ROBERTA JOY RICH is a South African diaspora woman born and raised on Wathaurong Country in nation-state Australia. Her exhibition The Purple Shall Govern immerses visitors in the extraordinary history related to a protest event that took place during the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Contextualised with public and private archive material, the artwork situates the history in its time and geography while crucially linking it to the histories of First Nations people in Australia. She speaks to MATARIKI WILLIAMS about the exhibition, whānau, identity, connection and meaning-making through the arts.
ROBERTA JOY RICH
My mother has always been very proud of being South African. My dad has a complicated relationship with the motherland. He left in 1968, in his twenties, really angry. He wanted to study architecture but it was for whites only. He grew up adjacent to the area of District Six, which was bulldozed under the Group Areas Act.[01] My dad is eighteen years older than my mum, so my mum grew up in the 1970s and 80s, in that period when there were many more protest movements. Whereas at the time when my dad left, Mandela had been imprisoned for six years and the brutality of the regime was peaking. They have very different experiences but, weirdly, met in Geelong, Australia, of all places.
Being part of the diaspora, and growing up in nation-state Australia, has heightened my experience and exploration of ‘Cape Coloured’ identity. It’s been a driver within my practice to think around the visual politics of identity, which has merged into a space of storytelling using archival material. I work with video, mixed-media installation and projection, an eclectic mix of mediums, to reframe or create installations that invite my audiences to rethink or challenge their own bias around ideas of history and the authors of history.
MATARIKI WILLIAMS
As an adult experiencing major life milestones, I realise that I don’t know what this was like for my parents, their milestones. Where did you learn about your parents’ milestones and how did you develop this really grounded understanding of Cape Town itself?
That was from spending substantial periods of time visiting South Africa. In my late twenties, I was basically living there on and off for months at a time. I’d ask questions connected to my art practice—Is this a legacy of segregated values or the Apartheid system?—but was also just generally curious. I was trying to understand the tension within our communities. A lot of it is embedded class perspectives. The North areas, generally, are perceived as a bit ‘poorer’. There’s more Afrikaners. The South areas have the presence of affluent British South Africans. Afrikaans is spoken in the South, especially the Cape Flats regions, but the taal is different. It’s very nuanced, but speaking English was seen as higher than speaking Afrikaans; this is also changing now as communities embrace their history.[02] I’m really interested in exploring Afrikaans, because it’s a language created in the kitchens by slaves coming together to try and speak another tongue, so that the Dutch master couldn’t understand. The first Afrikaans was actually written phonetically in Arabic, because of the Malay slaves who were practising and teaching Islam.
I definitely felt something in Cape Town that I hadn’t felt in Naarm before, in the sense of feeling nourished in seeing oneself, learning about oneself, and one’s sense of connection to place. There’re still nuances, though, because I’m always the Aussie in my family when I visit.
That really resonates. I’ve got this thing about the difficulty of returning. My parents grew up in very small whānau environments with their elders, having access to immense knowledge. Then slowly, over generations, as they moved and had children, that proximity and access fell away and I’ve always wondered, would I ever get back to what they had? I am interested in how you felt something being back in South Africa that you’d never felt before. Is that something you consider, this idea of returning, of not belonging?
It was definitely something I romanticised and thought about. There was a point where institutions in Naarm were not that interested in the voices of people of colour. I wanted to go to South Africa because there were dialogues and other things that were more interesting. But in going there, I was also thinking about what I’d be leaving behind, in terms of the privileges that I’ve been afforded through my father migrating here.
Remaining in Australia, there are things that are beneficial, not only to myself, but to what I’m trying to do in the larger project of my work. I want to create spaces where people can see themselves, because I’ve realised in my adult life what I didn’t have as a younger person. That’s what’s been a big motivator for creating works that share stories and explore stories to create spaces for community, to rewrite our stories, which are often written by others
I find this really compelling, the decision you’ve made to remain in Australia and use what you can and the privilege that you have, where you are, to share these histories. Tell me about this event you reference in your show.
From 2016, I’d been visiting South Africa a lot, and I remember seeing photos of this purple rain moment. The more I read about it, the more I became obsessed with this moment. It was 2 September 1989, in Greenmarket Square in Cape Town. People had gathered to protest against the Apartheid regime and the police had come to this protest with a lot of artillery, including these water cannons. The cannons were filled with purple dye that they planned to spray on everybody at the protests so they would know who to arrest. What is really beautiful about this moment is that a protester named Philip Ivey manages to climb onto this water cannon and spray the National Party headquarters purple, and spray everybody, including police, purple.
