Two years ago, London auction house Bonhams hosted its first sale focusing on South African art. Old masters, like Jacob Hendrik Pierneef are back in vogue now after being cast aside for their associations with the apartheid past. Prices fetched for works by expressionist Irma Stern and Maggie Laubscher have also hit record levels locally and internationally.
South Africa, buoyed by nearly a decade of economic growth, has seen an increase in the number of wealthy individuals looking to spend money on art and new galleries have opened across the country.
But the South African art-buying public remains small - and is still almost exclusively white.
With post-apartheid South Africa grappling with high unemployment and mass poverty, the handful of public galleries barely have budgets to buy emerging artist's works let alone South African artists fetching record prices on the international market.
Africans rarely even get a chance to see, let alone buy, contemporary art of the continent. Major international exhibitions of contemporary African art rarely come to Africa. Njami's acclaimed Africa Remix, which showed in Johannesburg last year after a world tour, is an exception.
Njami wants there to be more contemporary museums in Africa, more African critics and more involvement in setting the price for the continent's artworks.
"I think it is important for Africa to create its own value and an art fair is very instrumental in that," he says.
He is mindful, though that the fair is also a test of the market and that "what the galleries are showing is what they expect to sell." Critic Anthea Buys wrote in South Africa's Mail & Guardian weekly of what she saw as the "remorselessly" commercial nature of the fair. That sense has left many artists and critics, already suspicious about exploitative dealers, feeling uncomfortable.
"Skeptic" read one of the badges being handed out at the opening night by a top Johannesburg gallery - along with "collector" and "artist." "There is a lot of unease about the interaction between art and money," said Sean O'Toole, editor of Art South Africa. In a recent article he described art dealers as drunk on champagne and "self-congratulatory." Ending his speech on Thursday, Njami urged the well-heeled crowd of art aficionados to buy the works - before they got too expensive, he joked.
"I think it is our responsibility to the future to make sure African creations remain in Africa - or at least some evidence of it," he said, more seriously.
It's not yet clear whether Njami's call will be heeded out of altruism or in the pursuit of good investment returns. But by the end of the evening there were quite a few red sold stickers on the walls.
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