Pitika Ntuli was born in Mpumalanga, South Africa in 1942 and, as a teenage member of the Pan Africanist Congress, was at the frontline of apartheid resistance. Arriving in his 30s as an exile in England in 1978, after studying in the USA and imprisonment in Swaziland, he received qualifications at Middlesex Polytechnic and Brunel University in 1984 and 1985, respectively. Until his return to South Africa in 1994, Ntuli contributed widely to exhibitions and arts education in London and beyond, known particularly for his critical writings on sculpture, orature, and the importance of maintaining a collective cultural identity in the face of exile.
Sculptor, poet, political activist, and academic Pitika Ntuli was born one of nine children in 1942 in a farm in Mpumalanga (then part of the Transvaal Province), South Africa. The family later moved to Witbank, to the shantytown known as Masakeni. In the late 1950s, when he was a teenager, during the ‘inkathazo’ (troubles), Ntuli became involved with the underground establishment of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a political organisation in Witbank that opposed apartheid. Following the banning of the PAC in 1960, and being subject to attention from the police, Ntuli left South Africa for Swaziland in 1962. There, he became immersed in cultural work and teaching, exhibiting his works in New York and Nigeria, and obtaining a master’s in Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in New York in 1977. After 16 years in Swaziland, at the age of 36, Ntuli was arrested for his involvement in the PAC in April 1978 on the grounds that the organisation posed a danger to the country's political and economic stability. Spending eight months in a maximum-security death cell of Matsapa Prison, Ntuli continued to write on toilet paper and carve sculptures from soap and bread. Eventually he was released following the involvement of Amnesty International, and relocated as an exile in Birmingham, England in December 1978.
In England, together with what he called a ‘Black Community’, Ntuli organised exhibitions, festivals, poetry readings, conferences, seminars and symposia to ‘create spaces or trenches from which to confront the establishment’ (Pitika Ntuli, Orature: A Self Portrait, 1988). In 1981 Ntuli joined London-based African Dawn, a pan-African orature collective which enabled him to continue the cultural activism that had been disrupted in South Africa and Swaziland. Eager to consolidate his artistic practices with socio-political thinking, he then obtained a certificate in Industrial Relations and Trade Union Studies at Middlesex Polytechnic, London in 1984, as well as a masters in Comparative Industrial Relations at Brunel University, London in 1985. Between 1985 and 1997, Ntuli joined the Jenako Community Arts Centre in the East End of London, where he became coordinator of the Writers Workshop and of the Visual Arts Collective, and Artistic Director. Expanding his teaching between 1987 and 1994, Ntuli also lectured on History of Art and Cultural Studies part-time at London’s Central St. Martins College of Art, Camberwell College of Art, Middlesex University and East London University.
It was through Ntuli’s community, education and teaching in England that his art practice and theoretical thinking was redirected towards issues of belonging, the collective and rootlessness: his art’s ‘very roots in the bowels of exile with its tentativities measured against time-lines and space’ over which he had ‘no control’ (Antoinette Ntuli ed., Pitika Ntuli, 2010). Following the art of orature, Ntuli’s sculptures aimed to tell a story of a particular time and place: formed not only by carving wood, but by found objects such as exhaust pipes, gearboxes and saucepans. His paintings, on the other hand, aimed to bring the colour of his childhood ‘in protest against’ London’s ‘grey skies, smoky houses and monotonous terraces’ (Pitika Ntuli, Orature: A Self Portrait, 1988). Beyond his art, Ntuli wrote about art and his experiences of exile in British journals, including Artrage and Index on Censorship, as well as in various exhibition catalogues. During his 16 years in England, Ntuli curated and showed his art widely in solo and group exhibitions in Sheffield, Nottingham and London, including Pitika Ntuli, Oval House, London (1982); Creation for Liberation The Third Open Exhibition: Contemporary Art by Black Artists, GLC Brixton Recreation Centre, London (1985), and Into the Open: New Painting, Prints and Sculpture by Contemporary Black Artists, Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield (1984). He also participated in Monti-Wa-Maruno (Boomerang to the Source) at Brixton Art Gallery in 1986, an exhibition comprising the artworks of 19 South African artists in exile (organised by Hazel Carey, Eugene Skeef, Glenn Ujebe Masakoane and Graham de Smidt) and which aimed to create and maintain a collective cultural identity that resisted erosion. The collective exhibited annually, including in 1993 at the Angel Gallery, Nottingham, for which Ntuli wrote the exhibition catalogue. In 1990, Ntuli exhibited in Distinguishing Marks at the Bloomsbury Galleries, London, alongside Sonia Boyce, Allan de Souza, Shaheen Merali, and Keith Piper.
After President Frederik Willem de Klerk declared in 1990 that exiles related to the PAC were no longer considered dangerous, Ntuli eventually returned to South Africa in 1994. Since then he has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and the University of Kwa Zulu Natal in Durban; he is married to Antoinette Ntuli, and they have four sons, two daughters and four grandchildren. His work is not held in any UK public collections. Pitika Ntuli continues to practice and exhibit his art in South Africa.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Pitika Ntuli]
Publications related to [Pitika Ntuli] in the Ben Uri Library