The same boat

The 4th World Summit on Arts and Culture has taken its delegates into the heart of Johannesburg, causing curiosity among its 100-odd international visitors about the nature of the inner city. Standing on the piazza outside Museum Africa, in a recess, a distinguished gentleman from Tanzania in a full dashiki approached me, inquiring whether the museum is, as a rule, surrounded by high wire fences when there are major events happening within. I told him about corporate backed jazz events that happen in Newtown that have, in the past, been cordoned off with revelers having to pay dearly to get within enclosures.

There have indeed been free concerts open to the public in Newtown, most of these happening on public holidays. For example on Women’s Day there is an annual bash thrown for all to attend. My new Tanzanian friend asked whether these got out of hand, and I couldn’t seem to remember an incident to report. He was curious about the residents of the city (as opposed to the suburbs), who would attend free events in Newtown. I told him that free concerts probably get a mixed crowd of migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, French-speaking Africans and local students from the low-cost Brickfields development.

His next question concerned xenophobia, whether free concerts with a multicultural crowd don’t degenerate into threatening stand-offs between groups — if there is no adequate crowd control. All this was discussed on a red carpet leading into the museum where methods of ‘intercultural dialogue” are being hotly debated as the summit wears on.

I wondered whether the Tanzanian would meander beyond the confines of the summit, and what he would find, as I watched him head off to lunch through a turret of ushers, down a now-fenced-off passage towards the Market Theatre where the meal would be served.

Johannesburg is a recommendable site to observe problems affecting cities in transition. As Lola Young, former Head of Culture at the Greater London Authority and current chairperson of the Commonwealth Group on Culture and Development summarised it: growth of inequality, economic recession, globalisation and environmental issues. Given the scope of problems affecting city populations, the Commonwealth Group on Culture and Development has decided that development itself must be humanised (a declaration is being drafted) and that’s where the debate on using culture comes in — as a fresh approach, to supply ‘a new narrative on development”.

Njabulo Ndebele, novelist and academic, delivered the summit’s second keynote address after Young on September 23 and he began with an anecdote from his time as vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town.

Ndebele told the story of a group of white students holding a bash on campus at a time when the university had recently opened up to black students. The tussle at dance parties between groups eager to play their music amounted to a ‘low-key culture war”. While the familiar, he said, ‘restores balance”, South Africans have engaged in a debate about whether it is worth retaining the old balance or whether it is useful ‘to get one with a fresh perspective in one’s life”.

While difference invites curiosity, without prior processes of engagement difference also brings about crisis. This was seen in the production of cartoons lampooning the Islamic Prophet Mohammed produced in Denmark in 2005, Fire, Deepa Mehta’s lesbian-themed movie made in India in 1996 and Mbongeni Ngema’s AmaNdiya song that was banned from radio airplay by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission in 2002 because it was seen to be a vitriolic attack on the Indian community in South Africa.

The build-up to these conflicts, Ndebele has observed, comes with a period of contemplation before the explosion that ‘leaves the world as it never was before”. Ndebele recommends a policy formulation that allows for dialogue during the period of contemplation that will deepen understanding when strangeness is encountered.

Such a policy formulation, then, could be the task of the World Summit on Arts and Culture that had opened on September 22 with an extravaganza directed by offbeat theatre director Brett Bailey at the Alexander Theatre in Braamfontein.

The multimedia dance piece showed three disparate groups in conflict, broadly representing the ‘meeting of cultures” theme of the summit.

Through the work, choreographed by Gregory Maqoma and with music by Congolese Mapumba Cilombo, the audience was able to enjoy a funky but visceral ritual that portrayed the horrific reception African migrants receive when they travel by boat to greener pastures in search of a better life: assault by border authorities, rape and economic exploitation.

Landscape projections were accompanied by statistical information noting how many migrants traverse the globe and how native populations view unwelcome outsiders.

A meaningful quote was projected, once uttered by assassinated clergyman Martin Luther King. It was greatly appreciated by the deep-thinking, multicultural crowd who have travelled far in search of meaning: ‘We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”

The 4th World Summit continues in Johannesburg until September 25.