What the Gabrielle Goliath case has meant for SA’s art world

It was a Sunday afternoon in early January when I asked Gabrielle Goliath, the artist selected to represent South Africa at this year’s prestigious Venice Biennale, what she would say to Gayton McKenzie, if given a chance

The right-wing sport, arts and culture minister had just informed the pavilion’s organising committee of his decision to censor Goliath’s three-part, video-based project Elegy, just eight days before the 10 January deadline for countries to submit their Biennale plans.

“I would appeal to him to open himself up to the work, to actually experience it,” she said. “Because he hasn’t seen it.”

Goliath and the curator Ingrid Masondo were to present a new iteration of Elegy – a project begun in 2015 that has centred on femicide and the murder of LGBTQI+ people in South Africa. The version planned for the Venice Biennale also addressed violence against women in Namibia and Gaza, and it was the new Gaza-related section that caused the controversy.

On 22 December, the staunchly pro-Israel McKenzie wrote a letter to the organising committee describing the Gaza-related suite, which focused on the death of Heba Abu Nada, a Palestinian poet who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023, as “highly divisive in nature”. McKenzie requested that the section be changed; when Goliath declined, the minister cancelled her plans, on 2 January.

The artist’s pleas to President Cyril Ramaphosa to intervene fell on deaf ears. McKenzie was clearly not going to open himself up to Goliath’s artwork as she had hoped. So, the artist and curator launched an urgent application to overturn the cancellation of the pavilion. 

But on 18 February Judge Mamoloko Kubushi dismissed their application – this meant that the South African pavilion stood empty at the 2026 Venice Biennale. Fortunately, Elegy was still staged at the Biennale until the end of July, but as an independent exhibition at Chiesa di Sant’Antonin.

Both McKenzie’s censorship and the high court ruling sent shock waves through the art world, seen as a serious blow to freedom of expression.

Both are being challenged again as the artist and her team were back in court on 8 September 2026, applying for leave to appeal the judge’s decision, which was granted.

In its heads of argument, the Campaign for Free Expression (CFE), which is an amicus curiae (friend of the court) in the case, says that the ruling sent a number of discouraging messages, including one to South Africa’s artistic communities: “that in order to survive or thrive, they must produce art that pleases – or at least does not displease – whomever happens to be the Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture at the time.”

The art world agrees.

Censorship ‘always on the wrong side of history’

Veteran arts administrator Ismail Mahomed, the director of the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and board member of the CFE, warns: “Censorship and tampering with curatorial processes is a practice rooted in political ideologies that are reactionary, non-inclusive and always on the wrong side of history. 

“Until there is a revision of some of the current cultural legislation in South Africa and the introduction of transparent policies for the protection, promotion and internationalisation of the South African arts, it gives an unbalanced power to the State to censor, downplay or do a disservice not only to artists and the arts, but also to the impact that the arts make in transforming and building democratic societies.”

Johannesburg-based artist, researcher and organiser Molemo Moiloa is one of the five-person independent panel, consisting of respected members of the arts community, that unanimously selected Elegy to represent South Africa in Venice.

I ask her whether Goliath’s taking on the authorities is an example for other artists.

“I recently read the letter mathematicians wrote against AI,” Moiloa replies, “and what struck me was how clearly they could articulate what their practice is, what it’s for, and how AI is undermining it – and their defence of creativity and criticality that sounded somehow like my own field in ways that were unexpected. 

“I haven’t seen that same clarity from the creative sector, even though AI is hitting us just as hard, arguably harder. And when I thought about why, it came down to this: those mathematicians are tenured, salaried and secure, many of them are very accomplished. 

Artists respond from a ‘place of precarity’

“This means that they have support systems, institutional backing and organisation in ways that the creative sector does not. That lack of precarity enabled, I think, a capacity to speak with precision instead of panic.”

Moiloa believes the arts sector doesn’t have much of the support structures the scientists have, “so we tend to respond from a place of precarity and, in my opinion, too often, victimhood. I think much of how people have spoken about Gabrielle’s case (her name being a fun play on this) has repeated this habit. And I think it’s important that in many ways Gabrielle’s case is actually an example of the opposite of that pattern, even though the narrative around it hasn’t caught up yet. What we saw wasn’t a small artist taking on a goliath ministry. 

“We saw someone and her network, including the selection committee, with real international standing, access to respected legal advocates, global media reach, foreign institutional backing, people literally helping transport her work by boat, major international writers speaking up for her without even knowing her personally. 

“That’s one part of cultural capital – the other of course, it’s the power behind what she was actually saying, which so many agree with and stand by.”

Moiloa says that in some ways the response first of the committee tended towards “isn’t there someone high up who could intervene?”.

But then Goliath’s taking the minister to court “kind of made me feel a bit iffy about operating from this sense that McKenzie is all-powerful and that artists’ voices should be ‘protected’ as opposed to the capacity to self-protect”. 

Moiloa believes the minister significantly underestimated Goliath and the contemporary art scene because “he doesn’t know how we work. And I think it's important we say that plainly, because there’s a discomfort in the sector with admitting an artist is powerful – as if power somehow cancels out the rightness of their position.

“So if there’s an inspiration here, it’s not ‘go to court and win’. It is: recognise the capital you have and use it. That was available to Gabrielle at her level. It wasn’t available to artists in literature for example whose censorship by McKenzie I only found out about because of the attention on her case – of course the Gaza element also meant more visibility for this than the literature one, which was different. But still, I think this is important.” 

‘People are terrified of getting cancelled’

South African art scholar Anthea Buys believes “there is already a fair amount of self-censorship in the industry. People are terrified of getting cancelled. 

