For over several decades, Sue Williamson’s artwork has addressed South Africa’s societal challenges, initially fighting against the apartheid regime and later scrutinizing the country’s progress in reconciliation and commemoration.

As she gears up for her inaugural retrospective exhibition, the 84-year-old artist has new targets in her sights: US President Donald Trump and South African-born billionaire Elon Musk.

Following Musk’s criticism of South Africa’s “openly racist policies” on his social media platform X, Trump signed an executive order halting aid to South Africa. This move accused the country’s government of “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners and offered them asylum in the US.

Williamson dismisses these claims that South Africa is expropriating land from white Afrikaner farmers, supporting the process as a correction to the Land Act of 1913, when black farmers lost their land to whites.

President Cyril Ramaphosa also signed legislation allowing for land expropriation without compensation under certain conditions.

In her art and activism, Williamson has been outspoken on these issues, particularly after the Soweto uprising in 1976 when she joined a multiracial activist group advocating for peace.

Her artworks have frequently engaged with themes of reconciliation and the treatment of non-white communities, including installations that used objects and sound to represent housing demolitions in District Six.

Williamson’s works, like “The Last Supper,” have been pivotal in highlighting the displacement of non-white homes. The upcoming retrospective exhibition at the Iziko South African National Gallery will reprise some of her most compelling pieces and prompt further reflection on these social and political issues.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/23/trump-and-musk-are-gaslighting-anti-apartheid-artist-on-how-us-president-and-his-billionaire-ally-are-attacking-south-africa