Zeitz MOCAA’s latest exhibition is a powerful tribute to Albie Sachs – freedom fighter, writer, judge and cultural worker.
Spring Is Rebellious: The Art & Life of Albie Sachs opens on 24 July and runs until 23 August 2026. It explores how art helped shape the fight for freedom in Southern Africa and how it continues to carry memory, resistance and imagination.
Curated by Dr Phokeng Setai, the show brings together artworks Sachs collected, commissioned or was inspired by. It also includes personal material from his life, tracing how his journey as an activist links to bigger political and cultural shifts in South Africa and Mozambique.
Sachs was a human rights lawyer who defended people charged under apartheid laws before going into exile. In 1988, while living in Mozambique, he survived a car bomb attack by South African agents. He lost his right arm and sight in one eye but returned home and later helped write South Africa’s democratic Constitution. Nelson Mandela appointed him to the Constitutional Court in 1994, where he served until 2009.
Now 90, Sachs is still writing, reflecting and sharing lessons on justice, healing and memory.
His own words are part of the show. “Art was never a luxury,” he says. “It was part of our survival… It carried our defiance, our memory, our dreams.”
“In Mozambique, I saw creativity thrive amid hardship. In South Africa, art gave spirit to our Constitution —the jazz musicians wrote the Constitution in music before the lawyers did in words.”
The exhibition features work from three collections:
– the Mayibuye Archives at UWC
– the Constitutional Court Art Collection
– Sachs’ personal archive
A timeline runs through the exhibition, linking his personal story to major events in Southern African history. Visitors will also be able to hear Sachs’ voice through an audio guide.
This isn’t just about one man. It’s about the role art played, and still plays, in the struggle for freedom. It honours the writers, dancers, musicians and painters who helped people imagine justice before it arrived. “The struggle isn’t over—and neither is the dreaming,” reflects Albie Sachs.
Dr Phokeng Setai shares: ‘So why this show? Our purpose is clear: to illustrate how art and culture are integral to law and justice, politics, and nation-building. We hope you come away with a deeper understanding that the realms of art and intellectual expression are not peripheral but central to building free and just societies.’
According to Dr Setai, art and culture are not extras, they’re central to how we build freedom.
Spring Is Rebellious invites us to think about where we’ve come from, what still needs to change, and how art helps us see what’s possible. Catch it at Zeitz MOCAA, situated at the Silo District, South Arm Road, V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, from Thursday, 24 July 2025,
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