Episode Notes:

In this week’s episode, we travel to Johannesburg to speak with Lekgetho Makola, a visual storyteller, cultural strategist, and arts executive whose work spans decades and continents. From his early days sculpting clay animals in rural Limpopo to curating critical archives at Robben Island and studying under film legends at Howard University, Lekgetho shares how his journey has been shaped by care, community, and a radical commitment to dignified representation. Now chief operating officer of the Market Theatre Foundation, he reflects on the transformative power of photography infused with love as a tool not only for documenting truth but for reclaiming identity and rehumanizing Black life. The conversation explores what it means to make—not take—images, the tension between capitalism and care, and the promise of building artistic ecosystems rooted in joy, collaboration, and cultural memory.

Jump To:

02:09 - “Disorganized lions won’t catch even a limping buffalo.” Lekgetho’s invocation highlighting the power of community and collective action.

05:15 - Lekgetho’s journey into the arts, with a little help from an attentive headmaster and exposure to animation on TV early in his childhood.

10:00 - The role of the arts, politics, political organization and even sport, in building a space for him to gently “let down” his father by choosing to pursue arts over studying economics.

14:50 - The Howard University experience, Lekgetho chooses to attend graduate school at the premier HBCU in the US and continues to be inspired by its pan-Africanist teaches

23:30 - References in Black imagery in the US, and West Africa and their influence on archiving the photos at Robben Island Museum, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.

25:35 - Visual literacy, the transformation of South Africa and the power of the image to de-humanize Africans as part of the “Colonial excursion”

33:30 - On utilizing the care found in traditional African storytelling to put dignity back into the modern legacy of Black and African storytelling.

46:20 - Youth and the impact of African music and urbanism on the future of visual storytelling.

54:00 - South Africa’s current challenges and the importance of care and integrity.

Episode Transcript:

Darren Isom:

Welcome to Dreaming in Color, a space for social change leaders of color to reflect on how their unique life experiences, personal and professional, have prepared them to lead and drive the impact we all seek. I'm your host, Darren Isom.

This season we're traveling to the continent to highlight African leaders in the continent's role as a key driver of global innovation and leadership. So join us as we travel across the continent from South Africa to Tunisia, with stops in Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Senegal along the way, celebrating the diaspora in all of its complexity and beautiful possibility. This is Dreaming in Color Africa.

Lekgetho Makola is a highly respected arts executive, curator, and thought leader with over two decades of experience in arts administration and visual storytelling across Africa and beyond. Currently serving as chief operations officer at the Market Theatre Foundation, he previously held leadership roles, including the inaugural CEO of the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria and head of the Market Photo Workshop (MPW) where he helped establish the institution as a continental leader of photojournalism. Under his leadership, the MPW received the prestigious Prince Claus Award in 2018.

An MFA graduate in film studies from Howard University, HU, Lekgetho has served on numerous international platforms, including the World Press Photo Awards as the first African chair of the General Jury, Vogue Photo, and Apple's Photo Aesthetics Project. He's a founding member of the Centers of Learning for Photography in Africa and contributes in global advisory boards such as CathLight and the Social Documentary Network. Deeply committed to social justice, his work continues to amplify underrepresented voices and champion culture preservation through innovative inclusive storytelling. And I'm lucky to sit in conversation with him today in Joburg's Maboneng Precinct. Welcome to Dreaming in Color, Lekgetho.

Lekgetho, it's great to have you here. Thanks for making time. It's good to see you. As you know, I hand you the floor to start the conversation, so give us your invocation.

Lekgetho Makola:

"Baholoholo bari. Dao, chahloga sebok. Isia genari ihlotsha." Before I directly translate it, it's a saying that's been there for many, many, many, since back in the time I guess, since when our people started creating community. It refers to community. It refers to being organized and organizing. The direct translation, which is at times difficult to translate to other languages, is a siPedi saying because I come from baBedi cultural group or nation, not a tribe, we don't use that term tribe. They use their interaction with the animal kingdom, with nature as a reference point, as a point to borrow animal experiences that they translate and use in their own lives. So this specific reference or saying refers to how lions organize themselves either as a pride, but as much as they are so powerful and strong animal kingdom, they also need to be organized for them to hunt and be successful in hunting. So when we say "dao, chahloga sebok" meaning lions that are not organized don't ever catch a limping buffalo, and that has been my reference point around organizing, mainly because I also come from a large family, a family of 11.

Darren Isom:

Oh wow.

Lekgetho Makola:

And I've throughout the 50 years of my family engagement, interaction, we are stronger whenever we are on the same kind of page with thinking about the same, similar things with a common purpose. But once we begin to pull apart, we can begin to see fractures, we begin to have more challenges, we have more fights. So that in itself I think it's something that drives me in my thoughts, in my work, in my thinking, in my engagement in a nutshell.

Darren Isom:

And that's a powerful way to start the conversation because even the most powerful group is limited if there's not organization, right?

Lekgetho Makola:

Mm-hmm.

