By Eleanor Momberg
A life-sized sculpture of an African elephant matriarch created by a well-known South African artist will grace the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mexico in November.
The sculpture will serve as a an emissary for wilderness and creativity, and it is expected to be a tourism drawcard for the 2010 World Cup when it is returned to South Africa in time for the football showcase.
Nomkhubulwane was named by the renowned conservationist Dr Ian Player at the Premat factory in Durban, where she was created by sculptor Andries Botha and his three assistants, Joshua Ogle, Ntokozo Ntshingila Hadebe and Janine Zagel.
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The statue was woven from strips of old truck tyres.
Premat, also known as Pretoria Mat and Tyre, recycles truck-sized tyres into rubber mats and other items, including the protective linings in containers used to transport captured elephants and rhino to other destinations.
At present on exhibition at the KZNSA Gallery in Durban, the elephant will be crated and moved to Mexico at the end of the month.
Botha, who was also the founder of the Human Elephant Foundation, said the creation of this elephant statue - one of 11 by the artist - had evolved out of a conversation he had had with Player during which the conservationist had suggested he make an elephant that would have a symbolic presence at the global conference.
Player is expected to accompany the elephant to Mexico for the latest of the wilderness congresses started by him in 1977.
Because the congress was not funding the exercise, Botha and his partners were rallying the necessary financial partners to support the elephant's presence there as a "creativity advocate and conversation catalyst".
Player said the partnership between the Human Elephant Foundation and the Magqubu Ntombela Foundation, established in memory of his Zulu mentor, served to stimulate new creative ideas that expanded environmental awareness and commitment to conserving and extending wilderness.
This involved a deeper understanding and appreciation of the spiritual values of wild places that were under constant threat and rapidly decreasing at great cost to all life forms on the planet, including humans.
According to Botha, Nomkhubulwane was a matriarch, an Earth goddess who could morph into many different animal forms. She informed the young women regarding their sacred relationship with the Earth and their special role in Zulu society.
"The elephant is a metaphor for the yearning for forgotten conversations between humans, the Earth and all living things.
"Such conversations are the essence and foundation of sustainability. Matriarchs embody organising principles around memory, social and cultural structure."
He added that the elephant embodied the potential for human visual creativity "to expand and accelerate the conversation with other creative thinkers about the environment".
Botha said because the world required massive collaboration to shift the human consciousness into a more sustainable relationship with the Earth, the Human Elephant Foundation was created to engage other partners in contributing their creativity and industry to the conversation.
"Our immediate task now is to get Nomkhubulwane to Mexico and the WWC. Once she has graced that conference, it is intended that she tour as a global ambassador of creative possibilities within the physical world... She joins 11 other foundation elephants in the world who are serving as advocates of a shared visionary movement.
"At some point in the near future, we hope the whole herd may gather," he said.
- This article was originally published on page 6 of Sunday Independent on September 13, 2009
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