The Real Review

The most sensible thing for anyone who has a sincere interest in the lifeblood of South Africa’s arts and artists is to seek out ways to build on the 33-year legacy of the Festival. One would think that those organisations and bodies who ought to have the national interest at heart would gladly step forward.
Who are they? The SABC springs to mind first. Under the Broadcasting Act of 1999 Policy Mandate (Section 10f), the SABC is meant to “enrich the cultural heritage of South Africa by providing support for traditional and contemporary artistic expression”. The Festival gives the SABC the single best opportunity in the year to deliver on this mandate. It is after all the official media sponsor of the Festival, a title it has not done enough to earn. Its parsimonious coverage and participation is well shy of what one expects from a national broadcaster who neglects the arts throughout the year. The Festival is faraway still the most representative festival we have of national talent, and it has the best potential if correctly managed to shape the future of our arts. It is the biggest event and most diversified in terms of sheer numbers of productions and the range of art forms available to festival-goers.
The private sector, big business in particular, is another. South Africa’s corporations still view the arts as social investment. Unfortunately, a charitable approach will never lead to the kind of investment required. According to the last survey undertaken by the Performing Arts Network of South Africa, in a year business when spent roughly R236 million on arts and culture sponsorships including leverage, it lavished R3,2 billion on sports sponsorships. Sport sponsorship is hellishly expensive in comparison to the arts, but the paucity of business leaders with an affinity for the performing arts means that these opportunities are missed through ignorance. The Festival is in urgent need of at least one more key sponsor. Let us hope some enterprising captain of industry will realise there’s a golden opportunity here.
Government is another key player. Tentative at first, hopefully blaming the Festival for the problems of the country is past. Pieter-Dirk Uys, who starts his satirical revue, Evita for President, by entering as Adriaan Vlok with a bucket and sponge to do penance, says he struggled at most performances to find black feet. In one case, he resorted to slipping off the shoes of a newspaper photographer shooting from the aisle. Audiences are still largely white, but it’s not Festival’s fault that the economic divide in the Eastern Cape runs roughly along racial lines. The demographics of the festival have shifted substantially and they will continue to shift in line with the country. It was however high time the Festival opened closer to the disaffected and this year the event at the Stadium Mickey Vili in Joza (which we reported on June 28) makrs an important milestone.
Political window dressing with subsidised audiences for instance is all very well, but much of it is wasteful and meaningless. Sharing creativity with more free concerts held in the areas where the majority of the population live makes better sense.
The economic spin-offs from the Festival are numerous, from temporary jobs to a spike in retail for shops. The local government should be desperate to keep this annual R50 million injection to the city’s economy. They should be offering rates rebates to address the accommodation shortage; the town planners should be looking at ways of developing infrastructure that assists at Festival time. Were the national arts festival to be held in a major city, it would dissipate – one needs look no further than at the dismal failure each year of Cape Town’s International Festival of the Arts.
Festivals develop organically, the outcome of the interests of numerous parties, yet there are custodians, in particular, the festival committee, who must come up with the necessary vision to keep the event vital. Our cultural landscape has shifted radically in the past decade, and the Festival has to respond with imagination. Longevity helps, but is not enough. Curatorship as opposed to custodianship is the missing factor. Nothing is possible if the Festival does not have a clear vision of what it is and should be. Creative excellence must be the guiding star of the Festival. Except for the benefits to loclaised audiences, everything else can be had in superior circumstances elsehwere. To attract an audience from across the country, the Festival must be the acme of arts in South Africa.

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