Darren Isom:

I'm happy that you brought up your family of 11 or 11 kids at least because I want to go back to your childhood and give you some space to talk about that. I understand you've been interested in arts since high school, you noted. So take us back to those early years. I would love to hear what were the pivotal moments or influences that really encouraged you or sparked your interest in the arts and how did that interest in the arts, how was it fed by your family. What was your family, your community's response to that?

Lekgetho Makola:

I mean, one, I only became aware possibly in my latter part of my high school that my strength was in the arts through my headmaster because I was a troubled child in many ways in high school, and he, with interaction with my father, shared that with him that as much as your son is going through adolescence and he's struggling in terms of his grades, but there is something that I don't think he's aware of, he's artistically inclined. That's where probably I got much more kind of physically aware that, wow, this is something that I can actually take on and create a life, a future on.

But prior to that, I think there had been signs. I come from a village, a rural village in the current province of Limpopo. It used to be called Northern Transvaal, and before that it used to be called Lebowa. It was part of the apartheid segregation. Every nationality or ethnic group had a special province that was dedicated to them, like how the Native Americans had given... there were specific areas that are not cared for, and there's generally chaos. The system of apartheid facilitated this kind of ideology of segregation, but we find ways of existing, and as kids we used to do wire cars, but also I think the climate was better then because the rivers were flowing and we used to get clay and build animal models out of there. So that, I used to be the leading person in that space.

And then in kind of lower levels of school, I used to be the one that will draw the fish better than the rest, draw the locust. So many of my classmates, especially the girls, used to come to me to do the drawings for them. It's something that I've gotten used to, but I did not realize that it was really, really important. But also with the introduction of television in... my father bought our first set of a television in the early '80s-

Darren Isom:

Oh wow. Yeah.

Lekgetho Makola:

... because we were a bit well off in our village. So being exposed to animation, I got interested, deeper interested into it, but I wasn't sure if this is something... I didn't know actually that one could actually think of that this thing's done by humans, right? But those things made sense when I was about to exit my high school that, you know what, let me give this a chance. But I had to negotiate because my father was a business kind of minded person, and generally people will tell you that fathers will say, "No, you can't become an artist. What are you going to be doing? You're to be busking your guitar on the street and making cents instead of going into business?"

Darren Isom:

You had your dad worrying, yeah.

Lekgetho Makola:

Yeah. So thus I think the confusion was there, but was beginning to make sense.

Darren Isom:

Got it. And I know that you briefly explored a career in economics before returning back to the arts in the mid-1990s, and when we first connected you mentioned in my notes this idea of art feeding the soul. And so tell me more about what this means to you, this idea of art feeding your soul and what ultimately brought you back to the arts.

Lekgetho Makola:

When I was doing my last year in high school, with engaging with my father, “where do you want to go,” because two years prior I definitely wanted to go into some kind of an art space. In the final year as we are about to apply to universities and what kind of programs you want to go into, my father was quite influential in that I am not able to invest money in you going to do the arts. Rather do the economics area, anything that was related to business and economics, and once you complete you can then use your own money to go do the arts.

But also at the same time, I grew up in a Catholic family. My mother was very, very strong Catholic. My dad was not a churchy person, was not a religious person, was more a spiritual person. I was an altar boy. Basically, I grew up Christianity being the center of my being, and the high school that I went to was a boarding school, it was a church school, Anglican school. So once I got accepted in one of the coastal university, University of Durban, Westville in Durban, meaning that I had to leave my village for the first time and going to a major city about, what, 400 miles away from my home. I think once I started being exposed to other religions, my mind began to think differently.

But also I found expression because this was a lot of the dying years of apartheid. Nelson Mandela has just been released. The turmoil was quite heavy. It was a lot of confusion, but also excitement and hope, and I found myself being involved in politics, but not being an activist per se, but doing drawings, designing posters, things like those. So that space of expression for me was my connection to some kind of activism, and I guess at the same time I began to feel really closer to the practice. It was solace for me. It was a space of thinking, of organizing myself, and being able to represent myself through this work that people were really interested in. My work was part of the groups to translate the expression. So I found expression through that. But at the same time I found something that really spoke to me and got to be deeply connected to that while I was not doing well with my grades in economics.

But also I was a very sporty person. I was one of the top softball players, baseball, softball, but South Africa we're more of softball. In that first year I won an international tournament as the best player of the tournament. So those kind of expressive spaces became me connecting with my identity, and I guess I had to make that hard call to say to my dad, "This is not working. I have to look inside and follow what's in me."

Darren Isom:

I love this idea of really looking inside and finding out what really works for you and exploring that and celebrating it. I think it's also interesting as well that very often we have these hidden gifts that show up in different ways. And so I have a brother, my middle brother who's perfect middle child, meaning imperfect in the most wonderful way possible, is really good at drawing, and my parents always saw that as a sign that he was very perceptive. He could see things in ways that we couldn't see them and play them back. And so I would love to hear a little bit more about your gift of perception, how it plays out both in your artwork but also just in your work more broadly.