“Social alienation is one thing, but financial alienation is a real prospect, especially when you confront power. I think this has to be seen alongside McKenzie’s ongoing visibility and prominence in the cultural sector.”

Buys was the curator of South African artist Steven Cohen’s retrospective at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town. It was at the centre of another censorship debate after 11 of his works were covered in black cloth just before the opening last year.

“I think when you have someone as capricious as McKenzie in a powerful position in the industry, people become very scared of knee-jerk alienation, and that fear produces hyper-vigilance and self-censorship,” says Buys.

Moiloa says artists shouldn’t be intimidated by McKenzie’s actions “because we have far more leverage than our sector’s own narrative usually leads us to believe – networks, solidarity, media reach, financial mobilisation”. 

She warns against assuming powerlessness, as that is itself part of what keeps artists behind. “But I’d pair that with a caution; the underlying protections are not secure,” Moiloa adds. “As we move further from the founding assumptions of the post-94 moment, those norms need active, ongoing investment from all of us – they don’t sustain themselves. I think artists have a big role to play in this.”

The censorship happened in the context of the South African government’s having instituted a case at the International Court of Justice against the state of Israel for committing genocide in Gaza.

“On the specific content – the Gaza-related material – I don’t think intimidation landed the way it might have elsewhere, because McKenzie’s position actually contradicted South Africa’s own national stance at The Hague,” says Moiloa. “He was working against his own government’s declared line. This meant that there was a kind of righteousness established. 

“And a very evident and obvious sense of an abuse of power on the part of McKenzie. It’s still incredibly stressful and overwhelming for the artist to deal with – and in many ways quite alone on the actual matters of the thing – but I am not sure it has the same silencing effect as it has in Germany for example.”

‘Our duty as human beings to speak out’

Jewish artist, educator and activist Adam Broomberg was born in Johannesburg and grew up in South Africa during the height of apartheid. Now based in Berlin, Broomberg is a prominent pro-Palestinian activist. He is no stranger to being cancelled and has been on the receiving end of McCarthyite witch-hunts in Germany.

“So many people across so many fields are being criminalised, censored, and silenced right now – artists, academics, doctors, factory workers, simply for showing solidarity with Palestinians,” he says. “It is our duty as human beings, not just as artists, to speak up at this moment in history. It was precisely the silence of my ancestors’ neighbours, colleagues and friends that allowed the Holocaust to happen. This is not the time to worry about losing our salaries, our comfort, our grants, our pay checks.”

Broomberg believes that Goliath has given an example to other artists that you can take on the powers-that-be.

“Gabrielle did many things, carefully and strategically,” he says. “She challenged the unconstitutional actions of a corrupt Minister of Culture, and she did it through the justice system. Her public, courageous stand exposed the state of both the ministry and the justice system itself.”

Buys cautions that “arts workers can’t stand up to power on their own. There needs to be a willing and courageous society behind them. Right now, I can’t really say exactly why, but I don’t think these forces are connecting properly.”

However, that is not to diminish the role that culture plays in social change. “In South Africa, the arts played an important role in the struggle against apartheid, and I believe this is because of art’s paradoxical ability to speak directly and obscurely at the same time.”

In this “terrifying” world, Broomberg adds: “We should stay sensitive to the violence being inflicted on an ever-broadening group of people. The dehumanisation that allowed for the genocide in Gaza is no longer confined to Gaza. But we also have to keep our nerve. Being in danger is part of our job description.

“Artists have always been dangerous; as the avant-garde, we are quite literally, the canaries in the coal mine. When the state comes for us, it’s a clear sign that everyone else isn’t far behind. We have to show what it looks like to fight for freedom, in all its forms, for all people.”

Although McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance party is relatively small, the outspoken rightwing populist is in a position of power as a Cabinet minister. It also appears that his censorship has happened without consequences, despite appeals by Goliath and her team to the South African Presidency for intervention.

“I think this is a warning less about this one incident and more about where South Africa is heading,” says Moiloa. “We’re moving past the liberation-era nationalism of the ’90s, and the norms we’ve taken for granted – checks and balances to freedom of expression and the capacity to challenge this, is without question eroding. 

“These things require our collective investment as a nation. I expect problems to increase as populists without a real governance culture and ethic increasingly move forward in our political sphere.”

‘I choose to do it again daily’

I spOoke to Goliath again on the eve of her team’s application for leave to appeal and asked if she would do it again.

“Well, Charles, I believe that, rather than ‘would I do it again’, the more appropriate phrasing would be, that ‘I am still doing it’. Despite the efforts of the minister to deplatform Elegy, it showed in Venice as an independent exhibition, through the support of friends and allies. 

“It will next travel to London, where it will be hosted by Ibraaz, a courageous and dynamic cultural space in London, and from there it goes to the Sharjah Biennial [in the United Arab Enirates], and to ICA Milano. 

“And, of course, tomorrow we have our application for leave to appeal. So, in other words, I choose to ‘do it again’ daily – and that is what this work asks: that we choose to recall and grieve, again and again, the women and LGBTIQ+ people lost to the crisis norm of femicide in South Africa; that we live with the active recognition of colonial violence, dispossession and its afterlives in Namibia, here and elsewhere; and, crucially, that we mourn – deeply – for Heba Abu Nada, and the women, children and civilians lost to the unfolding genocide in Gaza. 

“Holding this line is, for me, hardly a choice, but the ethical, political demand of my implication in a world of others – and that demand is more urgent than ever, in a context in which we are increasingly told whose lives, lands and worlds we can and should value, and whose remain available to death and disregard.” DM

This is an expanded version of an article for the Campaign For Free Expression’s annual report. Charles Leonard has been covering the censorship saga for the global publication The Art Newspaper.