After much research and deep thought I have come to the conclusion that Jimmy Manyi is right. The concentration of coloured people in the Cape is a problem. Where I differ from him is that there is not an overconcentration; it is clear to me there are not enough coloured people in the Cape. And I want to offer a single painting by Vladimir Tretchikoff in support of my thesis.

Tretchikoff’s “The Green Lady” is the world’s best-selling print of a painting yet. Since the artist lived in Cape Town, and since it is not certain who was the model, one could say she is the most famous Capetonian of all. And she is coloured, well, green, even though the official title is “The Chinese Lady”.

Tretchikov’s own unofficial title is the “King of Kitsch”. Heaven forbid that I come across as some sort of apologist for his perpetrations. I’m not. His paintings are mostly awful and often quite creepy – he is the artist who made orchids cry, for heaven’s sake.

But that he had a great measure of skill, is also incontestable. A handful of his paintings, especially portraits of his mistress, Lenka, and Malaysian women do border on high art. And “The Green Lady” stands out as an enigmatic work, not similar to his sentimental swans or artist-in-the park nudes, not similar to any other art work anywhere, in fact. It has been likened to Andy Warhol’s solarisations, and many would say he actually stole a march on the “King of Cool” – they would trade one of his Marilyn Monroes for the Green Lady any time.

What made Tretchikoff paint her face green? Now that is the crucial question. It is said that she was actually the daughter of a San Francisco businessman, and that she did not want to sit for the portrait. Many of Tretchikoff’s paintings do come across as some sort of revenge on women.

I would venture another answer: Tretchikoff was inspired by the Cape. Something in the air made him do something audacious, depart from his usual milk-the-lingerie-department-in-Stuttafords approach. That something is the essence of Cape Town vibe, and that is what is making so many afrideologues so nervous – it is totally unique, not really of this continent, not of any continent.

To see Cape Town as part of “black Africa” is a fallacy, in more than one sense. In the first place “black Africa” does not cover the whole continent. Travel in North Africa and you should be careful who you call black there, or even African. I nearly got beaten up by a Berber once for suggesting the latter.

Egyptians point south when they say the word “Africa”. Along the east coast Swahili speakers adopt Arabian names, to prove they are not African. Even some Ethiopians claim they are not African, according to the writer Paul Theroux. Many settlements along Africa’s Mediterranean coast were Phoenician, and later Roman or Carthaginian.

In the second place it is a fact that “black Africans”, or “sub-Saharan Africans” never settled near the Cape in their centuries-long trek down from West Africa. Africa’s “first peoples” lived there, and many coloureds can claim them as their descendants. Max du Preez is simply wrong when he says coloured people are rootless – their roots quite possibly go far deeper into time and into the continent than those of any other South Africans.

The theory that man originated in Africa is universally accepted nowadays, but if you think about it, the first homo sapiens, the unknown woman 70 000 generations or so ago named “Eve” by anthropologists, must have been coloured – otherwise where did white people come from?

In France the other day I was surprised to see how many beautifully dark-skinned Frenchwomen there were in the city of Lyon, one of the great crossroads of Europe in ancient times. The French are really a hugely mixed up people, and so are most of the world’s most productive and creative nations – look no further than America, or China for that matter.

And coastal areas are the greatest sites of mixing up of human genes. There is even a theory that had the Dutch not lost a key 17^th century battle in the then Formosa, now Taiwan, the Cape would have been settled by Chinese menial labourers and not slaves from Malaysia and Indonesia. Afrikaners might have written the “taal” in their own pictograms. The Green Lady would fit right into such a scenario.

There is no doubt that the Cape has by far the most fecund of seedbeds for human endeavour in the country. It has produced some of its greatest writers, a whole language, artists, scientists and a way of life that is precious in its uniqueness. Apartheid has conspired in downplaying the key factor of mixing it up. But that is what the Cape is all about. Make it black and you would destroy it.

The Green Lady will probably forever stay an enigma. I would propose that Cape Town adopt her as its first lady, a symbol of experimentation – in the spirit of, let’s paint people different colours and see what happens. To further develop and exploit this tradition, we need more colour in the Cape, not less.

Tags: #, #Cape Town, #Formosa, #Green Lady, #Tretchikov