felt it critical to 

engage with Namibian audiences given the nature of the work and the history it dwells on. We 

thus collaborated with Windhoek gallery The Project Room to facilitate this exhibition14 and 

an accompanying panel discussion15. Following the second iteration, I embarked to expand and 

improve the exhibition catalogue, by including Bolliger’s lecture transcript and its translations 

into Portguese and Oshiwambo.16  

 

 
10 15th April 2020. 
11 18th April and 25th April 2020 respectively. 
12 21st April 2020. See the full programme as it was communicated via Guns & Rain here: 

https://bit.ly/3cyL8W5 [accessed 28 March 2021]. 
13 For example, for the Zoom panel discussion on 21st April 2020,  we received over 90 RSVPs from South 

Africa, Namibia, Angola, Switzerland, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, and multiple 
cities therein. 
14 The Windhoek iteration of The Borders of Memory took place at The Project Room, 9-13 June 2020. 

Mekondjo’s close relationship with gallerist Frieda Luhl made this an easy progression. 
15 The panel discussion “borders, memory & belonging” took place at The Project Room, 13 June 2020, with 

discussants Tuli Mekondjo, Martin Namupala and Ndapwa Alweendo (see Appendix 3d). 
16 These translations were intended to make the catalogue more accessible to audiences for whom the history 

is particularly pertinent, although whether this goal has been achieved is questionable, given my limited 
capacity to distribute the catalogue thus far. See the translations in Appendix 4i and 4j. 

7

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Since the conclusion of the two exhibitions and related programming circa July 2020, I 

continued to stay in regular contact with both the artists and with Bolliger, in my capacities as 

both gallerist and researcher, but notably moving on to the more formal requirements of this 

research, such as semi-structured interviews. 

 

Race, Art History and Art Commerce in South Africa 

 

In the vast majority of popular discourses in contemporary South Africa, race is the overriding 

lens through which engagement, analyses of and debates around socio-economic power takes 

place. Whilst discussions around race are open and uncensored, they are also frequently 

sensitive, often inflammatory, and can have implications for physical protest and violence. This 

extends into the commercial art world and into the art academy, further precipitated and 

underscored by the ‘fallist’ movements that began in 201517 and their accompanying calls for 

decolonisation. As Brandt has written, “The post-apartheid era of euphoria has shifted 

dramatically to voices that are now ‘of fury, not suffering’”(2020: 191). 

 

I have conducted this research with my eyes wide open to the fact that I am a white (albeit 

Zimbabwean) woman writing about black artists, in a context where such practice has been 

substantially critiqued (eg. Khan 2006, Dabi Nkuleleko 1987, Portia Malatjie 2011) and where 

there are concerns about the extension and reproduction of white power in terms of knowledge-

making, exhibition-making and money-making, amongst others (Athi Joja 2020, 2019; 

Thembinkosi Goniwe 2018). I briefly discuss some of these race dynamics whilst stressing that 

we must not lose sight of other positionalities and the ways in which race intersects with 

generation, gender, class and so on.  

 

To provide a few examples of relevant analyses, and to start with a ‘macro’ view, Thulile 

Gamedze’s (2018) research on the apartheid-era Medu Artist Ensemble argues that, in an ironic 

twist, neoliberalism in South Africa has been a destructive force to the radical cultural work of 

black artists which comprised, amongst other things, a mode to “unlearn black inferiority” 

(2018: 39). Gamedze argues that cultural work for the most part has been neutered, thanks to 

the African National Congress (ANC)’s version of nation-building, “using symbolism and 

imagery to portray the new democracy as a paradise of forgiveness, equality, diversity, and 

 
17 See Paul Maylam (2020) for a review of relevant texts. 

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‘rainbow-ism’. In effect, this was a strategy to silence a nation of [black] people who had 

experienced worlds of pain, and to deny that this was largely a reality that still existed” (2018: 

112) as part of the country’s “underbelly of reproduced coloniality” (2018: 55). 

 

Zooming in to critical arts writing in this post-apartheid context, Khan and Asfour have 

usefully theorised how “South African Whiteness frames appreciation, evaluation, 

historicization, and education about “non-White” cultural productions through art criticism 

texts (2018: 189). They proffer the term “Whitespeak” as nomenclature for how white writing 

“frames black artists/arts in particular ways…[resulting] in a hyper-visibility of the racial-

gendered-ethnic body of artists of color, even while the body of the White writer-critic is 

invisible in its making of discourse (2018: 192). Through various practices of Whitespeak, 

“bodies of color are always known and are always spoken for and about. White art criticism 

texts, then, perform both the role of ventriloquist and judge (2018: 199, my emphasis). Within 

this, black artists’ biographies are interpreted and deployed in particular ways, often to the 

detriment of thorough analysis of the artwork itself, as Khwezi Gule (2013) and Nomvuyo 

Horwitz (2017) have argued. 

 

Furthermore, race, art history and commerce intersect in significant but under researched ways 

in South Africa. In general, there is a dearth of reliable research on the commercial art industry. 

One explanation is that it is a small scene, where “everyone knows everyone”, where galleries 

frequently compete for new artistic talent, and where existing hierarchies and “food chains” 

structure the extent of a gallery’s influence and possibly even profitability. Rigorous industry 

research would be hard to anonymise, and would inevitably prompt discomfort and/or conflict 

of some kind. As in other parts of the world, galleries and dealers are notoriously secretive 

about how they operate, and about pricing and sales. That said, as the art market increasingly 

moves online, transparency may be at its highest levels ever, and is helping to level and 

democratize the playing field (see McAndrew et al 2016). 

 

When it comes to commerce, art critic Sean O’Toole (2018) has commented on the 

disproportionate and problematic influence of market forces on art education and production 

in South Africa, in the face of “frail, faltering” public institutions and lack of government 

support for the visual arts. He writes, for example, that “the much-feted graduate exhibition at 

the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town...has increasingly come to resemble a job 

application forum…”. Curator Kabelo Malatsie’s (2018) research similarly highlights that a 

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shortage of self-organised art institutions drives young artists to immediately seek commercial 

representation, in the absence of alternative forms of support, meaning that the gallery system 

disproportionately affects artists’ practices (including, for example, their choice of mediums) 

and dissemination of their work.  

 

Taking market factors together with race, artist and art historian Goniwe (2018) has railed 

against the “the sad reality behind the mirage of a democratic art scene” in the context of “the 

unrelenting afterlife of colonial apartheid”. He provides long lists of feted and successful black 

artists and curators, but argues that they are hamstrung by apartheid’s legacies, continually 

“wrestling with white scrutiny”, “tamed if not pacified through filters of an art market that 

renders them sexy, trendy and palatable”. Goniwe propones that black artists are ultimately 

subservient to white interests and dominance of the commercial art scene in South Africa and 

elsewhere, and that these artists have no other choice but to find their success “within the 

playground of whiteness”. 

