"Zulu Artist"

Down at Dunster House, the humanities have taken on an exotic cast this year. An expert on witchcraft has just filled the room left by a tall African named Selbourne Mvusi, who was billed as a "Zulu artist." Of genuine Zulu origin, Mvusi produces sombre, impressionistic oils and mournful woodcuts. He is studying art education at Penn State, at the suggestion of Professor Gordon All-port, who also invited him to Dunster House.

But Selbourne Mvusi is interesting, not so much because of his art itself, but because of the events that have brought him to it. While he was at the University in Durban, Natal, he was taken in tow by an Oxford graduate who taught literature and who asked him to "come around for tea" some afternoon.

"I had gone to the University with a view of doing science," Mvusi says, "and I was studying zoology, biology, chemistry and physics at the time."

"Do you really like science?" the professor asked, when Selbourne visited him. "You fellows are so obsessed with your 'duty to the masses' that you never think of yourselves. You don't realize that you can serve your countrymen best by doing what you like. Are you sure you like to do science best?"

With that, Mvusi began taking liberal arts courses, history and literature for the most part. His interest in art developed on its own, since South African art has been stamped out, and standard fine arts courses do not exist in Negro universities. "Even in white universities they don't admit non-Europeans in fine arts courses," Mvusi points out.

With his artistic skill and interest growing, he graduated and took a course in education. Then he had to make a choice between taking a job with a London film company or returning to high school as a guinea pig in an art education program which was just getting under way in Natal.

The film job was tempting. "So many African pictures are being made these days that this film company wanted to hire a full-time native artist. I was young and romantic and I could see myself with beret and cigar, you know."

"When I decided to stay with art education, it was a considerable sacrifice on my part," Mvusi says. "I was placed alongside fellows at the ninth grade level as an example. You know, 'If he learns about this sort of thing, we can, too.' Some of the teachers didn't even have my qualifications."

"I forgot about films," he adds.

When his year as a ninth grade "example" was over, Mvusi was asked to teach art at the high school level.

He registered to "sit for exams" at the University of South Africa (Negroes aren't allowed in classes) and ran a rigorous schedule of teaching from 8 to 12:30 each morning, studying from then until 8:30, and taking the train back to his home 50 miles away every night.

Since the whole pioneer art education project was "on trial" in his classroom, Mvusi was anxious for his students to do well. In a standard nationwide test, 63 per cent of his first group of students passed, and later classes did better.

But with the recent decision of the South African government to overhaul native education--"Education for the Bantu"--art and the humanities have suffered, and the pioneer art education project has suffered as well. So this is really the best time for Mvusi to be studying in America.

Mvusi has talked to many contemporary artists in his travels. Although his roots are in native Africa, he is against the "primitive art fad." Aside from a half dozen serious artists, he reports his own country's native artists are "mostly ignorant fellows blighted by curio seekers." Mvusi himself was the second Negro ever to have his work shown in South Africa's major national art exhibition.

"You've got to recognize the cosmopolitan nature of thought in the world today," Mvusi says. "You can't expect a narrow native art when there are Coca-Cola signs on the remotest tree in the jungle."

"There must be a healthy cross-fertilization of ideas between cultures and a recognition of the value of everything that has been said and done."

And into what artistic "school" does his own work fall? "I'm still searching," he answers.