The Man Who Sang and the Woman who Kept Silent

I went to the Judith Mason solo exhibition in September at the Gallery AOP on 44 Stanley Avenue and this is one of the paintings that really stood out for me mainly because of what it signified. It's called The Man who Sang and the Woman who kept Silent (Triptych), 1998. Collection: Art of the Constitutional Court, South Africa. The art piece was on loan from the Constitutional Court for Judith Mason's show and it is a triptych ( a set of 3 panels or compartments bearing pictures,carvings or the like) that Judith Mason says "was inspired by two stories Mason heard on the radio at the time of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. They told of the execution of two liberation movement cadres by the security police. One was Herold Sefola, who as Mason relates, "asked permission to sing Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrica before he was shot; the other Phila Ndwande, "who was tortured and kept naked for ten days" and then assassinated in a kneeling position. As Mason recounts, before Ndwande was killed, she "fashioned a pair of panties for herself out of a scrap of blue plastic."" (taken from http://www.judithmason.com/)

Phila Ndwande was a young MK cadre who was arrested by apartheid police and taken to a farm for information extraction about the secret armed wing Umkhonto weSizwe. As stated above she was tortured and kept naked for ten days and so she made herself a pair of panties made from blue plastic bag just to salvage what was left of her dignity. Her body was never found until one of the officers that killed her led the family to the farm after being granted amnesty by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission. What touched me deeply about this story was the fact that the only reason why the officer even remembered her was because of her courage. He said that no matter what they did to her she never told them anything.She never gave them any information or gave up anyone. She died being loyal to the ANC. She gave up her life for the cause of the ANC.


"Ndwande's body was found naked in a shallow grave, with the thin piece of plastic still covering her private parts. Mason was so moved by her tragic story that she made a dress of blue plastic bags on which she inscribed a text:




Sister, a plastic bag may not be the whole armour of God, but you were wrestling with flesh and blood, and against powers, against the rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in sordid places. Your weapons were your silence and a piece of rubbish. Finding that bag and wearing it until you were disinterred is such a frugal, common-sensical, house-wifey thing to do, an ordinary act...At some level you shamed your captors, and they did not compound their abuse by stripping you a second time. Yet they killed you. We only know your story because a sniggering man remembered how brave you were. Memorials to your courage are everywhere; they blow about in the streets and drift on the tide and cling to thorn-bushes. This dress is made from some of them. Hamba kahle. Umkhonto.
Mason's dress with text forms the centerpiece of the triptych, flanked on either side by a painting in which the blue dress hangs suspended. In one of them, a predator, clearly representing "the rulers of darkness", and partially held back by a honeycomb-like grid, is seen with a piece of the dress in its mouth. In the other, the predator is also depicted, this time without the piece of dress in its mouth, and again caught in the honeycomb-like grid. But here the work also includes a mug and braziers aglow with flames. " (Taken from http://www.judithmason.com/)

Personally my heart shot to my throat when I imagined this woman's willpower and tremendous courage it must have taken to not give in when your dignity and humanity is stripped from you and your body is put through more excruciating pain than it can endure. You know we all remember the Mandelas, Sisulus and Tambos of the world but let's not forget the thousands of nameless soldiers who like Phila Ndwandwe gave up their lives so we can be free. It makes me tremble with rage when I think of how their deaths would've been for nothing if we let our country get ruined by corruption and autocratic laws that are thinly disguised as protective ones. And also by a youth that doesn't give a shit about what happens in its country and instead finds the most important thing in their lives is drinking themselves unconscious. Phila Ndwandwe was apparently in her 20's when she died. Do you think you would've been able to do as she did?