Ribbon Remembrances at the Tokai Forest Gender Based Violence Roadside Memorial: Mapping Materiality, Artivism and Multimodal Afterlives in Cape Town

Abstract

ABSTRACT A multitude of brightly coloured ribbons tied along a barbed wire fence blow wildly in the Cape South Easter wind giving kinetic energy to the Ribbon Gate Gender Based Violence (GBV) roadside memorial bordering Tokai Forest in Cape Town. The memorial was created after the violent murders of Sinoxolo Mafevuka (d. 02.03.2016) and Franziska Blöchliger (d. 07.03.2016). It is continuously recreated by the public, whereas other sites of GBV, such as Unineye Mrwetyana’s (d. 24.08.2019) memorial in Claremont, also in Cape Town, are no longer memorialised. GBV protest is multimodal encompassing, performance art, artworks, slogans, internet archive images, #protest movements, social media, exhibitions, poetry, audio-visual productions, podcasts and differentiated material forms, including ribboning. The Ribbon Gate contests the official South African post-transition memorial landscape by appropriating roadside memorial practice, GBV artivism and the accrued cultural power of cause ribbons. Since the 1980s increasingly ribbons evoke compassion, empathy and hope in the context of the underrepresentation of women, women’s rights activism and symbolise violence perpetrated against women, children and L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+. Ephemeral GBV memorial practice, such as the Ribbon Gate, utilising the theoretical lens of public critical potency, as theorised by Lutheko Modisane, is redefined as multi-gendered, creatively subversive, and a social protest form where ribbons represent a language of resistance.