The best of both worlds
Jun 2 2009 by David Whetstone, The Journal
Just back from South Africa, David Whetstone reports on cultural links with the North East. Pictures by Jenny Dewar
Port Elizabeth overlooks the newly named Nelson Mandela Bay with its beautiful beaches and dramatic rock formations. It has a Victorian opera house, a lively morning newspaper, an art gallery with an ambitious acquisitions policy and a new football stadium that will host some of the World Cup matches next year (and whose own football team has just been relegated!).
Yes, you don’t have to plumb the outer reaches of credibility to see similarities between here and there. But over there they are still finding their way. Less than 20 years ago the black people who now occupy many of the influential jobs were deprived of many basic human rights.
Small wonder that the opera house has to work hard to find its audience when the largest potential part of it used to be banned from entering.
Small wonder that a nation which for decades turned a belligerent face against international sanctions might not have what we would consider to be the most adventurous approach to culture and the arts.
On our trip we met quite a lot of frustrated people who struggled for years under an unsympathetic or hostile regime. There were art school lecturers with not enough books, theatre managers with no subsidy and artists struggling simply to exist.
On the other hand, there appeared to be a wealth of talent. On our journey we were accompanied – and filmed incessantly – by Simphiwe Vikilahle, a township playwright whose drama The Journey is being brought to the stage by North East theatre company Taproot.
At the Egazini Outreach Project, Grahamstown, we watched a drama group comprising kids from the townships who have fallen foul of the law but now have the chance to channel their energies positively.
Kids like these have been benefiting from the experience of North East theatre professionals such as Annie Rigby and Amy Golding, who left our party to conduct workshops in a remote area of Eastern Cape. At isolated Gqumahashe Primary School we saw where an amphitheatre designed by Newcastle architect Chris Allen, of Ryder, is being built. It is going to enrich a lot of lives.
The indigenous art and craft skills of Eastern Province have wowed many visitors and caught the eye of Helen White, a Swallows Partnership delegate from Tyne & Wear Museums. An exhibition featuring South African beadwork may be on its way. Musically, this is fertile ground. Waves of classically trained black South African musicians are not yet emerging from the townships of Eastern Cape, but the vocalists will take your breath away.
