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For a long time now, Malangatana has been the creator of some of the
most beautiful works of art in our country and on our continent. The
course his life has taken is like that of so many others of his countrymen
born and brought up in the last half century of portuguese colonial
domination. He is the son of a migrant miner in South Africa, and was
brought up by his grandmother, who taught him all the traditional Ronga
mythology. His childhood and adolescence were marked by an insoluble
conflict: on the one side was the traditional African world, on the other
was the Swiss mission school, which opened up another cultural
dimension. The values of Ronga mythology were deeply engraved in
him. They were his unbreakable roots.
In fact, the Swiss mission schools did not practise a policy of attacking
African tradition. This was the reason why the colonial authorities closed
down Malangatana´s first school transferred to a catholic school. He
became a catechist, and with the little money that brought, he paid a
traditional doctor to treat his mother. This double standard in the
behaviour of colonised people is typical. The end result is almost always
the negation of the African origin and the assimilation of European
values. In the case of Malangatana, this conflict awakened his
consciousness of his oppressed position and the need to rise towards the
future.
After being forced to leave school, he began a tough apprenticeship in
survival: domestic servant, ball boy in a tennis club. But this boy, who
was brought up to early maturity by the sorrows of life, never wasted any
opportunity to draw and to paint.
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