The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

University’s Mark Haywood felt that the image of Biko should have “come out” in the
statue, which should have been “more representative of what the public wanted”. 107 It is
interesting that the main criticism of the statue was that the face did not resemble Biko.
Indeed, as Leslie Witz suggested, much of the representational energy in commemorative
depictions of Biko in visual art has concentrated on his face, 108 as if that enabled the
integrity of Biko’s body to be restored. This would explain why non‐resemblance would
have been so troubling. More generally, it seems as if the face may be to visual
representation what biography is to history.
These criticisms could have been taken further had some attention been paid to Jacobson’s
career as a sculptor. Her attempt at portraying the African body as part of a transforming
public culture and heritage policy had indeed been preceded by works that had depicted
the body in racial and ‘tribal’ ways. From the 1970s, Jacobson had been responsible for
producing a series of ethnological ‐ even anthropometric ‐ studies in bronze and cement
fondu of ‘tribal’ heads and faces from colonial Namibia. 109 It is a consideration of this
genealogy that leads one to pose questions about Jacobson’s seemingly successful
transition to post‐apartheid memorial sculptor commemorating heroes of the struggle. As
a result of her work the grand statue of Steven Bantu Biko may have ended up as “just
another Bantu”. 110
As part of its own transformation, the NMC embarked on a poster campaign in 1998,
asking the public for assistance with the identification of sites of significance. People were
107 Saturday Weekend Argus, 20/21 September 1997.
108 Personal communication.
109 These heads are contained in the ‘Peoples of Namibia Collection’ at the Hunterian Museum at the
University of the Witwatersrand Medical School and form part of the George Elkin Collection. They
are displayed to medical students in a cabinet across the floor from the Raymond Dart Gallery of
African Faces. There are seven heads in the collection: Ovahimba, Nama, Bushman, Damara, Herero,
Ovambo as well as a sculpture of ‘Oubaas’, a ‘Pituitary Midget’ from Ghanzi in Botswana. For a
discussion of anthropometric collections at the University of the Witwatersrand, see Ciraj Rassool and
Patricia Hayes, ‘Science and the Spectacle: /Khanako’s South Africa, 1936‐1937’, in Wendy Woodward,
Patricia Hayes and Gary Minkley (eds), Deep Histories.
110 This quote comes from Sowetan journalist Mpho Lekota, with whom I discussed this matter. The
inappropriate embracing of Naomi Jacobson’s post‐apartheid sculptural production did not end there.
The Robben Island Museum acquired Jacobson’s head busts of Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu.
These were kept in its collection at the UWC Robben Island Mayibuye Archive.
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