“Albie’s blood is deepest red,” sings the retired Constitutional Court judge, a longtime freedom fighter, art collector and writer, at the opening of a new exhibition, Spring is Rebellious: The Art & Life of Albie Sachs, at the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town. Exuberant, in tune. At 90.
Sachs bursts into this variation of the socialist anthem after a presentation about the red, blue and yellow timelines that flow through the exhibition and link the cultural histories of South Africa and Mozambique with his life story.
The blood-red line in the centre represents his life; the blue line above it documents events integral to South Africa’s struggle, art and transformation; and the yellow line below portrays Mozambique’s art and trajectory to freedom.
“I was so nervous when I came for the first time to see it that there would be lots of text and a few beautiful art pieces,” said Sachs of the show. “Thankfully it’s the other way round: beautiful artworks displayed with sympathy, affection and style... [sections] full of surprises and secrets.”
Exhibition curator Phokeng Setai said using Sachs’s story “within a constellation of other people and stories” to elucidate history was thematically challenging.
“The history of Africa has predominantly been told through the eyes of individuals through the format of biography and that tends to flatten the realities, narratives and histories of other people and countries.”
Yet Setai and his team — Rory Tsapayi and Amy Cornfield — have done the opposite, in this first-of-its-kind exhibition at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. They have brought this layered history to life through contemporary art and the lens of Sachs’s experience.
If we get freedom, if we get democracy, if we get the rule of law that will be my soft vengeance... and it’s powerful
— Albie Sachs
Spring is Rebellious: The Art & Life of Albie Sachs also honours such local modernists as Dumile Feni and Albert Adams.
The diversity of sculptures, photos, drawings and other art reflects the complex, at times colliding, realities of personal and political ideals during revolution. Take Sachs himself, a dreamer and writer. “I'm a pacifist at heart who got caught up in a revolutionary struggle. I supported armed struggle,” he said during a panel discussion at the opening night last month.
In the first section of the exhibition, focusing on Mozambique, Sachs — sharp, funny and unruly — leapt into storytelling about art as a catalyst for freedom.
- Mozambique’s freedom & art
“As the plane flies in to Maputo, I see the [slogan] ‘liberated zone of humanity’... and I enter the airport building and there is a beautiful carved sculpture by [Alberto] Chissano and I’m feeling at home,” said Sachs, who lived in Mozambique between 1977 and 1988.
“I drive through the streets and there are murals, paintings and slogans everywhere.” It was in Maputo in 1988 that he was nearly killed by a car bomb.
Sachs referred to a sculpture of contorted, intertwined individuals by Augusto Carlos “Govane” Ferreira, Requiem in Wood — the artist risked his life by hunting for the wood for the work in a conflict zone, he said.
Govane discovered “the story in the wood as he chipped away”, much like Michelangelo revealed figures in marble.
A collector of African art, Sachs celebrates how culture — from the visual arts to poetry and beyond — is inseparable from revolution. His 1989 cultural manifesto calling for a five-year moratorium on using culture as a weapon in the struggle, “to stop reducing culture to a blunt weapon of political combat”, provoked controversy among his comrades in the ANC.
- Soft vengeance
The most intimate and immersive section of the exhibition is the “soft vengeance” section, carpeted in blue, the entrance veiled with velvet. A sculpture by Naftal Langa, You might have lost a leg my husband, but we have gained independence, stands alone here and a single photo hangs on the wall. That image is of a scarred Sachs looking at himself in the mirror.
This space raises Sachs' concept of “soft vengeance” developed after this “most important day of my life”.
“I’m recovering in my hospital bed in London under an assumed name... and I get a letter,” he recalled at the opening night. “The letter says, ‘Don’t worry, comrade Albie, we will avenge you,’ and it’s signed comrade Naidoo who has been 10 years on Robben Island.
“And I thought, ‘Avenge me? Cut off an arm, blind in one eye? Is that the South Africa we want? If we get freedom, if we get democracy, if we get the rule of law that will be my soft vengeance...’ And it’s powerful. It’s resilient. It is the triumph of your goals and ideals.”
- The power to reach people’s hearts
Another section explores the tensions around building a new democracy under the legacy of apartheid.
“Helping drafting your country’s constitution, putting up a beautiful building for the Constitutional Court on the site of an old prison and filling it with wonderful art, and being put on the court to defend the values you were fighting for, that’s soft vengeance,” Sachs said, recalling how he and the late justice Yvonne Mokgoro were given R10,000 to do “décor” for the court.
“The art was about humanity shining through and inspiring people, encouraging people, even judges... to be more empathetic about the people being affected,” he said. “Public power is strong not because it can crush and control people. It is strong because it reaches people’s hearts.”
Spring is Rebellious draws mainly from this collection and two others, the University of Western Cape-Robben Island Mayibuye Archives (featuring Sachs’s Mozambican works) and Sachs’s own personal collection.
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TRIBUTE TO KOYO KOUOH: the catalyst for Spring is Rebellious: The Art & Life of Albie Sachs
The spirit of visionary curator Koyo Kouoh, the Zeitz MOCAA executive director who died in May, infuses the exhibition, said Sachs.
When Kouoh started at the museum in 2019, “she found this magnificent building, which had the most boring chambers... It was as though the art objects were fighting this muscular, romantic, robust, crazy building with neat little spaces for displaying art.
“And she tore down walls. She created different volumes, spaces. It was as if the building began to breathe.”
Sachs praised Kouoh’s “madness, method, meticulousness and imagination”, citing an exhibition by black women artists “depicting their bodies as they see and feel them” as an example of her boldness.
Kouoh’s approach to each new exhibition was to treat it as an adventure. Sachs said he challenged her about putting him, her friend, at the centre of this exhibition and she said: “Of course it’s a risk and if an exhibition isn’t risky, it’s not worth doing.”
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- Sachs’s unique upbringing
“How is it Albie that you have done such a meticulous job of archiving your life?” Setai asked Sachs during the panel discussion.
The struggle veteran joked that he was a narcissist, before going on to say his book The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs, written when he spent 168 days in solitary confinement, had been a way to stay sane and to shape the narratives of people fighting for freedom.
Born on January 30 1935, Sachs was named by his communist parents who named him after trade union leader and communist Albert Nzula.
“I used to get credit for doing things when I was so young. I matriculated at 15. So I started legal practice at 21... Now I get patted on the back for being so old. Mine is a long lifespan.”
Pablo Neruda’s poems resonate with Sachs. He quoted from the Chilean writer’s I’m explaining a few things: “And you will ask: why doesn’t his poetry speak of dreams and leaves/ and the great volcanoes of his native land?... Come and see the blood in the streets”.
Asked about art and following his dreams, Sachs said: “I would say follow your life and your dreams will follow you.”
- Optimism in an open but unequal society
Sachs remains an optimist despite South Africa’s problems. “People say, ‘Albie you lost an arm, you were in jail... And look at the unemployment, look at the racism, look at the corruption, look at the problems. Is this the country we were fighting for?’ And I say yes!
“Even though South Africa is not a fair or safe society, people have hard-won rights protected by institutions and can speak their minds freely and openly.
“We have some of the best stand-up comedians in the world. Maybe we have more to laugh about than many other countries.”
Spring is Rebellious: The Art & Life of Albie Sachs celebrates art’s ability to revolutionise and renew — through beauty, memory and imagination.
* Spring is Rebellious: The Art & Life of Albie Sachs is on until August 23 2026
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