Cape Town - The Tokolos is dead, long live the Tokolos.
Or so the guerilla graffiti group Tokolos Stencils Collective vowed in its last public utterance - as Tokolos Stencils - almost a year ago, on August 26.
The collective’s red spray-paint slogans reminded the public of the massacre by police of 34 miners at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in the North West Province in 2012.
Marking the third anniversary of Marikana and saying they had been inspired by #RhodesMustFall, the Tokolos crew dubbed the week of the Marikana anniversary last year as #LonminMustFall - and sprayed “Remember Marikana”, “Ramaphosa Kills” and other slogans in UCT’s public spaces with their iconic image of the Marikana miner in the green blanket. They also drew attention to the fact that UCT was an investor in Lonmin and that retired Judge Ian Farlam, commissioner of the official inquiry into the massacre, was a member of UCT’s governing council.
UCT spokeswoman Pat Lucas confirmed that, via managed investment portolios, UCT did have a stake in the mining company last year, but she could not confirm by the time of publication whether that was still the case. Farlam no longer serves on UCT’s council and had no sway on investments.
Amid last year’s tension on campus, Tokolos’s August 26 communique on Tumblr read: “Exactly one week after our radical action on the campus of the University of Cape Town in which we made known UCT’s collusion with white monopoly capital, and in particular Lonmin (#LonminHasBloodOnItsHands), Tokolos Stencils’ Facebook account was taken down by Facebook authorities.”
UCT has denied this charge, with Lucas “rejecting outright” the claim “we would interfere with their freedom of expresssion via Facebook. We invite members of Tokolos Stencil to provide evidence for their claim as we consider this to be a serious charge.”
Tokolos Stencils’ Facebook page is there today, but there has been no activity for the past year. Email queries from Weekend Argus bounced back with a message from the mail delivery system saying the inbox was full.
“Our struggle exists in the real world,” the statement on Tokolos’s Tumblr page goes on, “and we will continue to take political action in real life, on buildings, walls, pillars and statues, to bring forward our struggle for a better world... (whether it is under the name Tokolos Stencils or not...
From 2014, Tokolos Stencils had been in Cape Town’s collective face with images and messages popping up in public spaces to remind passers-by of inequities and injustices in South African society and history and to berate those in authority for failings and hypocrisies.
Targets included: the DA municipal authorities of Cape Town, “the city that works for the few”, as Tokolos dubbed it; Cecil John Rhodes and his fellow imperialists (“disown this heritage” was routinely sprayed in red on plinths around the city”; and sculptor Michael Elion’s Rayban sculptures on the Sea Point promenade, labelled “myopic art” and especially lampooned as seeking to ride on Nelson Mandela’s years of heroic suffering in Robben Island prison.
City spokeswoman Priya Reddy said this week the city’s “Law Enforcement Department followed up leads to try to expose and bring to book members of the Tokolos Stencil Collective, but our efforts were in vain... The last we heard of them was about a year ago when they stencilled graffiti on the walls of the public toilets in Langa”.
It was Tokolos Stencils’ first preoccupation that proved their most lasting. In August 2014, the inscription “Remember Marikana” appeared one night on the plinth of the statue of Cecil Rhodes, seated in Thinker pose, looking out into the hinterland. A year later only the plinth and graffiti remained. By that time, the #RhodesMustFall movement had seen to it the statue had been removed.
But who knows, with another Marikana anniversary coming and going, the Tokolos might take to secret spaces of the night again in one form or another.
The Tokolos crew dubbed the week of the Marikana anniversary last year as #LonminMustFall and sprayed Remember Marikana’ in public spaces with the iconic image of the miner in the green blanket.
Guerrilla graffiti group notseen for a year
The Tokolos is dead, long live the Tokolos.
The Tokolos is dead, long live the Tokolos.
Or so the guerilla graffiti group Tokolos Stencils Collective vowed in its last public utterance - as Tokolos Stencils - almost a year ago, on August 26.
The collective’s red spray-paint slogans reminded the public of the massacre by police of 34 miners at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in the North West Province in 2012.
Marking the third anniversary of Marikana and saying they had been inspired by #RhodesMustFall, the Tokolos crew dubbed the week of the Marikana anniversary last year as #LonminMustFall - and sprayed “Remember Marikana”, “Ramaphosa Kills” and other slogans in UCT’s public spaces with their iconic image of the Marikana miner in the green blanket. They also drew attention to the fact that UCT was an investor in Lonmin and that retired Judge Ian Farlam, commissioner of the official inquiry into the massacre, was a member of UCT’s governing council.
UCT spokeswoman Pat Lucas confirmed that, via managed investment portolios, UCT did have a stake in the mining company last year, but she could not confirm by the time of publication whether that was still the case. Farlam no longer serves on UCT’s council and had no sway on investments.
Amid last year’s tension on campus, Tokolos’s August 26 communique on Tumblr read: “Exactly one week after our radical action on the campus of the University of Cape Town in which we made known UCT’s collusion with white monopoly capital, and in particular Lonmin (#LonminHasBloodOnItsHands), Tokolos Stencils’ Facebook account was taken down by Facebook authorities.”
UCT has denied this charge, with Lucas “rejecting outright” the claim “we would interfere with their freedom of expresssion via Facebook. We invite members of Tokolos Stencil to provide evidence for their claim as we consider this to be a serious charge.”
Tokolos Stencils’ Facebook page is there today, but there has been no activity for the past year. Email queries from Weekend Argus bounced back with a message from the mail delivery system saying the inbox was full.
“Our struggle exists in the real world,” the statement on Tokolos’s Tumblr page goes on, “and we will continue to take political action in real life, on buildings, walls, pillars and statues, to bring forward our struggle for a better world... (whether it is under the name Tokolos Stencils or not...”
From 2014, Tokolos Stencils had been in Cape Town’s collective face with images and messages popping up in public spaces to remind passers-by of inequities and injustices in South African society and history and to berate those in authority for failings and hypocrisies.
Targets included: the DA municipal authorities of Cape Town, “the city that works for the few”, as Tokolos dubbed it; Cecil John Rhodes and his fellow imperialists (“disown this heritage” was routinely sprayed in red on plinths around the city”; and sculptor Michael Elion’s Rayban sculptures on the Sea Point promenade, labelled “myopic art” and especially lampooned as seeking to ride on Nelson Mandela’s years of heroic suffering in Robben Island prison.
City spokeswoman Priya Reddy said this week the city’s “Law Enforcement Department followed up leads to try to expose and bring to book members of the Tokolos Stencil Collective, but our efforts were in vain... The last we heard of them was about a year ago when they stencilled graffiti on the walls of the public toilets in Langa”.
It was Tokolos Stencils’ first preoccupation that proved their most lasting. In August 2014, the inscription “Remember Marikana” appeared one night on the plinth of the statue of Cecil Rhodes, seated in Thinker pose, looking out into the hinterland. A year later only the plinth and graffiti remained. By that time, the #RhodesMustFall movement had seen to it the statue had been removed.
But who knows, with another Marikana anniversary coming and going, the Tokolos might take to secret spaces of the night again in one form or another.
Weekend Argus