Witdoek/Black State Sponsored Vigilante 1989

Oil on canvas
180 x 75 cm

During the last years of Apartheid the white government encouraged and subsidized vigilante death squads. They deployed a sophisticated version of the old divide and rule system whereby colonial rule was assured. Untold thousands of black South Africans were murdered during this “Total Onslaught” period ending only with the transfer of power and the establishment of democracy in 1994.