Elias Mtshengu

Elias Mtshengu was born in 1945 on the Stendahl Lutheran Mission, near Weenen, KwaZulu Natal. His parents died while he was a boy, and he grew up poor, leaving school in grade 3. Uncles would help to pay lobola for his wife, Audrey, a local girl who got as far as grade 6 at the mission school.

Mtshengu always worked with his hands, and in about 1985, he got retrenched from a furniture factory in Johannesburg. It was a difficult year, for the Stendahl community discovered the church had sold the land under them, and they were moved to an isolated encampment in the bush about 40 km away.

The government offered metal prefabs as temporary accommodation, and Mtshengu, Audrey and their five children settled down to a life in what would become the village of Waayhoek. It didn’t take long for the Stendahl people to find they were living in an area of endemic violence, and Mtshengu would lose count of the local wars that sent him into hiding for months at a time.

In between conflicts, he struggled to make a living while repairing tables and fixing doors. He had been forced to withdraw his children from school when Tessa Katzenellembogen started a craft group at Waayhoek in 1988, and Mtshengu began learning to weave copper wire. In time his wife and son, Thamsanqa, would join the growing number of craft groups in the village, although work tended to be sporadic, and there were long periods with no orders at all.

Mtshengu was building mud houses for a contract fee of R 300 each when a stray order from Paris got him busy on a large, coiled copper bowl known as sungulo. In November 2000 his sungulo won the copper section of an exhibition of Contemporary Zulu Basketry in Johannesburg, and Mtshengu used his prize money to send Thamsanqa back to school.

He continued to make sungulo bowls on order until succumbing after a long struggle with throat cancer.

The sungulo’s bowls, mastered by Mtshengu, are made with sterling silver and Shaduku, an alloy of gold and copper (typically 4-10% gold, 90-96% copper), woven in a continuous length of thick wire, coiled and labouriously stitched with a thinner wire. Mthsengu was the only artist in the community to excel in the sungulu stitch and, although he passed the skill on to his daughter, no one has perfected it in the same way yet.

Text adapted from correspondence between Creina Alcock and Julia Meintjes, 2011.

Elias Mtshengu

Elias Mtshengu was born in 1945 on the Stendahl Lutheran Mission, near Weenen, KwaZulu Natal. His parents died while he was a boy, and he grew up poor, leaving school in grade 3. Uncles would help to pay lobola for his wife, Audrey, a local girl who got as far as grade 6 at the mission school.

Mtshengu always worked with his hands, and in about 1985, he got retrenched from a furniture factory in Johannesburg. It was a difficult year, for the Stendahl community discovered the church had sold the land under them, and they were moved to an isolated encampment in the bush about 40 km away.

The government offered metal prefabs as temporary accommodation, and Mtshengu, Audrey and their five children settled down to a life in what would become the village of Waayhoek. It didn’t take long for the Stendahl people to find they were living in an area of endemic violence, and Mtshengu would lose count of the local wars that sent him into hiding for months at a time.

In between conflicts, he struggled to make a living while repairing tables and fixing doors. He had been forced to withdraw his children from school when Tessa Katzenellembogen started a craft group at Waayhoek in 1988, and Mtshengu began learning to weave copper wire. In time his wife and son, Thamsanqa, would join the growing number of craft groups in the village, although work tended to be sporadic, and there were long periods with no orders at all.

Mtshengu was building mud houses for a contract fee of R 300 each when a stray order from Paris got him busy on a large, coiled copper bowl known as sungulo. In November 2000 his sungulo won the copper section of an exhibition of Contemporary Zulu Basketry in Johannesburg, and Mtshengu used his prize money to send Thamsanqa back to school.

He continued to make sungulo bowls on order until succumbing after a long struggle with throat cancer.

The sungulo’s bowls, mastered by Mtshengu, are made with sterling silver and Shaduku, an alloy of gold and copper (typically 4-10% gold, 90-96% copper), woven in a continuous length of thick wire, coiled and labouriously stitched with a thinner wire. Mthsengu was the only artist in the community to excel in the sungulu stitch and, although he passed the skill on to his daughter, no one has perfected it in the same way yet.

Text adapted from correspondence between Creina Alcock and Julia Meintjes, 2011.

Bandile Mtshali

Bandile Mtsahli carried herself with a deliberate grace that made her stand out of the crowd and never complained of the burdens she carried. Life was hard but you got on with it, doing what was needed.

She was born in 1959, in Mashunka, in the Msinga District of KwaZulu Natal, at a time where there were no schools, and girls learnt to cook, sweep, fetch water and weave grass mats. She met her husband, Sthenjwa Dladla when she was sixteen years old, and after a traditional courtship that lasted two years, they got engaged. The lobola was set and after an initial payment of eight cattle, Badile Mtshali moved to the Dladla home to start her life as a partially married woman, as there could be no formal marriage ceremony until lobola was paid in full.

Bandile Mtshali looked after her seven children (including twins), the home and her ailing mother-in-law. To supplement the family income, she sold woven grass mats and later joined the Mdukatshani group as a beader. From the start, it was clear that she was a natural crafter, initially producing exquisite beaded jewellery, and later learning to weave copper wire. After her mother-in-law died and her children were grown, Bandile Mtshali had more time to herself, and in 2001 she became a wirework instructor at Mdukatshani, always taking pride in tackling designs that were difficult and different. She preferred wirework but remained adaptable, able to switch to beaded jewellery when there were orders.

Her wedding day finally came in 2017, a joyful traditional ceremony under Mshunka Mountain. Nine days later, she woke up to find that her bridegroom had died in his sleep. Soon after the funeral, Bandile Mtshali fell into a deep depression despite her family’s support and it would be a long time she could return to crafts. In the last years of her full life, Bandile Mtshali lived in a Zulu home surrounded by children and grandchildren, all of them educated, and excelling at what they do, which gave her comfort. And she couldn’t hide her pride in her son, Phelelani who after a career in the Flying Squad, was voted in as a municipal councillor at Msinga. Bandile Mtshali died of illness in 2021.

Text adapted from correspondence between Mdukatshani Trust and JMFA, 2021.