Art of protest: Vaal Generationperformed at Artists Against Corruption’s show. Photo: JS Design
The use of the arts as a vehicle to fight socio-political problems is a familiar feature in South Africa. The arts allow for discontent to be interrogated and expressed in a palatable way, for the ordinary person to easily consume, learn and, hopefully, heal.
Although it is one of the thorns that affects the daily lives of South Africans, corruption has largely become normalised.
“Throughout South Africa’s history, we know that the arts have played a pivotal role in activating citizens and been used as a medium of bringing citizens together under the banner of different social justice causes — and it has a way of breaking through without offending,” says Joanna Atkinson during our interview.
With a presence in more than 120 countries, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit provides services in the field of international development and cooperation.
Atkinson is the communications adviser for the Transparency, Integrity & Accountability Programme (TIP), an anti-corruption project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs. The programme is implemented in South Africa by her organisation.
Atkinson says TIP has three pillars.
“The first one is active citizenry, second is institution development and the other is multi-stakeholder partnerships. So, in our pillar of active citizenry, the TIP conceptualised this idea of involving the arts sector, hence Artists Against Corruption.”
The initiative culminated in a final show hosted at the Market Theatre Laboratory in Johannesburg last week, aimed at involving the arts in the fight against corruption in South Africa, with a view to shifting social norms and behaviours that perpetuate the culture of corruption.
Last year, TIP started conceptualising Artists Against Corruption by initiating discussions with various groups in the arts sector.
The thinking, Atkinson adds, was to codesign an initiative that would be owned and operated by the arts sector and would not belong to just one entity.
After a few months involving a series of workshops and performances in communities in Gauteng and Mpumalanga, seven pilot projects were selected for the initiative.
Cultural worker Francois Venter was a producer at the show.
To give it relevance and coherence, cultural workers Jonathan Rees and Francois Venter were invited to produce the final show that brought together art disciplines such as poetry, theatre and live music.
Arriving on a Joburg spring afternoon of taxi hooting and commuters making their way to the Bree Street taxi rank, I entered the venue to a courtyard filled with creatives and eager art lovers.
I pulled Venter aside in between coordinating the evening’s activities, and he told me his and Rees’s task as the show producers was multilayered.
“In the beginning, around February, there were lots of conversations of what we could be doing. Then we thought of inviting organisations and individuals we thought could make an interesting contribution.
“The first thing was to choose different collectives with talents in different disciplines,” Venter says.
He indicated how not everyone they called on wanted to participate, often due to the time constraints.
“The contract came through and the artists had six weeks to produce work. We then worked with those artists to develop an idea for a pilot project that would fit within the theme fighting against corruption.
“There were grants for different collectives to work for six weeks to create something but all seven groups had different ways of working.”
The call was not for artists to directly criticise corruption.
“We also didn’t say artists must make plays, poems or dance pieces that say anything specific about corruption. What we said to each collective was that there is a problem in our society, but you can think about the problem in different ways, and do different things about it.”
Advocacy group Sticky Situations, for instance, conducted research to give a snapshot of stories shared by artists, highlighting how they have been impacted by corruption in the arts sector.
Truth is a Poem, by Word N Sound, Venter adds, focused on the effect of corruption on poets using an anonymous Dipstick Research Survey, workshops and TIP Digital Slam on the theme of “Truth and Anti-Corruption”.
The Sharpeville theatre group Vaal Generation of Stars and Mpumalanga-based The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative looked at the influence of corruption on basic services, like water supply, for ordinary people in their communities.
The Political Cartooning workshops, facilitated by Jonathan “Zapiro” Shapiro, questioned how an artist with a satirical view on the socio-political reality would be able to express that to the rest of the world.
Shifting norms: The Artists Against Corruption initiative was hosted at the Market Theatre Laboratory in Joburg for a show
“Instead of deciding on one strategy and trying to stuff all the projects in, we chose seven interesting projects who did completely different things,” Venter says.
Some of the challenges artists face due to corruption include misappropriation of funds meant for projects, unmaintained art spaces in communities, the culture of sexual favours, exploitation and ostracisation.
For theatre practitioner Modisana Mabale, part of Vaal Generation of Stars, gatekeeping has been his personal experience.
He says due to the norm of having gatekeepers in the industry, when artists speak out against corruption, they end up being victimised, thus losing potential opportunities to perform their art.
“You can’t have access to main theatres if you speak out, hence, we try to create alternative spaces for artists to perform because the main theatre spaces that are government-owned sometimes become toxic,” he says.
Regarding communities speaking out against corruption, Mabale says they too are victimised, especially the elderly. For the evening, Mabale and the theatre group invited a group of elders who were at the Sharpeville Massacre on 2 March 1960 to attend.
“Some still have [the scars of] bullet wounds on their bodies. So, as young people from the community, we had to come up with ways to retell the stories through theatre because some of the stories, if they tell it themselves, they might be victimised, so we embody their stories through theatrical expression.”
Venter emphasised, in this inter-generational conversation, artists and ordinary communities need to understand, and fight against, corruption.
“We asked the collectives and people in the community to bring old and young people. Because one of the problems with our political culture is that we don’t have intergenerational memory.”
The resounding call echoing in the Market Theatre Laboratory corridors was for more transparency and accountability from those meant to empower artists and communities.
Other collectives for the evening, like BUWA! by IKS Cultural Consulting, advocated for whistleblowing and unity.
Venter adds that, for artists and communities to be immune to corruption, unity is vital.
“Unity is so important because, if one person in the community becomes a whistleblower, but they become isolated, hurt and intimidated, everybody suffers. But, when the community stands around that whistleblower, then it’s a different situation. So, it’s about how people think about themselves within a particular situation.”
Certainly, this sense of unifying people was evident in the lead-up to, and on the night of, the final show.
Venter, Rees and the TIP team created a multi-act experience where the audience came into the space as individuals but walked out with a unified understanding, joy and hope.
“When people arrived, they were scattered, then the first act happened in the courtyard, then they moved together to sit in the theatre for an hour. They came out and sat down again by the courtyard for more performances and then, at the end, we sang Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrica, and were all united,” Venter concluded.
As I ordered my Uber, I thought about the last time I was revitalised by artists using their talents to speak truth to power. It was during the #FeesMustFall student marches, where in the middle of the streets while marching to Union Buildings in Pretoria, theatrical performances took place, expressing frustrations to the government of the day.
Our forebears in the arts space also had to fight the apartheid system with words, sound and movement. Artistic expression lands differently from any potbellied speeches on podiums.
Artists Against Corruption brought together artists, activists and activities that attempted to spark a movement for social change and to stand against corruption.
The initiative has surely blown a resonant whistle within the arts sector and communities on a theme many dare to challenge.