 

Whilst Goniwe makes multiple valid points, his analysis is lacking in too easily lumping 

together entities such as ‘black artists’ and ‘white gallerists’ and making them appear 

monolithic. In reality there are substantial and multifaceted differences among art galleries, for 

example, in terms of financial capital, organisational capacity, business and intellectual 

networks, and social influence, to name but a few factors.18 In his overattribution of agency to 

structures rather than individual actors, Goniwe’s analysis falls short for some of the same 

reasons as does writer Joja in his recent sparring with artist Judy Seidman (Joja 2019, 2020): 

an over-reliance on a high-level, structural macro-analysis, where conceptual entities such as 

“totality”, “hegemony” and “dominant system” become reified, whilst individual human actors 

become “the mere carriers of a structural logic” (James Duncan and David Ley 1982:30). In 

turn this presents challenges for empirical study and analysis.  

 

It is still clear, nonetheless, that the commercial sector, both gallery and auction house, is 

dominated by whites at senior levels. In addition, whilst I cannot provide statistics (another 

indicator of a dearth of research), the fields of art history and curatorship often seem to be 

 
18 It is almost impossible to directly compare, for example, Everard Read Gallery (a large commercial 100-year-

old enterprise with a large staff of 54 spanning 4 locations) and Stevenson Gallery (spanning 3 cities with a 
staff of some 30 people) with Guns & Rain, which is 7 years old, has 1 full-time employee (myself) and 2 part-
time employees and has never had any investors. 

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dominated by white women, although this may be starting to change. There are clearly ongoing 

racial structural inequalities at play here, and especially to the extent that race intersects with 

class. My own hypothesis is as follows: for new gallerists and art dealers, financial risk 

combined with the very lengthy gestation required to accrue credibility with both artists and 

collectors is so challenging that this precludes many who do not have other sources of finance, 

or who have had not had a previous professional career, related experience and savings (as was 

my case).19 In this context, social capital becomes a key factor. As such, structural white 

privilege serves to bolster white resilience and longevity in a very tough industry. 

Simultaneously, whilst the media highlights new black-artist-led initiatives and spaces (eg. 

Corrigall 2021), which sometimes appear to correlate with the democratising effects of the web 

and new technologies, questions remain about why black-owned and black-led spaces often 

lack longevity. In turn, their appearance (repeatedly noted as ‘new’) and their un-analysed 

disappearance leads to new forms of erasure.20 

 

Thus whilst it is beyond the scope of this research, we distinctly need less reductive, more 

nuanced analyses of how race, art history and commerce intersect in South Africa - and within 

this mix, a closer empirically-based examination of how art galleries operate, the multiple 

‘spaces’ that they occupy which go beyond the simply commercial, and what these actors effect.  

 

The Gallerist-Researcher Nexus and Dialectic Approaches 

 

My position in this research, informed by modes of working in parallel, is complex. On the one 

hand, and most problematically in the South African context, I am the black artists’ white 

representing gallerist and agent, including in a commercial sense. On the other hand, the artists 

are the ‘subjects’ of my research as a Masters student. Commerce and researcher-subject 

relationships are the main two themes that I address in the following sections, in tandem with 

dialectics. There have been multiple other frameworks and positions to navigate, of course, 

which I do not address in any detail here: age, gender, language, class amongst others, and 

which are widely discussed in the methodology literature (eg. Linda McDowell 1992; Beverley 

Mullings 1999). 

 
19 Anecdotally, and again this is a personal hypothesis, the few black African and South African dealers, 

gallerists and fair owners who have found a foothold tend to be ex-corporate or come from wealthy and/or 
royal families. 
20 I am grateful to Nontobeko Ntombela for her insights on this point. 

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One’s attempts at self-reflexivity inevitably fall short. Macro-structures and micro-agencies, 

and their causes and effects in relation to one’s own positionality, are difficult to disentangle. 

Standing in the shadow of colonialism and apartheid, as many have noted, the politics of 

representation are fraught, and I have been wary throughout of claiming to represent the artists 

(beyond in my partial role as their commercial agent). As Brandt (2020: 19) has written, “The 

question at the heart of this is, ‘what right have I to represent you?’, or, as increasingly and 

more relevantly demanded in the current volatile discourse, ‘What right have you to represent 

me?”. Scholars such as George Mahashe go further, claiming that reflexivity is ultimately a 

‘Western’ problem, an excuse to talk one’s own coloniality “at the expense of [actually] being 

in conversation with those they have invented as counterpoints” (2019: 122, my emphasis). 

 

I have been responsible for promoting and selling the artists’ work in the international art 

market, including at commercial art fairs, and placing their art in multiple international private 

collections, as well as securing Mekondjo’s first museum acquisition. I have also been the 

curator of several exhibitions for Mekondjo, and have secured collaborations on her behalf 

with exhibiting partners in other countries. I have also supported another gallery and curator in 

selling the work of Uambembe21. My interests are commercial to the extent of covering the 

costs of running a gallery22, paying my own and part-time assistants’ salaries, ensuring that the 

artists have a regular income, meeting artists’ urgent welfare needs, and continuing to build the 

long-term local and international profile of the gallery. This research may also boost my 

credibility as a gallerist in terms of being able to speak with more depth to the artists’ work. 

 

Simultaneously, I have non-commercial interests. As a southern African interested in social 

justice and as a researcher with a publication record demonstrating long-term engagement with 

identity politics in the region, I have interests in raising the international profile of African 

voices and histories in a postcolonial context, including in terms of international and African 

art history. As a feminist, I have an interest in promoting women and their voices in particular. 

 
21 Most recently, I facilitated a number of sales of Uambembe’s recent print monotypes on behalf of David 

Krut Galleries in March 2021, as well as work presented by independent curator Luamba Muinga at FNB Art 
Joburg, November 2020. 
22 Costs are often surprisingly high for such a small organisation.To provide a data point example, the cost of 

hiring the smallest available booth for the 4-day international 1-54 Art Fair in London is 150,000 rand, before 
any travel, shipping, framing, accommodation or other expenses. In addition, participation at a fair does not 
guarantee any sales. 

12



 

 

I have a personal interest in expanding my own knowledge - and as someone who already has 

academic qualifications, this MA degree might be seen as yet another manifestation of white 

luxury and privilege.  

 

What of the artists Mekondjo and Uambembe and their interests? Our interests intersect in that 

the artists benefit from the operations of the gallery: they earn an income; their profiles are 

raised locally and internationally through exhibitions and related marketing and publicity; and 

they gain access to new networks23 and other opportunities.24 Importantly, they also receive 

feedback on their work from multiple sources, which in turn influences their knowledge and 

practice. With much of this feedback being positive, it may also boost the artists’ confidence 

and sense of self-worth. This said, the artists’ interests differ in multiple ways: they each have 

multiple other projects and/or employment underway at any one time, unrelated to the 

gallery.25 Furthermore, they may sometimes feel constrained by the gallery’s expectations 

and/or operating frameworks. 

