You left me with…

1.) A green piggy bank (in the shape of an elephant). Loot from one of your car-boot sale trawls.  A relic from some Afrikaans bank promotion in the 70’s.

2.) A fridge full of inedible leaves. Watercress wasted on me—my resourcefulness with salad stuff extends to boiled eggs and iceberg lettuce- what does one do with watercress?

3.)A wobbly vintage bed side lamp, fond of conking me on the head during late night reading sessions.

4.)An ID photo, carefully placed amongst our shelf of Chinese wind-up toys, solemn eyes to keep a tin army in check.

5.) A Jasmine vine on the balcony which, in the absence of your patient fingers, now competes with fellow tendrils to topple the TV Ariel and strangle me in my sleep.

6.)A sculpture you made in second year: A concrete cast of your upturned hands, left outside to cup the evening rain.

Each morning I wake and empty two generous palms-full.

Ladies and Gentlemen

As my first outing as Chairperson, I want to pay tribute to my predecessor, Sibongile Kumalo. She was a beacon of light and authority amongst some of our most fragile years in the building of a National Arts Festival alongside the building of a new nation, and I would like to give her thanks.

We make art for many reasons. We view art for another range of reasons. We promote art for yet another whole host of reasons. At the National Arts festival we are meant to deliberate on all of these myriads of reasons why a work of art exists, why it may be shown or not. We also know that the kinds of reasons that are contemplated determine some crucial trends, decisions, and careers paths, praise and criticism alike From Fringe to Main, from Arena to Think Fest, from advert to sponsor, from sore bums to bums on seats, from programming to venues, we deliberate on all kinds of imperatives about art: Its excellence, its innovation, its transformation, its impact, its distribution, its demographic representation, its commerce, its value, its saleability its internationalism and so on and so forth.

But the reason why the Standard Bank Young Artist Award is so special is that it epitomizes the dream in what we do.  It sits at the core of the value of art; it represents the imagination at its most pure. It is Young in the best sense of the word. Not innocent, or flippant, or slight, or just effervescent. The Young Artist Award is about the young but not the unwise. It is young and not careless, it is young and not untrained, and it is young but not unknowing. It is young and brave, courageous, fresh, electric, idealistic, dynamic, pure, unwavering, stubborn, opinionated, hopeful and free: Free from constraint, from compromise, from fitting a mould, from brash commercialism, from trying to live up to industry expectations. Read the rest of this entry »

The following is an extract taken from an essay I wrote in 2008 exploring South African politics and the Performative turn.

I print an extract of this paper as I think it sheds some interesting light on the notorious Mr Julius Malema and his more recent “Kill the Boer” comments.

This was an Academic essay written during the succession battle between Zuma (who at time was awaiting his corruption trial) and Mbeki in 2008, during which (a comparatively ‘milder’) Mr Malema was just beginning to make himself known.

I have decided not to re- edit the extract even though my thoughts and feelings have shifted significantly over the last two years. Still I think it illustrates just how little changes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stupidity plummeted to new lows in Durban this week (with Sunday newspaper headlines that even satirists like Haibo might have been hard pressed to come up with) with the report that acclaimed artist and sculptor Andries Botha’s R1.5 million life-size elephant sculptures, made of recycled wood, metal and rubber, were ordered to be removed from a Durban free-way island, after passing ANC megalomaniacs found them reminiscent of the –shock horror— same unwieldy mammals gracing the IFP logo.

Let’s get one thing straight. With three sculptures, costing as much as this and weighing over six tons each, this was no trivial commission. This was no beaded chandelier or beach-front curio City- managers commissioned to dangle in their reception areas.

Predictably, Durban City-Manager Mike Sutcliff (currently enjoying the more wintry climes of Vancouver, Canada, where he is attending the opening of the Winter Olympics) issued his usual diss to Durbanites for “over dramatising” the situation and claiming that Botha’s Elephants were not passed through the correct procedures and committees before going ahead.

At the cost of R1.5 million one would imagine (but hardly hope) that the that city leaders and planners had pontificated long and hard enough before blowing tax payer’s money on an art work that is now in danger of being reduced to a pile of rubble because it has irked certain “elephant-sized” insecurities within the ANC.

At the same time, can we blame those who commissioned the sculptures? Should we pity eThekwini Municipality head: international and government relations Mr Eric Applegreen?

Could Mr Applegreen have ever in his wildest, woolliest dreams imagine that such preposterous claims would be laid against the sculptures and, more bizarrely, that such claims would seriously ever come to threaten the fate of Botha’s art-works.

The Elephant it seems is no longer allowed to be considered just an Elephant. No longer can we see it as a quintessential African symbol of power, freedom and grace. Rather the ANC would like us to believe that the Elephant© was created exclusively by and for the Inkatha Freedom Party, conceived, not by some higher power, but rather by a loopy illustrator armed with copious amounts of Ganja and a pencil.  Read the rest of this entry »

To kick start each morning of the South African Military Societies International Anglo Boer War History conference, held in Ladysmith two weeks ago, a blank was fired from a British Naval 12 pounder. This I soon discover is the Military equivalent of slugging back a double Espresso first thing the morning. A reverberating shock to attendees’ ear drums and pace makers, prepping us all for the illuminating and often arduous day of battle-speak ahead.

Held at the Platrad Lodge, overlooking significant Anglo Boer War battle terrain, the conference boasted a range of international and local speakers talking on topics that ranged from this War’s many myths, tactics and military blunders as well as revisionist takes on controversial and largely misunderstood historical figures of the time.

