KGANG KGOLO: The thing that matters

Magano, Clarah

KGANG KGOLO: The thing that matters

Thesis / Dissertation

2026

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Michaelis School of Fine Art

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

KGANG KGOLO: The Thing That Matters examines the intersections of identity, memory, and archival practice in Southern Africa, reflecting on personal and collective histories. Using visual culture, storytelling, and decolonial frameworks, the study interrogates how identity is shaped, contested, and represented through state apparatuses such as identity documents, letters, and visual archives. Central to the study, the concept of KGANG KGOLO draws on African womanism and existential phenomenology, offering a lens to explore the experiences of marginalised groups. Through the narratives of the Barokologadi ba ga Maotwe in Melorane and Pitsedisulejang, and my grandmother, Mme Lena Motletlwa “MmaSpech” Mogotsi, this framework examines the layered intersections of personal and political identity, highlighting forced removals and land dispossession in the 1950s, including the displacement from Melorane to Pitsedisulejang/Madikwe Game Reserve. Using autoethnography, critical fabulation, and oral histories, the study reconstructs fragmented familial and ancestral memories, emphasizing Setswana's role in preserving these narratives. Engaging with scholars such as Uhuru Phalafala, NoViolet Bulawayo and Saidiya Hartman, it critiques the erasure of African languages in academia and advocates for their reintegration as valid intellectual frameworks. This linguistic marginalisation is positioned as both a site of resistance and a tool for decolonial memory-making, enabling communities to reclaim histories and epistemologies from colonial frameworks. The research also explores the relationship between state-issued identity documents: passbooks, reference books, and biometric IDs, and personal autonomy, showing how these tools both restricted and facilitated movement and citizenship. MmaSpech's experiences under apartheid, alongside ongoing challenges with contemporary identification systems, reveal the long-standing role of state surveillance in shaping Black identity, paralleling these bureaucratic practices with colonial and apartheid-era visual culture. By combining mainane, art history, sociology, anthropology, and political theory, KGANG KGOLO critiques institutional frameworks that perpetuate exclusion. It advocates for a re-evaluation of archives, integrating African languages and oral histories to reshape collective memory and confront the erasure of Black South African histories. The study foregrounds African women's experiences, such as MmaSpech's, highlighting their resilience, agency, and role in cultural survival amid systemic erasure. Ultimately, the study positions archives: visual, textual, and oral, as dynamic, contested spaces. The analysis of photographs, documents, and stories highlights ongoing struggles for land, identity, and belonging in post-apartheid South Africa, honoring marginalized personal histories and asserting African epistemologies as central to reimagining Southern African identities in a postcolonial context.