Bandiete (Prisoners of Apartheid) – 1986

Compressed charcoal drawing. H53.5 x W71,5 cm

Black people were regularly rounded-up and arrested, mostly for not having the requisite permission to be where they were apprehended. Not having a ‘dompas’ meant you could effectively be ‘disappeared’. Invariably never charged, bandiete were kept in interminable penile servitude. Their labour was sold to white civilians and the Police pocketed the proceeds. Often farmed-out to remote properties as slave labour, they were shackled at night and kept on starvation rations. Deaths on these properties were seldom reported.