Mintirho ya Vulavula: Arts, National Identities and Democracy

By The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MIST

Mintirho ya Vulavula: Arts, National Identities and Democracy examines the role of arts and culture in development, and specifically its value in consolidating our nascent democracy and in facilitating the transformation of South African society. Contributors to this edited volume interrogate the role of arts, culture and heritage from a transdisciplinary perspective, enriched by the cross-generational perspectives offered by young and older artists, cultural practitioners, activists and scholars. Authors also offer some policy recommendations on how the contribution of arts and culture to social cohesion and nation-building can be enhanced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MIST
• Release date: Apr 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781920690182

Book preview

Preface

ARTS AND CULTURE SPEAK TO the very being of a people. They straddle history and its interpretations, the meanings of current existence and the sketching of future trajectories.

As a result, discourse on the arts and national development in the South African setting cannot but result in the painting of a broad canvas which includes national liberation efforts, democracy, nation-building and social justice. On the one hand, these elements of human existence shape the arts; but, inversely, the arts do impact on each of these concepts and their practical expression.

It is thus impossible to capture artistic expression, chain it and render it an instrument of any one cause, however noble. It is in the nature of humanity that, as it lives, so does it seek to interpret its existence in direct and indirect ways. This creative expression can take on a life of its own, unchained from material existence. But in time and with the agency of interpretation, it voluntarily flies back into the coop of practical life. The arts take from real life and give back to it in many generous ways.

Historically, as the people of what has become the South African nation-state eked an existence out of the country’s natural endowments, intermingled, subjugated, fought and fashioned political settlements, so did their cultural life and artistic expression evolve. The arts have creatively reflected these dynamics.

In crafting this volume on arts, national identities and democracy in South Africa and titling it Mintirho ya Vulavula (roughly translated as ‘actions speak for themselves’), the authors seek to capture this omnipresence of the arts. They reflect on the black and white of past and present value judgements, and on the grey areas in-between. They also present the technicolour of struggle narratives, the tortuous birth of a new nation, as well as intergenerational fusions and fissions.

Contained in the various chapters of this book are reflections on the contradictions that afflict the search for an overarching identity in the midst of diversity. The influences of race and social status on artistic expression do come into play, as do gender – and multiple other – intersectionalities.

This is covered in an array of treatments of the young ‘post-colony’, implicitly contrasted against the idealism that inspired the struggle for a democratic society. The authors use different artistic genres to give living expression to the manifestations of a nation grappling with its identity. What emerges is a critique of an artificial ‘rainbow-ism’ that eschews tension and contradiction; a protest against boxing individuals into homogeneous categories; and the growing self-assertion of those who live under conditions of freedom with minimal experience of its antecedents.

In their treatment of all these issues, and using music, publishing and the novel, theatre, paintings, opera and other genres as frames of reference, the authors seem, by a quirk of fate, to converge towards a question posed in one of the chapters: Has the history of South African society not rendered ours ‘a mad, mad country’, suffering from a multitude of unresolved social and personal pathologies?

Unavoidably, in dealing with the artistic expression of a nation in gestation, the question of who constitutes that very nation does arise. From this emerge the issues of belonging and ‘liveability’ in a society and spaces historically defined by internal and cross-border migration.

This volume does not seek to provide definitive answers to these complex issues. What it does assert is that there is indeed a strategic role for the arts in national development – in all its contradictions, ugliness and splendour.

This requires an appropriate conceptual underpinning to the development of policy on arts and culture, straddling their social, psychological, educational, entertainment, informational and other meanings. For such policy to achieve its purpose, which is basically to afford the human spirit free rein, there must be optimal consultation with art theoretician, practitioner and critic alike. Underpinning this must be an appreciation of the changing environment brought about by the infusion of new technologies in all social endeavours – a reality brought out in even bolder relief by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Mapungubwe Institute (MISTRA) expresses its profound appreciation to the authors who, through this volume, will hopefully generate deeper reflections on this complex subject matter. We also wish to thank the donors who make it possible for MISTRA to carry out its research work.

Joel Netshitenzhe

Executive Director

Acknowledgements

THIS ARTS, DEVELOPMENT AND DEMOCRACY PROJECT would not have been so successful without the focused guidance and assistance received from several individuals and organisations.