Lekgetho Makola:

Well, yeah, I think again it starts from me, right? It starts from within. I prefer to be in a safe space internally that can be able to absorb, but in that absorption I have to engage... well, filter what works, what doesn't work. In that I think it allows me to get a better understanding of my surrounding, my space, my area, my environment, and again it goes back to finding expression, and that expression I think is founded from within, but from the self, but the environment being critical in how it informs. So my strategies is just around navigating, absorbing, getting as much information as possible, sometimes just being a fly on the wall and observing, but at times finding where possible to ask questions. But those moments of feedback, of information, that information translate to a resource for me. So it goes into my memory bank, and in that memory bank I compactalize what, I mean, how I will use this going forward as an archive that helps me interact with the environment.

Darren Isom:

And so we both went to Howard and so I have to, HU, you know, I have to spend some time talking about Howard. And so you pursued your MFA at Howard. I did my undergrad there. I would love to have you talk a little bit more about what drew you to that institution, to the city itself, and in many ways both how did your time at Howard influenced the way you see art and culture, but also what do you feel like you contributed to the Howard world as well.

Lekgetho Makola:

Yeah. I mean, the Howard experience was one of my biggest decisions because this is just around 2009 when I applied for the Ford Foundation Fellowship through the Africa-America Institute. I did not believe that I probably deserve, I'm a deserving person for that type of platform, but somebody whispered, it's like, no, you've been doing interesting things because by then I was working for the Robben Island Museum in Cape Town, and for that year I was a senior manager of an institution so I was rising career-wise within the cultural institution space.

Darren Isom:

You're more than qualified for this.

Lekgetho Makola:

Well...

Darren Isom:

I love the humility though. Keep going.

Lekgetho Makola:

Thank you. Thank you. Ke a leboga. And I applied for this scholarship and I received a response that you are being considered, and we went through layers and layers of interviews up until the finalists were announced and I was asked, "Where do you want to go study in the world?" And the program was around future cultural, well, future leaders of the continent. And for me, because I was working for Robben Island which is a very important site in terms of history, the past, but also the present, the future, and how it projects itself in a very interesting geography of Cape Town which has the... it's the oldest colonial city that's still thriving I think probably in the whole continent. So they have these kind of contradictions in the space. Robben Island is-

Darren Isom:

Cape Town's a very special place.

Lekgetho Makola:

It's a very special place. So that kind of conflict and tension but also opportunity inspired probably the process of me applying for the Ford Foundation in how do I use the current dynamics as a resource to contribute to the transitioning of this post-apartheid country. So the transitioning element was what inspired my application, and using the culture and the arts as catalyst of that process, and as a leader, as a future leader I found it as a very, very important kind of tool. The question now, where do you go, where do you want to go, obviously there were a number of recommendations, but the mecca, I've heard a bit about it. There was a professor from the African History Department who used to come and visit yearly and we used to interact with him. The mecca was a Pan-African intellectual space. It had Africans from all over and highly regarded Africans who deposited their knowledge in that space, and for me to be able to access that is to be part of the HU. That's how I end up being at Howard University.

It was a very interesting. Obviously when you go, you go with this kind of romanticized idea of what it's going to be because many of the African American individuals who are doing amazing things that are critical have gone through the Howard space, and getting there and also just kind of facing the similar issues around the administration that I've experienced back home, the opportunities but also those challenges was like, "Okay, maybe I will slide in much more easier than I thought." I happened to be in a very beautiful space, School of Communication, MFA class with one of the leading professors being Prof Haile Gerima who has inspired people such as Spike Lee from the West Coast movement, UCLA in the 1970s. They were already called thinkers around Black film, Black visual storytelling, Black mini-making. So I think those were the most-

Darren Isom:

Quick shout out to the West Coast. We do things, right, that the East Coast can exploit, exactly.

Lekgetho Makola:

Of course. Of course. Yeah. So I thrived in that space of thinking about visual storytelling, mini-making, interpretation, but also how my own language, a siPedi person, could be part of script writing, of cinematography, of photography as a whole besides storytelling. I think those were the meaningful kind of technicalities that I derived. I worked closely with the professors from the African American divisions, but also the African studies and those also became kind of resource.

Within that space, I also identified a loophole because I think DC was going through its own challenges within the Black communities because there was this kind of concerted effort that is becoming evident that had been pushed out. Unfortunately, men who are impoverished, many of them are not working, but they own properties because of gentrification. Young money coming from a little bit north, New York, but also mid and west, young people coming into Washington DC, property prices going up, you see condos rising, then the people are being pushed out slowly and surely, and beginning to see it, like when you walk, every year the texture change. There's little dogs being... in the morning and you realize like, "It's changed. No longer." I never used to see puppies being walked. Yeah.

