Male Figure

Title

Male Figure

Creator

Unrecorded

Description

Physical Description: A standing wooden carving of a male figure holding a club in his right hand and a club and container in his raised left hand. hIs head is decorated with white feathers. The figure is wearing an apron decorated with burnt decoration which also distinguishes the facial features. The figure is represented in burnt wood as dark with decoration in a lighter unburnt wood.

Contextual description: " Shashe River artefacts on sale to railway travellers. Certainly by the mid-1920s, and continuing up until today, there have been many curio sellers (and one may assume carvers), largely of wooden statuettes such as giraffes and wooden spoons, meeting passenger trains at Shashe (Shashi) River railway station south of Francistown. Since the mid-1950s, when they were expelled from South Africa as far as Zambia, these are mainly originally-Zimbabwean ""Mazezuru"" (aka ""Vapostori"" or Apostolic Church of John Masowe or ""Korsten basket-makers""), i.e. white robed ""aliens"" able to settle at the station as a non-mans-land under nobody's control but the railway company.

Khama III resisted granting Mahalapye, Palapye Road, and Shashe River stations i.e. locomotive watering areas to Rhodesia Railways 1898-1906. But gave way to signing deeds granting the railways freehold tenure of a triangle of 22 morgen at Shashi River station, because the waters of the Shashe being the border of his Reserve were not 'his'. Hence the 22 morgen became no-mans-land = no longer part of the Bamangwato Reserve and never part of the Tati company's land across the river northwards. The opportunity for ""aliens"" was to sell while the loco filled up with water from the river. "
Taken from MAC project report produced by NP 16/09/2020.

Publisher

Making African Connections

Date

Pre 1950

Type

PhysicalObject

Format

Whole: 590 mm x 90 mm x 95 mm

wood; feather (bird)

Identifier

R4789/1

Source

One of a pair of figures donated to Brighton Museum in 1951, by Mr and Mrs Sneyd. Described in the accession register as: 'Two male figures made by natives of Shatsi, Bechuanaland, 1950'

Mr Sneyd; Mrs Sneyd

Botswana, Southern Africa, Africa

1950