OUR COCKTAIL OF RICH THEMES [A Talk by Dr Mosibudi Mangena at the Annual Polokwane Literary Fair, 11 September, 2014] South Africa ought to be a paradise for the arts in all their forms and manifestations. I say “ought to” because it is not evident that we are aware of our blessings and more importantly, that we are consciously harnessing the tailwinds offered by our environment to fly the arts aircraft to our advantage. We are a melting pot of colours and cultures from Africa, Europe and Asia, as well as all major religions of the world. To further enrich the brew, the African majority comes in several ethnic groups with their own languages, dialects, dances and other cultural expressions. It is a rich diversity that defied the brutal attempts by the European component of our population to destroy, or at least dilute it, using religion, the gun, political and economic domination of everyone else. Throw into this mix, a society that is trying to discover itself after centuries of colonialism and racist oppression - a society in transition. It seems, by current evidence, that we are a society that has dressed itself up in lofty ideals as contained in the constitution of the land, but fails miserably to live by its dictates. Our pledges to observe the equality, dignity and human rights of all are negated by the unspeakable abuses and cruelty we perpetrate against one another, especially against women and children. The rapes and murders of women and children have become so frequent that they have lost the power to shock. Behold the disjuncture between the promise and optimism of freedom twenty years ago and the growing abject poverty, inequality and unemployment that have come to characterize our society. To add complexity to an already attractive kaleidoscope of colour for the arts, we have rampant corruption and the parading of wealth by the few before the eyes of the struggling majority. That immediately brings to mind Thomas Mapfumo’s wailings in his song “Corruption”, about the same malady in his beloved Zimbabwe, with its catchy refrain: “something for something; nothing for nothing.” These constitute a rich soup of topics, themes, plots, ideas and notions for our writers, poets, dramatists, musicians, painters and sculptors to thrive. It is like a huge elephant right in front of us, waiting to be eaten by those in our midst with an artistic streak, each at his or her own vantage point picking an ear, a tail, a hoof or a trunk as his or her point of concentration. They can enjoy it without consultation with one another or team work, each using his or her own talents, perceptions, fancy or imagination to tell a story. The totality of their work would tell us who we are, because the arts are a mirror through which society sees itself. With their generally accepted licence to do, express themselves, or even offend those in authority in a manner ordinary mortals cannot do, artists can prick our consciences and point us in the right direction. That they sometimes get into trouble, as Thomas Mapfumo and others did, including some in our country, is part of the territory. In addition to contributing to the cultural and spiritual wellbeing of a society, the arts do add to the economic wealth of a country. The Cape Town International Jazz Festival; other jazz festivals that take place at different times and localities in our country; the Grahamstown Arts Festival and others of its kind; the various book fairs; the export of dramas, such as Generations to other parts of our continent; the success of some of our music artists across the world, give us an idea of the economic spin-offs that the arts are capable of. Elsewhere in the world, the Hollywoods, Nollywoods and Bollywoods show how big the arts might be in the economic space, and this is only one form thereof. In their wake, the arts provide subsistence to others in the managerial, logistics, distribution and retail spaces. For a society with an elephant to consume, our appetite in the last twenty years has been woeful indeed. The root cause of our poor appetite is our love for other people’s things and our tendency to look askance at that which belongs to us. The passionate love our women have for Brazilian, Pakistani and Indian hair illustrates the point. It does not matter what diseases the owners of the hair might have suffered from, or whether they are alive or not, or under what circumstances the hair was harvested, they just want that hair. For as long as the hair is straight and does not belong to us, they want it. I would bet you my last cent that you will not find a Brazilian woman or an Indian one with African hair on her head. If this is an attack at all, it is not on African women, but on a mentality evinced by all of us, which state of mind confronts you everywhere you go in this country and in almost every sphere of our lives. Imagine you were from somewhere else in the world and you were blindfolded and deposited in any South African bookshop, you would not conclude that the majority in our population are African and that they speak nine different languages. The books, magazines and newspapers that invite your attention are almost all in English and most are from foreign lands. If you were from Mars and you were to be dumped into a hotel room in South Africa and you scroll through our television channels, you would not conclude that the majority among our citizens are black and speak different languages. Apart from news bulletins and an occasional drama, most of the material on television, especially dramas and films, are from elsewhere in the world. Again it does not seem to matter to us whether it is trash or not, as long as it is from elsewhere, we would lap it up. It is the same mindset that would allow us to insult ourselves by declaring, in our own country, a week or month during which we would play more of our music on our radio stations. You will not encounter such a thing anywhere else in the world – the Japanese or Americans or British would not insult themselves like that. They are simply not wired to insult themselves in that fashion. It is just common sense that their own music would dominate the airwaves; they don’t even have to discuss it. They just know it. To the extent that African hair has disappeared from the heads of our women, our music struggles to be heard on our airways and we have almost no books on the shelves of our bookshops and libraries, so would the arts struggle to flourish in our country. And thus the contribution of the arts to our economic endeavours would be puny. That’s the more regrettable because the arts do not only contribute to the economic endeavours of a society in direct and physical ways, but also play a critical role towards shaping the cultural and spiritual milieu within which every society functions. The arts could be part of the invisible clue that binds a society together, ensuring that we are not just a collection of individuals occupying a certain geographic space, but people that do feel they belong together. In other words, the arts could play an important role in determining whether we are a nation or not. That could in turn determine the way we play sport, observe national days, protect our country against external threats and participate in our economic life. Paradoxically, the arts might also play a role in curing some of the ills and fault lines that make South Africa such a paradise for the arts. In addition to rewiring our heads so that we may better appreciate the richness of our environment for the arts, and whet our appetite for the elephant right in front of us, we may need to attend to a few structural things which we inherited from our inglorious past. One of these relates to the ownership of the publishing, management and distribution of everything in the world of the arts. Whether you talk about the publishing of books, music and their distribution, the ownership and management of venues, there is an unhealthy pattern that tends to disadvantage large sections of our population. The arts would not flourish under such circumstances. It might be necessary for the public sector to play a much bigger role in this space, especially the building, ownership and management of facilities that are crucial for the advancement of the arts. Secondly, there is a need to tackle the language structural barrier that prevents the vast majority of our citizens from fully participating in the arts, either as artists or as consumers of the arts. Considering the generally accepted notion that most of us dream in our mother tongue and that language is the carrier of our mores, values, cultures and traditions, the marginalization of most South African languages is a tragedy for the arts. In addition to the measures that the state might take to promote and protect our languages, the various ethnic groups, without resorting to any form of ethnic chauvinism, need to be proactive in this regard. Failure to do this would only be at the detriment of the arts. And our country would be the poorer for it. Yes, in the last twenty years of democracy, we have nibbled a bit of the elephant in front of us, but we are still to eat it seriously. We have the potential to be a world-class Mecca for the arts. But it seems we still have to recognize the potential we have.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 08:27:08 +0000
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