 

In terms of my research methods, I have been interested in dialogic perspectives and practices, 

and whether and how I could position the artists more as “co-authors” rather than “subjects”. 

There has been much written on dialogic approaches, shared authority, and sharing authority 

(eg. High 2009, Frisch 1990, 2003a, 2003b, amongst others). These explorations are correlated 

with the rise in participatory approaches to knowledge building, especially in community-based 

projects in multiple geographies since the 1980s. Some of this writing highlights the notion of 

moving away from the academic research ‘product’ (which has been the traditional focus of 

the academy) and focusing on ‘process’, an idea which has also taken shape in a more formal 

way in arts institutions (eg. Kentridge’s Centre for the Less Good Idea) and in art theory (eg. 

Ambrozic and Vettese 2013).  

 

Referencing Greenspan, High (2009: 16) writes that “self-reflexivity and 

subjectivity...combined with [a] commitment to sharing authority throughout the research 

process, represents a fundamental shift in perspective from "knowing about" to "knowing 

with”. Given my close relationships with both Mekondjo and Uambembe, this research has 

 
23  Artists, curators, scholars, collectors, gallerists, dealers etc. 
24 Museum exhibitions, commissions, lecture and workshop invitations etc. 
25 For example, Mekondjo is also a primary school teacher; Uambembe is interested in building her profile in 

Angola, for which my capacity is extremely limited due to language barriers. 

13



 

 

provided an opportunity to pursue an approach of “knowing with”. I have purposely 

incorporated direct quotations from the artists on a regular basis; so too are a selection of 

discussions and interviews documented in the appendices, as part of an attempt to ensure the 

presence of their voices and authority. There have, however, naturally been limitations on the 

artists’ time, availability and degree of interest which have shaped any attempts at co-

authorship. Simultaneously, there is the ongoing problem of the privileged status of the written 

word inherent to co-authorship efforts. Is there a less ‘word-centric’ way to convey a 

production, collaboration or relationship between artist and academic, and how can hierarchies 

between the written and the visual be navigated and resisted?26  In my experience, this remains 

a real challenge which is not overcome in this research. 

 

Last and significantly, I have played a key role in bringing the two artists into engagement with 

each other and with third parties such as Bolliger. As Pamila Gupta asked, “what has that 

meeting done to three people now in an art practice relationship, and each artist’s reading of 

the other artist?”27 Gupta pre-empted my interest in knowledge-creation and art-making in this 

context - as a multi-directional dialectic process with multi-trajectoral outcomes and effects 

(cf. Jacob 2013), which I speak to and problematise in Chapter 1. 

 

Conclusion 

 

This chapter has introduced my research project, which intends to shed light on the pioneering 

work of two black women artists re-telling Namibia’s Independence War, the events and 

histories of which have dramatically shaped their biographies, even whilst in no way fully 

defining or limiting them and their identities. The study addresses multiple layers of absence 

concerning historiography, race and gender in the context of South Africa’s imperial 

relationship with Namibia, proposing that Mekondjo and Uambembe’s practices not only helps 

fill those gaps, but exert an agency that mobilises history in new ways, including back on itself 

and back onto revisionist historians. 

 

 
26 This question was posed to me by historian Joel Cabrita (pers.comm 12th May 2020) in relation to her 

collaboration with artist Sabelo Mlangeni for Umlindelo wamaKholwa, an exhibition that took place at Wits Art 
Museum, 27 June - 28 October 2018.  
27 I am grateful to Gupta for this point in her report on my research proposal, 12 June 2020. 

14



 

 

In addition, this chapter has explained the origins of this research and my methodological 

approaches. It has considered the particularities of my position and interests as both white 

commercial gallerist and researcher in relationship to the two black artists, in the sensitive, 

highly racialised context of fallist South Africa - bearing in mind that this latter lens in turn 

may obscure the nuances inflected by our respective Namibian, Angolan and Zimbabwean 

heritages. I have also briefly introduced Mekondjo’s and Uambembe’s exhibition The Borders 

of Memory (2020), which was critical to developing this research. Last but not least, this 

chapter has introduced my interest in dialectic approaches and co-authorship, whilst 

acknowledging significant limitations to these intentions. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

15



 

 

Chapter 1: Historiography and Art-Making 

 

Namibia Imagined: Empire, Historiographical Absences and Transnationalism 

 

This research considers layers of absence: not simply the broader absence of artistic, gendered 

and transnational perspectives on Namibia’s Independence War, and how artists Tuli 

Mekdondjo and Helena Uambembe are addressing these in and through their work, but also 

historiographic1 and theoretical absences in the ways in which South African art histories are 

being (re)written. In the context of the latter, I posit, we have overlooked South Africa itself as 

empire, instead privileging Europe and associated epistemologies and systems as empire. 

 

Furthermore, I am concerned with taking a more regional, transnational view, taking seriously 

the idea that the marginalisation of Namibian history in South African popular discourse and 

historiography is “an expression of the reproduction ...of codes and conventions of a continuing 

imperial repertoire of South Africa itself” (Dag Henrichsen et al., 2015, cf. Gordon 2021). This 

approach necessitates thinking about the theoretical utility and limitations of both ‘empire’ and 

‘nation’ in regional context. In turn, recent historical work which favours transnational 

perspectives on liberation wars not only better situates the biographies and narratives of the 

two artists, but becomes more theoretically useful as well. 

 

Last but not least, I must acknowledge that at the same time as addressing multiple absences, 

this research of course contains its own absences, the most notable concerning my very limited 

attention to Angola (as compared to South Africa and Namibia) within the transnational 

histories that I address. 

 

South Africa and Namibia: Empire, Coloniality and Art History 

 

In the face of historiographic neglect, Henrichsen et al (2015) have made convincing arguments 

for understanding South Africa as empire, given both its 20th Century regional domination and 

its 75-year rule of Namibia, formerly South West Africa. Building directly on this assertion, 

anthropologist Robert Gordon’s new study (2021) demonstrates how Namibia was used as a 

 
1 Historiography is defined here as the study of the writing of history. 

16



 

 

testing ground for apartheid, and how a host of Afrikaner ethnologists - particularly the 

Broederbond member Johannes Bruwer - played a critical role in this. Namibia was the site 

where native homelands were first trialled, and “the social technology for internal pacification 

was...then transferred back to South Africa as part of its strategy for suppressing internal 

dissent” (2021:1).2 

 

Henrichsen et al also remind us that “new scholarship on empires...and post-colonial critique 

have unsettled the simplistic notion of a centre-periphery dichotomy in relations between 

Europe and the wider world, and have moved the debate towards transnational, entangled or 

shared histories of all sorts” (2015: 432). I stand with the authors in their view that “empire is, 

above all, a way of knowing and an enduring system of knowledge that persists long after the 

demise of colonialism” (2015: 433). Since 2015, of course, enduring colonialities have become 

the subject of many more studies and popular discourse, including in fine art and art history 

