Books

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: LIBERATING VISION AND SIX MEDITATIONS HARD BACK CATALOGUE BY STEPHEN CLINGMAN, ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS, 2022

Professor Stephen Clingman (BA 1977, BA Hons 1978), distinguished professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, offers a brilliant exposition of William Kentridge’s work in this catalogue which accompanies the major autumn 2022 exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

According to the publisher, the catalogue “undertakes a series of enquiries, of walks around the artist and his practice, through the various layers and linkages, crossings and connections of his art…he considers Kentridge’s themes, explores them and moves by association to others. Along the way, overlaps, thought-collages, allusions and assemblages come together to create a connective, dimensional way of thinking inspired by Kentridge’s own habits of creation.”

Clingman has taught at the University of Massachusetts since 1989, and was chair of the English Department from 1994 until 2000. His research and teaching fields include South African literature and politics, postcolonial fiction, transnational fiction, and twentieth-century and contemporary British fiction. He is also the award-winning author of "Afrikaner Revolutionary: Bram Fischer" (2013, Jacana).

The catalogue is an apt collaboration, despite Clingman’s reservations, which he has admitted to WITSReview: “I have never worked as an art historian or critic, and realised at a certain point that I had to approach the project in my own way and from my own point of view.”

The volume is punctuated by Clingman’s six meditations on the exhibition’s themes: Drawn through Time; The Enigmas of Soho; Shadows of the Past, Shadows of the Present; Dualities, or How I Did Not Become; Timespaces, or Two Dancers; and Coda: Vanishings.

The two Witsies’ paths have crisscrossed throughout their lives: at King Edward VII School in Johannesburg (where Clingman was a year ahead of Kentridge); at Wits when they started their undergraduate year at the same time when Clingman returned from an exchange programme after completing high school; as fathers when their older daughters were born around the same time and their families enjoyed birthday parties together. Over the years they’ve remained in touch between exhibitions and operas in the US and South Africa.

In March 2020, just prior to the COVID pandemic Clingman visited Kentridge in Johannesburg interviewing him, observing him at work in his studio, and watching him in operation at the Centre for the Less Good Idea. “I was in Johannesburg for only a week, but it was exhilarating; I loved the energy I found there, as I always do.

“I can say that writing the catalogue was truly one of the most enriching and rewarding experiences I have ever had. During it, my admiration for William’s genius only increased – the sheer profusion, creativity, and quality of his work across such a range of genres and media…I’m going to miss it now that it’s over,” says Clingman.

Learn more on his personal website: https://www.stephenclingman.net/

WOMEN ARTISTS IN EXPRESSIONISM: FROM EMPIRE TO EMANCIPATION BY SHULAMITH BEHR, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2022

Dr Shulamith Behr, née Ruch, (BAFA 1968, BA Hons 1972) is honorary research fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London. During her time at Wits, in the late 1960s, she received the Henri Lidchi Prize for top undergraduate student in History of Art and she lectured at Wits for seven years at the time when Professor Heather Martienssen was head of the department. She is a specialist in the study of German Expressionism and admits to having had a long “fascination with materials and print production in the works of the twentieth century”.

Her previous publications encompass the contribution of women artists to German and Swedish modernism, starting with her Women Expressionists (Phaidon, 1988) to essays for catalogues of the Gabriele Münter (1992-93) and Sigrid Hjérten (1999) retrospectives. Similarly, her latest, richly illustrated "Women Artists in Expressionism" explores how women negotiated the competitive world of modern art during the late Wilhelmine and early Weimar periods in Germany. Their stories challenge predominantly male-oriented narratives of Expressionism and shed light on the divergent artistic responses of women to the dramatic events of the early twentieth century.

Commentators have praised this work for “dismantling” the canonical histories of modernism as well as painting a clearer image of how women Expressionist artists were regarded during their lifetimes. Behr illustrates “the uniqueness of their struggles and strong contributions to a movement that has, until now, been viewed through the historical lens of masculinity”.

BOY ON THE RUN BY WELCOME MANDLA LISHIVHA, JACANA, 2022

When Welcome Mandla Lishivha (BA 2013, BA Hons 2014) was 12 years old, he heard bangs from his mother’s room at their family home in Soshanguve, outside Pretoria. His mother had been shot by her boyfriend, who then turned the gun on himself. "Boy on The Run" is a journey of discovery about finding “a way for me to cope with the loss”. With the help of his remaining family, Lishivha takes the reader on a journey through his childhood, student politics, journalism studies, Fees Must Fall and then as a freelance journalist.

Lishivha, who is a PhD candidate in Jurisprudence at the University of Pretoria, describes his mother Angelinah in the last lines of the book: “She never had a garden, but she sure tended my hair like it was her own bed of roses.”

He has worked as a travel writer and contributed to publications such as Getaway, Daily Maverick, Mail & Guardian, Reuters, GQ and City Press. His piece ‘Site Visits’ was published in the second volume of the Gerald Kraak Anthology, As You Like It: African Perspectives on Gender, Sexuality and Justice.