The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) would like to express its deepest gratitude to the project leaders for this book, Associate Professor Innocentia Mhlambi, Sandile Ngidi and Dr Zenzo Moyo, who coordinated, provided oversight and performed editorial duties. Njabulo Zwane, Dr Heidi Brooks and Ntsoaki Gwaelane deserve special thanks for their dedication and support during various stages of the project.

The success of this book is also due to the contributions of the authors who invested a great deal of their time, under difficult circumstances, in researching and writing the chapters that offer a fascinating cross-section of experiences, insights and policy advice. MISTRA extends its appreciation to the subject specialists who reviewed the chapters and provided valuable comments and suggestions.

All MISTRA staff who collaborated so enthusiastically in this project deserve special recognition. These include the fundraising team, and the operations and project management teams; Terry Shakinovsky, who oversaw the publication process; Professor Susan Booysen for her efforts in ensuring that this publication met the highest standards; and Joel Netshitenzhe for his thorough reading of the manuscript.

Final thanks go to Jacana Media’s publication team and to MISTRA’s donors who are listed on the following page.

PROJECT FUNDERS

Intellectual endeavours of this magnitude are not possible without financial resources. We convey our special thanks to the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) for generously supporting this project.

MISTRA FUNDERS

MISTRA would also like to use this opportunity to acknowledge and thank donors who may not have been directly involved with this project but nevertheless support the Institute and make its work possible. These include:

•Albertinah Kekana

•Anglo American Platinum

•Anglo Coal

•Aspen Pharmacare

•Belelani Group

•Discovery Central Services

•Exxaro

•First Rand Foundation

•Goldman Sachs

•Harith General Partners

•Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC)

•National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS)

•Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (OMT)

•Pareto Ltd

•PEU

•Phembani Group

•Robinson Ramaite

•Safika

•Simeka

•Sishen Iron Ore

•Standard Bank

•Yellowwoods

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Contributors

HEIDI BROOKS

Heidi Brooks is the senior researcher at MISTRA and has a background in higher education and project management. She holds a PhD and MA in Political Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand, and a BA Honours in Development Studies from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. Her research interests lie in politics and government in South Africa, South African political history, and the study of democracy. Brooks has published a monograph with Palgrave Macmillan titled The African National Congress and Participatory Democracy, as well as several peer-reviewed journal articles on the history of democratic thought in the ANC, the 1980s people’s power movement, participatory democracy in post-1994 South Africa, and conceptions of democracy in the South African Police Service.

ANELILE GIBIXEGO

Anelile Gibixego obtained a BSc in Microbiology and Cellular Biology in 2011 from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and an Honours degree in Environmental Science from North-West University in 2017. She is currently working as an assistant researcher at MISTRA, where she has gained vast experience in scenario planning, facilitation, stakeholder engagements and research. She has also authored a fiction book titled Igoli Dreams. Her strong leadership and communication skills fuel her passion for public speaking and writing.

BARRY GILDER

Barry Gilder is currently South Africa’s ambassador to Syria and Lebanon, based in Damascus. In 1974–5 he headed the cultural arm of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). He went into exile in 1976 and served with the African National Congress in various capacities, including composing and singing struggle songs at anti-apartheid meetings. Between 1995 and 1999, he served as the deputy director-general of the South African Secret Service (SASS), among other responsibilities. He served as deputy director-general of the National Intelligence Agency from 2000 to 2003, after which he was the director-general of the Department of Home Affairs until 2005. In 2010 he helped set up MISTRA and served as its director of operations. He is the author of a non-fiction book, Songs and Secrets: South Africa from liberation to governance, and a novel, The List.

NTSOAKI GWAELANE

Ntsoaki Gwaelane is a research intern in MISTRA’s Humanity Faculty. She is currently studying for a postgraduate qualification in education at Vaal University of Technology. She holds a BA in Public Management and Society from North-West University.

ATHI MONGEZELELI JOJA

Athi Mongezeleli Joja is an art critic and theorist. He is a member of the artist collective, Gugulective, and a member of the Azanian Philosophical Society. Joja was also part of the editorial collective of the New Frank Talk: Critical essays on the black condition. He publishes art criticism, critical opinion pieces and polemics on local and international art platforms, such as Africanah.org, Artthrob, Mail & Guardian, Chimurenga, Artforum and Art South Africa. Joja’s work homes in on questions of art and politics, liberation aesthetics and art criticism. In 2018 he was an Andrew Mellon pre-doctoral fellow in the Critical Theory Cluster at the University of Northwestern in Minnesota, where he developed a curriculum on appropriation, together with art historian Professor Huey Copeland. In 2021, Joja will be the Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Art History, Northwestern University, where he will teach a semester course on South African art and the transition to democracy.

