"Bophuthatswana's Scorpion Logo" COMMISSION (C)Aug1989 RAKoch. 297 x 210mm A4, Ink+Card

A weird commission: I was asked (I can't recall by who) to design a scorpion logo to be used for a new Bophuthatswana government formation. (Bophuthatswana was a tribal 'state' or 'homeland' existing under South Africa's apartheid system) Apparently, they were a special security police unit called the 'Scorpions', headed by the then president, Lucas Mangope. I don't think they became active as the politics of the country was changing rapidly. I wonder, however, if the new South Africa's 'Scorpion' police unit (counter-corruption) had any connection with Mangope's? Incidentally, I visited Bophuthatswana often in those bad old days, and even though 'Bop' was a puppet state of the apartheid government, there existed perhaps a real glimpse of what South Africa would be like when racism was eradicated from the nation. In Mafikeng, at least. -Because 'blacks' and 'whites' were not segregated there in that artificial country - they mixed as freely as South Africans do today. And strangely, it seemed a peaceful arrangement, until the final upheavals in the mainland removed 'Bop' from the political geography of South Africa.