(eg. George Mahashe 2019).  Last but not least Henrichsen et al. highlight the marginalisation 

of Namibian scholarship, which “seems to be struggling with the persistent intellectual legacies 

of the South African empire, as well as with a strong, state-driven, anti-colonial and patriotic 

history narrative” (2015: 434).3 

 

What might this mean for art history as a discipline? If revisionist art historians such as Khan 

and Asfour see the bulk of South African art history as an ‘outpost’ of ‘the West’ - primarily 

extending practices of coloniality - where does this leave Namibia, as a former outpost of South 

Africa? Does this then comprise a sort of double-layered coloniality? As Namibian artist-

activist Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja (2021: 5) has written, for example, “Visual culture 

discourse in Namibia has focused heavily on the colonial period, primarily colonial 

photography and posters. Even pre-colonial visualities like rock art have been read through 

colonial and western academic lenses. This is problematic because it often does not account 

for the diverse and intertwining indigenous visualities”. Moreover, as we work to rewrite, 

delink and decolonise South African art history, what does it mean to extend that approach to 

Namibia? Can we indeed assume to continue to view Namibian art history and its new  

 
2 Gordon’s study finds a parallel with Olusoga and Erichsen’s (2011) study which closely implicates the 

experiences of German colonialism in Namibia in the rise of Nazism. 
3 Cf. Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, pers comm, 8th May 2020, where he commented on the lack of 

decolonial approaches in Namibian education and scholarship. 

17



 

 

postcolonial art practices through a ‘big brother’ South African lens, or is this characterisation 

too simplistic?4  

 

With these questions in mind I have worked to integrate recent Namibian scholarship into this 

research, in particular that of artist-scholar Nicola Brandt (2020), whose theory I discuss later 

in this chapter in detail, as well as historians Memory Biwa (2012) and Napandulwe Shiweda 

(2011, 2019), and Mushaandja (2020, 2021). 

 

Nation, Transnationalism and Patriotic Histories 

 

Histories of nationalism and liberation in southern Africa are currently being reworked, 

challenging the centrality of ‘the nation’ in favour of transnational dynamics and “the 

negotiated and multi-directional exchanges between global, regional and local actors” 

(Alexander et al 2020: 822). Here this is important because there is little art historical work 

that attempts to engage the region’s snarled, transnational histories.5 This project constitutes a 

very modest contribution to such absence and perhaps points the way to new areas for research. 

 

Commenting on very recent historical literature in this field, Alexander et al (2020) note “a 

new focus on entanglements, fractures and encounters that bring into view identities and 

motivations that do not easily fit a nationalist mould or indeed a story of liberation”. It is 

precisely this kind of historical analysis that is much needed if we are to better comprehend the 

biographies and art practice of Uambembe and Mekondjo. Furthemore, as I soon show, 

particularly in Chapters 2 and 3, the transnational research of historians Williams and Bolliger 

provide critical context and theory in this regard, and in turn may be shaped by the narratives 

of the artists. 

 

Whilst ‘the nation’ as a concept may have lost academic popularity, it was and remains a critical 

tool in practice for authority-making by the apartheid, post-apartheid South African and post-

independence Namibian governments. This is relevant as we engage with Mekondjo’s and 

Uambembe’s work precisely because the artists frequently describe running up against 

 
4 Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, pers comm, 8th May 2020. 
5 Nicola Brandt, pers comm, 12th May 2020. John Peffer’s (2009) work on the Medu Ensemble in Botswana 

may constitute one example of exception, although it is still very much focused on South African art history. 

18



 

 

monocular post-independent “patriotic histories”. “Patriotic history” is a term coined by 

influential historian Ranger (2004) and has since been redeployed in multiple analyses. To give 

an example as applied to the case of Zimbabwe, historian Blessing-Miles Tendi (2008) 

describes how patriotic history bolsters certain dominant narratives to the exclusion of others, 

usually along political party lines, which in turn influences popular understandings about the 

past.  

 

This can be seen playing out in both South Africa and Namibia (eg. Gamedze 2018; Finex 

Ndhlovu 2019; Alexandra Stonehouse 2018). In the case of Namibia, the leading party South 

West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) has, for example, often swept under the carpet 

contestations about the past, particularly regards human rights abuses in exile (eg. Oiva Angula 

2018). This has understandably created all sorts of silences and questions for Mekondjo’s 

generation. In South Africa, the ANC has also cultivated patriotic histories, attempting to build 

‘unified’ postapartheid nationhood through its heritage practices and commemorations, (eg. 

Samuel Longford 2020), which certainly do not cater for the experiences of inconvenient 

groups such as the South African-based Angolan community of which Uambembe is a part. 

 

Last and importantly, state-driven patriotic histories, alongside the apartheid propaganda that 

preceded them, have frequently overlooked the wartime experiences of women and children 

which are at the heart of the artists’ view.  Having laid out these historiographic and theoretical 

concerns, it is to the work of the artists and theories of art-making that I now turn. 

 

Is the Artist an Historian? History-Making, Art-Making and the Archive 

 

One of the guiding motivations for this work has been to address the dearth of black women’s 

perspectives in re-telling Namibia’s Independence War6, and more specifically to ask how we 

might understand this history differently through the lenses of two black women artists, Tuli 

Mekondjo and Helena Uambembe. In turn this begs a more nuanced set of theoretical questions 

relating to artistic practice, gendered positions and historical engagement, which goes beyond 

a simple ‘insertion’ of black women’s voices into dominant narratives about the past. 

 

 
6 Notable exceptions include Martha Akawa’s (2014), Libertina Amathila (2012) and Ellen Ndeshi Namhila’s 

(2013), as well as current research by University of Namibia sociologist Ndeshi Namupula (pers. comm, Lennart 
Bolliger, 15 February 2021, Dag Henrichsen, 27 September 2020, Ndeshi Namupula, 6 April 2021). 

19



 

 

Put differently, are these artists historians of some kind? What are they doing with history, 

memory and archival materials? How do we conceptualise ‘history’ and particular historical 

references (including documentary images) within artistic practises? Rather than being a ‘truth’ 

that exists out there to be excavated and revealed, how might we see history as a tool mobilised 

by artists to articulate their own stories and cultivate meaning at both a personal and collective 

level? To this extent, we find parallels with what the historical literature has long shown us 

about how groups and individuals mobilise discourses around history to address a wide range 

contemporary agendas and concerns. With regards to the historiography of liberation struggles 

in southern Africa, Alexander et al (2020: 827) remind us of “the uses to which these histories 

are put in the present and the ways in which the present shapes how the past is known, 

encountered and performed” (cf. Wolukau-Wanambwa 2019). 

