When Lindsay Bremner, professor of architecture at Wits University, set out to characterise Johannesburg’s top echelon of regeneration managers, including Neil Fraser of the Central Johannesburg Partnership and Johannesburg Development Agency CEO Graeme Reid, she had very little positive to say.
In her recent book Johannesburg: One City, Colliding Worlds, the recipient of the Sunday Times R100 000 Bessie Head fellowship writes, ”While one can only commend their missionary zeal, none among them has the personality, authority (or the colour?) the city needs right now… Together they head up the bunch of suit-and-tied, middle-class, middle aged white men leading the inner-city regeneration drive.”
She describes Johannesburg’s first ”supermayor”, Amos Masondo, as ”lacking the personal charisma to engage public imagination”. While Bremner confesses that her essays ”capture a particular moment in the city’s history”, her observations are characteristic of the framework of judgement South Africans employ in evaluating projects of public concern.
But these concerns are at least challenged when considering the abundance of suburban whites in flashy cars in the inner city: this must indicate some good news.
At the Sci Bono museum on Tuesday this week, snack trays were out in full force.
The Johannesburg Central Partnership kickstarted its conference Cities in Change: Creative Cities/Smart Cities/ Cities of Culture, with the release of the Johannesburg Progress in the City 2004 annual report.
The report sought to answer a key question raised at the conference: ”Is Johannesburg becoming a 24-hour city?” Behind the debate is the issue of why the city centre should shut down at 5pm, given the economic possibilities that exist in maintaining life after dark.
The positive spin is that ”attendance across all of the inner city venues has increased by 6%. The most significant increase has been in the Civic Theatre which saw attendance increase by 34% since 2001. The Johannesburg Art Gallery also saw a significant increase in attendance, up to 25%. Attendance at museums rose by 15% this year on 2003 figures.”
Somewhat disgraced by poor performance figures and sloppy punctuality, the Market Theatre got no mention in the report. But the country’s leading theatre held its own celebration on August 11 when it announced its new appointments. Sibongiseni Mkhize, previously of Pietermaritzburg’s Voortrekker and Ncome museums, would become MD and the artistic director would be Malcolm Purkey, contracted for five years from 2005.
Indications are that Jo’burgers and tourists are beginning to comprehend the role the cultural arc will play, even if it’s not being used to its full potential yet. It stretches from Constitution Hill, through Braamfontein to Newtown. ”In 2004, the overall confidence index for the Cultural Arc was 62,9%, up 29% from the previous year,” the report card reads in characteristic development-speak.
Basically city trawlers are almost convinced that Newtown could be a place to land up for a meal, a drink and a show. The Market Theatre’s new appointments could be just the medicine needed to convince the doubters. But hovering in the shadows of the good news at The Market (its now-abbreviated official name), is the sceptical black press.
It was inevitable that Purkey’s appointment would be greeted with a colour-conscious groan, although his level of his expertise cannot be denied. Much has been made of the fact that his application was up against those of big theatre names like Mbongeni Ngema and Sello Maake ka Ncube.
”The general opinion was that Purkey, as a white theatre director, stood little chance of getting such a post,” wrote Sunday World’s outspoken columnist Shwashwi. ”But at Wednesday’s press conference invited guests knew right away something was ‘wrong’ … The black candidates must have realised they were not up against a struggling artist, but a drama professor who was so determined to impress the panel that he was ready to give up his prestigious academic post.”
It’s almost laughable to characterise Ngema and Maake as ”struggling artists” — both have done ample time in the international theatre big league.
Mkhize’s first week in office has been plagued by the closure of Cold Stone Jug. The Market’s headline act at this year’s National Arts Festival, directed by its associate artistic director Mncidisi Shabangu, transferred to Johannesburg and closed two weeks before it was due to end. ”It really hurts,” says Mkhize. ”Although I don’t come from theatre, I come from the museum sector — even if I looked at the figures of who visited the museum if I got maybe 20 or 30 people a week I felt maybe there was something wrong with the product we were giving to the community. The same thing applies here — we need to do something about our product, our marketing, the way we communicate. We need a team of people putting their heads together to find a solution.”
Mkhize, who has never lived in Johannesburg, is green to say the least. Perhaps this 33-year-old historian’s freshness will serve his new institution well. He comes from a complex environment in which, as the first black museum director, a revision of history was undertaken across the divide known as the Ncome River to the Zulus and Blood River to the Afrikaners.
Mkhize arrives in Johannesburg free from Newtown’s dirt. He is presently living in Melville and says he was startled one night when he drove to town to fill up his car and found a deserted city centre, with none of the 24-hour pumps that he left behind in Pietermaritzburg. Now he is a central player in the drive to make Johannesburg into a 24-hour city.
Purkey, on the other hand, is an old hand, having appeared as a bearded nun in Barney Simon’s opening production of Marat Sade at the Market Theatre in 1976. His legendary production, Sophiatown, in the late Eighties, was an international hit.
Purkey’s vision is concentrated on what theatre means to the average person in the street. ”What is the role of theatre in any community, any society?” he asks. ”I have to believe that we can still love live performance. That we can engage with the pleasure of live performance on the stage. And that we can engage with the pleasure of humour and unexpectedness and the mystery of the human body in space as it dances and performs, speaks or sings. Why shouldn’t we love that for itself? Theatre doesn’t have to be so large and so important that it can’t even get on with its wonderful small work.”
At the Cities in Change conference an altogether different opinion prevailed. Experts from the United Kingdom pointed to the possibilities of large-scale cultural regeneration found in major events. Although circumstances differ, for London this is tied in with their 2012 Olympic bid. For South Africans this is the hope for 2010.