THABO LEHLONGWA

Thabo Lehlongwa is a writer, poet, cultural activist, film/TV producer, urban historian and creative consultant. His roots are in the hip-hop culture, where he started as a junior member of the Silver Stars Youth Club, the group that recorded the first official kwaito album, Kwaito Nation, in 1989. Since the mid-1990s, he has been using his organisational and creative talents to contribute to the development of South Africa’s youth and disenfranchised communities through public speaking, training and multimedia projects, including workshops, events and TV/video productions. Lehlongwa’s work has been published in a number of poetry journals, newspapers, magazines and other publications in the development and creative sectors.

REFILOE LEPERE

Refiloe Lepere is a journalist, playwright, theatre director, drama therapist and facilitator. She is a graduate of New York University and the University of the Witwatersrand. Her research looks at how race and gender intersect to frame and shape our understanding of and interaction with the world. Her work entails creating a dialogue between race and feminist theory, social justice and theatre-making practice, drama therapy and human rights. Her international plays include Between Sisters and Postcards: Bodily Preserves (Germany, South Africa and USA); Money for Shoes (Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland); Heading Out (US and UK); Songs for Khwezi (US and South Africa); Disappearing Act and Black in the Box (US and Canada).

MATTHIEU MARALACK

Matt Maralack holds a BA Honours in Music and Musicology from Rhodes University and has several years of experience in the fields of ethnomusicology, sound technology, music performance and music education. Although he continues to occupy stage and music studio spaces when he has the opportunity, he has developed an interest in arts and culture’s intersection with society from a leadership and urban governance perspective. To this end, he obtained an MA in Cultural Policy and Management from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2019. Currently, Maralack works as a network associate at African Leadership Academy (ALA) in Johannesburg, concentrating on cultural sector development on the African continent.

ATHAMBILE MASOLA

Athambile Masola is a writer, researcher and teacher at the University of Pretoria. She has a PhD from Rhodes University, and her thesis focused on black women’s historiography, intellectual histories and life writing. She is a member of Bua-Lit Collective, a group of researchers and educators advocating the use of African languages as a social justice mechanism. Masola is the founder of Asinakuthula Collective, which is a group of teachers and researchers who aim to challenge the continued marginalisation of women’s narratives in the school curriculum. Her work has been published in a variety of publications, such as Prufrock, Sable Literary Magazine, Al Jazeera, Mail & Guardian, Sawubona, and various online blogs and academic journals.

INNOCENTIA MHLAMBI

Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi is associate professor and head of the Department of African Languages at the University of the Witwatersrand. She teaches African-language literature, black film studies, popular culture, oral literature and visual culture. She is the author of African-Language Literatures: Perspectives on isiZulu fiction and popular black television series, and she has published extensively on aesthetics, literature, black opera and popular culture, in both broadcast and print media in South Africa. She was selected as a participant in the University of Michigan African Presidential Scholars Programme and is currently doing research on black opera in post-1994 South Africa.

ZENZO MOYO

Zenzo Moyo is a researcher at MISTRA. He holds an MA and a PhD in Development Studies, both from the University of Johannesburg (UJ). Before joining MISTRA, he lectured in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at UJ. His PhD was on the relationship between human rights-oriented civil society and state structures in Zimbabwe, and how this relationship moderates processes of democratisation. His other research interests include social movements, southern African politics and opposition parties, socio-economic transformation and the interlinkages between education and development.

ROBERT MUPONDE

Robert Muponde is the director of postgraduate affairs and professor of English in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand. His publications include Some Kinds of Childhood: Images of history and resistance in Zimbabwean literature (Africa World Press, 2015), While the Harvest Rots: Possessing Worlds of Kudzanai Chiurai’s Art (co-edited with Emma Laurence, The Goodman Gallery, 2017), and The Scandalous Times of a Book Louse: A Memoir of a Childhood (forthcoming, Penguin Random House).

RELEBONE RIRHANDZU EAFRIKA

Relebone Rirhandzu eAfrika holds a Bachelor of Journalism degree from Rhodes University, and is a writer, copy editor and literary advocate. She is also a blogger, promoting mainly black writers and their work. In 2019 she was awarded a Casa Lorde Residency, where she began work on her compilation of creative, non-fiction personal essays titled Depression is Not an Aesthetic (forthcoming, BlackBird Books). She has also worked with The Con and AfriPop! Mag as a freelancer, writing on a variety of topics, including gender, music, culture and spatial politics.

