Playwright and poet, Maishe Maponya, is Johannesburg’s latest high power cultural appointment. He shares his ideas with HAZEL FRIEDMAN
‘I WAS called an angry young man, you know,” Maishe Maponya laughs gently at the recollection. With bene-volent smile and trademark scull cap framing his face like a tight-fitting halo, he looks positively papal in disposition (perhaps an inappropriate metaphor, given his undisguised distate for titles).
It’s impossible that the cultural officer-to-be of Johannesburg’s Southern Substructure could be described in anything but benign terms. Yet anger (and hunger) have been two of the driving forces in his life. And when the fury threatened to consume him, he channelled it through ubuntu. It is this unflagging belief in the African principle of humanism that informs Maponya’s cultural vision today.
“I’m a firm believer in collective responsibility”, he says, outlining his plans for transforming one of Gauteng’s most neglected (and contradictory) cultural turfs — parts of Mondeor, Lenasia and Soweto — into vibrant cultural communities. “It wasn’t a political appointment. I see myself as serving a broader community in order to help arts and culture become part and parcel of communities in a non- partisan way.” He adds: “Without deference to protocol.”
Maponya can hardly be described as a yes man. A renowned playwright, director, poet and performer, his work — for example, plays like Hungry Earth and Jika (written in the late 1970s and 1980s, respectively) — have been infused with a militant, yet fiercely individualistic political consciousness.
To many, his writing — passionate, metaphorically dense and inescapably didactic — typified the black consciousness protest theatre of the times. Yet there remained something strongly aloof within Maponya.
This might to some extent explain the title of his most recent work, a performance for Biko week in September called Monuments/ Bambata: I Read what I Like. Written between 1992 and 1994, it offers a collage performance comprising epic poetry and excerpts from his play Gangsters, performed against a backdrop of percussive instruments. Critic Gwen Ansell described it as “quite brilliant” and bewailed the fact that it was not part of the September Arts Alive lineup.
Then again, Maponya is used to being sidelined. In 1981, after failing repeatedly to gain sponsorship, he took Hungry Earth overseas “out of my own pocket”.
But he did not join the brothers and sisters in exile because “the struggle was here, on many fronts. And, despite his widely acknowledged intellectual acumen, Maponya has remained curiously low key, and his voice, at times, surprisingly soft. Although he sits on the board of the (will-it won’t-it be transformed?) Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal (Pact), his outspokenness against the presence of the cultural old guard is less vociferous than one might think.
Presently a senior lecturer in the drama department at Wits university, he’s been invited to perform his work at Unisa, but never on home turf. Maybe the reason he takes a less visible seat in the front row is because he does not see cultural achievement as golden goose of self-gratification. “I really don’t mind being side-lined,” he says
“I’m not sure yet how I will implement my vision. I just want to go in and see what’s in place, understand the existing structures and their shortfalls. That will entail delegating and putting competent people in positions of responsibility. This will mean assuming a less visible, more humble, but no less committed role in cultural transformation.” He adds: “We need to understand who we are, acknowledge how our history has informed where we are and embrace the need for co- operation without blind consensus …”
He quotes from I Read What I Like: “… recapturing ourselves in the rubble of facades, / Every piece a victory, / We’ll have to create, / A monument of pieces, / every calendar day a monument, / every monument a victory, / every victory a monument …”