BD Live | Chris Thurman:
I know my history damn well,” declares Sipho Sepamla in his poem “History-books, Amen!”. Sepamla wanted to affirm how his own history “has little to do with 1652”, claiming for himself a different identity to that ascribed to black South Africans by white historian-propagandists. The poem — published in 1983 — offered a necessary challenge to apartheid historiography, but in debunking one form of myth-making, it risks celebrating another… Read more
Image: In Keith Dietrich’s Fragile Histories, Fugitive Lives, the micro-stories radiate out from a centre, highlighting the heart as a vulnerable, flesh-and-blood human organ. The exhibition is on at Lizamore & Associates in Johannesburg