Cape Town - Several artists, writers, and academics have collaborated for a new exhibition ‘Palestine will soon be free, from the River to the Sea’, now available for viewing at the Desmond and Leah Tutu House, in Cape Town, District Six.
The mammoth solidarity exhibition was organised and hosted by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.
The official opening took place on September 6, with a number of solidarity organisations such as Healthcare Workers 4 Palestine (HCW4P) South Africa, and South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP), in attendance.
Instrumental in the conceptualisation and realisation of the project was PSC’s convenor professor Usuf Chikte and contributing artist, Leonard Shapiro.
“In my experience, the reality of solidarity is that one can hold pain and celebration in one’s heart at the same time. This exhibition is one of both celebration, remembrance, hope, terrible suffering both emotional and physical, death, love, joy and more hope,” Shapiro said.
Twenty-two artists were invited to select an illustrated page from the children’s colouring book ‘From the River to the Sea’ illustrated by cartoonist and illustrator Nathi Ngubane and Social Bandit Media.
The selected illustrations were then enlarged and printed onto canvases, with the artists adding their own creative interpretations to the original illustrations, resulting in the 21 artworks now on exhibition and available for purchase.
The artists, writers and academics included Neil Badenhorst, Rana Bishara, Ralph Borland, Tasneem Chilwan, Annemi Conradie, Alex Dodd, Chris van Eeden, Gary Frier, Dan Halter, Ilhaam Khan, Susan Levine, Virginia MacKenny, Nawawi Mathews, Nathi Ngubane, Natasha Norman, Ruth Sacks, Leonard Shapiro, Stacey Stent, Colijn Strydom, Donovan Ward, and Liezl the Weasel.
Palestinian artist Bishara joined via video call and was visibly emotional as she expressed her gratitude for South Africa’s solidarity with the people of Palestine, and how this had been emblematic of humanity and seeking justice.
The exhibition will also comprise a fundraising component with proceeds from the sale of the artworks to be used to purchase pencil crayons and colouring books for children in need at schools in South Africa.
Ngubane’s colouring book, launched in late February, sold over 10 000 copies as at July, with an uptick in sales, particularly seen following attacks on the publication and calls for cessation of the book by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.
Ngubane said the colouring book with educational and contextual information on Palestine, took about a month to compile and with the assistance of Palestinian journalists, as well as parents, teachers and anti-Zionists scholars.
“We wanted to celebrate Palestine. We wanted this book to be a gateway into Palestine. We wanted this book to read like a story for the little ones,” Ngubane said.
“It's really got me thinking about political education and the importance of teaching our little ones while they’re still young about the world around them. And this book definitely does that. The aim was to teach solidarity to the little ones, what does it mean to have empathy.”
Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa University, now residing in Johannesburg, Haidar Eid lost more than 50 family members in Gaza due to Israeli attacks, as well as over 20 students and more than five colleagues.
“I am a genocide survivor. I spent the first two months of the genocide in Gaza together with my small family, two little daughters, and I have, together with them, have been displaced four times. I am not complaining because this is nothing compared to the suffering of other people in Gaza.”
While reports have placed the number of Palestinians killed by Israel at over 40 000, reputable British medical journal The Lancet in early July, stated that it would not be implausible to suggest that the number of deaths could be as high as 186 000.
“It's like killing seven million South Africans within 11 months and the world is watching,” professor Eid said.
“So what can we do? This is a question I'm just raising because this is the role of art, to motivate us, to stimulate us to ask questions.”
Popular South African activist and cartoonist Jonathan ‘Zapiro’ Shapiro was also present for the event.
“The Jewish diaspora are very pro-Zionist and in 1985, as an activist, as a cartoonist, as a South African, as a Jew, I suddenly realised just how much of this stuff I've been force fed.”
Dr Marwan Diab from Gaza, had been in Gaza until November and was displaced six times from Gaza City, Rafah, to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
“Art is very important for us, from a psychological perspective. We give children the chance to express themselves through art because once you tell the child what's wrong, if there is any problem, they will not be able to speak but if you give them crayons and pieces of paper and tell them to draw, they will draw.”
He said when working with around 20 children, they were given crayons and none had drawn a flower or the ocean, an indication of the psychological impact and trauma faced, with many instead opting for depictions of what they associated with the war such as rockets and destroyed homes.
Supporting the initiative was Gift of the Givers (GOTG), whose founder Dr Imtiaz Sooliman addressed the scores of attendees.
Sooliman said the organisation was assisting the government for its forthcoming submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its genocide case against Israel on October 28.
GOTG has brought 27 final year medical students to continue their studies at the University of Cape Town, and a further 22 students recently arrived at the University of Witwatersrand for the completion of their electives. Another group of students are expected to arrive at the University of Pretoria.
Desmond and Leah Legacy Foundation programme manager said: “The Arch (Desmond Tutu) always said, go on dreaming that we are going to have a different world than the one we’re living in… and so we hold Palestine in our hearts and we know that sometimes words can't say it all, words can't reach the hearts and the minds of those who need to hear them most and that's where art comes in. It can talk to us in non-threatening ways and talk to our very inner being.”
PSC chairperson Jaamia Galant said: “As we take in the beautiful expressions on the walls, let us not forget why we’re here and let us not forget that there is a genocide that did not start on October 7th, that started in 1948 and is ongoing… Let us not become complacent and forget that there are still people in Gaza, in the West Bank who are suffering enormous dehumanisation and indignities that we cannot begin to imagine.”
The exhibition will be available for viewing from Tuesday to Saturday from 9:30am to 3:30pm and will run until November 30, 2024.