DEMOCRACY
 1 3 - 1 5 JULY 1994
 UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND
 HISTORY WORKSHOP
 STEPHEN KAPPATA, ARTIST WITH A DEMOCRATIC VISION
 Hugh Macmillan
 History Department
 University of Zambia
\-\\lS
 Stephen Kappata. Artist with a Democratic Vision
 Stephen Kappata has been presented to the Zambian and
 international public over the last ten years or so as a 'naive' ?
 artist. A standard English dictionary defines naive as follows:
 'artless, innocent and unaffected; unconsciously and amusingly
 simple'. Although the word may have a more technical meaning when
 applied to painting, referring, perhaps, to lack of formal
 training and unfamiliarity with the principles of perspective, it
 is difficult to see how any of its usual senses can apply to the
 work of Stephen Kappata. For his paintings are with their
 meticulous draughtmanship, their striking compositions, and
 effective, if somewhat idiosyncratic, use of colour, anything but
 artless. Unaffected they may be but their innocence is open to
 question for the paintings, with their often ambiguous inscriptions
 and content, are frequently susceptible to different, conflicting,
 and even subversive, interpretations. Amusing they often are,
 occasionally provoking hearty laughter, but they are more often
 knowingly complex than unconsciously simple. It is possible that
 the label 'naive' may in the case of Kappata be intended to draw
 the sting from the work of an artist whose paintings of
 traditional, colonial and contemporary scenes carry a distinct
 political message. In any event the adjective 'naive' seems quite
 inadequate to describe one of the most original, and now most
 successful, contributors to Zambia's artistic scene. It is the
 purpose of this article to examine in some detail the life and
 art of Stephen Kappata and to place his work in a broad historical
and cultural context.
 KAPPATA'S LIFE
 Stephen Chipango Kappata(the spelling of the surname is
 idiosyncratic as the double p is unknown to Zambian Bantu
 languages) was born at Namenga village in the southern part of
 Mongu district in Barotseland, Northern Rhodesia, now the Western
 Province of Zambia, in May 1936.1 The village lies about thirty
 miles east of the Zambezi river. His father, Kapata Wakoma, who was
 Luchazi, had migrated from Angola into Zambia at the turn of the
 century, escaping from Portuguese colonial wars of conquest. As
 such he was one of a large number of people from a variety of
 ethnic groups, known to the older established and dominant Lozi
 inhabitants of the area, as lWiko', meaning people from the west,
 who have entered Zambia from Angola in a continuous stream in the
 course of this century. His father was a poor subsistence farmer
 who was frequently away for long periods as a migrant labourer in
 Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. The Luchazi people were noted as
 hunters but also as wood carvers. Stephen Kappata remembers his
 father as a successful craftsman who made and sold wooden drums,
 and pestles and mortars, and was also a basket-maker. Stephen was
 the son of his father's.third wife, Musole Mesele, a Luvale woman
 who was also an immigrant from Angola. Stephen was the only
 surviving child of seven born to his mother. He had two half-
 brothers and a half-sister from his father's earlier wives.
Stephen Kappata was brought up in a Luchazi village in a
 predominantly Lozi area. He spoke Luchazi at home and learned Lozi,
 the local lingua franca, and later English, at school. His family
 were converted in the early 1930's to the Watchtower sect, a
 millenarian movement of Jehova's Witnesses, which became popular in
 Barotseland at that time, especially among the poorest and most
 marginalised of immigrant people. He has remained faithful to the
 movement, with some lapses from orthodoxy such as his involvement
 in nationalist politics in the early 1960's, until the present. The
 Watchtower movement was viewed with deep suspicion by the British
 colonial authorities who saw it as at least potentially subversive
 and anti-European, but has been viewed with equal suspicion by
 independent African governments on account of its disapproval of
 all political parties, and the refusal of its memebers to recognise
 the symbols of nationhood such as flags and anthems.
 EDUCATION
 Kappata first went to school in 1943 at the village school
 which was run by the French protestant Paris Evangelical Mission.
 Kappata recalls that the first four years of school were free.
 Pupils were provided with slates, and later on with pencils and
 exercise books. After two further years at a lower middle school
 Kappata proceeded to the Sefula Mission School at the headquarters
 of the Paris Mission. He left school after three years at Sefula in
 1951. He had completed Standard VI, the last year of primary
 school, but there was no possibility of going on to Munali School
in Lusaka which was then the only boys' secondary school in the
 country. It was a remarkable achievement for a boy from a poor and
 illiterate home, with the added disadvantages of belonging to an
 immigrant tribe, and a suspect church, to have come so far through
 the highly selective, and grossly underfunded, colonial educational
 system.
 Kappata recalls that he very much enjoyed school... He
 acknowledges the influence upon him of several Zambian teachers and
 of the French superintendent of Sefula Mission, the Reverend J.P.
 Burger, a man who was deeply interested in the history, culture and
 languages of Barotseland. He was in Kappata's own words "the first
 white man who liked me' and treated him as a son. There was no art
 teaching at school, but he remembers that he was always interested
 in drawing. He had his first lessons from an older boy, Kakoma,
 before he went to school. He learnt from him to draw cattle with a
 stick in the Kalahari sands of Barotseland. Like other boys of his
 age he modelled cattle figures from clay. At school he continued to
 draw, at first with chalk on slates, and later with pencils and
 pens in the margins of exercise books. His teachers and fellow
 pupils recognised his talent as a draughtsman, though there was no
 formal outlet for his skills. At home he annoyed his elderly uncle
 by his attempts to draw his portrait.
 EARLY WORK EXPERIENCE
After leaving school he could, perhaps, have trained as a
 primary school teacher but he had no interest in doing so. He
 stayed at home in the village for a while and then went to look for
 work at the nearest industrial centre - the Zambezi Sawmills
 which exploited the extensive indigenous teak forests of
 Barotseland, and provided sleepers for the railways of Southern
 Africa. These sawmills were the nearest centre of large-scale
 employment, but they were 200 miles, and an arduous ten days walk,
 from Kappata's home village. He and his companions travelled with
 food, cooking pots, and blankets through wild and sparsely
 populated country. He worked at the sawmills for a few months as a
 junior ticket clerk at a wage of ?1.8.0 a month with food. His job
 was to check on the days and hours worked by the mass of labourers.
 He went on from there to work for a year for an Italian building
 contractor at Livingstone, close to the Victoria Falls, and then to
 work for a year or so each for the Federal Post Office and the
 Rhodesia Railways in the southern province of Zambia. In 1957 he
 moved to the capital, Lusaka, and worked for a year at the Pioneer
 Brickworks. He was employed variously as a storeman, a linesman,
 and in his old job as a ticket clerk. In the meantime he had not
 abandoned formal education. He attempted to complete the first two
 years of secondary school through the Central African
 Correspondence College.
 He was not happy in Lusaka. After an abortive attempt to
 become a policeman which involved a period of training at the
 Lilayi Police College - the inspiration of many later pictures - he
heard rumours of the wealth which could be acquired on the South
 African gold-mines. He made his way in 1958 to Kazangula, in what
 is today the Caprivi strip of Namibia, and signed on with WENELA -
 the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association, which had been
 recruiting labour for the South African mines from Barotseland
 since the mid 1930's. After medical tests, and painful injections,
 he was flown by DC 3 (Dakota) to Francistown in the then
 Bechuanaland Protectorate, now Botswana. He was transported from
 there by train to Johannesburg.
