The project, which was co-funded by the Western Cape government and the City of Cape Town took five years to complete.  

A painting made on the 16th of June to commemorate youth day. This day is remembered for the atrocities committed by the Apartheid government of South Africa for shooting at young high school children on the 16th of June 1976. These kids were protesting against making Afrikaans compulsory as a medium of instruction. The absurdity of the law is it disregarded the fact that most children didn’t speak Afrikaans. The kids that day saw the law as a direct effort to strip them of their identity and ability to learn effectively.

 

The collaboration between Mr. Fuzzy Slippers and I celebrate youth by depicting a young boy who has not come of age but dreams of walking in his elder brothers footsteps by attending initiation school, a right of passage for all young boys who seek to fully assimilate into the way of the Xhosa. Draped in the same traditional clothing young men at initiation school would wear we see a boy filled with hope that he to can take on this proud moment where he realizes the entirety of his cultural being. It is this celebration, and longing that was taken away from those children in Soweto in 1976.

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