Back in 1997 and 1998, Jodi spent three months travelling through towns like Pofadder, Nababeep, Eksteenfontein, Port Nolloth, Riemvasmaak and Pella, funded by a small grant from the National Arts Council. She shot everything in black and white. Portraits of the Bosluis Basters in Eksteenfontein (forced there under apartheid), the independent diamond divers of Port Nolloth, and families returning to Riemvasmaak after a successful land claim. Now, more than two decades after apartheid ended in 1994, she’s ready to go back and see how these communities have evolved.
The Northern Cape covers nearly 30 percent of South Africa’s land but held only 840,000 people or about 2.1 percent of the country’s population, in 1994. With just over two people per square kilometre, most communities are isolated, their daily lives rarely seen beyond the main centres. Two-thirds of residents speak Afrikaans as a first language, and 52 percent are classified as ‘Coloured,’ a fact that has shaped the region’s history and social rhythms.
Jodi’s work asks: how have political shifts, new technologies and economic changes woven into these remote towns’ everyday lives?
Visual archives like this matter… Not just for history books, but for all of us today. They shed light on stories that might otherwise go unrecorded and bring the realities of marginalised communities into sharper focus. For her planned monograph, Jodi will combine her original black and white archive with fresh colour images shot with a more contemporary vision.
In 2015, Jodi returned to Pofadder for two weeks, documenting people and the environment in both the town and the adjoining township. A new solar farm promising jobs and growth, alongside concerns over migrant labour, Spanish contractors who come for work since 1997, but leave after their contracts end, questions about the town’s future of fatherless children.
While alcohol abuse remains prevalent, community members now express concerns of rising drug addiction in the township, fears voiced about xenophobia against Ethiopian shopkeepers and the steady drift of younger white families toward nearby farms and larger cities, possibly for their kids to attend private schools. The township itself remains dry and sparse, with only some evidence of RDP housing.
Looking ahead, if social development programmes tied to the solar farm take root and job creation follows, Pofadder could look very different in five to ten years.