Reviewer Mark Gevisser writes that the memoir “has broken new ground in South African literature in the voice he finds and the stories he tells – about growing up poor, and queer, and loved in a South African township.”

UNFORGIVEN: FACE TO FACE WITH MY FATHER’S KILLER BY LIZ MCGREGOR, JONATHAN BALL, 2022

In this personal memoir Liz McGregor (MA 2006) details her harrowing attempt to find the truth about her father’s murder in August 2008.

She is a respected journalist and author who has written several books including "Touch Pause Engage, the Springbok Factory" (Jonathan Ball, 2011) and "Khabzela" (Jacana, 2007) and edited others, among them "Loadshedding: Writing On and Over The Edge of South Africa" (Jonathan Ball, 2013) and "At Risk" (Jonathan Ball, 2009).

Her father, Robin McGregor, was a 79-year-old retired publisher and coincidently the former mayor of the Western Cape town of McGregor. Shortly after the fall of apartheid, he was appointed to the Competition Commission because of his work as founder of independent research organisation Who Owns Whom after he became incensed by the monopolies that dominated business in South Africa.

“He went and bought one share in every company in South Africa and put them down on our dining room table. He added them up and realised that the entire economy was virtually owned by about five companies,” McGregor explained in an interview in June this year.

“It took a long time to do the book. I was knocked down by a car and quite badly injured. I think the shock that gave me took me back to the shock and the sense of imminent danger, of danger being everywhere, that I had during the trial and my father’s murder – it gave me the adrenaline to do what I had been feeling for a long time, which is to find out the truth about my father’s murder: why he died, the gang involvement, what it meant about our country. I needed to find out more as a journalist and also as a daughter. I thought I owed him that,” she said.

She discovered that Thomas was educated and from a loving, comfortable home, but who had become addicted to drugs. In prison he had become involved in a broader gang network and resisted telling the truth even if he wanted to.

“Despite all the grand words in the Constitution and in the legislation, the lofty ideals of restorative justice that theoretically underpin our system are just that – ideals,” McGregor writes. To make it work, “efficient, ethical governance would have been required. He would have to be offered a credible alternative life, away from the gang, and treatment for his drug addiction.”

McGregor currently lives in Cape Town and London with her husband Alan Hirsch (BA Hons 1978). Despite all the pain she’s endured, she told the Guardian: “I feel totally bound up with my country. Its pain and its anger and its yearnings are mine too.”

DAYS OF ZONDO: THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM FROM CORRUPTION BY FERIAL HAFFAJEE MAVERICK 451, 2022

Ferial Haffajee (BA 1989) has had a long, respected career as a journalist and edited the Mail & Guardian and City Press before becoming associate editor of Daily Maverick. "Days of Zondo" is her second book, following "What if There Were No Whites in South Africa?" (Pan MacMillan, 2015). She has made sense of 429 hearings, 779 videos and numerous pages of documentary evidence to produce the book and has described it as a learning curve and “an honourable process”. It documents proceedings from the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture which has dominated headlines in South Africa for more than six years.

The contents are divided into three parts: “The Map”, which gives readers the road map of the locus of State Capture; “The Mechanism”, which illustrates how “corruption has become so vertically and horizontally embedded in the system that its operation extracts and misdirects a substantial development dividend”; and “The Matrix” which sees Haffajee undertake case studies of Eskom, South African Airways, Transnet, Bosasa and the Free State asbestos housing scandal.

Days of Zondo unravels a complex web of corruption and criminality, and leads the reader through Judge Raymond Zondo’s biggest moments while celebrating the whistleblowers whose testimonies often came at great personal cost.

Haffajee is at pains to elucidate the detail for the ordinary citizen with smart use of infographics on what has been lost and how the quality of life for many South Africans could have improved. There are also contributions from other Witsies, including policy scholar Ivor Chipkin (BA 1992, BA Hons 1993, MA 1998) and deputy director-general at the National Treasury Ismail Momoniat (BSc 1978, BSc Hons 1979, MSc 1989).

Haffajee warns that State Capture is not over. She offers some hope that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”. She says whistleblowers, civil society and ordinary citizens have shown that a small action can change the trajectory of the story.

THE BLINDED CITY: TEN YEARS IN INNER-CITY JOHANNESBURG BY MATTHEW WILHELM-SOLOMON, PICADOR, 2022

Over a research period of 10 years, from 2010 to 2019, Dr Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon (BA Hons 2005) has documented evictions, raids, murders, xenophobic attacks, and stories of a few Johannesburg residents seeking safety and a home in its inner city. What started out as an exploration of a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) survey in 2010 for an article in the Mail & Guardian grew into his first book, "The Blinded City: Ten Years in Inner-City Johannesburg".

