During any casual drive through the Eastern Cape, one is likely to see many young boys with ashen white faces.
These young boys are undergoing the Xhosa customary initiation ritual which will see them entering manhood.
During any casual drive through the Eastern Cape, one is likely to see many young boys with ashen white faces.
These young boys are undergoing the Xhosa customary initiation ritual which will see them entering manhood.
However, in Grahamstown during late June and July each year hundreds of young boys cover their faces in white ash or asbestos and take to the streets of the city.
These boys have nothing to do with the initiation rituals. They are part of the National Arts Festival landscape as they play out a mime tableaux that will robotically dance at the drop of a coin.
For some people visiting Grahamstown, these ‘statues’ add a certain charm to the Festival but for others, they are nothing more than a nuisance.
Regardless of how one views these kids, arts commentators have acknowledged that these young children have often been the subconscious voice of South African politics.
During the 1994 Festival, many of these street children pounded out the new South African anthem to their heart’s delight. Their singing punctuated the mood of reconciliation that became so characteristic of the Mandela era.
During the Rugby World Cup, the haka and the world cup anthem Shozoloza was performed on almost every street corner.
And for the last few years, almost every statue has posed with a plastic gun. This vignette harshly drives home the point of just how violent our societies have become.
Last year, several children armed with their plastic guns created their frozen vignettes and at the drop of a coin they burst into the song that
President Zuma made famous: uMshini wam.
One can therefore only wonder if at this year’s Festival, if at the drop of a coin, each of the statues would unzip their pants and scream Laduma!
These children are also a harsh reminder to everyone visiting the city that the Eastern Cape is so very impoverished that its township children need to take to the streets to make visitors part with
a few coins.
In similar festivals in Europe, young children also take to the streets to busk. However, here they play violins and clarinets in open piazzas and street corners.
Unfortunately, in Grahamstown, township children are not offered any arts education and so musical instruments are clearly not part of their busking vocabulary.
Over the next few months, many South Africans cities will be gearing up for an infl ux of international tourists.
Already some host cities have started a clean-up campaign of their inner-city environments to welcome the hordes of expected tourists.
According to child rights and human rights groups, many street children who for years have been neglected by city authorities are now becoming the casualties of this clean-up operation which is intended to sanitise the cities so that tourists are not subjected to the dismal gloom from which these children’s lives spring forth. Grahamstown’s Merran Marr is a courageous woman.
Where others see gloom and irritation when confronted by street children, she has grasped the opportunity to offer these youngsters the kind of skills that will allow them to confront each of their days with a new sense of hope.
Armed only with a passion to transform their lives, she launched the Art Factory as a year-round initiative through which the lives of the city’s street children can be improved.
Last year, together with the Sakhaluntu Community Theatre group, she rounded together close to a hundred children from the streets and took them to her Art Factory. There they learnt new ways of singing, acting, dancing and how to improve on their miming skills.
She won the support of a number of high profi led professional actors who also voluntarily threw their weight behind the project.
A group ofcircus actors from Argentina also came on board and voluntarily offered their time to teach the children how to juggle, somersault and tumble. This year, the Argentinian group will return to Grahamstown at their own costs to continue to invest in this unique art project.
Merran works quietly and unassumingly throughout the year in Grahamstown’s township communities. There the gogos welcome her when they see her.
They don’t only see her as the umhlungu who wants their children to dance till the cows come home. For these grandmothers, Merran is the kind of catalyst who was long needed in Grahamstown.
She is able to onfront child-begging and take it off the streets by offering the children an escape into a safe space and into a world that is fi lled with wonder, joy and fun.
Her project is supported by the goodwill of artists ho live outside of Grahamstown and some from even as far as Argentina.
Yet, her efforts to rehabilitate street children are benefi ts that accrue to the city of Grahamstown; and for which this city can only be grateful that the number of street children during last year’s Festival was far less than in previous years.
Her approach to clean up the city of its street children is a much more noble way than is currently being adopted by some host cities.
When the World Cup will have come and gone, street children will be pulled out from under the carpet and once again be found in the city’s alleys. In Grahamstown, the children taken off the streets will continue to remain off the streets and they will be looking forward to their next exciting day at the Art Factory.
We can’t all become activists to work towards changing the lives of street children, but we can all make a small contribution to support Merran Marr to become the kind of model that will show the leadership in host cities just how effectively one can deal with the issues affecting street children.
Hopefully then, when we see a young boy with his face covered in white, we’ll know that he is an initiate bravely standing at the threshold of manhood; and not another beggar standing like a statue and silently praying that he’ll have few coins to pay for a plastic gun to practise with before he can buy the real thing.
