His formative years | Key events in Ernest Mancoba's life

Ernest Methuen Mancoba (1904 – 2002) was born in Turffontein and brought up in the mining township of the Comet Goldmine at Boksburg, the eldest surviving child and only son of Irvine Mancoba and his wife Florence (nee Mangqangwana), both descendents of the Mfengu people in the Transkei (now Eastern Cape) that had fled from the wars of King Shaka.

His father worked as a storeman and translator, and was a respected evangelist. The young Ernest had a strict Christian upbringing and went to church schools. But his mother, a traditional potter who did social work and taught pre-schoolers, also instilled in him a love of African stories, poetry and art, and taught him about the philosophy embedded in the proverb ‘umuntu ngumntu ngabanye abantu’.

The mines were a rich melting pot of cultures and little Ernest was given the name Ngungunyane, that of  a great Shangaan chief who had led anti-colonial resistance. A Chinese miner made a deep impression on him when he gave the young boy the gift of a beautifully decorated ceramic cup from China.

Mancoba started carving wood while at the Grace Dieu teacher training college in Pietersberg (now Polokwane) where he studied and later taught. His Bantu Madonna (1929) in yellowwood for the college's chapel caused a stir as it was the first time the Virgin Mary had been portrayed as a black woman.

He won a bursary to study at Fort Hare University, where he shared a room with AC Jordan, author of the famous Xhosa novel 'Ingqumbo Yeminyanya', 'The Wrath of the Ancestors', and father of South Africa's current minister of arts and culture. He was active in student life, chairing the debating and literary societies, and was elected president of the Students' Representative Council in 1934. He earned himself the nickname 'Stereo' for repeatedly saying to his fellow students: 'Don't be a Western stereotype, be true to yourself'.

Regarded as an intellectual leader by his peers, he could have gone into politics with his close friend Govan Mbeki – but chose art instead, believing it to be a means to produce a greater consciousness in people and so a vital part of the struggle for human liberation, 'without which any practical achievement would, probably sooner or later, deviate and miss its point,' he told Hans Ulrich Obrist, international curator and art critic, in 2002. 'Therefore making art, I thought, was as urgent as working for the political evolution.'

Despite his lack of formal art training, his sculptures were attracting attention and he decided to commit himself to being a full-time artist. In 1936 he moved to Cape Town, where he lived in cosmopolitan District Six while working as a caretaker. His Fort Hare comrade, Isaac Bangani Tabata, introduced him to activists like Dr Goolam Gool and his sister Janub “Jane” Gool, and he met artists like Lippy Lipschitz and Irma Stern. His work became more innovative and expressionistic.

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