That's where a friend of mine from Tanzania and I started this online news platform, web-based, called Kali TV. So we used to document experiences of Africans who are living mainly in the East Coast, but also visiting guests from the continent coming to interact with Washington DC because it had all the embassies of the world. So that became something that I got interested in too as part of the bigger conversation around DC and what value it has. But at the same time, I met this wonderful individual who was doing amazing work, activism work in mobilizing communities that are affected by this gentrification but also pushing out, public schools have been closed, public spaces have been closed down, have been turned into things that are not familiar to those communities, and that's when I started my work where I ended up producing a short documentary called Disappearing Faces of the Chocolate City-

Darren Isom:

Oh wow.

Lekgetho Makola:

... just trying to capture this moment in history because I knew very well that down 10 years down the line these people won't be here. So I think for me that's a contribution in terms of an archive.

Darren Isom:

You talked about earlier this idea of coming into DC and this understanding of Howard as institution that was a Pan-African institution and the feeling of having a sense of belonging. That speaks to just a very perversive and thoughtful narrative that's shared by Howardites in general. You walk into this space and you're one of many Africans, I'm one from New Orleans, you're one from South Africa. I would love to just have you talk a little bit about what was it like to... both, where did that narrative that you inherited to go to the institution, where'd that come from, but how you were able to feed that narrative, if you will, while you were there and take it back with you when you came back as well.

Lekgetho Makola:

Yeah. Like I said, I was at the Robben Island Museum and Robben Island was also a very important convening space where people came because we also had a heritage program that attracted students from across the continent but also from the diaspora. These moments of sharing begin to connect with... obviously from my own perspective the African American community, especially in the field of film and photography, have a very lengthy history. So when we speak about or we're looking for reference points of Black imagery and representation in these mediums, obviously we have West Africa, Burkina Faso, and Senegal, and Mali that started when the countries were being opened and independent. But the African American community has been doing that for a while, and I found myself accessing those archives to inspire how we curate, for example, the photographic archive of the Robben Island Museum. So those were kind of direct links that eventually contributed to my choice.

Obviously, entering Howard where Gordon Parks, a feel, a texture has gone and many other filmmakers that have gone through that space, I found myself linking directly with actually what I was using back home as an instrument and being in this space where these people have transitioned or have presented or have engaged or have influenced how the curriculum is structured. Because I think the Howard University curriculum was amazing in a sense that in the film school it really prioritized on the African experience within the production space and distribution space, but also a certain level of spirituality that fed and that welcomed me.

Darren Isom:

I want to just jump in and have a little conversation around this idea of visual storytelling, and when we first spoke you described yourself as a visual storytelling activist whose role is to support visual storytellers. What makes visual storytelling such a powerful tool for activism and narrative change, particularly within the South African context, and why does it resonate so deeply as a medium for shifting perspectives?

Lekgetho Makola:

I mean, images, photographs, we speak a lot about visual literacy as a learned process. You have to go through school to learn visual literacy. For us, for me in particular, visual literacy is embedded in any human. Once you see an image, you respond to it and you respond to it based mainly because of what you've been exposed to in your upbringing, but also the types of visual material that exist around you that will assist you make meaning and construct meaning in that image. Construction of meaning, it's not a complex thing at times. It can be complex when you begin to dig deeper into It. They always say artists or photographers can look at a black spot and interrogate that black spot for months to come. We can make it complex in that manner, but at times just a portrait of a person can become alive in one's processing, right? You begin to think of this person before the image, who's around them and what are they thinking about.

For me, those kind of very important elements of understanding visual literacy, that is one of the most accessible objects that our senses respond to, like smell, like taste, and I regard visual storytelling, finding its, I think, important carrier in images. So images become a very important accessible tool in our South African context. We know very well that photographs sold our story in the most difficult times when activists in the 1950s, predominantly white photographers because they had access to these equipments that were generally inaccessible, started documenting this lived experience of a non-white and native in South Africa. They became documents of record, but also documents of exposing the atrocities of apartheid, and that in itself inspired how I thought about my artistic value to society, that as I am a person who is somehow gifted in interpreting society, environment, our relationship to our environment, and being able to translate it through drawing or sculpting.

But the visual medium is accessible to each and every single human being on this planet if they have access to a printed paper or newspaper. So the strength lies in that it is accessible and it can be presented in multiple kind of platforms, from television to your cell phone to a magazine. Yeah, so the space of this distribution is vast, so it makes it more and more and more strong, meaning that whatever ideas that you have can be translated or can be distributed to millions of people at once. So for me that that's where the power is. Besides the actual art of telling a story, the actual intentions of your intention about what story do you tell and what you tell it for. Do you tell it to confront? Do you tell it to expose? Do you tell it to teach, or do you tell it to define yourself as an individual?

I think within the continent context from the 1960s, because we speak about... in South Africa, in particular in our teaching, we speak about, well, specifically the Market Photo Workshop were much more involved, we speak about epochs of photography in South Africa where some of the first cameras are here. There's a museum called Museum Africa, one of the three cameras that were made in France in the 1800s, one of them is here in South Africa. It's like a box kind of camera, and that camera was a tool for colonial excursion to document the fauna and flora because humans were part of fauna and flora, not necessarily humans, the natives, document the natives, take the images back to Europe, wherever, to say, "This is how they look like."