 

Making and Gaining Knowledge through Art 

Questions concerning the relationships between artistic practice and history-making reference 

a host of broader ongoing debates about theories of knowledge and “thinking through the 

visual” (Sarat Maharaj 2009). These discussions reflect on how and in what ways the visual 

arts and artistic enquiry should be considered a field of knowledge and knowledge production, 

and how process is central to this (Ambrozic and Vettese 2013; Maharaj 2009). In the section 

below, I briefly touch on ideas about dialectics and multidirectionality in knowledge-building, 

and the questions of whether and how an artwork can be ‘legible’. 

Mary Jane Jacob’s (2013) definition is useful: “knowledge creation is a dialectic process. It 

moves between doing and reflecting, making and thinking. Quite simply, [as philosopher John] 

Dewey said, “We do something to the thing and then the thing does something to us in return” 

(Jacob 2013: 103). Further referencing Dewey, she goes on to argue that “works of art are not 

fixed things, but are both the “outcomes of inquires” and the “means of attaining knowledge 

of something else” by way of reflection. In this process, “in both production and enjoyed 

perception of works of art, knowledge is transformed; it becomes something more than 

knowledge because it is merged with non-intellectual elements to form an experience 

worthwhile as an experience” (Jacob 2013: 103). Jacob points at the multidirectionality of 

flows of information and knowledge. Indeed, knowledge-building is not just ‘for’ the artist but 

for and involving others in relation to them. I return to this shortly, regarding artist relationships 

with both the academy and the archive. 

20



 

 

In terms of thinking about the legibility of artworks, Maharaj argues for moving away from 

“approaches to the visual that treat it predominantly as an ‘image-lingo’ - basing it on a 

linguistic model ostensibly with codes of grammar, syntax and related regularities” whose 

“impact is to restrict the visual to verbal-discursive legibility” (2009: 4), and which in turn may 

lead us to talking over and above the artwork. Verbal-discursive legibility is also interlaced 

with race and gender dynamics, creating segways for a long history of white writers and 

curators talking over and above the work and biographies of black artists, as described in the 

introduction to this research. 

 

Maharaj’s position also segues into a set of paradigmatic concerns which Irit Rogoff (2003, 

2006) has clearly articulated. Existing theoretical frameworks such as structuralism and 

poststructuralism assume that “meaning is immanent, that it is always already there and 

precedes its uncovering” (2006: 1). Instead Rogoff argues that “as we have moved to engage 

increasingly with the performative nature of culture, with meaning that takes place as events 

unfold, we need to also move away from notions of immanent meanings that can be 

investigated, exposed and made obvious” (ibid). Rogoff’’s work appears to offer a 

fundamentally postmodern approach: meaning cannot be uncovered or excavated and is not 

fixed, cannot be fixed in the artwork. No one has the final word in determining its meaning 

(Rogoff 2003: 104). Meaning is thus inherently unstable, and we cannot decipher it ‘on behalf 

of’ the artist. 

 

Instead of attempting to uncover and make legible its hidden meanings, rather we must ask: 

what does the artwork do? What does it produce? What effects does it have in the world, for 

whom and in which moment? (cf. Rogoff 2003: 103). That is, and as I will argue in relation to 

the work of Mekondjo and Uambembe, “meaning takes place in the present”, and is produced 

in ways which are contingent on the immediate audience and their subjectivities, as well as the 

temporal moment. If this is accurate, it concurrently unsettles how we think about the ‘truths’ 

of history, not only the “patriotic histories” of the state but perhaps also evidential visual genres 

such as documentary photography, upon which both the artists draw (cf. Okwui Enwezor 2008, 

Enwezor and Rory Bester 2013). 

 

 

 

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Making Art With History, and Interdisciplinarity 

 

There is a parallel, perhaps, between art historical tendencies to ‘uncover’, make legible and 

fix meaning within an artwork, and progressive historians’ drive to unearth marginalised 

histories - black histories, gendered histories, transnational histories among others. In common 

is the assumption that, with the ‘right’ type of research, methodologies and analysis, one can 

successfully revise received wisdom about the past; one can really find a ‘more truthful’ truth. 

 

On the question of interdisciplinary relationships between art and history, Maharaj’s often 

dense writing emphasises that in their unpredictability, visual art methodologies contrast 

markedly from the “methodological steel tracks” (2009: 3) of other disciplines. However, 

“[t]his is not to say that visual art practices do not interact with established discursive-academic 

circuits and think-know components (Maharaj 2009: 3)”. In this regard, we find interesting 

examples in how Mekondjo and Uambembe are engaging with, and being engaged by, 

European and American academics and their students. For example, Uambembe was invited 

by historian Bolliger to be a guest lecturer to his students in their courses on ‘War & Conflict’ 

and ‘Regional Studies’ in Berlin and Potsdam.7 Uambembe also presented on her performance 

practice at University of California at Berkeley to students at the Performing Arts Department.8 

Meanwhile Mekondjo was invited by historian and cultural studies lecturer Julia Rensing to 

present to African Studies students at the University of Basel.9  

 

In turn, exchanges and discussions with historians and scholars are informing the artists’ 

making. As Uambembe explains: 

 

A lot of [Lennart Bolliger’s] writing [has] influenced my thinking around the 

community and [my] making of the works, especially [his] paper on ‘Gendering..’ 

influenced me when I made How to make a Mud Cake10. I’m still thinking about it as 

I’m creating new work….So that’s important, it just makes sense having the visual 

representation and the written [historical] work [in relation to each other]. What I like 

about Lennart and what’s different about him is how he positions himself...how he takes 

 
7 Interview with Lennart Bolliger, 19 February 2021. 
8 Helena Uambembe, pers. comm, 27 March 2021. 
9 Julia Rensing, pers.comm, 15 February 2021. See also Appendix 2l regards the lecturers’ motivations. 
10 Uambembe’s How to Make a Mud Cake series was exhibited as part of a group exhibition titled Cubicle, 

Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town, 11-23 January 2021. 

22



 

 

on this position of learning, not just engaging and disappearing...he constantly engages 

with it.11 

 

In turn, Bolliger believes that Uambembe provides his students with a unique perspective that 

is rare to find in the military history literature; he also acknowledges that other disciplines are 

‘valid’ ways of engaging with this history: 

 

What [the key texts on gender and militarisation] all emphasise is that militarisation 

goes way beyond barracks, and it does so in multifaceted ways, and in ways that has 

little to do with armed forces more narrowly defined and understood. In colonial armies, 

you see they spend a lot of time regulating romantic... and family relationships. This is 

a really important aspect that doesn’t come through in a lot of the literature. It is difficult 

to get at [and] difficult to ask about and write about. In Helena [Uambembe]’s work 

and lectures, it becomes very clear that her work and her own life is deeply militarized. 