SANDILE NGIDI

Sandile Ngidi is an arts activist and an isiZulu/English literary translator. In the 1990s Ngidi was general secretary of the Natal Cultural Congress and later served on the first non-racial board of the Natal Performing Arts Council (now The Playhouse Company). In 2018 he published a poetry chapbook, You Can’t Tell Me Anything Now (Mahlephula Press). Ngidi previously edited Realtime, a South African human rights and democracy youth magazine, and Baobab, a journal for the arts and new writing. A seasoned communication specialist, he has an MA in Creative Writing from Rhodes University (2019) and a BA in Social Science (Sociology and Political Science) from the University of Natal, Durban.

ANDRIES WALTER OLIPHANT

Andries Walter Oliphant is a literary scholar and cultural policy planner attached to the University of South Africa. He served on the board of the International Comparative Literature Association and is the founding chair of the Arts and Culture Trust. He wrote Creating a National Strategy for Developing an Inclusive and Proud Society (2012) for the South African government and the Diagnostic Report on Nation Building for the National Planning Commission. He co-wrote Nation Formation and Social Cohesion: An enquiry into the hopes and aspirations of South Africans (2014), the White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage (1996) and the Revised White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage (2020). He is a recipient of the English Academy of South Africa’s Thomas Pringle Award for Short Stories (1992), the Sunday Independent Book Journalist of the Year Award (1997) and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Arts Advocacy of the Arts and Culture Trust (2019).

ALBIE SACHS

Albie Sachs is an activist and a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa (1994–2009). He began practising as an advocate at the Cape Bar at the age of 21, defending people charged under the racial statutes and security laws of apartheid. After being arrested and placed in solitary confinement for over five months, Sachs went into exile in England, where he completed a PhD at Sussex University. In 1988 he lost his right arm and the sight in one eye when a bomb exploded in his car in Maputo, Mozambique. When he returned from exile, he served as a member of the Constitutional Committee and the National Executive of the African National Congress. He is the author of several books, including The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs; Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter; The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law; We, the People: Insights of an activist judge; and his latest book, Oliver Tambo’s Dream. Sachs has travelled to many countries sharing his experiences with a view to helping to heal divided societies.

MONGANE WALLY SEROTE

Mongane Wally Serote is the 2019 poet laureate of South Africa. He is the author of a number of novels, poetry collections, essays and plays, and has been awarded national and international awards, including the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver by President Thabo Mbeki; the Pablo Neruda Medal for Writing by the Chilean president; the Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize; the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa; the English Academy of Southern Africa Medal for his contribution to the English language; the Department of Arts and Culture Lifetime Achievement Award; and the Alexandra Icon Award. He was also the recipient of the Pan South African Language Board Award for his contribution to the development and promotion of African languages in South Africa.

CHRISTOPHER TILL

Christopher Till is the (founding) director of the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria (Javett-UP), which opened on Heritage Day in 2019. After obtaining an MA in Fine Art from Rhodes University, he began his career at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, becoming director in 1980. He then served as director of the Johannesburg Art Gallery from 1983 to 1991. He was responsible for several groundbreaking exhibitions, including The Neglected Tradition: Towards a new history of South African art. He secured the Brenthurst Collection of African Art and commissioned several major sculptures for the collection. As Director of Culture for the City of Johannesburg from 1991 to 2001, he established the city’s first cultural office and directed the formation of arts and culture policy. Till is also the founding and current director of the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. In 2018 he received the USIBA (Creative and Cultural Industries) Award in the Heritage and Museum category.

NJABULO ZWANE

Njabulo Zwane is a researcher in MISTRA’s Humanity Faculty. He is also a writer and a scholar whose interests lie in the historiography of black cultural practices and African political economy. He did his undergraduate studies in politics, history and economics at Rhodes University and also holds a BA Honours in History from the University of the Witwatersrand. His writings have appeared in the Mail & Guardian, Iliso magazine and Daily Maverick.