Images became a tool to define a representation in the psychology of it that influenced Europe and how even if you have never been to Africa you have already developed this perception of the subhuman. So the subhuman, the dehumanizing phase that went on for almost hundred years until the 1960s with the independence of some of the West African states, and photographers there, Malick Sidibé, and Seydou, started taking the cameras, turning the camera to themselves and documenting themselves and their identity.

Darren Isom:

Lekgetho, before we move forward I really want to go a little deeper with that thought. You noted the use of the visual image in many ways to dehumanize communities, and I think there's something quite radical, very simple as well about this idea of using a visual image to humanize folks, and I think it speaks to the ultimate gift of being able to pursue this work from a place of love. I'm reminded all the time of Bill Cunningham, the photographer, the New York Times photographer who used to always say, "He who seeks beauty will find it." I feel like when Black and Brown photographers and folks that work in the space, when they take pictures of the community and when they capture communities you can see the love, and there's something actually quite beautiful and radical about finding love, finding beauty, finding joy in spaces that others don't always find that. So I would love to get your thoughts on what's the role of love, what's the role of joy, what's the role of beauty particularly from a community perspective and the work that you do.

Lekgetho Makola:

Yeah. I mean, firstly, it's care, right? Care, an idea of care, care, when you care, generally you care and you receive care, and care is central in how we think about photography and image making. The process of making an image, we generally speak about taking, taking a photo, shooting, capturing, those are hard terms. I mean it's like hunting. You shoot, you capture, you take, take away, so you're taking away. So for me, it's about making a photograph. Even though I do get into use the term shoot because of the context, but making an image, for me it's the language that we should use because it's a process.

When you are documenting your experiences, there's something that it does. The camera becomes so invisible in that you directly connect with the human being that is in front of that camera or the space or the ornament or the little something that is of sentimental value in a house that speaks histories and generations and families and community. I think because we know that these tools were used for a certain purpose, we have the power to turn them around and make them the tools of care, of really reflecting and telling who we are because we've been documented so much that we end up believing how we're documented.

For me, that became a journey of saying let's confront these demons and accept that they exist, accept that we've been dehumanized. We lost our dignity, our dignity is eroded, our self being, our integrity is compromised. Let's use these tools to really begin the process of unlearning, and in that process of unlearning we begin to learn anew, and we learn together. For me, image making, visual storytelling or storytelling, storytelling obviously is something that is our library as a people of this region. Storytelling, there's always care in it.

The romantic idea of an old man with kids sitting around a circle, and the circle is important with fire in the middle, telling a story and narrating that story which represent generations before him. It should be something that those children carries further, and how do we take those types of methods, methodologies, and embed them in the modern tech tools to continue the legacy of defining the identity of storytelling in our Black and African communities. So I think for me, that's where that element of love, care is defined. We need to represent ourselves as a people with great minds, with great intellect, but also with love and care.

Darren Isom:

Love is our secret weapon, right?

Lekgetho Makola:

Of course.

Darren Isom:

I want to jump in and stay there for a bit. You mentioned in the conversation earlier this need to balance artwork and cultural work in your role through visual storytelling, and I would love for you to share a little bit more about what is the distinction between the two. How do you strike that balance, and how do you think of using that cultural work as a way of building those narratives in that world that in many ways has been stripped away or compromised?

Lekgetho Makola:

I'll probably become a bit more technical in terms of how I define art at work. Art for me, it's a methodology, it's a vehicle to interrogate our current and present culture because culture is a way of life, is a way of being. Art helps us interrogate the past or record the past and document the past in amazing ways, and the archive, and how then art plays this role in projecting what the future will look like, right? So it becomes this medium that is exciting, that facilitate connecting the past, the present, and the future, and if you master that, the cultural space that breeds wars at times because culture embedded into this religion and spirituality, the power dynamics that exist within the cultural work are hectic.

If you look at the wars that are currently happening across the world, this aspect of cultural tension that exists of not want to be part of or trying to erase and push out the certain culture because you want to maintain a singular way of power and culture in society. So cultural work is a very hectic space. So if you master the artistic kind of mediums and tools, you can find ways of navigating how you investigate culture, but also how you position your own ideas as collaboratively as possible with the humans that you work with or the environments that you work with. So the relationship I think is of feeling of each other. They're not necessarily a singular thing. They exist within their own kind of spaces.

Darren Isom:

Got it. And your work centers on underrepresented voices and the preservation of cultural heritage through visual storytelling. I would love to get your thoughts on what drives your commitment to that focus and those communities and very often those overlooked narratives that reveal quite a few truths about us as communities. So just share a little bit more about how you think about, in exploring those groups and those communities, what are we all learning as a group, and what's the culture that we're building together in exploring those conversations.