 He soon found that his new employers at the Consolidated Main
 Reef Gold Mine were uninterested in his hard-won educational
 qualifications and previous experience. They seemed to be deeply
 suspicious of anyone who could speak English. Within ten days he
 was sent underground to work as a lasher with pick and shovel. He
 was not used to such work, and was immediately involved in a clash
 with his Mozambican 'boss-boy' or foreman. After a month of
 underground work he was, after repeated letters to the management,
 transferred to surface work in the kitchens. He was soon promoted
 to stores work, and later established himself once again as a
 ticket clerk.
 Although he objected very strongly to the way in which the
 mine-workers were treated by 'the Boers', he enjoyed his time in
 South Africa. After two years he came back as far as Kazangula for
 the sole purpose of signing on for another contract, and returned
 to the south without going home. While on the mines he travelled
freely in the Witwatersrand area, and knew well townships such as
 Orlando, the oldest part of the massive Soweto housing complex,
 where he was able to enjoy a more normal social life away from the
 frustrations of the single-sex mine hostels. But he was also able
 to make himself at home in the hostels with his many Lozi, Luchazi,
 Luvale, and Chokwe companions, many of the latter coming from
 Angola. There were few Zambians from outside the western and north
 western provinces, but there were many 'Nyasas' from what is now
 Malawi and was then, with Northern Rhodesia, a part of the settler-
 controlled Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
 ARTISTIC TALENT
 It was at the mines that Kappata was first able to put his
 artistic talents to profitable use. He found that he could sell
 drawings done to order for half-a-crown(two shillings and sixpence)
 a time. He drew whatever he was asked to draw, but remembers that
 there was a particular demand for drawings of naked women in the
 sex-starved atmosphere of the hostels.
 After a dispute with a Swazi head clerk, who disliked Africans
 from the north, and after a period in hospital suffering from what
 he believed to be poisoning, Kappata left South Africa in 1962 and
 returned home. He had been in South Africa during a period of great
 political crisis, following the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, which
 resulted in the banning of the ANC and PAC. He returned home at a
 critical moment in the history of the Federation and of Zambia.
from 19S9, and in Zambia from 1961, the Federation was on the verge
 of collapse. Zambia and Malawi were destined for independence in
 1964. The more militant of the two nationalist parties, UNIP, under
 the leadership of Kenneth Kaunda, was in 1962 just beginning to
 establish itself in Barotseland, an isolated part of Zambia, where
 the natural lines of communication were with the south, and
 political developments had lagged behind the rest of the country.
 POLITICS
 Kappata maintains that he had taken no interest in politics
 when he worked in Zambia in the mid 1950's, which were in any case
 a period of political quiescence. He now looks back on the Federal
 period, as do many of his generation, with some nostalgia, as' the
 time when 'development' got started, and when the cost of living
 seemed to be relatively low. He professes also to have had little
 interest in or knowledge of South African politics during his time
 on the mines, though he shared in the general resentment and
 bitterness produced by the' racism, and violence, of the mining
 .industry. It may, therefore, seem surprising that on his return to
 Zambia he became for two years firstly branch secretary, and- then
 branch chairman, of UNIP in his home area. His short involvement in
 active politics was in conflict with the Watchtower beliefs of his
 family, and of his upbringing. Clearly he was for a time swept
 along by the current of popular enthusiasm for UNIP and forthcoming
 independence. It seems probable that his time in South Africa had
also been a mind-broadening and radicalising experience.
 Kappata's brief involvement in local level politics provided
 him with a new opportunity to exercise, and to display, his
 artistic talents. His main duties as a branch secretary involved
 the sale of party cards for a small commission, but he soon found
 that he was in demand as a cartoonist, and a producer of posters
 and placards. He remembers drawing cartoons showing, for instance,
 Harry Nkumbula, the leader of the ANC, the more conservative rival
 of UNIP, seated on a stool as a sign of withdrawal from the
 political fray, and of Sir Roy Welensky, the prime-minister of the
 doomed Federation, packing his bags in preparation for departure.
 It was not only in the field of graphic arts that the political
 upsurge of the early 1960's allowed Kappata to demonstrate his
 talents. He is a guitarist and was able to compose and sing popular
 political songs in Luchazi.
 It was very soon after independence that he ended his brief
 political career. He was under some pressure to withdraw from
 politics from the Watchtower members of his family who objected to
 any political activity. He was also annoyed by the failure of the
 party headquarters to respond to his request for assistance with
 the repair of his bicycle which had been worn out in pursuit of
 party card sales. He resigned from his position as branch chairman
 in 1965 and went to work for a brother-in-law as the manager of his
 grocery, and tea-cart, at Nalikwanda.
AUDIO-VISUAL AIDS ASSISTANT
 He continued in his new job to practise his drawing, and had
 by now acquired a local reputation as an artist. When' Ian Murdoch,
 the training officer at the Namushakende Farm Training Institute,
 near Mongu, asked his extension workers to look for some-one who
 could draw they recommended Kappata. He was called to Namushakende
 and asked to demonstrate his skills. He performed satisfactorily
 and was recruited as an Audio-Visual Aids assistant. Murdoch told
 him that their film projector was not working and that 'we want to
 use you as our projector'. He was recruited at first for a trial
 period of a few months but was soon told that he could stay.
 His duties involved the production of drawings to illustrate
 courses conducted at the institute for peasant farmers. He was
 called upon to draw, for instance, men ploughing with oxen and
 women sowing seed to illustrate the slogan 'Plant early'. Murdoch
 gave him training in silk screen printing, enabling him for the
 first time to experiment with the use of colour. In 1968 he was
 transferred to the Provincial headquarters of the Ministry of
 Agriculture at Mongu. He was then sent to Mount Makulu Agricultural
 Research Station near Lusaka for a short course on lettering and
 stencilling. He performed very well and was invited to demonstrate
 his skills as a speedy draughtsman on Zambian television. In 1976
 he was transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture headquarters in
 Lusaka where he was required to work on the production of posters,-
 brochures, and booklet covers.
In the following year he was sent to Britain for a fourteen
 week course at Tavistock House in the use of visual aids in non-
 formal education. He found the course interesting but it was too
 short. It included work on photography, film, booklet production,
 book-binding and design. It was unfortunate that on his return to
 Zambia lack of facilities and resources made it impossible for him
 to practise much of what he had learned.
 APPRENTICE PAINTER
 Meanwhile he had, with a little help, taught himself to paint.
 It was in 1969 that a friend introduced him to a Zairean painter in
 the Linda township of Livingstone who made a living by producing
 pictures of the Victoria Falls for the tourist market. The Zairean
 artist, who had the typically Malawian or eastern Zambian, name of
 Phiri, gave him a one day course in the use of oil paints with
 sable brushes. The paint then used was commercial oil-based paint
 which was sold in large tins at a price of K7(?3.50) for a five
 litre tin. After some experimentation Kappata began to sell
 paintings in 1970 and has kept a careful record of his output
 documenting subject, price and purchaser since then.
