Lipstick on the Pig: Street art in Jozi

Lipstick on a pig
and a jury that's rigged
a crisis you say? what crisis?

(covering the bleak walls of decaying buildings)
stirring words & slogans!
inspiring images of transformation and change!

(as the images decay and slip away
revealing unchanged beneath
cement and brick and fading mortar)

disguise
from our eyes
a State that's captured,
while taxes enrich the entitled

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Imraan Christiaan does a lot of great work using his camera as a vehicle to further social change. So it makes a lot of sense to extend the reach of that work out into the wider community.

Putting them up, and then letting them wither and decay is, well ~ ironic at the very least. Grand ideas need grand actions, Grand actions need grand funding. If the best we can do is to send soundbites out to our community, and then let it all wither away, what does it say about our grand ideas?

Some say, put up or shut up.
I say, put up and keep up.
And then I say, put and build up.
It's in the doing that we build our nation, not in the speaking.
The doing and the spending.
We know the real intent of a Nation when we see how fairly it budgets it's income, and where it then spends the money.

Image (c) Author: Street art in Jozi, October 11, 2018