The ANC 103

The ANC..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Shake Shake Shake............................................................................................................................................................................................To the left............................................................................................To the right....................................UP............................................................DOWN (Literally its going DOWN) ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

 KUZE KUSE (e'Cubana) 

                       

VIVA ANC 

Stop it with the Jesus Factor Already

Let me first start by acknowledging that this blog was completely unplanned / but had to happen, on the back of a conversation that started on my friends Mncedisi Shabangu's Facebook update/ the conversation took twists and turns, got emotional at times but most of the things that had to be said were said and I guess this is just adding to the voices that have already set the tone on what I am saying here. 

You see four years ago on January 21 I asked a very basic question about the ownership of the industry and because I was deemed angry I  apparently used what one could call "a more than savoury language" to describe the feelings that I had about the issues affecting black creatives for the 16 years I had been in the business/ and certainly since Blacks could be allowed into white buildings called theatres/ you see for me I had reached the ceiling of tolerance in trying to break though the ceiling created by gatekeepers of the whiteness of theatre/ to this day Blacks are still dying paupers its not only mahlathini shame/ while while white people in the arts are sorted/ and now we are dealing with the "new white" the black gatekeepers!  

For many years it felt like we were about to breakthrough and just when we thought we were there we were shipped off to some training/development area/ festival/ program or shit like that but the exercise had been communicated clearly amongst the gatekeepers/ "whatever you do, make sure that the blacks remain in the perpetual state of development; those that breakthrough ensure they see the world as we see it"/ Of course for me this had dire repercussions I had to be homeless, my kids had to go to inferior schools and no one would touch me because I had been blacklisted/ was an anti semite/ a racist/ an un-talented black disturbing the peace/ everyone was singing "kumbaya"/ here i was singing "Gibela Phezukwendlu"/ my invitations to the dinner tables were rescinded/ my associations were disassociations/ the then CEO of the Market Theatre called me "emotionally unintelligent but didn't have the balls to fire me, left it to the acting CEO and the CFO/ so now what do you do when you have lost everything and have nothing lose?/ I could have kept talking/ apologised (NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN)/ and in the end I exiled myself/ but it saddens me that after sitting on the sidelines the status quo has worsened shame. 

So in the four years that I have been exiled what has happened?/ Has anything changed (for the good or bad?)/ Well judging from the discussion yesterday things have gotten worse than they had ever been/ now we can't even claim its racism because our people are in charge yet black creatives find themselves at the bottom of the pile/ or worse exiled back to their homelands (unless you are me of course my homeland is Soweto so I have had to find a self selected homeland)/ Why is that after 20 years of us taking over government we still haven't received a minister that is truly an artists at heart?/ why are we being given ministers that are between portfolios and as soon as they are good with the head of state they move on to better things?/ this couldn't have been highlighted more than in december 2014 when the western cape government swapped the mec for arts and culture with the mec for health "because arts and culture doesn't have a huge workload"/ like/ what the FUCK?/ the government thinks WE are light workload?/ 

I mean all the theatre's in the country are run by Black people/ there are more and more Black heads of record labels/ dance is dominated by blacks/ national museums are run by blacks/ at which point do we stop expecting jesus christ to come and rescue us?/ at which point do we tell our white messiahs to step aside?/ at which point do we break the cabals that have replaced the former cabals?/ are we really content seeing artistic directors touring theatre across the country with each others plays/dance pieces/music shows/ in our name/ without our PERMISSION?/ when do we say WAIT? SIYAYINYOVA?/ how do we begin to tell government that the tax is not coming to us?/ and when do we tell government that if the funding landscape doesn't favour us retlo kwala country ena?/ 

There has been so many dialogues in the last 21 years or so/ from the white paper policy consultations/ to the Mzanzi golden economy policy framework/ but when we die there has to be donations/ while our white counterparts never experience such/ why are they able to build careers through institutions that are supposed to take care of us while we can't?/ why are we not calling out all the state funded structures/ their boards/managements/ stakeholder liaisons/ to say you are FAILING US?/ 

ME THINKS THE TIME IS NOW/ 

The ANC, DA, EFF coalitions didn't even feel need to highlight the need to allocate space for us in their policy manifesto's/ Yet WE wore YELLOW, BLUE and RED T-shirts to ensure the shit continues/ It wasn't the artistic directors/ the board chairperson/ the salaried staff/ It was US/ the proposal bearers/ the pitchers/ the presenters of ideas/ the grovellers of funding/ the grant seekers/ when do we say ENOUGH! You have kept gates long enough that even when the colour changes the philosophy remains? Why is this acceptable to us? At which point do we tell our "white friends" we don't want to be directed in "workshopped pieces" that they/ "WRITE, CHOREOGRAPH or DIRECT" 

At which point do we say ENOUGH!/we don't need a chance/when we've created all "your" plays/ when we've conceptualised all your dance pieces/ we have written all your melodies?/ and this not only to the whites/ but to the "new black gate keepers" as well/? 