 At first his major outlet was the clothes shop of a Zambian
 friend in Mongu. His friend sold his paintings as a favour and
 without commission. Prices were very low with pictures selling in
 the early 1970's for prices ranging from 75ngwee (7shillings and
 sixpence) to a few Kwacha.(Kl = 10 shillings). The initial market
 11
was, as with the drawings which he had produced in South Africa in
 the early 1960's, or in Zambia in the later 1960's, a wholly
 African one. From the beginning he concentrated on three broad
 themes which have remained his stock in trade until today. These
 were and are: Zambian traditional culture and history; the colonial
 experience in Zambia; and contemporary social comment.
 It seems important to stress that his choice of themes is very
 much his own, and was originally aimed at an African audience,
 because he soon found that there was a more lucrative market for
 his work in the expatriate population of Mongu. This consisted
 initially of a small group of development workers and volunteers,
 many of them from Scandinavia and the Netherlands. The discovery of
 an expatriate market had the effect of raising his prices beyond
 what most Zambians could afford, or would be willing, to pay. He
 says himself that while many Zambians like his paintings they can
 no longer afford to buy them. Others, he laments, are prepared to
 live in houses with bare walls "without even a photograph' . When
 Kappata lived and worked in Lusaka from 1976-82 he apparently
 retained a small expatriate clientele centred around Scandinavian
 and Dutch aid and diplomatic circles, but he was not well known
 even among the small group, mainly of expatriates and long-term
 Zambian residents, who patronised Lusaka's first commercial art
 gallery, the Mpapa gallery, which opened in 1979. So long as he was
 engaged in full-time work at the Ministry of Agriculture his output
 was in any case relatively small, and he could function only as a
 weekend painter.
 12
DISCOVERY
 It was only after his return to work at the provincial
 headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture at Mongu in 1982
 that Kappata was 'discovered' by Anna-Lise Noppen Clausen who began
 to encourage and promote his work. A Danish woman she was employed
 by NORAD (Norweigian Aid) to work on the establishment of the
 Nayuma Museum at Mongu. She started a craft shop at the museum and
 began to sell Kappata's paintings there. She helped with the supply
 of paints and materials, which had become increasingly difficult to
 obtain with the collapse of the Zambian economy in the mid 1970's.
 She also arranged for the sale of small numbers of his paintings at
 the Zintu craft shop at the Ridgeway Hotel in Lusaka from about
 1984 onwards.2
 Anna-Lise Noppen Clausen was also responsible, together with
 the directors of the gallery, for the sponsorship of Kappata's
 first one-man exhibition of 35 paintings at the Mpapa Gallery in
 August 1986. This exhibition was a sensation and marked Kappata's
 first real recognition as a Zambian artist. The exhibition
 coincided with his retirement from full-time employment, and his
 emergence as a professional painter. Since then his work has been
 seen quite frequently at the Mpapa Gallery, with further one man
 shows in August 1987, April 1991, July 1992, and May 1994. His
 work was first shown overseas in 1989 at the Third Havana Biennial
 in Cuba. It was shown in London in 1990 at the Focus on Zambia
 exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute, and at the Frontline
 13
Africa exhibition, as well as at the Glasgow Mayfest exhibition in
 the same year. There was much favourable comment on his work in
 press reviews of these exhibitions. Although usually described as
 'naive' his work was frequently given more attention, and
 favourable critical comment, than better established and more
 academic painters from Zambia and the region. Further recognition
 came with the offer by John Gill, Artistic Projects Director of the
 Festival Hall, London, of a one-man exhibition at the Riverside
 Gallery in May 1991. Norad provided sponsorship which enabled
 Kappata to paint for a year without financial worry and to produce
 the forty paintings which were sent to London. The exhibition was
 very well received and over two thirds of the exhibits were sold at
 prices ranging between ?100 and ?300 each. Norad also enabled him
 to travel to London and to be present at the opening of the
 exhibition. Since then his work has been shown in Gaborone,
 Beijing, Nairobi and Paris. An exhibition in Finland is now
 planned.
 KAPPATA'S WORK
 It remains to provide some explanation of the context, content
 and style of Kappata's work. In the contemporary Zambian art scene
 he appears as a unique and original exponent of a style that is all
 his own. His work does not relate at all closely to that of the
 small number of recognised professional painters in the country,
 some of whom are, or have been, critical of what they see as his
 technical shortcomings. Nor does his work relate very closely to
 14
the work of artisanal painters in Zambia, many of whom are of
 Zairean origin. These are the 'pavement' artists who produce
 stereotyped village scenes, and wildlife paintings, for the casual
 passing trade. But his work does not emerge from a cultural, or
 artistic, vacuum. Kappata is a rural intellectual who sees himself,
 and should be seen, as a social historian, teacher, and social
 critic. He uses paint, canvas, images, words and humour, to make
 acute comments on the country's past and present. He has translated
 into paint many of the functions of the oral historian, the story
 teller, and the composer of songs, all of whom were in the past,
 and to some extent still are, licensed critics of the social scene.
 He appears to be unique in Zambia but there is evidence that just
 across the border in Lubumbashi on the Zairean side of the
 Copperbelt, and in Kinshasa, Zaire's capital, there have been a
 number of artists of similar social background who have chosen to
 concentrate on traditional, colonial and contemporary social
 themes. Starting with a local market they had by the 1970's an
 intellectual expatriate following. Some of these painters appear to
 have shared in Kappata's partly bitter, and partly nostalgic, view
 of the colonial period, and his often severe, though humorous,
 criticisms of the greed and hypocrisy of the new post-colonial
 ruling class. They have been seen by Bogumil Jewsiewicki as
 representing in the Zairean context the views of the original
 colonial intelligentsia, whose position was eroded in the post-
 independence period as they were displaced by the new political
 elite, and the more highly educated products of the expanded school
 and university system.3
 15
In the last eight years - that is between 1986 and 1994-
 Kappata has exhibited close to 300 pictures in a series of seven or
 eight one-man exhibitions held mainly at the Mpapa Gallery in
 Lusaka, but also at the Festival Hall in London, and at the Odeon
 Gallery in Paris. He has also contributed paintings to joint
 exhibitions in Lusaka and abroad, and has sold paintings privately,
 or through the Mpapa Gallery without exhibition. The paintings
 exhibited at one-man shows must represent at least half his total
 output in the eight year period. A rough analysis of the titles of
 these pictures indicates that rather more than one third of them
 were devoted to 'traditional' and colonial scenes while rather more
 than half his work was devoted to contemporary scenes. It is not
 the intention of this paper to provide a comprehensive analysis of
 his output but it is the intention to focus on those aspects of his
 work which would justify the description of him as a historian and
 social critic.
 TRADITION
 While some of his paintings of dances and ceremonies are
 timeless representations of traditional practice, others show
 tradition in a modern context and show an awareness that tradition
 is neither static nor unproblematical. A recent painting, for
 instance, of the Nayuma Museum Dance Troupe is of a very definitely
 modern troupe, without ethnic identification, performing
 traditional dances as entertainment outside of a village context.
