A senior district arts and culture official has vowed support for satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys when he's next in Grahamstown. This was, however, a complete turnround from his initial reaction to Uys' show that he attended last week during Festival.
A senior district arts and culture official has vowed support for satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys when he's next in Grahamstown. This was, however, a complete turnround from his initial reaction to Uys' show that he attended last week during Festival.
Unfamiliar with Uys's work, Cultural Affairs Manager in the Sarah Baartman District office of the Eastern Cape's Department of Recreation, Sports, Arts and Culture, Hasting Mqhayi sat through the first half of the performance with stony-faced displeasure.
And then, he said, he realised the nature of Uys' genius.
"For most of the first half I didn't clap at all," Mqhayi said. "I didn't like the way a white man seemed to be ridiculing black people and their politics, but seemed softer when it comes to whites," he said.
"Then I began to understand what he was doing and how that type of humour can actually help heal the rifts between blacks and whites."
Further discussion at the Isikhumbuzo Conversation – an event organised by The Isikhumbuzo Applied History Institute on the sidelines of the National Arts Festival last Monday – helped to clear the air.
The Institute, based at Rhodes University, serves as a meeting place to celebrate diversity and stimulate creativity.
In a paper published on Public History Commons (publichistorycommons.org), Rhodes History Professor Julia Wells said the concept of the Institute arose out of informal discussion on the theme, 'Re-imagining Grahamstown'.
Isikhumbuzo means “memories” in isiXhosa and the Institute is intended as a vehicle for "bringing together the best of the academic world with community-based artists to tell and create new histories".
Satire is at the centre of this year's National Arts Festival.
In an interview with Grocott's Mail ahead of the Festival, artistic director Ismail Mahomed said, “In taking a strong advocacy and agitating angle, this year’s programme not only honours South Africa’s constitutional right to free speech, but also creates opportunities for South Africans to do what they do best – engage passionately and honestly about life in our country.
“South Africa’s satirists, cartoonists, commentators and court jesters need, now more than ever, to be given the opportunity to be the public voice, the conscience, of the nation.”
Given this theme, it seemed only fitting that the first subject of the Festival's Arts Icon series, was South Africa's best-known and best-loved satirist – especially well-known for his character, Evita Bezuidenhout – Pieter-Dirk Uys who turns 70 this year.
The series featured four of his productions – either starring or created by him – and included screenings of three of his films on the Film Festival circuit.
At Monday's Isikhumbuzo Conversation, Uys encouraged artists in Grahamstown to use their skills to create employment for themselves.
“I became my work, because I have been unemployed since 1975!”
Uys urged local performers to use 'humour' rather than 'jokes', and to make fun of all the situations that make people fearful.
“Humour is when people are in control of bad news, whereas jokes only make people laugh. “Artists need to allow people to forget their fears, and laugh, not because it is funny but because it is a relief.”
The challenge is on for Grahamstown artists to seize the opportunity to illuminate and entertain people while simultaneously dealing with important and serious subjects politics, HIV/Aids, service delivery, sex education, or load shedding – the essence of what good satire is all about.
Uys committed to come to back to Grahamstown some time next year to perform at at Dakawa Art Centre and raise funds for artists. Mqhayi, in turn, promised that he would make sure artists and Grahamstonians will come en masse, come that day in 2016.