Are we ever going to be at a position where we stop begging and start taking?/ My take is that the moment is now/ We can't expect anyone to do anything for us anymore./ 

The first step has to be to form an alliance of black arts professional/ YES BLACK ARTS PROFESSIONALS/ It doesn't mean we can't  or won't work white white people/  in fact will work with them more/ but will not work FOR THEM further/ they need to understand that the status quo has changed/We will ensure that if DTI is putting in money into a film, then its ok to have Ausi Anna or Mavis as casting agents/ Hek after all their years working with actors how come they haven't had their big break?/ We will ensure that Mamela Nyamza is the curator of the DANCE UMBRELLA because its simply has benefited from her profile as a celebrated dancer and choreographer Internationally/ It would ensure that Vuyani Dance Company shouldn't grace the theatre's as part of someone else show/ THEY ARE TOP CLASS COMPANY/ It will ensure that we can be looking for BLACK FEMALE DIRECTORS/ When all they have been doing over the last 20 years had been knocking on doors that keep getting shut in their faces/ 

But we can't achieve this with a messed up policy framework/ the funding structure needs to change/ Government is still the major contributor to the arts/ Artistic directors, CEO's, CFO's/ can't continue getting JSE salaries when artists are suffering/ No longer should we allow cultural institutions to get the bulk of the money to buy toilet paper and floor polish for buildings that are closed on mondays/ everyone has to share the pie a little more/because we OWN this bakery now/ Senior administrators SHOULD be made to fundraise for their own salaries/ This is the ONLY way they will begin to understand the impact their lack of care has on the general populace of the artists.

The second thing that needs to happen is that anyone who is getting a government generated grant (Be it LOTTO, DAC, DTI DSRAC/etc) SHOULD have a development and integration strategy with individuals who are continuously disadvantaged/ and not some "manga manga" come to johannesburg for a performance at a festival strategy/ meaningful, audit-able long term project/ that demonstrate how they can grow the arts industry nationally so that we stop the cultural workers migration when in fact arts and culture can be practiced anywhere in the country/lets begin planting seeds to building a national industry and kill this joburg/capetown/durban/pretoria notion/

Regulate ICASA to allow for more home-brewed work to be aired in the national TV stations including DSTV and Etv akesa buwa ka SABC it should have a 90/10% local vs international broadcast policy, this way we can have more local focus on work being produced. Ban all foreign programs on community radio and TV stations, I mean if commercial television and radio stations are playing american stuff why do we need community media to be doing the same?/ Why are they community then?/

Lastly lets get UNIONISED we can't go anywhere without a UNION and not a government funded union like the one giving people 12 hour notices for consultations, a proper union that will take  gatekeepers like Mfundi head on, that will ensure that people don't WIN careers/ that those who pay their subs will be ensured work like it happens all over the world/ That will understand that JESUS is a myth and nothing is going to save US but ourselves.

Vuka Darkie 

Here we are

Every January since 2011 I take a moment to reflect what my world has become since I have left formal employ. In this post I am going to deliberately not mention something this might include peoples names, institutions and events that  have happened. One might ask why is this but I believe that unless I rid myself of those things I am not mentioning I just keep going back to the negative. 

My attitude around re-blogging again isn't too different from the last time I did. Most of the issues would be Black people issues, nothing heightened nothing confused just pure bread and butter issues that can be accessed no that should be said that not many people are saying. 

so there aren't many issues that are going to be raised in this initial blog just reflections of what has happened since then, well here goes: 

On the political front we still stuck with the same president and a defacto president in waiting has joined him (more about him in later blogs) needless to say it has become harder and harder to vote for the ANC with all the mess that goes in there. 

Those of you who know my politics would know I used to be in the SNI a movement that I truly believed was to change the course of blackness as for a moment there was a solid base for radical black thinking and while we might not have burnt a library or blockaded a street in protests against the continued co-operation amongst the ANC/DA/Anti Black Capitalist Forces we were on course to develop a black literate radical movement, then the EFF happened! This morning I was watching the news and there was a white women predicting about the demise of the EFF in 2015, this prediction came from the astros we are told but in truth we could have told this woman this EFF was doomed for failure when it was first mooted because of a few reasons :

1. It was a reactionary movement by ideologically fraught ex ANC members 

2. That it went around collecting political opportunist at will to try and force a pseudo-left movement speaking for the poor while it was being run by the by the political snobs of our time.Besides the conference or whatever they called it proved to us that the EFF will not sustain itself. 

3. That no one who claims to believe in the freedom charter has genuine interest to see Blacks emerge in the scourge created by CODESA talks in the early '90s.

The death of Cosatu is good news me thinks, its time that workers have a party that genuinely seek to fight for the protection of worker rights, after all if the incoming president is a mega business man (regardless of what he says) how can anyone aligned with his party do anything that is not going to benefit him and his friends? 

Enough about politics for now, lets talk about good news: 

the arts, more and more state funded theatre's are run by a majority of Black people and we can only live in hope that this begins to mean something for black artists who incidentally still have to struggle to survive, this isn't only a theatre problem, its across the board. Music, dance, fine arts, photography, etc it just seems the more Black people are in charge the more marginalised the Black people are, unless of course you are Nicky Minaj and you can routinely pick up a R10 million rands check in South Africa when they aren't sure what they doing. This brings us to the crucial issue of government department, agencies and or representatives of the DAC could we please have an environment that allows the arts to flourish without DAC acting like events management company? Without the NAC developing festivals? Without NFVF controversy? With SAMRO and RISA paying royalties to the artists? Without artistic directors directing every big budget production in their places of employ? With less collusion and more opportunities for the independent artists? 

Can we see a true transformation of the arts? And can this start with the National Arts Festival? Because if it happens there then it can set the tone as to which direction the industry should take rather than just feed into a messed up untransformed system? Can who ever who is sabotaging Zola's music cut the brother a break while we at it, because the continued persecution of Bonginkosi Dlamini chronicles every problem with the development of Black artists? 

On the positive side though (and now the really positive no manga manga business) We have seen the mergence of new voices across the arts, the not so new Vuyani Dance Theatre continues shining, a string of other companies keep pushing the boundaries across the country, the green goose collective, kiri pink knob, lingua franca, the different collectives working out of the BAT centre, Thenx collective, Phillip Dikotla, Mncedisi Shabangu working with Dr. John Kani (finally old meets young) The Soweto Theatre, The Plat4orm, Yellow Bunny Productions and many other alternative spaces I have come across have been really good news