Walking the streets of Grahamstown during the National Arts Festival borders on nightmare. Amid the genteel theatre-goers and rowdy privileged schoolkids, the roads are lined with dozens of poverty-stricken children in fixed poses, faces painted white.
On the ground are worn paper cups or boxes containing a few cents and, as one drops a coin, the tiny living statues change position.
Grahamstown’s pervasive poverty was thrown into a different kind of relief this year — apparently by political bling. No one knows exactly who they were but, driving down the high street in their 4x4s and BMWs, blue lights flashing, they were clearly VIPs.
The street children have been there throughout the festival’s 34-year existence, representing a world apart. Before the ”mime artistry”, they sang hymns or the work song, Shosholoza.
They are one of the priorities of the festival’s newly appointed management team. Executive director Ismael Mahomed says the festival will, from this year, begin to ”take responsibility to grow the skills of the children so that as we walk through the streets we see diverse kinds of performances”.
Mahomed said the children of Grahamstown had no exposure to the arts at school. They have copied mime from one another and, incredibly, from Grahamstown’s internationally acclaimed mime artist, Andrew Buckland.
Development means money — and new chief executive Tony Lankester, who says he is ”responsible for what happens offstage”, has spent some time in search of potential sponsors.
Lankester says the festival runs on R16-million a year but is looking for R20-million. He would also like to extend it from 10 to 17 days in 2010, when it will coincide with the Fifa World Cup. ”Every day we extend adds another R1,5-million to the price tag.”
Questioned about a plan for Grahamstown’s impoverished Rhini township, Lankester talks about the Kwam e-Makana Homestay Project, where people ”open up their homes as bed and breakfast venues”.
”We are working with the grading council to get them graded. Last year we booked something like 1Â 600 beds in the township.”
This year the festival also dished out about 7 000 festival tickets to locals in a project called Arts Encounter.
Lankester says the children posing on street corners for money ”present a tragic image. But a week before the festival this year we worked with director Janet Buckland to give them workshops and training. During the festival they also get lunch every day.”
Mahomed says two people have been appointed to follow up on the young street performers to make sure their paltry gains are not spent on ”substance abuse”.
Buckland was nominated Shoprite Checkers SABC 2 Woman of the Year for her work with community drama groups in Grahamstown.
She says ”the interface between the town and the township is pretty dynamic”. She works three days a week in Rhini township. The project is not subsidised by the provincial government, a major festival funder — she gets money from the National Arts Council and private commissions.
Working with her is Michael Mati, a member of a gumboot troupe Buckland calls ”Grahamstown’s answer to the Chippendales”.
Of Mohamed’s plan to train Grahamstown’s children Buckland says: ”If it works, I believe the streets could come alive with little cameos and vignettes. At the moment I don’t stop to look.”
Buckland says Grahamstown has a shelter for street children and that some of the young buskers are doing quite well.
The initiative is in its infancy and its impact is unclear — but it may be a start. Like everything else, the arts cannot escape South Africa’s profound divisions.