The third annual Pietersburg-Polokwane Book and Film Fair was a sell-out
Stephen Gray
The recent Pietersburg-Polokwane Book and Film Fair was enjoyable beyond the sheer pleasure of its buzz of success. Crocodiles of children scuttling for seats … crowds bursting through glass doors … elbows at the lavish catering … book sales being made.
Peaceful South Africans of Northern Province were not denying themselves their recurring literary frenzy.
Upgraded to city status only in 1986 and now a provincial capital, this neat town at the intersection of the Great North Road and the Tropic of Capricorn used to be noted mostly for its luscious gardens.
There are few public venues beyond the old Jones’s drapery store or Irish House, now converted into the bright green Pietersburg Museum. The theme was the Anglo-Boer South African War, running on perpetual videos. From the National Library they had imported cartloads of related books, with yards of posters and cartoons, plus cabinets of memorabilia belonging to local collectors. In one corner the disgraceful Breaker Morant episode, with the evidence: the murdered Reverend Heese’s blood-soaked prayer book.
Meanwhile, in Seshego, there was a workshop on mother-tongue writing for education; and the Mavani Puppets.
In town there was the inter-school debate and the emotional return of Frederik van Zyl Slabbert to his youthful roots.
There was the new Chris Barnard and the new Dalene Matthee, and clearly an undercurrent of worry about the slipping status of Afrikaans.
Local celebrity and cabaret star, the gorgeous, gangly Gisela de Villiers, saved the occasion more than once.
In a shop-window studio at the Savannah Centre De Villiers interviewed me for Radio Jacaranda. The faces pressed against the glass were certainly not studying my red hair.
I asked one of her young fans what he was fretting to get into at the flicks: Die Wind in the Wilgerbome.
My task was to recreate the drama-filled year of 1943 which Herman Charles Bosman had spent in Pietersburg. He sent the dorp into a spin by living too openly, and unforgiveably happily, with not one, but two wives. Gingerly I avoided jibes about multiple partners perhaps being a custom in those parts. Polygamy goes well with pumpkin souffl and with warthog stew, somehow.
On the last night there was a power contest of the poets. But before that there was to be a story-telling circle (bring your own booze).
Out we trekked in the dusk to the Bakone Malapa Open-air Museum where, beneath a towering execution rock, campfires blazed under the full moon. A flash thunderstorm drowned that one right out, so it was back to the genial City Library and a line-up of now sodden sulkers.
Then – as if by magic – one Philip Mafesa got the spirit and took over. We had not been warned.
Mafesa comes from the unique Tzaneen Museum nearby, where for his living he is able to practise the tradition of story- telling in four languages: Tsonga, North Sotho, Afrikaans and English.
Each tale he tells is nnnillustrated with daft wooden statues of his characters.
Whether it is with lazy wives letting the tokoloshes do their nnnndirty work, or the nnhideously disgruntled hadeda- ibises complaining about yet more taxes, or that quite gross flesh-only eater up to his tricks again, Philip Mafesa knows how to make an audience fly.
The organiser of the fair is Annette Pienaar of the City Library, with Elaine van Rensburg of Pietersburg Marketing. Both insist they should not compete with Grahamstown or the Klein Karoo festivals, as they do not have the facilities.
While their province has the lowest crime rate in South Africa, and hence the welcoming atmosphere, their illiteracy rate is also the highest.
Books are where they stay, with films as spin-offs.
Their motto is to tell “the story of the story”. And their book tables were cleaned out.