Fiona Macleod
Aaron Mmako (39) used to sell his sculptures for a pittance on the side of the road. He knows how hard it is to flag down a tourist, and how easy it is to sell a lovingly crafted piece for a song because it is the only cash he will see for a long time.
Mmako is now the central entrepreneur in an innovative project which has brought together the national government, Mpumalanga government, Matsulu town council and arts crafters to try to stop people like him from being exploited and provide them with a formal outlet for their work. “The problem for most craftspeople is they get confused working alone out there in the bushes. Now we are providing them with structures to help them create and sell their work,” he says.
Mmako runs a crafts emporium inside the Silulu Cultural Centre at Matsulu, east of Nelspruit. Opened on September 24, it aims to capture business from tourists visiting Mpumalanga and the Kruger National Park, and those on their way to Mozambique.
The national Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology paid for the construction of the centre, which is owned and maintained by the Matsulu town council. With an eye-catching thatched dome, the centre is one of three being erected by the department in Mpumalanga – the others are at Badplaas and Pilgrim’s Rest – in a major push to draw rural communities into cultural tourism.
Last weekend hundreds of dancers, poets, orators and traditional performers poured into the centre to audition for the department’s travelling cultural tourism roadshow. Winners from the auditions, held throughout South Africa, will receive training and the chance to perform at some of the country’s top tourism destinations.
At the Silulu centre, training programmes and workshops are run by the provincial Department of Sports, Recreation, Arts and Culture. Artworks produced during these programmes are either sold at Mmako’s crafts emporium or exhibited in an art gallery that is also part of the centre.
John-Anthony Boerma, who facilitates the provincial training programmes, says the centre is a meeting place for the exchange of ideas. “We are trying to encourage groups to experiment, to come up with creative items that will put a unique stamp on Mpumalanga crafts,” he says.
Among the unusual items featured in the crafts emporium are slice-of-life embroideries done by a group of 60 women who received training from the provincial department, and pieces of hand-pressed writing paper made during recent schools training projects.
The innovative spirit the emporium encourages is illustrated in a showcase of pieces from artist Willem Boshoff’s Blind Alphabet Project. It consists of 350 small sculptures made in collaboration with rural wood carvers, based on the narrative tradition of myth, dream and spirit. The sculptures are hidden in boxes with accompanying braille texts.
The emporium adds a 25% mark-up on most of what it sells, which goes into a Section 21 company administered by the town council, and pays for the maintenance of the centre, electricity and Mmako’s commission. Any money left over goes towards helping crafters experiment with new concepts.
In the two-and-a-half months it has been open, the emporium has generated about R750 a day. Mmako is happy with this, but says there’s a long way to go before the project realises its full potential. “It’s hard work negotiating with the crafters and getting them used to this new idea,” he says.
He points out that the emporium offers a number of advantages over stalls set up along tourist routes for crafters to sell their wares. “Here I act as the vendor, and they [the crafters] can get on with what they do best. Individual crafters often have a lot of problems when they try to negotiate prices directly with tourists.
“There’s also the problem of transporting the items back and forth on a daily basis, often over long distances. So what they tend to do is hide the items in the bushes, only to come back the next day and find they’re missing.”
Another hurdle is signposting the centre, which is hidden behind trees and fruit- vending stalls at the turn-off to Matsulu. Boerma says it is taking time to persuade the road authorities and local chiefs to allow them to cut down some trees and put up signposts. But he is philosophical: “We’ve come a long way and this centre will be here for many years. We can afford to wait.”