Lekgetho Makola:

Phew, yeah. My response to that is that it's interconnected. I mean, my own kind of life history in the cultural space, when I started working in the museum just after completed my fine art degree in 1999, and this is four years just after the elections, and in the museums that were governed in a very particular way were beginning to be forced to or compelled to open up and deconstruct and redefine what their roles is in society around representing with integrity its artistic programming, the collections that are in there because the collections were named, given names and problematic names, issues of representation, and also because there was lack of voice, a Black voice, an African voice present in those environments was an igniter of that.

And then going straight to Howard and how Howard exposed me to... because I felt that I was in the international space where I could begin to reflect from outside, realizing that there's few African voices of reference in these spaces, but they exist but they're not elevated as sources of input enough to be included in curricula, but in any space of where young people are getting into the copywriting to advertising, they could find text and references and archives that inspires their visual narratives.

So I felt that coming back home I should focus on ensuring that those archives, those texts, those knowledges are elevated, if it means forcefully so, they have to. So the idea of activism started also coming in, and my voice has again began to be translated beyond just Johannesburg, but more global where I felt also strategically for me to make meaningful change I have to be involved in decision-making platforms of your National Geographic, your World Press Photo, the Guardian, New York Times where editors edit from their own perspective, and it's problematic. We know it still exists how-

Darren Isom:

Not from a place of love.

Lekgetho Makola:

No, no, yeah. So how do we do that but with love embedded in, with care embedded in. I think that in itself translated to me taking upon myself because I felt that the need is there but not every one of us sees that way, that we have to begin to shift and become part of discussions on the table, and not be outside of the table but be on the table, if possible jump on the table and shout out loud that people understand that visual storytelling is informed by our being and the communities that we come from.

So we cannot have the singular way of understanding the quality, our defining quality of an image from one particular region. It has to be opened up, and multiple kind of ways of seeing need to be considered as part of multiple way of understanding qualities, and qualities depends on where you come from, not necessarily controlled by that this is what you have to work within. So that has been the space that I've been working in. I think I've just veered off from your...

Darren Isom:

No, no, you got to it. You completely got to it and went double down in it. I think you speak to this idea of, I mean, really divorcing the art space from this high art, low art dynamic, and really celebrating quality art as being relevant first and foremost and speaking to communities that you appreciate. You've talked a lot about the responsibilities of both insiders and outsiders in visual storytelling, especially the outsider's duty to act as a dignified visual storyteller, and I love the use of dignity in any conversation. In a country like South Africa where outsiders have historically held disproportionate influence, what does it truly mean to approach storytelling with dignity?

Lekgetho Makola:

It means self-respect. You have to respect yourself because if you don't respect yourself that would translate in how you treat your subject matter, but also the spaces and people that you photograph, and I think that has been a history of it. I mean if you look at the National Geographic photography probably 20 years ago and backwards, you'll see how a subject matter of the global south is treated as compared to the north.

So dignity, for you to treat something in a dignified manner, again, it has to come from with you. You have to have self-respect for you to be able to respect the processes that you engage with, the people that you come in to engage with. I mean, the theory of an outsider exists I think throughout. I mean, as much as I can say that I document my own communities, in certain kind of nucleus I'm still an outsider and I have to negotiate that. So that aspect of negotiation, of press process, of buying in but also of accepting that I am moving into a different space that requires me to give thought in terms of how I treat the information, the narrative, and how I respect the space, that will come up beautifully in your images once you go back to where you come from.

Darren Isom:

And I want to spend a little bit of time just talking about the future of South Africa's art sector. You have some wide-ranging experiences across arts and cultural space. I'd love to hear your perspective on what it takes to build a vibrant and sustainable artistic ecosystem in South Africa. What do you see as the key ingredients for nurturing talent, strengthening institutions, and bringing the gap between artists and broader audiences, and most importantly... as a good New Orleans boy I love a gumbo analogy and a cooking analogy, and the best dishes always showcase the ingredients that exist locally. And so I would love to get your thoughts on what are the ingredients that you have here to make that happen.

Lekgetho Makola:

Yeah. The most important ingredient is the participants, the audience. I mean, as we know, the continent is probably 70% young people. South Africa is similar. I think young people are curious, they're compelling, they're asking questions, and they want their space, they want to be heard, and trends are coming in. The young people want to be out. They want to interact beyond their racial groups, their racial cultural and ethnic groups. So this is a resource in itself. You have people that are curious, they want to drive an exciting kind of the mission of a future. Us who have been in the space for a bit, we understand how structure in these things works based on trial and error.

Darren Isom:

Oh that’s old…

Lekgetho Makola:

Yes. We should begin to think differently, and I think in many of my bios I speak about or I mentioned the fact that my role in the cultural institution space is to introduce a different culture of work, how we as people that are in institution should begin to design different ways of interacting with society, design different ways that are intentional and are future looking, that are collaborative in nature. We need to listen. We need to ask questions. We need to be informed by this future audiences, future contributors, future buyers of art.

