As he takes over the Market Theatre’s training and development laboratory, Matjamela Motloung has written a flippant but provocative article for Applause magazine lamenting the lack of transformation in the performing arts. “I know,” he writes, “because I am one of a few at the dinner table.” He calls on someone — presumably himself — “to be a champion of our cause, yes, our cause, black people’s cause”.
The problem as Motloung sees it is that there are parasitic “middle-age white” directors, writers and choreographers who overshadow more talented black artists; white administrators who favour the mediocre talents of their white brethren “ahead by virtue of their race”; white managers who resist giving black artists opportunities outside of community theatre; and the endless rounds of meetings, indabas, makgotlas and other “developmental crap that is designed to slow us down as a race”. Finally, Motloung exhorts black artists: “Let’s do it because we can, just like our fellow white practitioners.”
Perhaps it was no more than a call to action and a statement of pride and faith in black talent Motloung wished to make, but it has been ill received by his colleagues such as Craig Higginson and by arts writer Robyn Sassen. In an emotional open letter, she describes his views as “bitching”, a “tirade” and suspects “the arts are being used as a thinly disguised veil to crusade political agenda”.
Higginson, alluded to by Motloung as a “mediocre white writer”, comments, “I am sympathetic to the frustrations of any theatre practitioners, of whatever colour, who feel they are not emerging fast enough. What I am not sympathetic to are those who think it is below their dignity to learn and develop their craft — as if craft is somehow some sort of imperialist plot.” Higginson fears the position presented by Motloung is, “often to simply get rid of anyone who is ‘other'”.
Higginson, a dramaturge at the Market, cites Motloung’s appointment as evidence that transformation “is happening at the Market Theatre far quicker than we are often given credit for”.
These regrettable exchanges, as with the brouhaha around Lebo M’s outburst at the Naledi Awards, create imaginary battlefields yet litter them with real bodies — resentment and hurt feelings that close debate.
The bigger picture is that as the Thabo Mbeki government has failed to deliver on its manifesto, the movement has shifted from Nelson Mandela’s over compensatory policy of reconciliation to Africanist speech-making. This is a particularly disempowering rhetoric. It undercuts liberalism and leaves white leftists, which constitutes the vast majority of white artists, stranded. Motloung has hit this nerve.
Non-blacks feel racial talk obscures and over simplifies, since they know black as well as white administrators who are doing precious little for emergent artists and see talented white artists among those who are struggling.
Yet it must be acknowledged that opining like this is born of anger and tremendous frustration among a broad swathe of black artists. They face more than a little cultural arrogance from producers and critics and “unreconstructed whites”.
Theatre managers need to be proactive and sensitive to these concerns, not simply defensive. There must be an admission, regardless of the reasons, that on the developmental side theatre has not delivered satisfactorily. Apathetic administrators, who rest complacently on their theatre struggle credentials (Motloung dismisses this as “sentimental bullshit”), stand warned.
If one seriously wishes to address the failure of transformation in the arts, hammering on about how the industry reflects the broader South African reality is a soft target. Of course, the greatest beneficiaries of the demise of apartheid and the macro-economic boom that followed were the already empowered, be they advantaged minorities, elites from the homelands or overseas-educated exiles. How could it be otherwise?
The real culprit is government’s poor implementation of a flawed arts and culture policy and gross under funding for the first decade after democracy. Cultural institutions and resources remain concentrated in the urban centres in previously white Group Areas; the highly subsidised state theatres under commercial pressure favour the already empowered rich producers; white administrators were told to transform, penalised and then left to their own devices; the funding bureaucracy ignores grassroots realities and entrenches the status quo; inscrutable application forms and the requisite registered non-profit companies with audited financials for three years exclude emerging artists, who turn to existing “white” companies for administration. The list goes on.
And if government is to be pilloried, so perhaps should big business, private patrons and foundations that fund the arts without much imagination or research.
Theatre doesn’t exist outside of its audience, and black theatre will see its heyday once audiences transform themselves, as is happening with coloured theatre in the Cape. This is where the commercial reality serves as an impediment to transformation blamed on administrators. If plays have to engage with audiences at many of our festivals and theatres that remain stubbornly white, well then, educating the elite is also a worthy pursuit.
The pressure is mounting because transformation has taken too long. Opportunities are scarce, resources are hard to access, be it funding for an artwork or obtaining a child grant from government. In a climate of growing impatience, our society is re-tribalising.
In reviewing transformation in the arts, a distinction should be drawn between administrators and creative artists. There is no diploma or MBA for creative talent. Talented artists throughout the world struggle for years to gain recognition and, once given the chance, the only recognition that counts is their success with audiences, their peers and the critics.
In the 1960s, Ben Masinga didn’t sit back for producer Ian Bernhardt and the Union Artists, but struck out on his own. Sam Mhangwane toured for 12 years with his own musical. Gibson Kente left Dorkay House and without subsidy and in the dark days of apartheid managed to sustain three touring companies in continuous employment through the 1970s, paying his best actors handsomely. Ironically, while these legendary entrepreneurs were running successful black theatre companies in the townships, the more ideological Black Consciousness theatre was foreign funded, under white tutelage and often performed overseas.
Motloung’s critics believe he is the vanguard of a resurgence of Black Consciousness theatre in the service of the national democratic revolution. The very idea fills them with horror.
The ultimate question is whether the status quo has derailed any attempt to achieve a rainbow South African theatre, one arising from a collaboration of artists rooted in some creative synergy. Surely, it will never be too late to give up the vision of a non-racial society with a non-racialised theatre.