Wilhelm-Solomon, who now lives between Johannesburg and Florianopolis in Brazil, was born in Johannesburg. He holds a master’s and doctorate in development studies from Oxford University, has a background as senior writing fellow in anthropology and is a visiting researcher in the African Centre for Migration and Society at Wits.

Wilhelm-Solomon recalls his initial surprise at MSF’s finding that 50 000 to 60 000 people, mostly foreign migrants, live in substandard conditions a short distance from the family home he grew up in. The title of the book alludes to the numerous visually impaired characters he interviews, but also the way of seeing spaces in the city that were opaque to him. What emerges are interwoven narratives that “present a compelling mosaic of life in post-apartheid Johannesburg”.

Even at a time when most South Africans experience power cuts, and limited access to water and sanitation, "The Blinded City" makes for a harrowing read because of the litany of injustices the characters endure. There seems little respite for the city’s most vulnerable citizens who live in buildings that have been allowed to fall into dereliction, with criminal gangs extorting rent against a backdrop of successive governance failures and mayors’ attempts to “clean up” the city. Their only recourse appears to be in the sustained battle by civil society organisations such as the Legal Resources Centre and the Centre for Applied Legal Studies to hold the City of Johannesburg accountable.

The book has been praised for its narrative non-fiction style and it not only highlights the city’s urban housing crisis, it also does so with compassion. For example, Wilhelm- Solomon shares a song from Nomsa Dladla, an informal worker, who ironically understands she will never find a home in Johannesburg: “Beautiful home, my home/May I enter at the gates/May I find rest/ unburden myself in you/Beautiful home, my home!/I used to aimlessly go about my life/I could not see your beauty/I long/To see you, my home!/ There is good fortune in the home/ There is no longer any worry/Tears are wiped away/Beautiful home, my home!”

MENSCHES IN THE TRENCHES: JEWISH FOOT SOLDIERS IN THE ANTI-APARTHEID STRUGGLE BY JONATHAN ANCER BATYA BRICKER BOOK PROJECTS, 2022

A mensch, in Yiddish, is a person of integrity and honour; someone who would do the right thing even if it came at great personal cost. Although it is an ultimate compliment to be called a “mensch”, the true mensch is too modest to accept the label.

Jonathan Ancer (BA 1993) was commissioned by the Jewish Board of Deputies to celebrate the contributions of numerous unsung Jewish South Africans who opposed injustice in "Mensches in the Trenches". Ancer is an award-winning journalist and author of four previous books, notably "Spy: Uncovering Craig Williamson" (Jacana, 2017), "Betrayal: The Secret Lives of Apartheid Spies" (NB Publishing, 2019) and "Joining The Dots: The Unofficial Biography of Pravin Gordhan" (Jonathan Ball, 2021).

Through a series of interviews and forays into archival material, the book reflects on influencing factors that may have motivated the characters to embark on their fight for human rights.

Ancer said in an interview in April, that the project, which was done during the gloomy COVID-19 pandemic, was “hugely inspiring. I was moved by their courage and humbled by their sacrifices.”

These unsung heroes and heroines had varying areas of interest as activists, artists, writers, scientists, lawyers, medics, journalists, architects, and policy makers. One thread that emerges is many were Witstrained. A few examples include: Jock Isacowitz, who left Wits in his final BA year to volunteer in the Second World War, and went on to head the Springbok Legion – the group of ex-servicemen who were determined to create a more equal South Africa, having been shaped by their experiences in the war; Roman Eisenstein (BA 1962, LLB 1966), was a member of the African Resistance Movement; and Bernie Fanaroff (BSc 1968, BSc Hons 1970, DSc honoris causa 2013), a scientist, who, despite his Cambridge degree, chose to work tirelessly with his own resources to highlight workers’ poor working conditions.

Meanwhile, King Kong, the first allblack South African musical, was led by Harry Bloom (BA 1934, LLB 1937) and supported by businessman Clive Menell (honorary LLD 1996), with Stanley “Spike” Glasser (BCom 1950) the musical director. Novelist, poet, editor, critic, essayist and publisher Lionel Abrahams (DLitt honoris causa 1986), despite being wheelchair-bound since the age of 11, worked voraciously and pored over manuscripts without payment and nurtured the careers of others including Oswald Mtshali and Mongane Wally Serote.

What a great time to be reminded of these biographies of ordinary South Africans who valued human rights and justice more than money and prestige.

WITS UNIVERSITY AT 100: FROM EXCAVATION TO INNOVATION BY WITS COMMUNICATIONS WITS UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2022

Wits University at 100 tells the story of Wits from its beginnings as a mining college in Johannesburg to its current position as a vibrant university driving innovation from the global South. In the voices of its people, this full-colour, illustrated book celebrates the University’s centenary in 2022.

The history of the University is inextricably linked to the development of Johannesburg, to mining, and to deeply rooted political and social activism.

"Wits University at 100: From Excavation to Innovation" captures moments of Wits’ story over 100 years through exploring its origins, its place in society, its transformation and its challenges as it prepares for the next century.