Her performance Therapy for the Black man (In honour of….)12 - where she brewed 

traditional beer - was inspired by the alcoholism... in [army] communities…It was also 

one of the ways for women to supplement income.13 

 

These engagements are pertinent in terms of interdisciplinary pedagogy, North-South 

relationships and a range of power dynamics too.  For the purposes of this research I want to 

highlight the multidirectionality of knowledge-production and history-making in these 

interactions. These dynamics move beyond the conventions of making art legible through 

verbal-discursive readings of and over the artwork, rather allowing for it to have a more 

malleable, animated, mutually constituted presence. At the same time, whilst these dynamics 

suggest the disruption of structural hierarchies in terms of colonial/postcolonial relationships 

and in terms of race and gender, I am cognisant that they hold the potential for reinscription of 

those structures, where the black artist and the black body (in various manifestations - from 

archival residue to contemporary performance presence) may once again becomes a site for 

Eurocentric viewing, reading and consumption (cf. Baderoon 2011).14 Furthermore, my role as 

gallerist inviting figures such as Bolliger to collaborate in the exhibition could be read as being 

complicit in these dynamics. 

 

 
11 Interview with Helena Uambembe, 8 February 2021. 
12 Therapy for the Black man (In honour of….), performance by Helena Uambembe, FNB Art Joburg, September 

13-15, 2019. See Figure 31. 
13 Interview with Lennart Bolliger, 19 February 2021. 
14 I am grateful to Nontobeko Ntombela for her insights on these points. 

23



 

 

This research thus embodies and reflects on a number of efforts which operate either in parallel 

or perhaps even as mirrors. I closely follow and engage with revisionist historical research that 

is breaking new ground in analysing Namibia’s Independence War, in order to better 

understand the biographies and practice of Mekondjo and Uambembe. At the very same time, 

the artists are engaging in the multidirectional production of new knowledges about that 

history, sometimes with myself and sometimes together with some of the historians, Bolliger 

in particular. This research thus attempts a nuanced dance between that history-revising itself, 

how revised historical discourses are being constructed in contemporary art, and how art may 

in turn shape scholarly research. This all the time whilst in part responding to dominant 

narratives and “patriotic histories”, and in the context of a range of positions structured by race, 

gender and coloniality, as well as individual agency. 

 

Mobilising the Archive in Flux  

 

Carolyn Hamilton’s extensive work and theorisation about the archive in South Africa is well 

known and requires minimal introduction here. Her co-authored (2002) volume not only 

challenged received wisdom about how archives are continuously produced and shaped to 

found knowledge in the present, but posited that “a refigured archive might escape the 

boundaries [that institutions] enforce, and find expression in new sites and in new forms” 

(Hamilton et al. 2002: 17). This links neatly to Enwezor’s wide-reaching and incisive analysis 

in his (2008) essay Archive Fever, where he writes that the artist serves as “the historic agent 

of memory” and that it is “within the archive that acts of remembering and regeneration 

occur…” (2008: 46). 

 

Hamilton’s most recent work in Babel Unbound (Cowling and Hamilton 2020) invites us to 

once again consider the definition of an ‘archive’ in a contemporary context where archives 

are increasingly contested in public life, “being actively inaugurated, burnt down and much 

more between those poles” (2020: 126). Inevitably this contestation is grounded in ideas and 

positions about what constitutes the “truth” of the past. In addition, the very protocols and 

disciplines surrounding the archive - including the in-vogue academic requirement for 

researchers to be self-reflexive in its use - are a site of contestation to the extent that they still 

embody and extend coloniality, as Mahashe (2019) argues. 

 

24



 

 

Hamilton acknowledges a wide variance in what the term “archive” means, when and to whom 

- which in turn shapes what comes into view. She acknowledges, for example, that “cultural 

theory, subaltern inquiries and certain kinds of community projects have widened the scope of 

the term dramatically to include many forms [of archives] that are not in [physical] 

repositories” (2020: 126), meaning that an archive could be comprised of graves, graffiti or 

oral histories. This would stand in line with Namibian historian Memory Biwa’s (2012) broader 

conceptualisation of the archive in terms of Nama memory practices, for example, and which 

I discuss in Chapter 3. Yet Hamilton maintains a narrower definition, which privileges 

evidentiary-oriented practices and whereby archival materials must be “accorded a 

preservatory apparatus that involves some form of ‘freezing’ and sequestration, or protective 

recording as in digital preservation” (2020: 126). 

 

Contrary or perhaps simultaneously to this notion of ‘frozen’ preservation, however, Hamilton 

convincingly argues that archives are dynamic and in continuous flux. Indeed, there are 

multiple recent examples of archives, especially colonial archives, being recontextualised and 

thereby allowing new readings of the past and present.15 There are also examples of obscure, 

particularly marginal archives being brought into “new discursive fields”, such as the research 

of artist-historian Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa to reinstate pan-Africanist Amy Ashwood 

Garvey into the ‘mainstream’ history of anticolonial black activism. Wolukau-Wanambwa 

(2019) reflects on the “possibilities and constraints” of such work and the responsibility that 

comes with it - the possibility that those [archival] materials can and will be put to use within 

political life beyond the realm of contemporary art (cf. Wolukau-Wanambwa and Sherwood 

2018). In line with Hamilton, the archive here is once again always in flux thanks to the 

individual actors who activate and shape it; it has effects beyond itself. 

 

In this understanding of the archive we find clear parallels with what happens with art-making, 

directly resonating with the assertions of Jacob, Dewey and Rogoff: 

 

 

 
15 See for example, the exhibition Ovizire * Somgu: From Where Do We Speak at the Museum of Ethnology, 

Hamburg, 2018, where an exhibition by Namibian artists Vitjitua Ndjiharine, Mushaandja, Brandt and historian 
Ulrike Peters proposed a critical reading of the archive centred around a photographic inventory housed at the 
museum, created during the German colonial period in Namibia 1884 -1920 (Museum am Rothenbaum 2018; 
cf. Rensing forthcoming). 

25



 

 

Archival collections are reframed and refashioned over time, both affected by and 

resistant to the ebb and flow of reinterpretation, and in turn affecting interpretation. 

Thus it is that the archival object charts a course over time, lived in a continuous 

relationship with an ongoing, changing context, sometimes exerting a form of agency 

and sometimes itself being acted upon (Hamilton 2020: 139, my emphasis). 

 

Returning to questions of historical ‘truth’, Hamilton’s sharp conclusion is that “evidence is 

not a factual nugget mined from the archive, but a piece of evidence considered in relation to 

its own biography” (2020: 140). This returns us to Rogoff’s notion that an artwork cannot be 

analysed and critiqued to uncover its meaning, but instead that there is always some degree of 

instability and flux in the process of engaging with the artwork. I would conceive similarly of 

the artists and their making process, especially as it is continuously shaped, multidirectionally, 

by their interactions and knowledge exchanges with multiple other parties, including academic 

researchers and publics, and also, of course, with the archive. 