I became obsessed with this moment of there being no racial segregation. There’s no Coloured, there’s no Black, there’s no Indian, there’s no White; there’s none of these binaries that the regime constructed. We are all purple. That feeds into philosophies that exist within Southern Africa, such as Ubuntu, which is a philosophy about oneness within community. Beyond that, the State itself accidentally obliterates these constructs. I thought it was really incredible and unique as a resistance moment. This exhibition is the result of years of thinking and marinating on various elements, but I wanted to create a space that was purple, and in that purple, to have these critical and deep reflections on our positionality, our history and our place.
It’s easy to think of history as something that only happens in massive movements and captures us in intangible ways, but actually it is something that individuals carry with them every day. How does history enact itself in your show?
After the protests and this purple moment, people were so jubilant. Graffiti appeared on the streets the next day, quoting the Freedom Charter, saying ‘the people shall govern’, or ‘the purple peoples shall govern’, then ‘the purple shall govern’, which is where the exhibition gets its title from.[03] I made the space purple through a light installation, with purple lighting gel in the windows of the gallery, so that the sun naturally lights up the space with a purple hue.
You begin the exhibition by coming into contact with my aunt’s identity card, which has her photo and identity number with a letter K at the end. The K stands for Kleurling, which is Afrikaans for Coloured. Next to this is a dompas, which translates as a ‘dumb pass’ or a ‘stupid pass’, essentially a domestic passport for ‘African Black people’, as the racial group was categorised.[04] They had to have this pass on them in public, and if they didn’t they were arrested on the spot. The books are rare; a lot of these passes were burned in protests. I don’t want to memorialise what this object is, but I do want to use it as an education tool.
I worked a lot with the South African History Archive (SAHA), and Debora Matthews was extremely generous in helping me with this project from afar during Covid. There’s only one piece of video footage that has survived from the purple protest, because South Africa had very strict censorship laws. Fifty-two journalists were arrested on that day. The exhibition shows the only surviving video footage. It’s very fragmented, but it shows someone on top of the cannon. You can hear the tension within the soundtrack of this archival footage, there’s this chanting and eeriness. The footage plays forward, and then reverses back in a loop.
This work was first conceived in Naarm and you consulted with local Elders. Tell me about how those conversations informed your work.
For the development of The Purple Shall Govern, I worked with Taungurung Elder Uncle Larry Walsh, and Boonwurrung Elder N’arweet Dr Carolyn Briggs AM, having conversations with Uncle and Aunty, sharing our family’s experiences of Apartheid, and the Apartheid that has existed in nation-state Australia. Listening to both of their knowledges was so instrumental to the work, particularly an exhibition Uncle Larry shared, where you had to ask him if you could enter the space. I really liked that as a convention, in terms of these embedded permissions about being in publics. White folk already see themselves as the centre or the norm—do they ever think about the kind of labour experienced by People of Colour being in public space and just on land, especially for First Nations? I opened the exhibition at PICA with Whadjuk Noongar Elder Aunty Sandra Harben, and we shared our personal histories and experiences in the context of Noongar Country, where the show is held. I feel it is very important to continue conversations with Elders of the Country where the work lies, as different places hold their own stories and the process of guidance and permissions must continue with the work’s re-presentation.
It’s not just public conversations and archives that appear within your work—personal archives and family histories are also really present.
The Purple Shall Govern includes an AV installation that has a monitor on the floor, just slightly raised, that shows text taken verbatim from the audio. I had modular curved seats created, which can form a flow or a circle. I felt it was important that we sit in a circular shape together and listen to this work, named Lunch with the family at Mignon Street, Cape Town (2022). This work is a personal archive that I recorded more than ten years ago, that I’ve held for a long time because it’s very heavy, but also very special to me. I was about twenty-two and I wanted to learn about District Six, about what happened. My family and a friend of my aunts’ gathered for lunch. The work is about thirty-five minutes long; it’s edited so that we hear the harsh realities of the Apartheid regime, balanced with stories about the resilience and strength of my elders, because I didn’t want to create a deficit narrative. In this sound work we hear plates scratching and food and these silly anecdotes, moving through into their experiences of what it was like living and growing up around District Six.
Another work is called Though buried, They echo (2022) and in its initial showing at Footscray Community Arts I was thinking a lot about the architecture of the space. Within the floor, I created a frame and a thick Perspex panel that you could stand on so it would allow you to look into the basement of the gallery, which houses its archives. I placed an old television broadcast monitor in the basement, situating the medium of video within its time. This monitor plays footage of six white supremacist policymakers; the viewer looks down and sees them buried within the very foundations and structure of the gallery. This makes a literal and metaphorical link between these white men and the foundations and the laws of place. The video installation is muted; we cannot hear them, but need to acknowledge that they exist in our history. At PICA, I cut into the wall instead, revealing the internal structure and underbelly of the space, with the monitor lying in front of the original building’s architecture.
