The Man Who Sang and the Woman Who Kept Silent

The Man Who Sang and the Woman Who Kept Silent is Mason’s representation of two cases presented before the TRC involving ANC cadres. In one, Harald Sefola (the man who sang) was abducted, tortured and eventually electrocuted in a field near Witbank. While awaiting his death he sang ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’.

The other is the story of Phila Ndwande (the woman who kept silent) who was tortured and kept naked by security police for weeks in order to compel her to inform on her comrades. Before she was eventually executed she made a pair of panties out of a plastic bag to cover her nakedness, and it is to this garment, found on her body when it was exhumed, that the blue dress refers.

The words on the dress include these: ‘... At some level you shamed your capturers, and they did not compound their abuse of you by stripping you a second time. Yet they killed you. We only know your story because a sniggering man remembered how brave you were. Memorials to your courage are everywhere; they blow about in the streets and drift on the tide and cling to thorn bushes. This dress is made from some of them. Hamba kahle. Umkhonto.’

Artwork courtesy of Constitutional Court Art Collection.