Demographically and physically one thing; experientially, another. I would like to begin with a story and a saying that move from this point of incongruity. In a wideranging 2017 interview with Steven Cohen, the seminal South African performance artist related an anecdote from one of his earliest interventions, Dog. Uninvited, Cohen first publicly performed the piece in 1998 at the Goldfield's Kennel Club Obedience Show in Johannesburg's East Rand, Cohen inserted himself into the dog show lineup as a performing mongrel dressed in his iconic tutu, bare-bummed, a dildo up his anus and a bag covering his penis. Midway through his show-dog routine of flick flacks, jumps and somersaults, the ball bag flew off. Cohen recalled:

In 2017, the Pan-African collective Chimurenga devised the Spring curriculum for the RAW Academy in Dakar around the implications of the colloquial South African saying, ‘Angazi, but I'm sure’ – its English translation: ‘I don't know, but I'm sure.’ The curriculum outline explains: ‘It is a deliberately self-contradictory phrase that is usually spoken in prelude to a reply – often, when one is asked for directions or facts. “Angazi, but I'm sure if you turn left you will get there.” … The respondent is uncertain – of what they “know.” Or, perhaps, they are certain, but they do not know how to speak it. Or, they know, but do not know what they know.’ The many simultaneous directions in which Cohen pulls his viewers reflect the paradox at the heart of this South Africanism.