After a 1927 law banned non-white South Africans from bars and other recreational establishments, a series of makeshift speakeasies, known colloquially as shebeens, popped up across the country to provide alternative spaces for recreation. Once serving as hangouts for anti-apartheid activists, the shebeen has since become a canvas upon which the stark contrasts of South African life are cast. On the one hand, there is more than enough money to keep the alcohol flowing; on the other, there is generational alcoholism, petty crime, rampant joblessness, and untreated depression, all of which reinforce each other in the wake of failed economic empowerment programmes that were designed to correct apartheid’s social-political damage. The hidden figures of Ananias Léki Dago’s Shebeen Blues (2006–9) exist in the shad- ows in both literal and metaphorical terms. Their days are structured by the comings and goings at the local speakeasy, where there is little difference between day and night. Even so, the shebeens remain radically pan-African spaces outside of the perennial flare-ups of xenophobic violence. Nowhere else on the continent is one more likely to encounter Congolese, Nigerian, and Zimbabwean revellers drinking together. As an Ivorian, Léki Dago is a double intrusion as both a non-local and camera-wielding witness to the manifestations of clan- destine urban life in contemporary South Africa.

Works in the exhibition: All from the series Shebeen Blues (2006–9) photographs, print on non-woven wallpaper: Alexandra Township, South Africa (2008); Alexandra Township, South Africa (2007); Chiawelo, Soweto, South Africa (2008); Orlando East, Soweto, South Africa (2007); Alexandra Township, South Africa (2007); Alexandra Township, South Africa (2007); Kliptown, Soweto, South Africa (2009); Chiawelo, Soweto, South Africa (2008); Zola, Soweto, South Africa (2006); Zola, Soweto, South Africa (2006); Eldorado Park, Soweto, South Africa (2009);  Chiawelo, Soweto, South Africa (2008); Orlando East, Soweto, South Africa (2007). Courtesy of the artist