 Other pictures show performances carried out in the presence of
expatriate or tourist spectators. A painting of the latter type, of
 which there have been several versions, is entitled: "A country
 without her own traditonal culture is dead indeed'. As with
 Kappata's other recurring themes no two pictures are exactly the
 same, but a typical version illustrates the profound ambiguity of
 the post-colonial state, and elite, towards traditional culture. On
 the right hand side Zambia's former President Kaunda in a smart
 safari suit, with his characteristic white handkerchief in hand,
 backed by serried ranks of even smarter suited politicians, and
 civil servants, and a uniformed police officer, watch as a couple
 of traditionally costumed Makishi dancers, labelled 'Mwanapwebo'(a
 man dressed as a woman) and 'Chileya' , perform. On the left hand
 side there is a lone male drummer and a group of clapping village
 women, dressed in chitenges, provide musical accompaniment. Behind
 them an informally dressed white man, in shirt and shorts, with his
 wife at his side, films the scene. As is often the case with
 Kappata's pictures the inscription above the painting is much more
 than a title. It provides a challenging and thought-provoking
 commentary, it seems to ask: 'Whose tradition? and for whom?'. It
 calls into question the political motivation behind the apparent
 encouragement by government in the 1980's of a proliferation of
 new., invented, or revived 'traditional' ceremonies.
 It was Godfrey Wilson, the social anthropologist, who did
 research in Kabwe(formerly Broken Hill) over 50 years.ago who first
 pointed to the Zatnbian interest in clothes. The people of Northern
 Rhodesia were, he said, not a cattle people but a 'dressed' people.
 11
In this, and many other pictures, Kappata's minutely observed and
 intensely detailed portrayal of the clothes people wear, is highly
 significant. It amounts at times to a kind of class analysis. There
 are in this picture, for instance, four distinct types of costume
 in addition to the President's safari suit in view: the beaded
 costumes of the traditional dancers, the suits and uniforms of
 the new ruling class, the informal clothes of the expatriate
 spectators, and the chitenges(wrap-around printed cloths), usually
 in Kappata's work signifying poverty, of the clapping women. The
 class analysis is to be seen in the wealth of the ruling class and
 the poverty of the performers as demonstrated by their clothes. In
 this context the encouragement of tradition can be seen as the
 patronising promotion of entertainment for the masses, and as a
 substitute for the prosperity which the country's rulers have been
 able to deliver only to themselves. The informal clothes of the
 expatriate spectators place them outside the class hierarchy, and
 their position in the picture puts them visibly on the side of the
 poor.
 VILLAGE LIFE
 Another group of pictures which fall roughly under the
 traditional heading are those which portray village life. The most
 frequently painted of these is a straightforward village scene
 entitled: "A typical home life in the village'. Variants are
 entitled vVillage life is also enjoyable' or 'They are happy for
 the typical home life they are living'. Other related pictures show
 18
village crafts such as pottery making, basket making, wood carving,
 or a black-smith at work, and domestic work such as the shelling or
 pounding of maize, and the winnowing of rice. These pictures can be
 seen as timeless, nostalgic, and as presenting an idyllic view of
 rural life. And yet other pictures point to rural poverty and to
 the decline of traditional values.
 A recent picture, painted after the 1991 multi-party
 elections which brought the MMD (Movement for Multi-party Democracy)
 to power, is entitled a little paradoxically: 'There is no change
 to us. Things are now worse'. The title is complemented by a sub-
 title along the bottom of the picture: vWe can't afford to buy
 anything in the shops'. An old man and woman, poorly dressed, sit
 on stools with a fire between them. There are thatched village
 houses and a grain-store, as would appear in an idyllic village
 scene, in the background. Two chickens, their scarcity signifiying
 poverty, are the only animals in sight.
 Another recent picture is entitled 'Young ones are
 disobedient to their parents' with the biblical text, II Timothy 3,
 1-5. In the left background a yellow painted UBZ(United Bus
 Company of Zambia) bus has arrived at a rural destination and is
 being unloaded. In the right background there is a pink-painted bus
 station. In the foreground four people are walking away from the
 station on a path leading from left to right. In the lead is a
 smart young man in a suit with his only visible hand in his
 pocket. He is followed by an old man in village attire, bare-footed
 11
and in printed loin cloth, and shirt, with a yoke over his
 and a box hanging from each end. A village woman, evidently his
 wife, walks behind with a large bundle wrapped in a chitenge on her
 head. The last person in the procession is a smartly dressed young
 woman in a white dress and shoes with raised heels, who walks quite
 unencumbered. The contrast in clothes, and the apparent lack of
 any contact between the villagers and the urbanites, disguises for
 a moment what the apocalyptic biblical text makes clear. The
 smartly dressed and unburdened young man and woman are the
 disobedient children who allow their elderly parents to carry their
 baggage. Urbanisation is seen to have resulted in the total
 breakdown of traditional respect of the young for the old, and .of
 children for their parents. An emphasis on traditional values, and
 a rejection of the inequality among Zambians which has resulted
 from the post-independence acceleration of class formation iS; a s
 we shall see, an important element in the social criticism which
 informs much of Kappata's contemporary work.
 COLONIAL THEMES
 In his colonial paintings, cind in his representations of the
 struggle for independence from colonial rule, Kappata clearly draws
 on his own experience. He draws also on a deep reservoir of black
 representations of white invaders. The pre-occupation with the
 symbols of colonial authority, flags, helmets, uniforms, guns,
 truncheons, and whips, can be traced back over centuries to art
 works produced at the time of the; earliest European contacts with
 2.0
Africa. Officers in helmets with guns, officials carried in
 hammocks by retinues of carriers, and slave caravans, have been
 represented, mainly in wood carvings, for a very long time and were
 analysed and illustrated by the German Jewish anthropologist,
 Julius Lips, in a book -The Native Hits Back- which was published
 nearly 60 years ago. A fascination with colonial uniforms was a
 feature of the Mbeni dance societies (Mbeni comes from the English
 word 'band') of east Africa from early in the 20th century and has
 been documented by Terence Ranger in his book Dance and Society in
 East Africa. Ranger has also written of the importance of the
 symbols of imperial power as instruments of control in colonial
 Zambia. He has stressed the importance of symbolism as explaining
 the ability of a minute police force and thinly stretched colonial
 administration to hold down a population spread over a vast area.
 Many of these symbols, such as helmets, hammocks, and guns, occur
 in the carved walking sticks which have been produced by the
 Luvale, Luchazi, and Chokwe peoples of north-western Zambia and
 Angola for very many years. It is reasonable to presume that
 Kappata's great interest in these themes may have been derived from
 such sources as well as from his own experience. He himself
 remembers the caravans of porters, with wives and children carried
 in hammocks, which were a feature of the District Commissioner's
 tax-collecting tours until the introduction of four-wheel drive
 Landrovers revolutionised transport in Barotseland in the years
 after the Second World War.
 Such caravans are features of a theme which Kappata painted
 21
frequently in the mid 1980's: VA yoke which was placed on the
 Natives of Africa by the British' . A typical version of this
 picture shows the District Commissioner, in solar topee or sun
 helmet, riding a red horse at the head of a column of porters with
 yokes or head loads. His wife, who is also helmeted, is carried by
 porters in a machila or hammock. She is conspicuously reading a
 book and a dog is seated in the machila at her feet. Uniformed
 District Messengers, in fezzes, but with bare feet, escort the
 caravan. Two carry guns while one carries a water bag on a pole. In
 all of Kappata's pictures shoes, or the lack of them, are as
 important as clothes as signifiers of status or class.