So the cities, the central urban spaces are spaces of interaction, of engagement. I think, again, as cultural practitioners or cultural institution designers we need to collaborate. We need to create networks with business community. We need to create networks with some of the creative entertainment spaces that are thriving outside of kind of the general artistic movement, like your club space. Music is a major, major driver of trends and culture in this country, and music begin to translate to how we shoot music videos, how certain films that you're beginning to see in South African aspect are influenced through the culture of music. So there are these pointers that could be used to build a very unique, how hip hop I think for example, the United States has built an economy of itself. I think in South Africa as much as my piano will disappear, but there's evidence that every time a certain style of music leaves, there's a new one coming in.

So it becomes a point of connection, how do we bring those values into our cultural spaces, our museums, our theaters. The Market Theatre where I work now, we need to explore developing products beyond just a theater that will see these communities finding a resource or an experience to interact with, to contribute to, but also economically because obviously things have to be... these institutional platforms that we set up have to be financially sustainable. So it's like feeding off on what is thriving to be part of an evolution.

Darren Isom:

Yeah.

Lekgetho Makola:

Yeah.

Darren Isom:

I mean, I would love your thoughts... I love this idea of thinking about how we invest in changing how African art is valued and understood and even supported as a business as a way of thriving the success of the industry. I also, I have a little tummy rumble because the second we start talking about things as a business you start getting into capitalism territory and we know what capitalism does to... capitalism doesn't operate from a place of love or care, right? And so I would love to see or just hear what do you see as the greatest potential for a shift to happen that's still grounded in the love and the care that you're talking about. What roles do African artists, institutions, and even the global community need to play in making that transformation a reality, but always grounded in love and care for the communities?

Lekgetho Makola:

Yeah, I mean, for me, making money, money has to be made because it has to fund, people have to live. Artists across needs to fund themselves, making meaningful income to sustain themselves. So we need to approach it I think for me from a kind of the community perspective, that we are bringing contact zones together to create a thriving community, a community that can invest in itself. I think once you have that community that invests in itself you begin to reduce the compromises of capitalism in it. Obviously, you continue to have individuals that see opportunity and their selfish opportunity of coming in and taking as much as possible and leaving or disappearing, and coming in with unsustainable inclusions that generally don't sustain, they disrupt, and once there's disruption they pull out with what they've gained.

So I think we need to protect, and I don't know how protection should look like because we should not restrict. I think protection is possibly how we generate this culture of co-creation, co-cultivation, of thinking together and working together for a common purpose but still celebrating our difference, our diversity. I think the language that we use is important. The reference points that we include in how we come together becomes important. I think that's probably how cultural institutions, like we say, culture should become part of the developmental agendas of this continent. We need to find the sciences that are embedded in culture as a study, as a practice that could become part of the language that we use when we speak about financing, about marketing, about promotion, about budgeting. So the language also has to be integrated or, I think, infiltrate the capitalism. Capitalism will always be there. It's just how do we-

Darren Isom:

Drown it out almost.

Lekgetho Makola:

... drown it out and humanize it and bring care into it, right?

Darren Isom:

I want to end, it's just going a little bit deeper in a theme that's been really prominent in this conversation, and it's you're talking about this idea of both care and joy. I would love to hear you talk about what brings you joy and a sense of possibility in your work in this moment, and what is your dream for the future of the arts and cultural sector here in South Africa, and how do you hope your contributions will help to shape that future.

Lekgetho Makola:

Wow.

Darren Isom:

Putting you on the spot here.

Lekgetho Makola:

Yeah. No, I mean what bring me joy is seeing a number of young people that were young possibly when I moved to Johannesburg in 2013, in my almost 10 years being here, doing amazing things globally and knowing that I was part of their emerging journeys. I was part of establishing these connections that are local, national, but continental, and I think the continental space, even though there are few, of them but they're making a mark on behalf of young emerging practitioners globally. For me, that's one of the most fulfilling thing and respecting the fact that I was influenced by somebody else to be able to translate that influence into creating a sense of love in how I facilitate learning and teaching, mentorship, but also connecting, networks, through my networks that become intentional, like, hey, there is this person that you need to look at. Those simple moments can lead into creating new platforms and those platforms become sustainable platforms to grow one's career.

I think for me that's something that brings me joy and also hope in the fact that this is just but a few. Our country is still in the apartheid space. We are transitioning. The residue is alive. We know what just happened a few weeks ago with one of the most racist NGO or group going to the United States and lobbying, I don't know how they lobby it, to sell disinformation, I think horrible, evil disinformation that we are killing them in Africa, in South Africa to be more specific. So we realize that we are not out of the woods as yet. We seen them coming out again, and these are the people that were beating us in the 1980s as a young person in the streets. Now they're in their sixties and they're still stuck in that from but they're also influencing younger white kids that live in those communities. The question is how do we interrupt that without violence but with care, and for me that's where the biggest call of care is and integrity.

