Posters

This remarkable assembly of works is perhaps South Africa’s single most valuable international art collection.

The posters tell the story of mass resistance inside South Africa, as well as the campaigns of Anti-Apartheid Movements in countries ranging from Japan to Spain and Argentina.

Carefully printed on glossy sheets at backstreet printers and put up with organised precision; hastily poster-painted and stuck to lamp-posts by moonlight; screen-printed as part of university journalism programmes. The posters are artefacts that many South Africans may recognise, or may have had a hand in producing.

One of the biggest components are the originals from the Community Arts Project (CAP) in Salt River, Cape Town. CAP was a bustling art centre for many community organisations, and helped train activists and screenprinted posters giving notice of mass marches, rallies, women’s groupings and other political meetings throughout the 1980s.

There are also over 50 banners and murals, including the murals displayed at the historic 49th ANC annual conference in Durban in June 1991, and others produced for the Zabalaza arts, music and cultural festival in London in 1990. Others came straight from campaign platforms at local civic venues.