Art

Artists of Platfontein: Manuel Masseka 

2010-02-20 16:15:00

Artists of Platfontein: Manuel Masseka

Manuel Masseka was born in a small settlement next to the Longa River in Angola in 1946. He received his traditional education from his extended family. He was contracted to a Portuguese agricultural company close to Luanda for a period of four years before joining the Portuguese army in 1984. For the following two decades, he worked for the South African Defence force in Namibia.

“If you read my paintings, you see the way I grew up. This was the old bushman way of life. We are !Xun, but other people called us bushman, because they could not click and they saw us living in the bush.”

“Today I am proud to show my history. The older people like me cannot read or write. So this is our way of recording the past. When we are all gone, you will be able to see, this is how the last bushmen lived. By then, it will all be gone and no people will know how to survive in the bush.”

“We ate from the nature. We knew how to heal ourselves from the medicine we found in the veld. That was our knowledge as the creator gave it to us.”

“This is the story of my work. I record many stories in my work, about the eland and about how we made fire from fire sticks. If you know this, you can now read my work.”

Extracts from:
My Eland’s Heart, a collection of stories and art, from !Xun and Khwe San Art and Culture Project by Marlene Sullivan Winberg was published by David Philip Publishers in Cape Town in 2001.

Anyone who is interested in buying the work of these, and other, artists should contact Marlene on: marlene.winberg@absamail.co.za

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