Janet Smith
A campaign to revive workers’ culture is at the heart of the Workers’ Library and Museum’s May Day celebrations and 10th anniversary festivities at the Electric Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg, on Saturday May 2.
Omar Don Mattera, Jeremy Cronin, Mi Hlatshwayo, Alfred Qabule, Nise Malange and other South African poets will perform on a workers’ poetry festival bill which is headlined by superstar dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson. And although the appearance of such workers’ luminaries will enhance the programme, the promotion of workers’ own art and culture is going to be emphasised in an era of political neo- patriotism.
A symposium on the revival of workers’ culture has been planned to precede the festival, both as an effort to resensitise and challenge trade unions to invest in their members and to remind workers that the venue belongs to them.
The museum’s subcommittee on culture, whose aim it is to promote working-class art and culture, has previously organised festivals of traditional music and dance and a workers’ film festival.
Subcommittee member Hassen Lorgat, a former trade unionist, says that while the museum offers a remarkable historical record of the lives of the migrant workers who built Johannesburg’s wealth, there is concern that its educational and cultural imperatives could be lost if it becomes nothing more than a tourist attraction.
The revival campaign hopes to encourage an environment at the museum where the rank and file can again find a home for expression and debate on issues that affect their lives, as was the case in the late 1980s when workers’ culture in South Africa flowered.
Saturday workshops have continued for the past decade and a proposal has been submitted to the Gauteng Department of Education for adult basic education and training classes. But Lorgat says the intention now is to “deepen contact with our own constituency, to get our own fundamentals right.
“Even from their own paradigm, the government and the private sector know culture is big money, and it would be short-sighted of both to regard a venue like this as purely utilitarian. Ideology cannot be market- driven and since the ideology of workers was once so much part of their leisure time, we need to recognise that and recreate it here.”
KwaMzilikazi, a new permanent exhibition of historic photographs on the theme of migrant labour, is now on show at the museum, sponsored by the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, the Netherlands government, the Gencor Development Trust, Linda Givon of the Goodman Gallery and Business and Arts South Africa.
Another photographic exhibition on child labour, produced in Sweden by the Museum of Work and Riksutstallningar in association with Swedish Save the Children and the journal Vi, prominently features the work of celebrated South African photographer Peter Magubane, who has documented the exploitation of children in coalyards in Soweto.
Lorgat says the Workers’ Library and Museum intends to present more exhibitions featuring the artistic output of South African workers, and it is hoped trade unions will forward contributions which reflect their history as well.
“We need to reclaim our space for activities and discussion, remembering that while the literacy rate may not be high, functional political literacy is high.
“Potential sponsors should not regard investing in a venue like this as a luxury in an era of fiscal restraint. Rather, it should be seen as supporting the rebirth of a culture which played such a vital role in creating the country in which we live today.”
The Workers’ Poetry Festival starts at 2pm, preceded by the symposium at 11am, and admission is by donation. The exhibitions KwaMzilikazi and Child Labour are open Mondays to Saturdays from 9am to 5pm