 Kappata has painted a number of pictures which deal with the
 most obviously oppressive and deeply resented aspect of colonial
 rule, the collection of poll tax. A recent painting on this theme
 is entitled: 'Defaulters gathered outside the District
 Commissioner's office'. In the left foreground seven ragged
 supplicants, the tax defaulters, sit, crouch or kneel. A uniformed
 District Messenger stands between them and the District
 Commissioner. The latter stands in a stereotypical pose, pipe in
 mouth, hand in pocket, with paunch protruding , in shirt, shorts
 and minutely observed stockings and shoes, looking somewhat
 disdainfully at the men on the ground. His stern-faced wife stands
 behind him and to the right of the picture. In the background there
 is a typical district headquarters, or Boma, of a stock pattern
 1950's design with a few District Messengers and District Officers
 pacing its verandah. A flag, the Union Jack, painted in yellow and
 22
brown, flutters from a pole in front of the building.
 While colonial taxation was intended both to raise revenue and
 to force people out of the rural areas on to the regional labour
 market, another oppressive aspect of colonial rule was the system
 of controls on movement which were, somewhat paradoxically,
 intended to prevent proletarianisation and the permanent settlement
 of people in towns. Another of Kappata's pictures, entitled
 1
  Inspection of loafers and single women', provides a graphic
 representation of this system. In the right background of this
 scene there is a red-painted police station with the usual Union
 Jack flying from a pole in front of it. In the left background
 there is a distant but extensive compound of 1930's style white
 brick-built rondavels, with thatched roofs, indicating an urban
 environment. In the right foreground there is a white police
 officer with a vicious-looking dog straining at a short chain. The
 bulk of the foreground is taken up by a procession of nine people
 in single file. The leaders of this procession are two moderately
 smart women, wearing dresses rather than chitenges, with shoes on
 their feet and doeks on their heads. The first of them points
 apprehensively at the vicious dog. These are the single women whose
 presence in town was seen by the Colonial government, and its
 creation under the policy of Indirect Rule - the Native
 Authorities - in rural areas, as undesirable. Their clothes are
 smart by comparison with the four ragged, bare-footed, and hand-
 cuffed men who follow them. These are the 'loafers'- the unemployed
 work-seekers who were thought to have no right to stay in town. The
 13
better-off appearance of the single women tends to confirm the
 colonial suspicion that they could only survive in town by
 prostitution. In the rear of this procession are two black
 constables with batons drawn escorting a fifth 'loafer'..
 COLONIAL UNIFORMS
 Paintings such as these which portray the oppression and
 humiliation implicit in colonial rule, and others which show
 violence meted out by white employers to black workers, can not be
 described as nostalgic, though their humorous touches soften the
 depiction of oppression. But many of the colonial paintings do show
 what can only be described as a nostalgic fascination with the
 colonial hierarchy, with status, and rank as displayed in uniforms,
 or the lack of them. They seem to show some regret for the passing
 of a colonial order in which people knew their place, and were
 subject to discipline. Some pictures such as those of the 'District
 Messengers Parade I960' or "Police recruits on parade at Lilayi
 1958' are simply vehicles for the.detailed and loving depiction of
 uniforms, and the relationship between officers and other ranks.
 Other paintings are concerned with dating changes in the style of
 police and District Messengers uniforms.
 STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
 A less nostalgic display of uniforms is, however, provided in
 a number of pictures which Kappata has produced of scenes from the
 14
anti-colonial independence struggle, in the latter stages of which
 he himself participated as a grass-roots UNIP leader in
 Barotseland. In a 1986 variant on this theme entitled 'The Mau Mau
 and Chachacha struggle for independence' - a title which curiously
 links rather different' movements in Kenya and Zambia - a white
 policeman directs a black policeman with a gun. A black body lies
 on the ground. There is a black policeman with club raised in the
 foreground, and black men are seen running away in the background.
 A more elaborate version of this theme appeared in 1987 under
 the title vAfrican Proletarians and the Colonial Capitalism Riot'.
 The possibly surprising title is taken from that of an academic
 book on the history of the trade union movement in Zambia which was
 published in the previous year by the historian and UNIP cabinet
 minister, Henry Meebelo. It was entitled African Proletarians and
 Colonial Capitalism. In the foreground of the later picture two
 white police officers with truncheons are assaulting unarmed black
 men. A bare-footed black man lies on the ground with blood pouring
 from his mouth. A third white police officer is getting the worst
 of combat with a black militant and he falls dramatically
 backwards, with his cap suspended in mid air, and a dazed
 expression on his face. It is a good example of Kappata's almost
 photographic ability to capture in paint split-second moments of
 time. In the middle-ground nine or ten fights are in progress
 involving for the most part black constables and unarmed militants.
 While one man sprints off picture to the left a stream of
 reinforcements armed with sticks appears in the background from
behind a government office with a Union Jack(this one is painted in
 yellow red and white) fluttering in front of it. In the distant
 left background another stream of people emerges from behind the
 older style of urban compound. They appear to be stoning a police
 vehicle. Another police vehicle appears from the left. A contrast
 is drawn between the rows of round houses in the poorer compound,
 and three rectangular houses suggesting- the more modern
 accommodation of higher paid workers. Such details of class
 distinction are always significant in Kappata's work. In this scene
 there are, as in many of his larger pictures, thirty or forty
 people clearly in view and many others are suggested.
 The violence of the colonial work place is the theme of
 several pictures. vHow a blackman suffered under the colonial
 rule!' is the title of one of Kappata's smaller pictures painted on
 card which shows a white foreman dressed in shirt, shorts and
 stockings, kicking the backside of a black worker dressed in a loin
 cloth and with shovel in hand. He gasps in pain. Another worker,
 also with shovel in hand, looks over his shoulder at the scene. In
 the distance a number of ant-like labourers are seen at work with
 picks, shovels and wheel-barrows. This picture draws on Kappata's
 experience of underground work on the South African mines as does
 a picture entitled 'Underground mineworkers were regarded as
 primitive'. Mining has, of course, been the backbone of the Zambian
 economy for over sixty years, but mining in Zambia is not a part of
 Kappata's personal experience. A number of other pictures show
 scenes of violence inflicted by farmers on their labour. A recent
 26
picture on this theme is entitled: *A dog was treated better than
 the farmworkers during the colonial government'. This picture shows
 a white-painted(and white-occupied) farm-house in the right
 background and the huts of the workers' compound on the left. A
 distant herd of cattle is being driven between them. In the left
 foreground a white farmer, in khaki shorts and shirt with hat,
 kicks a worker. A vanette is parked to the right. The farmer's wife
 sits in the driving seat with, in an echo of the earlier picture of
 the 'Yoke placed on the Natives', a dog in the passenger seat. A
 number of farm workers sit in the back of the vanette. Another
 picture on this theme is entitled: 'Farmworkers were overworked and
 underpaid by their colonial masters'.
 Kappata has painted more tranquil scenes of colonial labour
 drawing on his early experiences at the Zambezi Saw-mills and at
 the Pioneer Brick-works at Lusaka. He has also indicated the
 profits which could be made from migrant labour to the South
 African mines, drawing on his experiences as a WENELA recruit. The
 UNIP government's banning of recruitment from Barotseland to the
 South African mines in 1966 led to its rejection by the people of
 the province in the elections of 1968, and is a lasting grievance.
