Res clamant - the land cries out: a practical study of the communicative and visual potential of a large-scale mural painting situated within a defined historical and cultural context

Delport, Peggy

Res clamant - the land cries out: a practical study of the communicative and visual potential of a large-scale mural painting situated within a defined historical and cultural context

Thesis / Dissertation

1991

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Michaelis School of Fine Art

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

The place District Six was located centrally in the 'mother city,' Cape Town. Once the most integrated of our cities, it became through the implementation of the Group Areas Act the site of the greatest number of population removals in the country. 'Spatial apartheid' changed its face and the lives of most of its people. Between 1950 and 1980 more than 150,000 people suffered forced resettlement in the Cape Town area alone, including the 34,000 inhabitants of District Six. This is an official figure widely believed to be so conservative as to reflect only± 50% of the actual number. As the oldest urban settlement in the country. The 'District' lay at the foot of Table Mountain, flanked by Devil's Peak, Lions Head and Signal Hill, within easy walking distance of harbour and city centre. Densely-populated and mainly residential, its character reflected cultural, religious, economic and racial diversities, contained, however, within relatively secure community structures. The history of the settlement that preceded the 1940s was turbulent, its many phases reflecting the early economic history of the country (addendum, p.3). The heterogenous population grew through natural increase and a steady influx, spanning the period that began with the freeing of the slaves in 1833 until the mid-forties, and representative of most race groups, both indigenous and from abroad. As the new arrivals stabilised into community formations their diversity of origin and circumstance remained an integral characteristic of the place. The ancestry of many inhabitants had roots throughout the interior, from whence the rural population migrated citywards in search of work, settling in the dense urban catchment area of District Six; and the Eastern origin of others remained evident in the culture of the inhabitants, their religious and social life, architecture, skills, dress and language. When the National Party came to power in 1948, except for Sophiatown on the Rand, District Six was the largest and most central of urban settlements and certainly the most multiracial residential area in the country.

Keywords

Fine Art

Reference:

Collections

Masters

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