Ijusi#29

ijusi: issue #29 The Mandela Issue Early 2014 CONTRIBUTORS: Designers: Mariska Botha - Clinton Campbell - Bradley Cuzen - Wilmarie Deetlefs - Rikus Ferreira Melissa Furter - Paul Garbett - Rhiannon Darcy Hanger - Nix Harwood - Letitia van Heerden Roger Jardine - Anton Kannemeyer - Matt Kay - Warwick Kay - Dale Kilian - Stathi Kougianos Wilhelm Krüger - Shane de Lange - Kim Longhurst - Mike Louw - Thabiso Mbambo Ningihlenge Ntuli - Brad Purchase - Scott Robertson - Udo Schleimann - Marie Serfontein Anna Sinnige - Skullboy - Alex Sudheim - Sasha Subramoney - Sumeeth Suthurgam - Fred Swart Andre Thijssen - Patrick Thomas - Simon Villet - Nicolene van der Vorst - Brode Vosloo Garth Walker Writers: Brenton Chelin - Eli Coelho - Steve Kotze - Blake Pickering - Niren Tolsi - Anelia Varela Ernest van der Merwe Published now and then by Mister Walker in Durban South Africa, ijusi aims to explore personal stories by South African graphic designers around the idea of “what makes me African - and what does that look like?”

PUBLISHER: Mister Walker EDITOR: Garth Walker garth@misterwalker.net www.ijusi.com www.facebook.com/ijusi

ijusi Limited Edition Collector Portfolio’s published in association with the Rooke Gallery

www.rookegallery.com/ijusi Cover: Garth Walker COPYRIGHT © MISTER WALKER 2014 Reproduction in whole or in part of any contents of ijusi without prior written permission from the publisher is strictly prohibited.

The publisher accepts no responsibility for content as expressed by contributors.

#29 The Mandela Issue

By Blake Pickering THE LAST SUPPER Revolutionary FanFic We descend into the scene from on high, two working street lights forming halos of the wood smoke and dust. A corrugated township with its barks and distant jalopies dragging their way through the night. It’s late. Miners and maids, shelf packers and picanins sleep without dreaming. We zero in on a window, paneless but crudely crisscrossed with rebar. Within the hoots and jabber of revelry.

Bafawetu! BA-FA-WE-TU! We slip through the bars like spies and join the fracas. Faces swollen with beer and laughter, half quarts on a makeshift table and a Panasonic hissing big band.

The little room, all beefy sour smell and sooty paint and gaudy melamine, all mushy from the booze and a rare night off from white spine breaking, is not, dear reader, a black, apart from age and place and the yoke of oppression. Nor are the actors in it alone. The air heaves and candles spit with the spirits of the righteous men, some fallen and others requited, of Moshoeshoe and Mao, Che and Squngathi. There to bear witness.

The little room, all exposed concrete blocks and misplaced sink, holds in it the players in a play about a rainbow nation that rains blood, both comedy and tragedy. on. Lilting a little on one foot, he leans down and rustles among some newspapers in a bag next to him, emerging with a brown stick of dynamite held aloft like a baton. Walter and Albert shoot nervous glances, but Winnie erupts in a cascade of laughter.

Bafawetu…

Jacob settles his onlookers with a swirl of the stick. Holding himself, his face takes a regal air.

“Mense, our policy is one which is called by an Afrikaans word…”

Jacob’s Verwoerd, even two litres of Lion in, is dead on the money. The room goes helplessly. Jacob gives it a moment before continuing. “…is called by an Afrikaans word, ‘terrorisme’,” Jacob punctuates the sentence with a hiccup, “and that is a word I’m afraid has been misunderstood so often. It could just as easily be described…” the dynamite pokes the air for effect, “as a policy of good neighbourliness.”

And with the riot of laughter our construct collapses. The players tumble outward into the void of Rivonia and Robben Island, Stompie, Sharpeville and snaking lines of voters. funeral of Madiba, his captors and cohorts casting lots for the relics of his South Africa.

Melissa Furter

Clinton Campbell

Anton Kannemeyer

Mariska Botha

Wilhelm Kr端ger

Rikus Ferreira

Stathi Kougianos

Shane de Lange

ijusi

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