With one hundred and ten years having passed since the War, it seems Boer and Brit can now comfortably share the same room without wanting to ‘bliksem’ each other every time things get a little heated. Throughout the conference, areas of research and interest were analysed with healthy amounts of objectivity and the atmosphere reminded one of a jovial old boy’s reunion.

The aim of the conference was to provide a new source of understandings around the causes, events and consequences of Anglo Boer War. As organiser and military historian Ken Gillings stated in his opening address: “Such a conference is arranged so we can learn from the past and ensure that such atrocities never again occur in the future.”

Certainly the seminal purpose of any historical gathering– the very hook on which history’s precarious future hangs– is how to ensure that younger generations of South Africans are made privy to such findings. Read the rest of this entry »

My brother Gregg and his wife Angella (a web developer and illustrator) live on a mountainside in Fishhoek in the Western Cape. Their house overlooks the main swimming beach. On a balmy summer’s day their lounge window frames an idyllic picture: a stretch of white beach lining an azure coastline littered with bathers, surfers, tourists and the like.

From such a height the people on the beach tend to resemble the miniature figurines populating a model train-set or the busy layout of a Where’s Wally picture book.

On Tuesday afternoon, around 15:35 Gregg and Angella heard a commotion on the Fishhoek beach and ran outside to see what was happening. Glancing down at the Fishhoek bay they spotted a giant shadow (of about 150m) gunning towards a colourful bobbing object.  From such a distance they were unable to make out whether this object was a bather, bouy or beach ball?

It’s now pretty well known that the shadow turned out to be a Great White Shark, a suspicion confirmed when they saw the creature break the waves and wrap its jaws around the bobbing lump before submerging itself again and taking the object with it. Gregg being the techno savvy guy he is– with i-phone permanently attached to hip– Tweeted the sighting on micro blogging portal Twitter as fast as it seemed to happen.

His first Tweet read……

Tue 12 Jan at 15:40: Holy shit, we just saw a GIGANTIC shark eat what looked like a person right in front of our house in Fishhoek. Unbelievable.

Seven minutes later he posted a new update……

Tue 12 Jan at 15:47: We are dumbstruck, that was so surreal. That shark was HUGE. Like dinosaur huge.

This was followed by further tweets over the next few hours that included details on the arrival of the emergency services and confirmation that the colourful bobbing lump was indeed a human-being.

What is both fascinating and disturbing to see was how quickly these ‘tweets’ were snapped up by Internet news agencies and how fast news, via the rapid and tangled broadband grapevine, is capable of getting around these days. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Thursday I happened upon an episode of Top Billing on SABC 3. What ensued over the next hour was something, that as much as I try, I will never be able to forget.Excuse me then if you are one of the brides who have in past flashed your million-rand wedding ring at the camera (while the impoverished masses watch on) or if you happen to be one of the interior decorators or house owners responsible for the over the top atrocities that weekly assault our disbelieving eye- balls.

 You need only posses a reasonable sliver of intellect to see that Top Billing (henceforth and aptly abbreviated in this column as T.B) is full of utterly useless information. One minute seducing you with a calorie infested cooking master-class and the next showing you how to burn it all off in time for the summer.  In fact here is a show that aims to teach you a hundred and one ways how to guiltlessly indulge yourself to death in the new South Africa.

Of course if scrap booking, paper mache or mosaic are how you choose to idle your precious minutes away then you will find this essential viewing or if you are one of those house bound mommies who spend fortunes on a themed children’s party for a two year old– who let’s face it– will have absolutely no recollection of the costly celebration in a day’s time. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s vaguely terrifying speaking the words of a Pulitzer winning playwright as she sits inches away from you in an opening night auditorium. Almost impossible to inhabit any semblance of a character when you find yourself imagining her ears to be pricked by your mis-delivery or mis-interpretation of her precious prize- winning words.

Margret Edson, celebrated American Playwright of Wit, was recently flown out by the American Embassy to attend the opening night of Kickstart’s version of the production, directed by Steven Stead and featuring Clare Mortimer in the role of Professor Vivian Bearing. Read the rest of this entry »

I am at a loss trying to write about Steve McQueen’s debut Camera d’Or winning film Hunger –and much has already been written on it. In a nutshell the film follows the death of an IRA hunger striker named Bobby Sands in Belfast’s claustrophobic maze prison in 1981.

McQueen, a visual artist, has a patient and poetic eye, an intuitive sense of how images work  alongside and against one another. Images with an accumulative cinematic clout that left me gasping. It was about twenty moments into the film that I had to press pause on the DVD and step outside to breathe and then sob.  Such emotion, while incited by the narrative events (and harrowing they are) was mixed with elation at the sheer artistry of it all.

Read the rest of this entry »

I hate being advertised too, lumped into a demographic and assumed to be a certain type of individual, who will want to dress a certain way and drink a certain beer while driving a certain car. From a recent experience at the Gateway shopping mall (and more disturbingly a urinal in the gent’s bathroom) I have come to conclusion that advertising has officially gone too far.

Last Friday evening I made the dreadful mistake of braving Gateway (The theatre of shopping) to attend a movie at Cinema Noveau. One of the joys of Noveau is, of course, not having to endure the half- hour bombardment of trailers and adverts used to indoctrinate teeny boppers in the more mainstream movie houses. You know the drill—roller skating meerkats and offensive Kentucky fried stereotypes served up by the greasy bucket load. Teenagers at this mall thankfully avoid cinema Noveau like a plague of impending acne. This, you see, is the designated arena of the ‘arty fartsy’ types. Movies that are just like sooooo annoying cause you have to like read the film half the time. Read the rest of this entry »