Robin Bernstein’s Mapalakata Reimagines South Africa’s Pre-Gold History
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- Robin Bernstein released Mapalakata, a photographic publication exploring South Africa’s Mpumalanga province, using the Bapedi word for 'visitors' to frame transient human presence across centuries.
- Mapalakata is set on the Mpumalanga escarpment bordering Mozambique and Eswatini, a geophysical frontier symbolizing historical collision points and the origins of South Africa’s gold narrative.
- The work documents physical remnants of pre-colonial societies, wild horses speculated to descend from those abandoned after a failed 19th-century gold rush, and industrial landscapes shaped by plantations and century-old mines.
- Bernstein photographed present-day inhabitants, including Marycate and her daughter Sibahle in Emjindini, a location established under the 1950 Group Areas Act, linking current social conditions to apartheid-era spatial policies.
- The publication examines how successive groups rewrite regional history to erase predecessors’ narratives, driven by the pursuit of resources, leaving behind ephemeral traces embedded in the land.
Why it matters: By centering oral histories and material remnants often excluded from official records, Bernstein reframes South Africa’s historical narrative around continuity and erasure, showing how resource extraction and forced displacement still shape identity and belonging in Mpumalanga today.