I always say that Nelson Mandela had something in me that continues to drive how I manage my anger and frustration and try to translate that into care because I want to remain dignified. I think as a country, our level of tolerance I think we do have, I think it's just a matter of how do we as cultural practitioners, how is my role as the chief operation officer at the Market Theatre Foundation influence that artistic kind of direction in how we curate, but also how we ensure that the institutions similar to us create a network that facilitate to conscientize people that are growing, that things will be still different in the future. Let's hold onto this hope and that hope we have to work hard for. It goes back to my opening, dao, chahloga sebok. Isia genari ihlotshada. So we have to be intentional in terms of how we congregate with the purpose of making our lives better in the future, even though I might not be in that future. So culturally, I think that's one of the most important and critical contribution that we can make use of at this moment.

Darren Isom:

Mm-hmm. And so as we close, I want to thank you for your time. You noted earlier this visual of an old man sitting in front of a fire and the children sitting at his feet, and I was reminded of conversations with my grandfather. It wasn't a fire, but we were definitely sitting at his feet and how those conversations always made me feel more cared for and as did this one. So thank you for the care with which you do the work, and best of luck in all the work. We definitely need it and proud of you and your time at Howard as well.

My Grandma Lois was an ordained deaconess in the church of sartorial maximalism. Her sense of color was impeccable and there was no color combination that she couldn't pull off famously. From cobalt, teal, and royal blues to burgundies, plums, emerald greens, ruby reds, and vermilion, she layered and matched the various bold hues with ease as she saw color mastery as a sign of urban sophistication and good taste, a reflection of generations of fine living, a color palette that was some centuries in the making.

I remember making a trip home to New Orleans from New York in my twenties and showing up to lunch all in New York black or dressed like a moneyed undertaker as she commented with great disappointment. She told me, "Dress like you have some inspiration, dear. Wear a bit of color." 

And her home, the house on Dominican Street served as a reflection of her sartorial whimsy and sophistication, painted a custom shade of lavender on the outside, made to perfectly match this scarf she picked up at a boutique on a trip to Los Angeles, and on the inside, bold color on color and pattern on pattern combinations that shifted with each room. In the deep emerald green painted living room, which felt tropical thanks to the wall of windows overlooking the lush back garden, was housed the Isom family's photo collection. Unlike the vibrant colors all around, the photos collected in the various albums were mostly black and white. Some were stern and simple from long-ago decades when photography was more science than an art, but then increasingly more fun and playful as the years progressed.

One of my favorite childhood memories is sitting with my grandpa Joseph as he narrated the various albums naming the handsome and regal characters celebrated in the images with Grandma Lois casually correcting him on every other photo. Most fun were the later albums with photos from the '60s and '70s. These were mostly in color and often taken by my father, the self-appointed family photographer or image maker, as Lekgetho says. 

I'm told that from behind the camera my father would call out, "Okay, can we try to look happy? Or even better, let's pretend we all like each other," before making the photo which always got a good laugh from everyone involved, even from my grandpa years later as he shared with me. My uncle Carmen inherited the photos when my grandma died in 2004. My uncle took them to his home in Pontchartrain Park where they perished with the great floods of Hurricane Katrina which struck the city exactly a year after my grandmother's death.

My conversation with Lekgetho prompted so many beautiful thoughts, as all good conversations with brilliant people often do. It reminded me of a specific photo taken in the 1930s. The photo includes my grandmother as a young girl with her two older sisters, my great-aunts, Zenobia and Mercedes, her parents, my great-great-grandparents, Lee and Alberta, and their respective mothers, my great-great-grandmothers, Marie-Mélite and Marie-Edme. 

I remember how wonderfully regal everyone looked in the photo, projecting wealth, confidence, and ease. Although, as my grandmother would explain it with my grandpa's shoulder, it was taken at the height of the Great Depression, and during a time of extreme racial unrest in New Orleans marked by the Charles Riots. That transcendent photo, which looked more like an impeccably composed Amy Sherald painting than an actual photograph, illustrates for me the power of visual storytelling to not only document the moment but to project the future, a beautiful visual archive bursting with vibrancy and inspiration as my grandma Lois instructed, stored forever in our collective community memory bank. No safer place for it.

Once again, we put some music with the magic, collecting the theme songs from our season's guests and collaborators to create a Spotify playlist for our listeners to enjoy. Find it on Spotify under Dreaming in Color: The Continent. 

Thanks for listening to Dreaming in Color. A special shoutout to all the folks who make the magic happen. From Africa InSight Communications, our wonderful producers, Mudzithe Phiri and Tom Kirkwood, production coordinator, Goddec Orimba, audiovisual editor, Omamo Gikho, graphic designer, Ernest Chikuni, and the amazing production crews on the ground in each country. A huge shout-out to my Bridgespan production colleagues, Cora Daniels, my ever-brilliant partner in good trouble, and Elisabeth Makumbi, my Joburg-based season co-host, and of course, our fabulous creative director, Ami Diané. 

What a squad, y'all. Be sure to rate, subscribe, and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Catch you next time.