'After images': impressions of the 'after' by South African performer-choreographer Namela Nyamza

The after-image is primarily produced by memory and the imagination. It is the emotional or psychological recall/re-imagining of something that is not immediately present to the senses. Both19-Born-76-Rebels (2013) and Isingqala (2011) evoke after-images in considering South Africa's past alongside its present. This chapter examines what vestiges of the past remain in Nyamza's present lived experience, and specifically, in what images does the 'after' manifest itself in Nyamza's work.19-Born-76-Rebels recalls the Soweto Riots and massacre of 1976, focusing on the education black children received in that era. Nyamza uses after-images of her own black girlhood.