Sam Nhlengethwa celebrates a print icon from SA's bad old days

Newspapers and magazines reflect their times, but in some cases they come to define an era.

Drum magazine will forever be synonymous with 1950s South Africa, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the hideous. From the vibrancy of Sophiatown and its art scene, to the struggles of forced removals and dispossession.

This is why one of the country's most celebrated living artists, Sam Nhlengethwa, was inspired to recreate Drum covers with his The Beat of Drum series of prints.

The series features five lithographs of different Drum covers: one about the original King Kong musical; the famous Makeba cover; a women's protest; forced removals and another of Steve "Kalamazoo" Mokone, the first black South African footballer to play soccer in Europe.

Nhlengethwa says the theme that inspired the covers was to show South Africa's past and present.

"When we were growing up, Drum was the magazine for culture, music, politics and sports. We got an education about the continent - and about us [as black people] - through Drum. So I thought, 'Let me take the nation down memory lane,'" he says.

Drum's peak was during apartheid, and Nhlengethwa credits the magazine's popularity to the pride it afforded the people it wrote about, who were stripped of all dignity in apartheid-era South Africa.

"It was the voice of the voiceless majority. Drum magazine was the pride of the nation. It showed the dignity and prestige of the black masses."

• 'The Beat of Drum' prints are available from The Artists' Press.