 

“New Practices of Self” in Southern African Contemporary Art 

 

Having presented the broader theoretical contours of art history and the archive which shape 

this research, I complete this chapter by turning towards contemporary art practices in southern 

Africa. I use scholar-artist Brandt’s (2020) analysis as a key framework to which I return 

throughout this dissertation. Brandt situates her new research on landscape and photography 

firmly in the postcolonial moment, in the context of the movements Black Lives Matter, 

Rhodes Must Fall, Fees Must Fall, and resistance against western and Eurocentric scholarship. 

Within this context, she convincingly analyses the rise of new hybrid artistic practices across 

southern Africa in recent years - often multimedia, performance-based and/or site-specific. Her 

lens is that of landscape (cf. Baderoon 2011): “In landscapes marked by trauma, inequality and 

deprivation, and at the same time constantly in flux...photographers and artists, across a range 

of media and strategies, are seeking to restore a closer and more intimate connection to place 

and to their own bodies and histories” (Brandt 2020: 78) 

 

Brandt examines “how [contemporary] progressive practices have been influenced by the rich 

legacies of earlier documentary idioms and sociopolitical critique” (2020: xviii). She conducts 

detailed analysis of the work of Santu Mofokeng, Margaret Courtney Clarke, John Liebenberg, 

Andrew Tshabangu, Jo Ratcliffe, Sabelo Mlangeni and David Goldblatt, all the while closely 

reflecting on colonial and apartheid policies around land and space, and extending this to the 

26



 

 

context of Namibia’s liberation struggle. Mofokeng’s oeuvre is the cornerstone of her analysis, 

in whose practice “the idea of landscape...represented a transition from a state of captivity 

under apartheid to a more conscious mode of claiming his right to the land and his stake in the 

landscape”(Brandt 2020: 75, my emphasis). 

 

Acknowledging the spectre of colonial hegemony as well as Independent state power, Brandt 

argues that “[t]he younger generation wants to move progressively away from the dictates of 

western hegemonic imports and instead draws on personal stories, oral histories and the 

imagination located in intimate narrative identities often expressed through performance” 

(2020: 172). The heart of her thesis is that 

 

Artists and photographers are now drawing on highly imaginative and cross 

disciplinary approaches and media in order to investigate deeper truths and are oriented 

towards new practices of self, including the interrogation of concepts of space/place 

and representations of landscape in varying ways. Motivations diverge, but are often 

also interconnected, from the desire to explore questions of personal identity, belonging 

and the production of new forms of knowledge, but also as a deliberate means to reclaim 

space (and land) and a sense of self-determination, especially in relation to the body.  

Some of these critical strategies and aesthetic modes include aftermath, appropriation, 

counter-narratives, opacity, collectivity and performativity (2020: 4). 

 

Brandt’s work echoes other recent analyses: for example, writing on the practice of South 

African ‘Indian’ woman artist Reshma Chhiba, Khan (2019: 52) writes about how “[t]he 

process of Self-determination is a crucial one for black-African-postcolonial feminists and race 

scholars...Self-definition, the ability and the process of naming ourselves, is part of 

recuperative projects for post-colonial Subjects”. 

 

Brandt also makes an important contribution in terms of documenting very new emerging 

practices in Namibia, particularly performance-based, which thus far appear to be mostly 

unwritten, for example the work of Trixie Munyama and the Da-mai Dance Ensemble. Brandt’s 

work is augmented by Mushaandja’s (2021) new research, which analyses alternative, radical 

cinematic and performance practices in Windhoek. In addition, Brandt also refers closely to 

Ratcliffe’s post-war ‘aftermath’ work, showing how artists have used documentary images for 

subversion, and how such images open up questions about narrative and memory. 

 

 

27



 

 

Employing Brandt’s theorising, this research thus asks how and in what ways does the practice 

of the two artists Mekondjo and Uambembe align - or differ from - Brandt’s theorisation of 

post-apartheid “new practices of self”, in order to create revisionist, decolonial, feminist 

vantage points on Namibia’s Independence War. At the same time, I ask if Brandt’s framework, 

despite certainly shedding light on new practices in Namibia, perhaps reproduces South 

Africa’s imperial ‘big brother’ relationship with Namibia, especially by centering so many 

South African artists in her work. Can we indeed assume continuity between the two countries 

and their respective ‘art landscapes’ and art histories, or does this extend a double-layer of 

coloniality? In addition, whilst I do not investigate this in any detail, there is the question of 

Brandt’s role as a western-trained white scholar (like myself) writing on the work of many 

(though not exclusively) black artists.  

 

Lastly, Brandt gestures towards the importance of spirituality within these “new practices” 

several times, for example, highlighting the predecessor interests of Mofokeng, Tshabangu and 

Mlangeni in the relationships between spirit and landscape (2020: 79). However she does not 

investigate this aspect in any depth, understandably, given her other key foci. Spirituality is an 

important avenue for exploration, considering Christianity’s growth across Africa as part of 

colonialism’s legacy  (cf. Siundu and Wegesa 1998, and Andindilile 2017 on Kenyan writer 

Ngugi waThiong’o), and African spiritual practices as significant modes of decoloniality. As I 

show in Chapter 3, spirituality is particularly important in Mekondjo’s performance practice, 

and makes it distinct from Uambembe’s practice, despite many other commonalities. 

 

Conclusion 

 

By way of setting the scene for engaging with Namibian history, which necessarily involves 

that of South Africa and Angola, I have highlighted the centrality of theoretical perspectives 

concerning ‘empire’, ‘nation’ and the transnational, the latter of which is crucial for 

contextualising the biographies and perspectives of the two artists, Tuli Mekondjo and Helena 

Uambembe. I have also flagged some art historiographic blindspots that hinge on South 

Africa’s imperial relationship with Namibia. Within this transnational view, I have identified 

“patriotic history”-building as a common practice of independent states, and one to which both 

artists respond. 

 

28



 

 

Next, I have pointed to theoretical questions that arise in relation to artistic practice and 

historical engagement, simultaneously conceiving of the archive as contested and in flux. I 

have posited theories concerning multidirectionality and dialecticism in knowledge-building, 

and cautioned that these dynamics may at times have a more sinister structural underbelly. In 

considering how to analyse artists’ work, I move beyond simply identifying their insertion of 

‘new’ gendered perspectives into dominant narratives, and I move away from trying to 

‘uncover’ meanings in the work. Rather, I view the art as processual and dynamic, something 

which does something to us, and to which we (the viewer, the curator, the scholar) do 

something in return.  

 

Meaning is made in the present, as artworks with their archival residues are brought into “new 

discursive fields”. In acting as historians of sorts, Mekondjo and Uambembe mobilise the 

archive, history and its discourses. They ‘do’ historical work, ‘making history’ not only of their 

own accord, but also in relationship to other scholars - engaging with historians and students 

studying the same history - and in relationship to broader publics and communal collectives. 

This subsequently feeds back into their own production.  

 

In the chapters that follow, I now turn to examining the work of each artist in depth and explore 

the nature of their “new practices of self”, especially their invocations of land, place and the 

gendered body. 

