I am a post-graduate student at the University of the Witwatersrand, doing a Masters degree in History of Art. The subject of my research project is Nukain Mabuza and his painted rock garden, which existed in all its glory from the late 1960s until the early 1980s. Little remains of it now. I have been granted access to the only existing archive of the man and his work, which has been gathered by the Pretoria-based artist John Clarke, but I am hoping that by publishing a number of new articles about Nukain Mabuza I will be able to add to that archive by unearthing any further photographs, articles or records of personal encounters that may still exist, even though Nukain Mabuza died in 1981.
In the 1960s and 1970s, artist and farm worker Nukain Mabuza created an amazing hillside painted rock garden on the farm Esperado at Revolver Creek, in Mpumalanga, South Africa, near the border with Swaziland.
The other farm workers lived in a village of fairly uniform, unremarkable, undecorated self-built huts on either side of the main road, conveniently near to the water pump and railway siding, but Nukain Mabuza chose to construct his home at the base of the granite koppie a short distance away from the other houses. The farmer who owned the land had no objection, as the site had no agricultural value. Nukain Mabuza built two single-roomed dwellings facing the main road, as well as an elaborate entrance stile over the roads-department fence.
Nukain...
