South Africa’s National Arts Festival (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: South Africa’s National Arts Festival Bryan W. Schmidt SOUTH AFRICA’S NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL. Various venues, Makhanda, South Africa. June 23–July 3, 2022. South Africa’s National Arts Festival (NAF) built its reputation on being a platform for vital social critique, a major draw for the Eastern Cape economy, and also a kuierfees—a social festival with an immersive, artsy atmosphere. After being forced to move online for two straight years, the 2022 live festival was held in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown) to rousing critical accolade—but with markedly lower attendance than pre-COVID times. Art of all disciplines was still on offer in the many venues scattered around Rhodes University, the 1820 Settlers National Monument, and the central business district, but there was a palpable decline in the bustling street life that animated years past. High Street and Church Square usually brim with pop-up marketplaces, buskers, street musicians, parades, and local children performing as mimes. This year, the few street performers present seemed confined to the NAF’s curated marketplace, the Village Green, and most of the informal vendors who make a living by following the crowds left town after just a few days. The successful pivot to digital over the last two years has given the NAF nimbleness to cope with changing times (and some virtual programming remained available in 2022), but rebuilding the live event’s vibe remains a considerable challenge. Continued caution around COVID was partially to blame for the turnout, but other factors like rapid inflation, gas price hikes, nationwide power outages, and competition from other regional arts festivals likely discouraged many from investing in the trip to Makhanda. But the NAF’s curated program still featured top-caliber work with stellar production values, and the fringe maintained a particularly robust showing from student groups and emerging professionals in the Eastern Cape, the Free State, and KwaZulu-Natal. For a festival that has made significant efforts in recent years to shed its image as an event held for a wealthy artistic establishment that skews disproportionally white, it was encouraging to see that enthusiasm for performing on a national stage continued to have a pull for Black African artists, especially those from rural areas. Click for larger view View full resolution Andrew Buckland, Tshiamo Moretlwe, Siyamthanda Sinani, Mongi Mtombeni, Roshina Ratnam, Beviol Swartz (l-r) in Hamlet. Photo: Alan Eason. Thando Doni, this year’s winner of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Drama, made the bold choice to stage his sponsored production Ngqawuse (The Death of a Nation) almost entirely in isiXhosa. Although this is the dominant language in Makhanda (and many fringe shows were also staged in artists’ vernaculars), the little English provided was somewhat uncommon for a featured work in the curated program. The language choice made a powerful claim within the space of Rhodes University, reinforcing the play’s pointed investigation of knowledge and epistemology as durable vectors of British domination. In recalling one of the Eastern Cape’s most tragic encounters with colonial power, Ngqawuse contended that contemporary social struggles in South Africa must be located within its history. It discusses events from 1856–1857, when Xhosa communities responded desperately to British violence by slaughtering their own cattle in fulfillment of a [End Page 81] millenarian prophecy, leading to mass starvation, and hastening their subjugation. Over 150 years later, Doni showed how the psychic wounds stemming from these events continue to haunt contemporary social life. Like in Zakes Mda’s novel The Heart of Redness, which also examined the cattle killings, Doni created a porous relationship between the past and present. He juxtaposed to the 19th century history of the prophet-ess Ngqawuse (Chuma Sopotela) a contemporary love story between a young man and woman that unfolded from youthful exuberance to tragic ruin. The minimal set featured a dusty, leaf-strewn floor evocative of the Eastern Cape landscape, where both stories could unfold simultaneously through crafty visual composition. Crucially, Doni’s staging self-consciously avoided leading the audience to place blame on Ngqawuse for the slaughter she urged, nor on Xhosa people still grappling with psychic trauma and generational destitution stemming thereof. Doni rendered both...