It’s the final month of a year-long exhibition, We, The People: 30 Years of Democracy in South Africa, that’s been held at the Norval Foundation — that handsome concrete hymn to culture and capital in the Cape’s vineyard suburbs — during which time we’ve been asked, as appreciators of art and its commentary, to stand before the mirror and ask: what have we done with our 30 years of democracy?
It’s been 30 years since South Africa queued up to vote. Thirty years since Mandela’s hand dropped his ballot into the box. Thirty years since the country’s chest swelled with the promise of its own difficult rebirth.
It’s almost time to take it down, so catch it while you still can. Curated by Liese van der Watt — a South African now plying her trade in London, which feels both symbolic and practical — the show celebrates democracy, but also interrogates its mileage. Has it lasted the distance? Does it still run? Or are we coasting downhill on fumes and nostalgia? And what of the next 30 years, and the next?
The exhibition is divided, academically, into four themes: To Belong, To Protest, To Care and To Be Heard — which could also be read as the stages of any post-liberation reality. To Belong takes on the old wound of land, that scar tissue of ownership and displacement that refuses to heal. To Protest crackles with the hot energy of the streets — students, miners, shack dwellers, the unphotogenic noise of the people who didn’t get the memo about the Rainbow Nation. To Care is the green bit, the conscience corner, where artists remind us that climate justice is social justice and that the earth is tired of our excuses. To Be Heard is the whisper and the wail — the section where the myth of unity is unpacked, rewritten or possibly sung over an old PS system.
In a museum as serene and polished as Norval, it’s easy to forget that democracy isn’t something that just exists. As Van der Watt puts it, “Democracy isn’t something we have; it’s something we do.” It’s an activity, not an heirloom. The artists — Igshaan Adams, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Candice Breitz, Wim Botha, Bronwyn Katz, Sabelo Mlangeni, Walter Meyer, Gugulective, the Keiskamma Art Project and the rest — remind us that to do democracy is to risk the mess of it.
In one room, shimmering beadwork becomes a map of absence. In another, video projections flicker like ghosts of promises made. It’s all beautiful and often painful, in that particularly South African way — where irony and sincerity, hope and rage, exist in the same breath. You can hear the curatorial subtext: the Rainbow Nation was a good idea, but maybe it’s time to mix new colours.
Caroline Greyling, Norval’s director, calls it “a special moment” — a chance to see 30 years not as an anniversary but as a mirror, cracked but still reflecting. If democracy were a person, it would be 30 and anxious: young, still trying, but uncomfortably aware that the party’s over and the rent is due.
We, The People runs until November 22 2025. Go see it before it becomes history again. Bring your optimism if you still have any. And if not, Norval’s terrace serves a consoling glass of chilled wine.
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