 'Makumacha coming home from Johannesburg' shows two villagers, one
 in loin cloth with an axe in one hand and the other in rolled-up
 trousers with a spear in hand, struggling under head loads. On top
 of one box is a three-legged cast-iron cooking pot of a type much
 sought after in rural Zambia. Makumacha in full miner's uniform,
 with boots and helmet, contentedly smoking a pipe, walks behind
 27
them. In the background another miner with men and loads walks on
 a distant path.
 Kappata's bitter-sweet recollections of the colonial period
 are matched by a more tranquil, and now nostalgic, reminiscence of
 the anti-colonial struggle. This is provided by a recent painting
 entitled: "The past is not forgotten' . In this picture a young
 Kenneth Kaunda, dressed in the cloth reputedly given to him by
 Kwame Nkrumah, speaks into a microphone on a dais labelled VUNIP is
 Power Power Power Power' . A crowd, in which men and women sit
 separately, listens attentively to the left. A white policeman, his
 colour indicating that this is a colonial scene, though the
 legality of the rally shows that it must have been shortly before
 independence, stands to the right. A tape-recorder on the ground is
 clearly labelled 'Uher'- the brand name of the most expensive
 German recorder - a detail which is reminiscent of Kappata's period
 as an Audio-Visual assistant. In a typical piece of ambiguity it is
 not quite clear whether Kaunda's speech is being recorded at this
 date for posterity or for the benefit of the colonial Police
 Special Branch, but the latter interpretation is more probable, and
 a man seated close to the recorder appears to be a plain clothes
 detective.
 CONTEMPORARY SCENES
 Kappata's traditional and colonial scenes demonstrate his
 talents as a social historian. The majority of his pictures are,
 28
however, of contemporary topics and demonstrate his abilities not
 only as a chronicler of the ever-changing Zambian scene, but also
 as a social critic. His chosen themes range over most aspects of
 contemporary life. In a country which has been racked over the last
 twenty years by the economic decline which began with the oil price
 crisis of 1973, and the subsequent fall in the price of copper, it
 is hardly surprising that the topic in this sample on which there
 are the largest number of paintings is the economy. Health and the
 related issue of the use and abuse of alcohol are frequently
 recurring subjects as are conservation, rural development, and the
 difficulties of rural transport. There are also a number of
 pictures which comment on the growing inequality between rich and
 poor in Zambian society, and on its consequence, the pressing
 problem of crime. More difficult to categorise is the group of
 paintings which express, often through the medium of proverbs,
 Kappata's own philosophy of life. Related to these are a number of
 pictures which express his views on both race relations and gender
 relations. While it would be a mistake to press the comparison too
 far there is some similarity between Kappata's choice of topics,
 and the concerns which underly them, and those of Kapelwa Musonda,
 the pen name of a writer who has contributed a weekly column to The
 Times of Zambia since soon after independence. Kappata has
 acknowledged him as an influence. They share a sardonic interest in
 the changing fashions and foibles of Zambian life and a broadly
 democratic and egalitarian viewpoint. While Kapelwa Musonda has
 reached a much wider audience than Kappata they have both
 functioned as licensed critics of the post-independence social
 29
scene.
 THE ECONOMY
 The aspects of the economy which are of greatest interest to
 Kappata are those which are of concern to most Zambians - trade,
 distribution and exchange. A 1987 picture deals with the 'Shortage
 of essential commodities'. The ending of price controls and the
 liberalisation of the economy which has come with "structural
 adjustment' has put an end to that particular problem, though it
 has not ended the problems of high prices and unemployment. A
 recent picture is entitled: 'Courageous women protesting at the
 high price of mealie meal'. In the left background there is a large
 colonial-style office building painted in white. There is a wall in
 front and cars parked within it. A notice proclaims: 'Office of the
 Deputy Minister'. There are guards at a closed gate marked 'In'. On
 the other side there is a gate labelled 'Out' . In the right
 foreground there are eleven large and determined-looking women
 painted in close-up with two very clearly in the lead. Their
 dresses and shoes are painted in typical detail. There are over
 twenty women behind them who are not painted in detail but are
 suggested by heads and doeks. It is hardly necessary to point out
 the picture's emphasis on the remoteness and inaccessibility of the
 elected representatives of the people.
 The conspicuous involvement of women in trade is emphasised by
 a number of pictures on the theme: 'Most marketeers in town are
women' . A recent version of this is entitled: "Most of the
 marketeers are women countrywide'. In this rural scene seven women,
 whose dresses, shoes, hairstyles and doeks are minutely observed,
 walk with loads on their heads on a path which curves around
 towards the right foreground. In the background seven more women,
 some of whom are partly obscured by the women in the front, walk on
 the same path curving from left to right. The whole picture conveys
 a sense of sweeping movement.
 There are also a number of pictures which deal with informal
 street selling which is sometimes seen as the preserve of young men
 and boys. One picture suggests, however, that "Mishanga selling is
 not for boys only but even old men and women are doing it' . The
 connection between unemployment and street selling, and disapproval
 of the official harrassment of such activities, is indicated in a
 picture entitled: '"Give us jobs" protested the street vendors'.
 The occasional exploitation of men by women is suggested by
 variants on the theme: 'They make their living by carrying
 vegetable bags from Soweto market to town centre'. This picture
 shows ragged men staggering under enormous head loads as they carry
 the purchases of smartly dressed Lusaka house-wives. Kappata's
 response to topical issues is shown by his painting in 1992 of at
 least one picture on the theme of the then burgeoning, and
 controversial, second-hand clothing, or salauala, market. This
 trade was much debated in the press at the time as it was seen, on
 the one hand, to be a source of cheap clothes and, on the other
 hand, to be putting Zambian manufacturers out of business and their
 31
employees out of work.
 SOCIAL INEQUALITY
 Another economic concern of Kappata has been the post-
 independence growth of inequality within the Zambian population. A
 frequently painted theme has been: 'A big gap between the rich and
 the poor!' One version shows in the background three different
 types of housing: the white rondavels of a poor compound, a
 rectangular house representing the better kind of compound, and a
 three storied house behind the high walls which have become typical
 of Lusaka's richer suburbs. Gates are closed behind a departing
 car. On the road in the foreground a car and a van pass. A tired
 man sits on a hump beside the road with loads on a pole beside him.
 A woman with a baby on her back and a large head-load stands
 looking at the big house with a man who carries a suitcase in one
 hand and a large bundle in the other. Some versions of this theme
 emphasise the contrast between rich and poor with a divided canvas
 and separate scenes. Another picture asks 'Equality is it there in
 the world?'
 CRIME
 A consequence of increased inequality is, of course, the rise
 in the crime rate which is a matter of concern to all classes in
 modern Zambia.. Kappata has on several occasions painted a
 contrasting pair of pictures which compare 'Crime in the country
 32
before independence' with 'Crime in the world today'. In the pre-
 independence picture a uniformed black constable in colonial
 helmet and shorts, with a truncheon, escorts a poorly dressad,
 bare-footed, and hand-cuffed, suspect. In the post-independence
 picture a policeman in modern uniform with gun escorts three
 suspects. They are hand-cuffed but two wear suits, one with a bow
 tie, one with a straight tie, while the third wears a smart shirt.
 The pictures refer, of course, to the rise of white-collar crime
 and seem to imply that theft today is driven not so much by
 necessity as by greed and is as likely to be carried out by the
 well-off as the poor.
