What was South Africa’s 1989 “Purple Rain” Protest and what is its importance then and now? How can we understand it in relation to The Purple Shall Govern at Footscray Community Arts in settler nation Australia, a project which has framed itself in response to this moment of resistance as a means to ask questions about public space?

The “Purple Rain” Protest which took place on 2nd September 1989 on Greenmarket Square in Cape Town, is a seminal moment in South Africa’s Anti-Apartheid Liberation struggle - of resistance and solidarity at the cusp of change. Apartheid was a state-led policy of racialised oppression, using an unequal separate development model which marginalised People of Colour (POC), and benefitted a minority regarded as “White” in South Africa. Repression against POC started after the region was colonised from 1652 by Western explorers looking for a route to trade in the East. From 1948, centuries of oppression were painstakingly codified and its bureaucracy deepened by a conservative government who used it to destroy whole communities based on racist ideologies. These included strategies of forced removals and other forms of active or passive brutalisation such as the inadequate provision of public services for broadly “Black” communities¹ and prohibitions against freedoms of association. Apartheid denied access to a great deal of public space in South Africa to People of Colour, more especially leisure, cultural and educational spaces.                                                                                          

Peaceful resistance against this abhorrent system was met with extreme violence by the State for the next five decades, leading eventually to armed resistance by some civilian quarters, and later by economic, cultural and sports boycotts from the international community. By 1989, it was clear to almost all that Apartheid was a failed project, even after four intensive years of heightened repression, imprisonment, bannings, and killings which attempted to turn back the inevitable. Through it all South African masses from all ethnicities gathered illegally to protest against the system, knowing they faced violence.

The “Purple Rain” event was one of those mass gatherings, and it ended up being the last one where state violence was used against protestors. The event started as any normal protest, with peaceful protestors expecting an attack, sitting down in the street next to Greenmarket Square. When ordered to disperse, unusually, police began spraying protesters from a water cannon, filled with a purple dye.

As this continued and protesters were being beaten with whips, a lone protestor (and conscientious objector) Philip Ivey, climbed onto the armoured vehicle and turned the cannon onto the police and the ruling party’s HQ on the square. Protestors ran away and were helped by shopkeepers all around the city as they sought to evade the police. All those who were found with dye on later in the day were arrested. The next day graffiti around the city declared, “Forward to Purple People’s Power,” and “The Purple Shall Govern,” playing on the words of South Africa’s Freedom Charter, “The People Shall Govern.”

This was a rare moment of jubilation for the country locked in four years of a draconian State of Emergency. Despite strong media censorship by the State, the event got news coverage. Used to seeing ongoing state violence against protests, activists all over the country celebrated this audacious, flamboyant act of victory for the oppressed. It was an event rich in symbolism, not least because everyone at the multiracial event became one colour, but the State itself obliterated race for a moment. The moment of unity in purpleness, was a David and Goliath instance, the ultimate in peaceful collective resistance, a finger in the face of injustice: it was the scent of possibility. In years since, it remains powerfully symbolic, an event which invariably brings smiles to South African faces. It evokes a loving struggle from a place of integrity, it elicits positive emotions of solidarity and affirms the value of committed perseverance for justice.

By enticing the audience in the purple hued celebration of humanity in public space, Roberta, drawing on her diasporic roots/routes with South Africa deftly looks under the surface and raises difficult questions about struggle, about language, and about solidarity. Questions of solidarity are especially raised between reckoners of South Africa’s complex racist past with those in Australia. By adding complexity to the story of the “Purple Rain” event she helps remind us of the human costs of unjust policy and their ongoing impacts in the ways in which First Nations and People of Colour experience publics and public space.

Archival works such as a pass book for an African POC to be in public spaces (Aunty Thelma’s ID and a Dompas), and painful memories shared by those interviewed, show the stark differences of recent histories on POC’s sense of being in public space. These raise important questions about whether POC are in fact closer to freedom of movement despite protests wherein White people were also active. Even as we recollect such powerful moments of collective action, the realities of POC being truly free and present in public space, whether in South Africa or Australia remains elusive.

Unresolved issues of justice for POC whether in South Africa or Australia, Roberta suggests, remain, and the works accompanying Purple Rain on September 2nd 1989 seem to ask whether time can really heal when injustices, such as lack of treaties in Australia for First Nations people, remain. Drawing on voices from District Six through an intimate dinner party, Lunch with the Family at Mignon Street, Cape Town, Roberta records members of that area’s “mixed- race” (so called “Coloured”) community, invoking memories of the once vibrant neighbourhood next to the city centre that was destroyed as a result of Apartheid forced removals. They remind us of the complexity of categorising and demonising by skin colour, and of belonging and deep loss of public place. As one elder crushingly offers, “Just don’t tell me to have amnesia... because I will remember the bad things, but I am moving on.” In this way Roberta speaks to the importance of celebrating resilience and strength of overcoming, while remembering hardship.

Roberta’s choice of referencing the archive, linking it to justice and resistance, challenges us to remember that struggles are not short term, they need continued engagement to enable change. In Though Buried, They Echo, the voices of racist policy makers whose legacies still define both countries are situated within the floor of the gallery’s architecture, and are silenced by making the audio mute. The reframing asks us to question who we hear and act on. In Pigs Might Fly Too, Roberta raises questions around accountability and a continued global conversation regarding the nuances and specificities of Bla(c)k and Indigenous Rights.² The works raise questions about solidarity bonds between First Nations and POC of the two countries of the two countries, once South Africa achieved its freedom. To what extent has post-Apartheid South Africa, and especially its global icon Mandela, honoured the support of others and acted from a position of solidarity around Indigenous rights in Australia. Struggles are not short-term, The Purple Shall Govern exhibition seems to suggest, they need continued engagement to enable change, and all have responsibilities to continue to play principled roles.

The Purple Rain Protest as mobilised by Roberta in this exhibition is a challenge to viewers to consider activism and public space. The iconic historical event juxtaposed against significant archival material allows us to consider the complexity of struggle as well as the importance of solidarity, humour and tenacity.