Part I

Setting the Scene: Arts, Culture and the Shaping of a National Identity

ONE

___

Reflecting on the role of arts in South Africa’s democratic trajectory

An introduction

INNOCENTIA J MHLAMBI, HEIDI BROOKS AND NJABULO ZWANE

INTRODUCTION

ARTS AND CULTURE, BROADLY CONCEPTUALISED as the expression of a people’s way of life, have made a significant contribution to the formation of South Africa’s national identity. Mintirho ya vulavula: Arts, national identities and democracy in South Africa seeks to locate arts, culture and heritage within a society looking to attain long-lasting social transformation and democracy, predicated on redress and healing. It examines and brings to the fore the critical role that arts and culture can play in national development and in shaping a collective imagination for effective policy formulation.

The chief aim of this book is to examine the value proposition of arts and culture in development and democracy, and to rethink their role in the democratic transition and their long-term strategic ‘fit’ in South African society. It does this with a view to developing a strategic understanding of the role of arts and culture in South Africa’s social and political economy through the lens of the past and present, while also looking to the future. Although bodies of work documenting the place of the arts in South Africa’s liberation struggle have been produced, complemented by studies on artists and their work since the democratic transition in 1994, there have been few instances when different generations of artists, industry practitioners and policymakers have come together to reflect on the role and value proposition of the arts in the country’s democratic development. This book provides a much-needed forum for a cross-sectoral and cross-generational dialogue between scholars, artists, cultural workers, policymakers, activists, academics and practitioners to debate not only the importance of arts and culture for transformative development, but also whether more could be done by different stakeholders to put arts and culture at the centre of such development.

The book is divided into three parts: Part I: Setting the scene: Arts, culture and the shaping of a national identity; Part II: Arts in the present: Everyday developmental experiences; and Part III: Arts in the future: Towards social cohesion and collective imagination. This thematic structure is intended to capture art as a force of history that plays an important role in shaping our present as well as our future trajectory of national development.

First, the book examines the arts’ historical foundations in the resistance against apartheid, interrogating the divergent and complex strands of the sector and its role in steering the post-1994 democratic project and forging a new national identity. It moves on to consider the present state of South African arts and culture, touching not only on the policy context but also on the everyday encounters of artists and cultural workers, both as a manifestation and a reflection of the post-1994 democratic experience. It then looks to the future, considering developments in artistic and creative practice and their implications for policy. The book provides important insights into the ways in which the arts can both guide and challenge dominant notions of development, identity and democracy, and the possibilities they hold for new beginnings.

In addressing the role of arts, culture and heritage in bringing about social transformation and collective identity, the book poses a number of questions: How do we define arts, culture and heritage in a society with a complex history of hegemonic domination and counterhegemonic traditions? How can historical positions on art, culture and heritage productions be reconciled with post-apartheid cultural productions? What opportunities exist for alternative policy formulations for the arts that transgress existing boundaries, and policy positions that may retard, rather than advance, national development and transformation? What and who are the social agents for the formulation, implementation and performance of these alternative forms of understanding? How can the global market for the arts be leveraged in order to elicit new forms of cultural production and identity formation? And, finally, given the ubiquity of global financialisation, how can local arts, culture and heritage brands be protected from commercial appropriations?

In a country whose development path and democratic transition have been shaped by a history of colonial occupation and repression, the epistemology and praxis of arts, culture and heritage are rendered all the more significant for development efforts. Indeed, we can contextualise the calls for social transformation in South Africa within a broader, global movement advocating for the recognition and restoration of indigenous heritage and knowledge production, and, in recent campaigns, for decolonisation and racial justice. The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in May 2020, triggered by the deaths of African Americans George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of white American police officers once again foregrounded the prevalence of racial and institutional injustice in societies with long histories of anti-racism struggles and national policy shifts.

The advent of non-racial democracy in the United States predates the South African experience by several decades. Yet, towards the end of 2015, students at South Africa’s public universities started a movement to campaign not only for free tertiary education, but also for the decolonisation of teaching and learning and the social transformation of white-controlled institutions. As in the case of Black Lives Matter, the protests of the #FeesMustFall movement targeted citadels and symbols of white domination and supremacy – the historical monuments to the founding figures of these racialised societies. Their focus on monumentalised objects of history brings into sharp focus the role that arts, culture and heritage play in the making and unmaking of societies and nations. The targeting of these monuments touches on three aspects that are central to cultural production: first, the figures are in themselves works of art; second, they are commissioned to celebrate a society’s or nation’s culture – in this case, a culture of racism; and third, they are monumentalised as commemorative objects of history, meaning that they represent a heritage that is meant to bind a nation.

