Charl Blignaut
Oom Paul Kruger’s statue has stood for 44 years on Church Square in Pretoria, watching nothing changing at all.
Unlike Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s bust on Red Square, he may survive the shake-up planned for the capital’s inner city. If all goes according to plan, Oom Paul will find himself in the centre of the funkiest parliamentary zone imaginable.
The area surrounding the square is the favoured venue for Parliament should it relocate to Pretoria.
In South Africa’s most ambitious cultural urban renewal development to date, the combined metropolitan Pretoria councils have given the green light to the development of a massive new public cultural space – stretching from Church Square to the State Theatre three blocks down.
Although the government has remained coy for four years about the relocation of Parliament to Pretoria from Cape Town, Pretoria is proceeding full steam ahead.
Says the programme manager of the Pretoria City Council Inner City Partnership, Johnny Coetsee: “Look, no announcement will be made until after the elections, but the rumours are strong that Pretoria will house Parliament, and the area around Church Square is our favoured venue. If so, Parliament and a cultural precinct will complement one another.”
Kruger’s gaze could witness a tussle between politics and art; the venue that is to form the core of the cultural precinct, the glorious old Capitol Theatre just off Church Square, is tipped by some to be the ideal spot for parliamentary chambers.
For the coalition behind the cultural developments, it will again become the grand old theatre it was in its heyday.
It will have the use of the venue for two years before its fate is decided – and in that time it plans to prove that it will be sacrilege to deprive artists of a politically neutral new performance space in Pretoria.
Either way, the surrounding cultural precinct – regardless of the decision over Parliament’s relocation – is a fait accompli, with plans already in motion.
Initiated by Orangerie Coalition Champions, the cultural consultants to the inner-city councils, the project has the backing of the City Council of Pretoria, the Metropolitan Council of Pretoria, the State Theatre and all relevant property owners in the area.
Together they are working towards cordoning off the heart of the inner city to develop numerous shops, restaurants, performance venues, office spaces and residential apartments.
They will also develop the street to create open-air performance platforms, sports facilities such as a street soccer field, a skate ramp and a basketball court.
They will also continue to utilise Church Square as a venue for military events and – if it should indeed come about – the ideal arena for Parliament’s increasingly Afro-chic pomp and ceremony.
“The idea is to give the ordinary citizens of Pretoria a space for culture. People who cannot afford tickets for the indoor venues will be able to make use of the outdoor space,” enthuses Lam Ebershn, who, together with her partner, Elsa Lamb, initiated the idea.
“We want to see 24-hour activity and are inviting all of Pretoria’s artists to make contact with us. We want to see film festivals and buskers and street bashes.
“We are asking property owners to buy into the idea of creating smaller shops, with shop owners living above their businesses if they choose.
“As a residential space we would like to attract visiting artists and really get the city on the international circuit.”
Ebershn’s dream fits in perfectly with the radical political changes that have allowed the city to shake off its dusty, conservative image as the former stomping ground of apartheid’s architects.
Already a dense block of museums is attracting tourists to the inner city area and the 80-odd foreign embassies resident in the city have all been lobbied by Ebershn to consider what kind of contribution each of their countries will be able to make to the precinct and to promoting tourism.
For three years now, Ebershn and Lamb have worked tirelessly on the project, which began soon after they bought one of the exquisitely preserved old buildings just off Church Square and turned it into a coffee shop and bar called Caf Riche.
>From their vantage point at the edge of the square, they began to dream of the possibilities for development that are now coming to fruition, finding remarkably few obstacles in their way.
The only problem that remains is the fate of the grand old Capitol Theatre, with its sweeping staircases and regal pillars.
Built in the late 1920s, the theatre-cum- cinema was dismantled by the apartheid government during the Seventies – to be used as a car park exclusively for government officials.
Coetsee, however, dismisses any possible conflict, downplaying the need for the space to house chambers and stressing that the council wants to see the theatre fulfil its original purpose.
“Parliament,” he says, “will also need a venue for functions, so maybe the Capitol Theatre can serve a combined role – as a theatre and as a function hall.”
The possibility is intriguing: a whole new generation of politicised artists and a fresh new generation of cultured politicians.