Stuart Hess
Police investigating a complaint against artist Mark Hipper dropped the probe this week when the country’s chief censor read them the film and publications Act.
Police telephoned Dr Nana Makaula, CEO of the Film and Publications Board, to arrange to take a statement following a complaint lodged by the National Council of Child Welfare. “I told them they couldn’t possibly be investigating a charge without speaking to us first. They agreed,” said Makaula.
The charge was laid a week after the opening of Hipper’s exhibition at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown titled Viscera, which included an image of a young boy touching his genitalia.
Makaula and her board have become public enemy number one for child abuse and child welfare organisations because of their refusal to support Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Lindiwe Sisulu’s bid to ban the exhibititon.
When she hears the Johannesburg-based organisation, Women Against Child Abuse, described her as running a “dictatorship”, Makaula laughs. “We welcome debate about how we come to conclusions regarding our work,” she says. Most of the board members who decided not to impose any restrictions on the exhibition have children, she says, and care about the kind of society they want them growing up in.
“What we rule will affect the future of our own children as well. I believe that it is the duty of parents to decide what children should see or not see. So generally we try to make things available to adults and then let them decide.”
An angry war of words erupted last week between Makaula and Sisulu regarding Hipper’s exhibition. “Under apartheid,” says Makaula, “everything was banned, because [members of the old censorship board] were working for the ruling party. We are taking a conscious decision to be accountable to the public. This is the work of a bona fide artist. Asking me to ban it is like asking me to find it illegal, and I will find it very difficult to criminalise that work.”
She adds she would look at the matter differently were it done by a well- known paedophile like the late Gert van Rooyen. “A section of the population said the artwork should be banned. I looked at it, but I can’t define an erect penis as pornographic.”
The National Council of Child Welfare’s national director, Andre Kalis, strongly disagrees, saying art like Hipper’s is an overt form of child pornography. “The material is a very expressive form of children in an aroused sexual state,” says Kalis. “We respect freedom of expression, but when that freedom infringes on the rights of other people, especially children, we have a serious problem.”
The council fully supports Sisulu and is in the process of lodging an official complaint with the Film and Publications Board.
The director of Women Against Child Abuse, Nicole Barlow, finds the work degrading to children. “I have viewed the work from all angles and it’s disgusting and has entirely no artistic integrity.
“They [the publications board] do not have the power to dictate to the South African community what their morals and values should be. Before the board criticises the deputy minister of home affairs for `old-order politics’, it should look at itself for practising something far more dangerous, and far more `old-order’ – and that is, they have become a dictatorship.” The organisation has lodged a complaint with the Film and Publications Board.
A home affairs representative said the war of words between Sisulu and Makaula was regrettable and emphasised that the department respects the independence of the board. “The matter was greatly exaggerated by the press, and as far as we are concerned, we believe that this matter will be amicably resolved,” he said.
Makaula, a former acting director of the University of Transkei’s financial aid bureau, believes people should be more expressive about their sexuality. “We in South Africa are not comfortable talking about our sexuality; we have this exaggerated Christian view about life which comes from our conservative background.”