But whose national arts, culture and heritage are they, if different sectors in the nation find them objectionable during moments of heightened intolerance of cultural and racial diversity? If the arts, culture and heritage commodities of any nation emerged from histories steeped in what JanMohamed (1985) termed colonial Manichean binaries, should it not be obvious that such cultural objects will inevitably be rejected by those citizens most derided by their installation and celebration? South Africa can draw lessons from the recent racial explosions in the Global North. Despite years of anti-racism struggles, particularly in the United States, the promises detailed in cultural policies of healing and national transformation remain a ‘dream deferred’. Arts, culture and heritage are thus at the centre of these recent protests and are elaborations of the contested conventions of the politics of historiography.

While these recent events provide important context for the questions addressed in this book, the pressing concern is how existing discourses and practices can draw lessons from the way in which indigenous societies – suppressed and subjected to the colonial order of things – process these cultural impositions for the purposes of redress and social transformation. Writings about indigenous societies and their deployment of arts, culture and heritage production for social transformation and healing (Lange, 1995; Schifold, 1998; Archibald and Dewar-Pímatísíwín, 2010) have shown that there is a need for a shared culture that will be a crucible for societal engagement and collective imagination. In other words, this shared culture must lead to some level of social cohesion and, in turn, a process of nation-building.

Against this backdrop, this book helps to chart the way forward for social transformation and cohesion, positioning arts, culture and heritage as key contributors to effective policy formulation. In an effort to position the sector at the centre of the democratisation and development project, the book draws together contributions from the visual, literary, performing and multidisciplinary arts, and locates them within wider societal debates calling for the transformation of centres of power. The critical appraisals provided by the authors are diverse and cover views across generations, providing a rich constellation of ideas that blend practice-sourced observations with some of the best heritage practices in South Africa. Throughout the book, readers are invited to consider the White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage of 1996 as the post-apartheid government’s attempt at transforming arts and culture in the country.

The philosophies underpinning this book are a reflection of the efforts by the arts, culture and heritage practitioner community to rethink how the arts should be positioned in South Africa’s democratic transition and development, and their long-term strategic ‘fit’. Ultimately, the book seeks to contribute to people’s understanding of the role of arts and culture in the social and political economy. In this regard, it interrogates the historical and contemporary role of the arts and culture sector and its potential influence in the future. Moreover, by addressing a wide range of complex challenges from a transdisciplinary perspective, it aims to advance South Africa’s development.

This introductory chapter lays the foundation for a discussion of the role of the arts and culture sector in development by providing a brief overview of the post-1994 period. It frames the initial policy direction of the democratic state, as informed by the Western idea of the nation-state and by South Africa’s home-grown project of ‘rainbow’ nationalism. It then provides an overview of arts and culture policy scholarship in South Africa and explains the contribution of this collection in revealing the value proposition of the arts from a transdisciplinary perspective. The chapter then looks at the role of power in art, and in artistic and cultural expression. Using Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of ‘cultural capital’ and applying it to South Africa, the chapter describes how the arts are subject to dominant processes of societal and cultural production and reproduction. The final part of the chapter outlines the structure of the collection and the individual contributions – with reference to the past, present and future – and examines each contribution through the prisms of national identity, everyday developmental experiences, social cohesion and collective imagination.

FROM NATIONALIST TO DIVERSITY-AFFIRMING POLICY FORMULATION

Inasmuch as South Africa’s arts and culture policy has been designed for a post-colonial, post-apartheid dispensation, much of its theorising and articulation is rooted in Western thought, practices and traditions. In his chapter, Andries Oliphant discusses the problems caused by the West’s imposition of the nation-state in Africa. He offers readers insights into how cultural policies are intimately tied up with Western conceptions of nationhood which, in modern times, can be considered bourgeois postulations – shaping the arts and the contours and boundaries of social belonging. In writing about arts in French society, Bourdieu (1984) and Bourdieu and Darbel (1990) map out how bourgeois art policy was oriented towards scientific rationality of the arts in order to legitimatise representation and practices. Bourdieu (1977, 1984) argues that what emerged were, in fact, policy positions informed by individuals who came from privileged backgrounds and who felt self-assured about what they claimed was good for the people.

South Africa’s arts and culture policy reflects the views presented by Bourdieu (1977, 1984). Apartheid’s cultural policy formulations undermined the local, indigenous cultural forms that have always coexisted, and have often syncretised, with imported traditions and cultures (Barber, 2000; Mhlambi, 2012). To a large extent, the post-apartheid dispensation is yet to gravitate away from this approach. Yet indigenous African and black popular cultural productions, which have developed in syncretic forms cognisant of the cultures from which they have been drawn (Barber, 2007), must be factored in, providing a vista to celebrate post-1994 South Africa’s diversity in all its fullness and complexity.

