Kea hoNkgono leNtatemoholo is a series of work on paper that aim to function as a parallel archival and historical metanarrative towards understanding Thokoza in the early 90’s. Thokoza, a township in the East Rand of the Witwatersrand, was gripped by immense socio-political, ethno-tribal civil unrest which, at one point, threatened to derail South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994.
Confronting the consequences of this history and having been born a few months before its end in 1994, Mokoena attempts to come to terms with the psycho-social conditions this violent has brought on friends and family whom the artist shared a shared childhood with.
By referencing a 1996 Independent Report pointing towards similar violence in similar circumstances in the East, West Rand, Cape Town and KZN, the artist writes over, redacts, deconstructs, expands and offers his own experiential documentation on the writing on Thokoza specifically, complicating the image of Thokoza as a footnote in the greater narrative of South Africa’s transition towards a democratic state.
Kea hoNkgono leNtatemoholo (I’m Taking a Walk to the Grandparents)