Karin Barber’s seminal ‘Popular arts in Africa’ demonstrated that popular art was a new kind of art created by a new emergent urban class. Barber’s suggestion was particularly significant because it called for a thorough theorization of modern social life in Africa, especially the city as a social space and experience.
This emphasis on the modernity of urban Africa complemented Barber’s notion of African historicity. Her argument should therefore be understood also with regard to the role of popular arts as the aesthetic dimension of popular protest and resistance in colonial and postcolonial situations.
My contribution revisits Barber’s discussion of the inscription of popular arts with the history of political and cultural struggles in colonial and postcolonial Africa through observations and conversations from the South African student uprisings that shook the country in 2015 and 2016. The paper investigates the significance of popular arts for the demands of decolonization and the calls of free quality higher education. Following Barber’s suggestion that the popular arts should not be analysed solely as constellations of social, political and economic relationships, significant as they are, my paper focuses on performances as expressive acts whose most important attribute is the power to communicate. The analysis thus draws on both the social sciences and aesthetic criticism.