It comes in cycles. In the period immediately after 1994, there was an international excitement about things South African, and a concurrent interest in our cultural production. It was a heady period of rainbow mist. Then everyone, the artists, got really depressed when the reality didn't add up to the shiny promise. Things were changing, but the baggage was heavy, full of skeletons and bickering crows. It was hard to represent this change, visually, culturally, in any meaningful manner. Interest waned both internationally, as new exciting experiences took up the media attention, and locally, when art failed to say much. The Johannesburg Biennale fizzled. We entered the tepid water of the early 2000's. The Brett Kebble awards were summarily cancelled. In 2007, Cape '07 was a wet blanket.
However, there is a new interest in South African culture. Tsotsi was the first blip, then District 9 and Invictus took the world by storm. And W. Kentridge opened his Nose opera at the Metropolitan. Perhaps influenced by World Cup Fever, there is a fresh interest in South African culture and art.
This month Bonhams conducted their 7th auction of South African modern art, and once again attained high prices. The top sale was by Pierneef, titled ‘An Extensive View of Farmlands which sold for R3.9m. Gerard Sekoto’s Market Street Scene, Cape Town, sold for R2.1m while Maggie Laubser’s Woman Wearing a Red Doek reached R554,000.

Towards the end of 2009, trendsetter blog boingboing.net featured South African rap band Die Antwoord. Within days the millions of international visitors had crashed Die Antwoord’s server downloading their video designed by Roger Ballen. The band’s semi-maybe-ironic white trash Flats sound, styled by the band as Zef rap, found a fascinated audience who debated their authenticity and shared interpretations of what zef means (essentially it means trashy Bellville uncool cool).
While both these stories are exciting and encouraging, what is worrying is the way, within this burst of interest, South Africa is being represented. It seems that the two extremes are either as a venerable product of European history (and European visions of Africa) or as a prawn-like (to use the District 9 sense of the word) abject outsider victim to a wanton and deranged culture.
While the wave is building, there is an opportunity to approach this idea of culture and South African identity in a wholly unique way. And possibly critical. And maybe without the irony.