Matthew Krouse
The opening item on the programme of the National Arts Festival didn’t happen. The print of Athol Fugard’s 1991 celluloid version of Road to Mecca was damaged and replaced by his earlier Boesman and Lena. This gave patrons a chance to prepare a comparison of the version currently in production, with Angela Basset and Danny Glover.
But this small setback doesn’t seem to have rubbed off on the general launching of the event that kick started with mad aplomb. The big moment was definitely the arrival of this year’s patron Nelson Mandela at 12.30pm on June 29, complete with helicopters, praise poet Zolani Mkiva, the Masekheke Youth Choir, balloons and the inimitable Madiba jive.
The streets of Grahamstown were jam-packed with local folk who probably won’t attend another event on the festival itself. So it was their moment because, after all, Grahamstown is their town too. Even in the gale-force wind they treated their visitors, including Mandela, to an eccentric Eastern Cape “hello!”
The wind blew so hard that, in all probability, few spectators heard the old man make some truly reconciliatory remarks about the 1820 Settlers – the original cause clebre. Then, with the words, “I declare the 1999 Standard Bank National Arts Festival open,” Mandela cut a ribbon as music filled the air.
Later that night remarkable thing occurred: the simultaneous world premieres of two important local musicals. Certainly, those who invested their pennies in the festival this landmark year must have been terribly divided, not knowing which of these two killer items to attend.
On the Rhodes University campus Mandla Langa and Hugh Masekela’s Milestones opened with diva Sibongile Khumalo in the lead role. On the other side of town Love, Crime and Johannesburg prevailed, produced by Junction Avenue Theatre Company that hasn’t done much since its Eighties success Sophiatown.
Directed by Malcolm Purkey, it’s a Brechtian foray into the specter of crime in the golden city, loosely based on the controversy around the arrest and imprisonment of Mzwakhe Mbuli. Brilliant one liners sum up the contradictions of a life where “it is better to be a bank robber than a bank clerk”. The play’s no cliff hanger, but it’s a mild example of the kind of post-apartheid protest theatre currently at play.
Without making excuses for the crime epidemic, it hints at the world of the new underground, complicated by political alliances, corruption and a fair degree of bad sex. Dealing with the past, at one stage the play even laments the passing of the “gentleman gangster”, suggesting that at some stage the criminal life was more respectable than it is now.
At 9pm on July 29 the jazz programme of the festival swung into gear, and there was barely standing room at the Viva Madiba concert, honouring the patron of the whole affair. Deep into the night the veteran African Jazz Pioneers blew so hard, turning the warm wind into the icy winter chill.
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