Of course, their actions continue to ripple through society, which feels particularly heightened right now.
This exhibition, though it’s very centred on Southern African narratives, is also about platforming the current colonial state and history of so-called Australia. I feel charged by it, but I also feel despondent as well, with the outcome of the Voice and the dark, dark realities of this place. There were a lot of white folk being like, “Oh no, I can’t believe it.” But if you look at the laws … Perth had pass laws, and The Aborigines Act 1905 and Perth Prohibited Area 1927.[05] South Africa also had pass laws that restricted African peoples’ movement prior to Apartheid, as a means of controlling African slaves in the Cape region. This was also something that Australia was implementing across the nation state; enslaving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, banning Blak people from accessing their Country and subsequently their right to cultural practice and connection that is inherent in being a part of Country.[06]
There is also work called Pigs might fly too (2022), which is another archival document. That’s part of the Aboriginal History Archive, Professor Gary Foley’s archive. He is a black Aboriginal activist. He has a video archive from when Nelson Mandela visited Australia in 1990 upon his release from prison. The media footage shows Michael Mansell, another Aboriginal activist and lawyer saying, “Mr Mandela, what about the Aboriginal people?” Mandela says, “We do not wish to comment on the affairs of another country.” There’s this irony of, wow, South African Apartheid ended because of many things, including international boycotts. I bring this footage in to speak to the complexities within the work towards justice, and the complexities within coercion, allyship and solidarity. What does global solidarity look like?
I love the solidarity aspect of protest and resistance movements. It’s something to take some comfort in at the moment—in your context with the Voice, and internationally with the genocide in Gaza. Here, a couple of right-wing parties started using the term ‘apartheid’ during the election campaign to describe governmental commitments to co-governance, which are based on our treaty. If we don’t hold the line in condemning the flippant use of that language, it could so easily creep back in. There’s a depth and complexity to this history that can be hard to engage with, so all some people remember is weaponised language.
It’s this fragility towards accountability for the history that they’ve inflicted. I came across this within Foley’s archives and was really intrigued and interested to learn more.
I hope that First Nations, Black and POC communities can experience this exhibition and feel seen, heard and affirmed. Though it is heavy to listen to, it reminds us of the strength we have, of all the different colonial structures that we continue to navigate. I want to, first and foremost, platform Black voices. Secondly, for folk who haven’t had to think about their ethnicity or class, or the ways in which they take up space, I hope they feel educated or learn something new. I hope they can think more about their own actions, of being someone that occupies space. That can extend to People of Colour as well, how we take up space, especially on land that is not our own. Particularly for audiences who just don’t think about the privilege that they carry when moving through publics and navigating structures and space, I hope that they can learn that these histories run deep, and continue to in the societies that we are living in today.
[01] The Group Areas Act (GAA) is the cornerstone of Apartheid policy. It aimed to eliminate mixed neighbourhoods in favour of racially segregated ones, and control the labour of Indian, Coloured and African populations, by limiting property rights. The implementation of the GAA resulted in extensive displacement and fragmentation.
[02] The Boer War was fought between the British and the Boers from 1899 to 1902, and ended in British victory and their relative supremacy over the Dutch in South Africa, contributing to ongoing class and racial dynamics between South Africa’s settler-colonial groups, extending to communities they attempted to colonise (who were also coerced into this war).
[03] The Freedom Charter was a document initiated by the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies that served as a collective statement on the principles of freedom and future democracy of South Africa, in opposition to the Apartheid regime. Thousands of people submitted their demands and the document was adopted by the Congress Alliance in 1955. First among its principles was that “the people shall govern.”
[04] ‘Coloured’ people are African and have Indigenous roots, but this is not recognised as ‘Black’ or African by Apartheid law, even within some of the community themselves who have been influenced by such laws. Pre-Apartheid, ‘Coloured’ people were considered part of the ‘Native’ or ‘Black’ community, but new categories were introduced as part of a divide-and-conquer colonial strategy.
[05] Pass laws have been used in both South Africa and Australia to control the movement of Black, Indian, Coloured and First Nations people, who are required to carry a ‘pass’ indicating which areas a person was allowed to move through or be in. If a person was found outside of these areas they would be arrested.
[06] Blak was coined by KuKu and Erub/Mer artist Destiny Deacon and is widely used as a marker of Black identity by and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) communities.
Thousands of Flowers: an interview with Minister Paul Goldsmith