 

 

29



 

Chapter 2:  War, Land, Gender and Spirit: Counter-Rupture  

in the Practice of Tuli Mekondjo 

 

Introduction  

 

Elizabeth Tuli-Mekondjo1 Mbumba, commonly known as Tuli Mekondjo, was born in 1983 in 

Angola to Namibian parents who joined Namibia’s SWAPO liberation movement in exile. 

Mekondjo spent her early childhood in exile camps in Angola and Zambia, returning to 

Namibia only at Independence in 1990, not long after which she lost both her mother and her 

step-father. In this chapter I trace Mekondjo’s biography and its historical context as I offer an 

overview and interpretation of her practice. Importantly, whilst I centre the war’s legacies in 

my reading of Mekondjo’s work, I do not assume that that her biography and identity is only 

shaped by the war, nor that it should be considered ‘fixed’ in this light. 

 

I examine the mixed media work that she has been creating since 2018, which employs the 

mediums of photographic transfer, paint, embroidery, resin and mahangu millet grain - a 

Namibian food staple. The majority of this work incorporates photographs which originate 

from both public and personal archives. I concentrate primarily on Mekondjo’s series for The 

Borders of Memory (2020) exhibition, given its focus on the Independence War. Last but 

certainly not least, I examine how Mekondjo extends her practice into performance, 

highlighting its significant spiritual components.  

 

Alongside liberation struggle historiography, particularly that of Christian Williams, Brandt’s 

(2020) art historical framework provides an insightful lens for contextualising Mekondjo’s 

work. As outlined in Chapter 1, Brandt documents the rise of new hybrid artistic practices 

which reflect a “desire to explore questions of personal identity, belonging and the production 

of new forms of knowledge, but [are] also as a deliberate means to reclaim space (and land) 

and a sense of self-determination, especially in relation to the body”. Mekondjo’s practice 

certainly falls in line with what Brandt theorises, but I build on this to incorporate spirituality 

as a critical element and mode of decoloniality in her work.  

 

 
1 Tuli Mekondjo in Oshiwambo translates as “We are in the struggle”. 

30



 

Mekondjo mobilises the archive and reflects on historical discourses - including “patriotic 

histories” - to articulate her own stories and mobilise meaning at a very personal level. In this 

way, the artist’s expression of the individual self becomes a way to better understand her own 

past, but is also an avenue to knowing the collective self. Throughout, this process feeds back 

on itself as the artist gains self-awareness through new engagements with history and in relation 

to others such as researchers and traditional healers. This is a multidirectional processual mode 

of knowledge-building and history-making, in line with Jacob and Rogoff; interpreting it 

necessitates that we move beyond the verbal-discursive, per Maharaj, and that we conceive of 

the archive as dynamic and in flux, mobilised but also acted upon and outwards, per Hamilton. 

 

In exploring Mekondjo’s practice, I evoke the themes of disrupture and rupture. These are 

useful as a way to think about Mekondjo’s personal life story - particularly her experience of 

wartime exile - as well as a broader motif for the colonial past, its profound reshaping of land, 

livelihoods and religion, and the Independence War that apartheid (a double layering of empire 

in Namibia) necessarily provoked. The idea of rupture also gestures to time and temporality - 

“before and after” - and the ambivalences within. I refer to Mekondjo’s actions as counter-

rupture: modes of practice that resist and counter dominant Eurocentric and/or “patriotic 

history” discourses, and that also proffer new ways of knowing about the past and being in the 

present. 

 

Disrupture: War, Exile and The Archive, Exile  

 

“For How Long Must We Wait?”2: Accessing and Mobilising the Archive  

 

South African research has reflected extensively on the themes of omission and writing-out in 

the archive, unsurprisingly flagging race and gender dynamics in particular. In the face of a 

scarcity of a black archive (that is, where black experience is subject not object), the ongoing 

precarity of its existence in material form, and limited definitions of what constitutes 

repositories for black experience, Bekhizizwe Peterson called as early as 2002 for “more 

creative encounters between archival material and different sites and communities”, 

incorporating those who have not historically used archives. This kind of approach 

acknowledges the implicit potential dynamism and generative capacity of the archive (cf. 

 
2 Interview with Tuli Mekondjo, 12 February 2021. 

31



 

Cowling and Hamilton 2020), and indirectly begs engagement from contemporary artists as 

well (cf. Wolukau-Wanambwa 2019). In tandem, the story of the “colonising camera” has now 

been much-told3, and I do not repeat this here but rather focus on the generative capacity of 

this ‘camera’. We see multiple artists - alongside Mekondjo - taking up this mantle, 

appropriating and repurposing archival photographs, including the likes of Zanele Muholi (cf. 

Brandt 2020, Farber 2017). 

 

Since 2018 Mekondjo has frequently used copies of colonial and war-time archival 

photographs in her work, as well as photographs from ethnographic books, her own personal 

collection and those of family friends. Explaining her fascination, she says: 

 

There is something about old photographs, they tell a story about a time capsule that is 

long gone, photographs capture the essence of the souls forever frozen in their poses, 

gestures and pains, regrets and joys. What were their profound memories of the pasts 

that they knew? Could any of our very own ancestors be captured in one of these 

archival images, without us knowing of them? For some people, they’re simply  

photographs of people long gone, but for me there’s a connection, it is almost like a 

remembrance for me, [of] what if I was there before, before this lifetime [my emphasis]. 

 

Regards Namibia’s Independence War and its associated archives, it cannot be over-stated how 

tightly the apartheid state censored the war, nor how much documentation was discarded or 

destroyed by the apartheid state at its conclusion (Verne Harris 2000, Jacob Dlamini 2020).4 

Accessing government records from this period remains highly challenging, even in post-

apartheid South Africa. Evert Kleynhans and Will Gordon (2020), for example, write about the 

huge legislative, practical and methodological challenges of accessing classified Department 

of Defence archives,5 suggesting that apartheid secrets are being preserved ad infinitum. Yet 

the authors do not claim conspiracy nor gatekeeping, rather arguing that poor accessibility is 

grounded in limited institutional capacity and understaffing. 

 
3 Examples include Landau and Kaspin (2002), Farber (2017), Hayes and Minkley (2019), Godby (2010), Rizzo 

(2019), Morton and Newbury (2015). 
4 Cf. Lennart Bolliger, pers. comm, and the late documentary photographer John Liebenberg, pers.comm, 5 

October 2015. 
5 This Pretoria archive contains “extremely valuable primary sources, numbering some 3038 archival groups 

and comprising nearly 38 linear kilometres of archival material” (2020: 2) but access to the majority of these 
archival holdings remains very restricted. The authors claim that only 11 percent of this vast collection of 
archival material is accessible, albeit acknowledging that such numbers are contested. As a result, “the 
methodology of post-1970 historical research differs significantly from commonly accepted historical 
practices” (2020: 2