It has been a few years since I packed up my Volkswagen Polo and made the mini-trek to Grahamstown for the annual National Arts Festival, held in the faltering shadow of a monument to some settlers who made their debut in 1820.
Like a struggle bookkeeper neatly aligning numbers, the 30th festival coincides with 100 years of Rhodes University, 50 years of the International Library of African Music, 10 years of democracy and the launch of the 800 Rooms project — a festival accommodation initiative of the Eastern Cape government to spread festival wealth to the townships.
The city boasts new shopping centres, new restaurants and new university buildings, but poverty is still one of the overriding impressions of this settler town, where everyone and their grandmother is a car guard.
Pull up at a stop street and five people will offer to look after your vehicle while you wait to turn right.
Previous festivals have featured groups of kids for every 3m, belting out their version of Shozaloza as an encouragement to festinos to move the change in their pockets from areas of high concentration to the makeshift collection cans of low concentration.
This year, it is ensembles of children miming statues. Andrew Buckland has been busy. Pop a few coins into the pizza box recycled as a money container, and the “statue” changes shape, with the kids freezing in new positions. Take a few coins out of the container (as one drunk tried to do) and the “statue” erupts into George Bush-like attacks.
Ten years of rainbow nation festivals later, the racial divides at the festival largely remain and, in some cases, appear to be getting worse.
White stallholders flog their wares at the Village Green hypermarket while black micro-enterprises clog the city square, where the same craft sold at the Village Green is sometimes available at a much cheaper price. Here, French is practically the official language as refugees from countries north of the Limpopo seek their place in the African renaissance sun in freezing Grahamstown.
Fringe shows devised and performed by black performers are seen mainly by black audiences and the odd German tourist, whereas productions by their white counterparts attract primarily white audiences.
White festinos and performers hang out in restaurants such as The Long Table and La Galleria, while black festival-goers and players — many of whom are dependent on sponsorship from provincial government departments to be at the festival — boost the coffers of Steers.
The usual festival challenges prevail. How does one survive the residence breakfasts? Where can one buy decent thermal underwear? How does one choose between fringe productions?
Perhaps it is because this is the city of cathedrals that there are so many revivals. Old shows making their third or fourth festival appearance generally seem to be more likely to put up the “at least half-full” signs than new shows.
Theatre stalwart Marthinus Basson bemoans the absence of young turks bringing a brand of exciting new work, while veteran festival watcher and Cue editor Darryl Accone opines incisively that “in our democracy it seems that many artists want to be liked, not regarded with suspicion as watchdogs of current freedoms.
“Revivals of plays celebrated for their fierce, anti-apartheid stance appear now to be the staple repertoire of some theatres. On our stages there is little sign of the new questions of social justice and urgent issues such as those posed by the new left and the Landless People’s Movement.”
Certainly, the evidence of this year’s festival has pointed more to the celebration of 10 years of democracy and rainbowism than to the practise of the fundamentals of either.