 HEALTH
 Kappata's pictures of health topics also display a contrast,
 if not between colonial and modern, then between traditional and
 modern. In this sphere the traditional and the modern exist side by
 side in contemporary Zambia. As one title proclaims:'People living
 in the villages believe in traditional healers'. Another picture is
 entitled: "Healing system for African traditional herbalists in
 the villages' . In the background there is a stockaded village on
 one side and a row of thatched houses on the other. In the
 foreground to the left four men with large drums between their
 knees beat out the rhythm, while on the right a group of women,
 some standing, some kneeling, clap. In the centre a sickly male
 patient wrapped in a blanket sits close to a fire on which a three-
 legged pot stands containing, presumably, a herbal remedy. The
 33
herbalist, dressed in a leopard skin with a plumed head-dress, and
 holding a rattle in each hand, appears to be intoning a chant. In
 the middle distance a group of villagers sits by another fire. The
 clothing of some of the villagers indicates that this is a modern
 scene. The harmony and balance of the composition seem to show
 approval of the activity in progress. The title of another picture
 - 'Diviners are dividers of the people in the villages'- indicates
 disapproval of the herbalist's competitors who smell out witches.
 Modern medicine is represented by pictures such as: 'Medical
 staff urge mothers to Under 5 clinics' and 'Pregnant women going to
 a Clinic for examination in the developing countries'. In the
 latter picture a uniformed nurse stands in front of the vWe care
 for you Clinic'. She points to the first in a line of seven clearly
 pregnant women. Each of them carries her medical card and they are
 ranked in order and width according to the stage of their
 pregnancy. As is usual in Kappata's pictures the dresses, shoes,
 hairstyles and doeks of the women are painted in minute and
 contrasting detail.
 The most pressing health problem in Zambia since the mid
 1980's has been the rapid spread of AIDS. Since 1991 Kappata has
 painted a number of versions of a picture with the title: 'Stick to
 one sexual partner. Social institutions are the source of AIDS the
 killer disease'.The first part of the title is a propaganda slogan
 which has been widely publicised. A recent version of this picture
 shows in the left background the 'Mwaziona Bar Restaurant and
 34
Tavern'.(According to the artist 'Mwaziona' means 'Now, see what
 you have done!') A number of people sit outside the bar and a
 couple dance in front of it. In the left foreground there are two
 rondavels with people drinking within them. In the right background
 there are a number of houses and some barrack-like buildings with
 a flag on a pole. In the right foreground women queue to enter a
 house where a funeral vigil is taking place. A number of men sit
 outside the house as is the custom at Zambian funerals. A lorry
 marked 'K. Manda Transport' is parked close to them, and a coffin
 lies on the ground next to it. In another version of the picture
 there is a clinic between the bar - the 'social institution' of the
 title - and the funeral house. This picture makes a clear
 connection between alcohol, promiscuity, disease and death. There
 are, of course, many other factors in the spread of AIDS, but the
 generally disruptive effects of alcohol are the theme of many of
 Kappata's pictures.
 ALCOHOL
 There is an ambiguous, if not ironic, side to the title of a
 recent painting on this theme - 'Be Happy, Rejoice Yourself and
 Don't Worry about these Critical Times'. There are over thirty
 people drinking in and around an establishment labelled 'No Money
 No Life Bar and Restaurant 1985 Ltd'. Next to the bar is a white
 building with the inscription 'Prostitute flat'. A man and a woman
 enter the room with their backs to the artist. In this and many
 other of Kappata's drinking scenes there is a distinct echo, though
 35
no doubt an unconscious one, of Hogarth's Rake's Progress. A number
 of his pictures warn of the clanger of producing or drinking kachasu
 - an illicit spirit - and others warn of the perils of drinking on
 an empty stomach. Another picture of which there are several
 versions is entitled 'Please hurry up. I am in trouble'. In this
 picture a man who is clearly enduring with difficulty the
 consequences of drinking before eating waits anxiously, and
 impatiently for his long-suffering wife to prepare a plate of nsima
 - maize porridge - for him. Another painting points to class
 distinctions in the types of alcohol consumed: 'Chibuku beer(opaque
 beer) is for poor and elderly people'. A picture with the puzzling
 title 'Bar Mathematics' links drink with fighting. It carries the
 legend: 'One fight equals two policemen. Two policemen equal one
 magistrate. One magistrate equals three months imprisonment. Three
 months imprisonment equal one lesson'. The scene takes place
 outside the 'Bwelani-Muone Bar'.(The name translates as 'Come and
 See') Two smartly dressed women holding beer bottles stand to the
 left. In the centre one man punches another. His botttle drops.
 Blood spurts from his nose. A policeman holding handcuffs places
 his hand on the shoulder of the assailant. A colleague with a
 truncheon stands behind him. A grey-haired man wearing a suit and
 bow-tie sits at a table to the right and looks on. This picture
 demonstrates, as do so many others, Kappata's ability to freeze a
 moment of time, as with the dropping bottle, and to convey an
 atmosphere by posture, gesture and facial expression.
 36
PROVERBS
 He has painted several paintings on the theme: 'Why was I born
 in this miserable world?' This is a theme which is also exploited
 by the artisanal painters of Zaire and he may have acquired it
 fromthat source. Versions of this picture usually show a man beset
 by a variety of ha-ards, and mishaps, sinking canoes, crocodiles,
 snakes and lions. A recent and rather different version of this
 picture gives it a generational slant with the title: 'Why was I
 born early in this miserable world?' The question is answered in
 small print at the bottom of the picture: 'When I was young the
 world was not beautiful as today'. An old man, white bearded and
 bald, sits with his back to a tree looking longingly at two smartly
 dressed young women. In the background four other elegant women
 young women walk past. Other proverbial themes include 'The good
 friends will be seen when you get into hard times', 'There is
 nothing for nothing' and 'Hard work pays'.
 RACE RELATIONS
 A number of Kappata's pictures are on the subject of race
 relations in Zambia while others take up the more topical issue of
 gender relations. While his colonial topics included many examples
 of inter-racial violence his post-independence topics emphasise
 harmony. He has painted a number of versions of a picture suitable
 for purchase by departing expatriates with the title: 'We had a
 nice time in Zambia'. This usually shows a decorous multi-racial
 22
drinking scene. A more controversial example on the theme of race
 relations is: 'There is no room for apartheid and discrimination in
 the Republic of Zambia' . In this scene a black couple sit on a sofa
 with an almond eyed, long-haired, presumably Asian, woman sitting
 between them. On another sofa a black man sits to the left with a
 white couple next to him. A waiter in the background carrying a
 tray of beers indicates that the scene is set in a hotel. The
 picture could be seen as uncomplicated evidence of racial harmony
 if it were not for a detail which, with subtle economy, calls the
 whole issue into question. The white man seated next to a black man
 is very clearly holding his nose. The inclusion of a contradictory
 detail of this kind is characteristic of Kappata's work which
 thrives on ambiguity.
 GENDER
 There is less ambiguity in Kappata's pictures on the theme of
 gender relations. Most of these seem to stress the virtues of
 domesticity and the dangers of glamour. A 1986 picture is entitled:
 'A beautiful woman is a trouble-maker' . A man with side burns in
 suit and tie is grabbed by a man in trousers and shirt. A woman,
 presumably a straying wife or girl friend, in white dress, with
 conspicuous watch, ear rings and necklace looks on. She drinks from
 a beer bottle and holds an empty bottle in her other hand. A more
 recent picture looks at the same theme from a different angle.
