African Posters: Basler Afrika Bibliographien by Giorgio Miescher and Dag Henrichsen (2004)
African Posters: A Catalogue of the Poster Collection in the Basler Afrika Bibliographien (2004), compiled by Giorgio Miescher and Dag Henrichsen.
The Accidental Exile of Namibian History
The Basler Afrika Bibliographien (BAB) in Basel, Switzerland, houses what is widely recognized as the most comprehensive collection of Namibian documentation and historical material outside of Namibia itself.
The core of the incredible poster collection documented in this book was established during the Cold War and Apartheid eras. It began as a personal mission by Carl Schlettwein, a Swiss national who founded the BAB in 1971. Because the South African apartheid administration heavily censored, restricted, or outright destroyed political ephemera within South West Africa (now Namibia), Switzerland became an unlikely safe haven for preserving liberation history.
A Convergence of Underground Networks
The posters catalogued in this volume represent a remarkable intersection of diverse, global political networks from the 1970s through the 1990s:
Liberation Ephemera: It features rare, ephemeral print media from liberation and resistance movements including SWAPO (Namibia), the ANC (South Africa), ZANU (Zimbabwe), and FRELIMO (Mozambique). This includes incredibly scarce printings, such as posters reacting immediately to the Kassinga Raid of 1978.
The Solidarity Committee Influx: In the mid-1990s, the collection grew exponentially when European anti-apartheid and solidarity committees in Switzerland and Germany began disbanding post-independence. Instead of throwing away decades of underground campaign posters, flyers, and graphic art, they donated their archives to the BAB.
Transition and Nation-Building: The collection captures the exact visual shift from resistance graphics to the vibrant, hopeful iconography of the late 1980s and early 1990s transition periods—such as the historic 1989/1990 UN-supervised elections in Namibia and the 1994 democratic elections in South Africa.
Shifting the Academic Lens on African Art
Historically, Western art institutions predominantly viewed African art through the narrow lens of traditional sculpture, masks, or "tribal" artifacts. When this catalog was published in 2004, it was part of a vital historiographical shift that argued political and commercial posters are essential pillars of modern African visual history, mass communication, and heritage. It stands as a monument to how ephemeral paper—originally designed to be pasted on a wall and quickly torn down—can become a vital archival record of a continent's march toward liberation.
245mm x 305mm x 27mm
Corners dented; slight surface wear.
R1,250
