Within Loving Memory of the Century: An Autobiography/Gerard Sekoto: 'I am an African'

Within Loving Memory of the Century: An Autobiography Azaria J.C. Mbatha Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2005.398 pp. 65 illustrations, 1 map, photos, bibliography. ZAR 280; US$89.95. Hardback.

Gerard Sekoto: 'I am an African' N. Chabani Manganyi Johannesburg: University of Witwatersrand Press, 2004. 304 pp. 16 color plates, 16 drawings, photos, index, sources. ZAR 290; US$39.95.

reviewed by Julie L. McGee

Two recent publications from South Africa, one a biography, the other an autobiography, blur the boundaries between history and memory, verity and fiction. Chabani Manganyi's biography of Gerard Sekoto and Azaria Mbatha's autobiography are not art historical texts per se, although both include artwork. Nonetheless, both texts can contribute to our understanding of artistic practice in South Africa, particularly in the early part of the twentieth century.

The practice of black South African artists is at times collapsed into segregated studies that legitimize and historicize the art through the rubric of the artist's blackness (see Miles 1997, de Jager 1992). Their contributions notwithstanding, such isolated studies often segregate the artists from the larger social and art historical landscape in which they work. Biographies and autobiographies offer the promise of personal, sustained life accounts that further our understanding of artists and their work. Manganyi's biography of Sekoto and Mbatha's autobiography are heavily indebted to how Sekoto and Mbatha first remembered and wrote about themselves. Readers interested in Sekoto and Mbatha as artists must unearth the relevant art historical information from these biographical constructions. But doing so exposes how much a construct art history itself is, emphasizing certain historical elements and submerging or dismissing others.

Manganyi's narrative is the more straightforward of the two, as it moves chronologically from Sekoto's birth to his death (1913-1993). It centers on Sekoto's life as an artist with references to exhibitions, reviews, and specific works of art, a number of which are illustrated in the text. Following most publications on Sekoto, including the first monograph on his work by Barbara Lindop (1988), Sekoto's life is broken into his formative years in South Africa and his years in exile, 1947 until his death.

The basic elements of Sekoto's life are well known. He was born at Botshabelo, a German Lutheran Mission Station in the Transvaal. At the age of...