 'Ugly ones are married leaving the beautiful ones on the shelves'
 seems to suggest that less attractive women makes the best wives.
 18
In the left foreground in close-up a plainly dressed and rather
 squat woman stands with a man, her husband, with their backs to the
 viewer. In the right foreground two smart, but not very smart,
 young women sit on a bench - the shelf- looking towards the viewer.
 The woman on the right wears a grey suit, blouse and bow-tie. Her
 hair is plaited. The woman on the left wears a skirt and blouse and
 has straightened hair. Both have moderately high-heeled shoes. The
 theme of domestic violence is taken up and apparently deplored in
 pictures entitled lWill domestic violence ever end all over the
 world?' and vHey, uncle, don't kick your wife like that. She is not
 your servant'. The latter title does, of course, raise the
 question of whether kicking servants is permissable.
 CONCLUSION
 Kappata's life and work can be assessed on a number of levels.
 He can be looked at as a man of his time and generation, as an
 artist, as a graphic historian, and as a social critic. In Zambia
 today it is said that half the population is under eighteen years
 of age. It is now thirty years since independence. People who came
 to maturity before 1964 must now be over fifty. At nearing sixty
 Kappata is one of the small proportion of the population whose life
 has been divided more or less equally between the colonial and
 post-independence -periods. His formative years were spent under
 colonial rule and his interest in that period, and in tradition, is
 self-explanatory. I have earlier described him as a rural
 intellectual and there is some truth in that description. He was
born, was educated, and has lived most of his life in the Western
 Province of Zambia, the former Barotseland. But he has worked on
 the line of rail, in South Africa, and in Lusaka. He now lives in
 a provincial town, Mongu. The process of urbanisation has beeen
 central to the social history of Zambia in the present century and
 has touched the lives of most people. An increasing proportion of
 Zambia's population has never known rural life. The tension between
 the urban and the rural has been an important part of Kappata's own
 life and is clearly to be seen in his art.
 Perhaps the greatest difficulty in assessing Kappata, the
 artist, is to explain his apparent uniqueness. As we have seen
 painters of his type are fairly common in Zaire, but he seems to
 have almost no rivals or competitors in Zambia. While there has
 been a Zairean influence on his work it would appear that he is
 largely self-taught, and has developed his repertoire of themes
 over the years. Clearly his style and technique have evolved over
 time. It is, unfortunately, difficult to chart these changes
 because few examples of his work produced before the mid 1980's are
 to be seen in Lusaka.
 He has worked largely on his own and has developed his own
 techniques. He uses oil paints on canvas, calico, or card. It is,
 perhaps, a product of his artisanal training that he engages in a
 kind of mass production. He tends to paint up to half a dozen
 canvases at a time. He sketches the outlines of landscape and
 figures first, and then uses different colours on different days.
This has some practical advantages in relation to the slow drying
 of oil paint. He also uses an assembly line technique in painting
 parts of the body and clothing. He paints heads, uniforms, dresses,
 and shoes sequentially in a number of pictures. It is perhaps also
 a reflection of his artisanal training that he is prepared to paint
 the same picture a number of times, and frequently accepts repeat
 orders of pictures after exhibitions. No two pictures are, however,
 identical in composition. While he has painted many versions of
 popular themes his repertoire is always changing. Only two titles
 which appeared in his 1986 exhibition reappeared in 1994. More than
 half the topics in his latest exhibition are original, and of the
 300 or so titles considered in the writing of this article the
 majority are unique.
 Kappata's value as a historian lies in his documentation from
 his own perspective of aspects of the now distant colonial period
 and the struggle for independence. He has a marvellous visual
 memory and an eye for the telling detail. But it lies also in his
 documentation of traditional culture as it was in the past and is
 in the present. His work shows an awareness of the complexity of
 tradition and traditionalism. Significant details indicate that he
 is aware that tradition is not static or timeless but always
 changing. He is also aware of the political use which can be made
 of tradition. His scenes of rural idylls are balanced by an
 awareness of rural poverty and isolation.
 His contemporary pictures provide a topical record of Zambia's
 41
ever changing social scene. He has a reporter's eye for social
 change and responds quickly not so much to events as to fashions.
 His contemporary pictures are not overtly political, and dwell only
 a little on party politics, but they provide, on the one hand, a
 conservative critique of the decline under urban pressures of
 aspects of traditional culture such as respect of young people for
 their parents. They provide, on the other hand, a radical
 critique of growing class distinctions and inequality. His detailed
 depictions of clothing and the gradations of urban housing
 demonstrate a fascination with placing people in terms of class.
 His work seems to stress the conservative values of order,
 discipline, and a hierarchy based on ascribed status, while
 rejecting status based solely on the acquisition of wealth. But it
 also emphasises the values of moderation, as in condemnation of the
 consumption of alcohol to excess, or the ostentatious exhibition of
 clothing. Kappata's is a voice which seems in general to be on the
 side of the poor and dispossessed and to draw on a fund of
 traditional values which reject gross inequality of wealth and
 stress respect of each for all. There is a tension in his work
 between the traditionalist conservative and the radical. He is
 reticent about his religion but his membership of a marginalised
 church regarded by both colonial and post-independence governments,
 for different reasons, as subversive, may provide a partial
 explanation for his idiosyncratic view of the world. Kappata is
 primarily an artist but the words of his titles are an important
 part of his message and often function as a preacher's text - the
 topic for a visual discourse. The secret of Kappata's uniqueness
 42
remains, however, something of a mystery. If there is one quality
 in his work which is more exceptional than his skill in
 draughtsmanship, in composition and the use of colour, it must be
 his sense of humour which illuminates and transforms familiar
 scenes, and is the ultimate source of his popular appeal. His work
 is, like all real art, full of contradictions. Perhaps the greatest
 of them is that an artist whose work is a genuine product of
 popular culture, and provides an egalitarian, if not democratic,
 critique of Zambia's past and present should be priced by an
 external or expatriate market beyond the means of the people to
 whom it was primarily directed.
 l.Most of the information on Stephen Kappata's life comes from an
 extensive interview with him conducted on 26 April 1991 in Lusaka.
 2.Interview with Anna-Lise Clausen, Lusaka, 26 November 1986.
 3.See Bogumil Jewsiewicki, 'Collective Memory and its Images:
 Popular Urban Painting in Zaire- a Source of "Present Past"'in M-N
 Bourguet, L Valensi and N Wachtel(eds.) Between Memory and
 History(London. Harwood Academic Publishers, 1991),pp. 183-94;
 'Monstres, violence et histoire: une ecriture iconique du savoir
 populaire sure les rapports de pouvoir au Zaire actuel' in L
 Turgen(ed) Le productions symboligues du pouvoir XVIe-XXe
 siecles(Quebec. Septentrion, 1990), pp. 193-211; 'Questions in the
 Africa(sic) intellectual histories of the construction of self
 through the identity of another in Zaire', seminar paper, Harvard
 University, August, 1990. I am grateful to Luise White and Bogumil
 Jewsiewicki for these references.
 il