Across the length and breadth of South Africa, arts and culture – whether derived from the Western mainstream or the marginalised indigenous and popular cultures of Africans and the Khoi, San and Nama – have played an important role in the development of arts and cultural productions¹ for which the country is known globally. However, the move to rainbow nationalism, a post-apartheid policy to drive development and national reconciliation, has threatened this diversity, as Rekgotsofetse Chikane argues in Breaking a Rainbow, Building a Nation (2018). Nationalism, as an ideology to suture together communities or nations, has been debunked in many progressive, international debates (McClintock, 1991; Calhoun, 1994; Wiessala, 1997) due to its association with radicalism, fascism and the isolationist power ambitions of dominant nations. It therefore seems misguided that the 1996 White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage (DAC, 1996) and its subsequent iterations should have continued to adopt a nation-building narrative, based on a singular nationalism. South Africa’s multiculturalism, ethnic diversity and heightened racial differences alone challenge the notion of a singular nationalism which is prone to repressing inherent differences. This book highlights the complex ways in which different indigenous, national ethnicities and social formations are (re)constituting themselves in terms of nation-building and cultural rebuilding, in ways that were not possible under apartheid’s separate development polices.

Beginning with Nelson Mandela’s non-racial ‘rainbow-ism’, the scholarship serving as a rejoinder to nation-building imperatives quickly sounded alarm bells (Degenaar, 1994; Baines, 1998). This anxiety increased even as the Mandela-era Ministry of Arts and Culture’s annual publication, Arts, provided proof of artistic developments by different arts groups from different racial categories as they attempted to build a non-racial, non-sexist national identity (Mistry, 2001).

After South Africa’s transition to democracy in 1994, the new government developed several policy frameworks. These included the work of the 1994 Ministerial Arts and Culture Task Team, whose brief was to develop national policies for the arts that would undo the apartheid practice of domination and exclusion. This resulted in the creation of arts regulatory and policy bodies, such as the National Arts Council (NAC), the Film and Video Foundation and the National Heritage Council, which were mandated to allocate resources and to engender principles of redress, diversity, tolerance, creativity, freedom and development. These reformulations were meant to ease concerns about the negative attributes of nationalism. Indeed, Mandela’s nationalism provided for some fluidity in social identities, where collective and individual identities could coexist and where different cultures manifested a shared sense of ‘African-ness’.

Thabo Mbeki’s notion of the African Renaissance, in contrast, had a more rigid trajectory, with specific implications for arts, culture and heritage policy. It was conceptualised along the lines of the Janus-faced, African-American Harlem Renaissance, reawakening the African past and redirecting it to define contemporary identities (Mbeki, 1996). While calling for an African artistic and intellectual revival, the discourse underpinning his African Renaissance did not project the multicultural/polycultural stance that Mandela’s cultural policy had nurtured. Instead, it fostered African unity throughout Pan-African and African diasporic constituencies. As a discourse speaking to broader continental concerns, it was also somewhat South Africa-focused (Adebajo, 2016). Mbeki appealed to an identity that developed powerful Pan-African economic development programmes, and extended the meaning of African belonging (Mbeki, 1996), but, given South Africa’s divided racial profile, his Renaissance discourse did not make clear the role of other racial communities (Adebajo, 2016). Limitations in the African Renaissance project have been evident in the ongoing search for an arts and culture policy framework that recognises and affirms diversity, while fostering a collective imagination.

Although Mbeki’s Pan-Africanism and Mandela’s national unity waned from 2009 when Jacob Zuma took office, the lack of a mainstream narrative about South Africa’s national identity during the Zuma administration did not halt revisions to the 1996 White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage. Significant revisions to cultural policy would have been tabled at the beginning of 2020 had it not been for the onset of COVID-19. However, the delay in legislative processing, as a result of the government’s focus on softening the impact of the pandemic, has permitted further scrutiny and reimagining of how arts, culture and heritage practices in the ‘new normal’ – induced by COVID-19 – could further fine-tune policy. On the one hand, the pandemic has exacerbated South Africa’s inequality crisis and exposed the failures of post-apartheid administrations to significantly transform society. Yet, on the other hand, it offers the country the opportunity for reflection, reckoning and reimagination – an exercise that may be articulated in the revised policy.

Already, different arts, culture and heritage organisations have begun to ruminate on the broader impact that the pandemic is having on society at large. As witnessed in all areas of social and economic life, COVID-19 has brought about new challenges for the arts. Faced with restrictions on public performances and gatherings, physical distancing and the general economic malaise, the sector is being forced to adapt in order to survive. This means rethinking the role of arts and culture in South Africa’s COVID-19 recovery and development path.

TAKING NOTE OF GAINS AND LOSSES: TURNS AND (RE)TURNS

Critiques of policy frameworks on arts, culture and heritage over the last two and half decades have begun to map out how cultural productions and practices have been affected. Arts and culture policy scholarship by Degenaar (1993), Chrisman (1996), Nauright (1998) and Corsane (2004) provide the earliest assessments of the sector’s general impact on society. This corpus is followed by Peterson’s (2014) seminal study on community art centres in South Africa. Peterson’s contributions are significant in three fundamental ways.

First, they link the effects of policy to the practices of arts and culture groups, whose existence stretches back to a period before the democratic dispensation. According to Joffe (2016), the Cultural Industries Growth Strategy (CIGS), developed from Peterson’s work, paints a picture of how a narrow policy focus impacted the fundamental principles of artistic freedom and the nurturing of artistic or cultural expression. The shift to a focus on arts, culture and heritage as cultural industries that create jobs has had an adverse effect on the broader dimensionalities of their role.

Peterson’s second observation has to do with the adverse effects of linking the commercialisation of arts, culture and heritage to urban reconfiguration and regeneration. The move to gentrify Johannesburg and reconfigure its spatial dimensions into a world-class city, for instance, has resulted in community arts centres losing space. These organisations, throughout the history of industrialisation and urbanisation, have been important providers of spaces for education, upskilling and recreation. As Peterson (2014: 196) mentions, through these spaces the arts were ‘championed as a crucial component of a rehearsal and performance of a black public sphere, facilitating and embedding progressive forms of consciousness and resistance in response to the marginalization and subjugation produced by oppression and exploitation’. The loss of these spaces in the post-apartheid period means that a crucial element of intellectual black public spaces, for the rejuvenation of a critical consciousness among the re-marginalised, has been lost.

Peterson’s third contribution shows how these community arts centres were important in that they provided a great deal of upskilling across a range of artistic forms, and also served as spaces for the circulation of crucial ideas and the fostering of local and group identities. Peterson’s focus on the centrality of the arts, as they are formulated and reconfigured in the country’s cultural policy, provided an important basis for further investigation. This book engages with some of his observations and extends them to the particular experiences of arts, culture and heritage practitioners, both from South Africa and across the country’s borders. The new interest in the cultural productions of South Africa has been buoyed by histories of migration, the circulation of cultures, and migrant workers’ contributions to arts, culture and heritage.

These cultural contributions have recently found nuanced articulation in spaces created by the forces of globalisation. Herwitz (2012) provides an interesting comparative analysis of the role of cultural production in the context of a post-colony. His outsider’s view of the South African arts scene, and how it compares to that of similarly situated nations, provides much-needed, detached reflection on the successes and challenges of the country’s cultural policy in the context of a neoliberal global arts economy and arts consumption politics. There are other scholars who home in on particular art forms, such as the black opera scene in South Africa (André, 2016; Mhlambi, 2016; Somma, 2016), drawing attention to the role of the arts in branding, circulation, transnational black consciousness, and access to funding for the arts from world bodies and patrons of the arts.

Apart from studies that explore cultural policy, there are some that are concerned only with cultural studies, where the impact of cultural policy is a secondary matter. These studies explore the various artistic forms, ranging from traditional to popular and elite forms, and how these impact different societal values and acts of citizenship (Meintjes, 2017; Gunner, 2014; Dalamba, 2016). The studies are an extension of a strong body of work that has been documenting the place of the arts in South Africa’s liberation struggle and its post-apartheid dimensions in different historical epochs. The contributions in this book build on these advancements, extending the analysis of our past and the evolution of our present to a cross-generational conversation about the intersection of arts, national development and democracy. The collection thus facilitates a transdisciplinary dialogue, which reflects on the interlinkages between arts and culture, and society’s struggles, challenges and aspirations.

The chapters that follow bring into the present the groundwork laid by Peterson and others, thereby revealing how the arts manifest in the development process, and vice versa, and how the revision and reformulation of the policy on arts, culture and heritage