The Arts

cademic Gibson Ncube considers two South African films, Skoonheid and Inxeba, to study how the films present male protagonists who negotiate their sexuality in conservative societies.

Two South African films Skoonheid and Inxeba, despite their diametrically opposed socio-racial contexts, broach violent and toxic queer masculinities, according to Gibson Ncube, an academic in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at the University of Zimbabwe and a fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. Ncube argues that the films present male protagonists who negotiate their sexuality in very conservative societies, Afrikaner in the case of Skoonheid and Xhosa in Inxeba.

Slavery, sangomas and sexuality

“Graduates”, an exhibition by final year students from the Department of Fine Arts at the University of the Free State, recently opened at the university’s Johannes Stegman Gallery. Precious Mamotingoe Lesupi reports on the pieces set to interrogate the broader concept of what it means to be human.

Final year students from the Department of Fine Arts showcased various artwork which depict their unique experiences of what it means to be human.

Dr Nadine Lake, lecturer in Gender Studies at the UFS, described pieces of the exhibition as ones which “remind us of the importance of rethinking familiar concepts”.

Artistic freedom was always tenuous in Kenya, but it’s become even less so since Uhuru Kenyatta became president in 2013. The political pendulum has swung against political dissenters, intellectuals and a handful of media institutions that still believed in objective journalism.

Progressive gains made under the previous administration of President Mwai Kibaki (2002-2013), such as the freedom of press and speech, have disintegrated

cultural landscape, have rolled back artistic freedom by banning films that attempted to expand identity or interpreted it differently. The most prominent example is Rafiki, a recent Kenyan film that was banned for “promoting lesbianism”.

The sun has set on Oliver Mtukudzi

Musician Oliver Mtukudzi, who died at the age of 66, was a great cultural ambassador for Zimbabwe. Known to his fans as Tuku, he was a cultural icon for the southern African country. His aura and presence had a global resonance with fans around the world, yet the man remained humble and magnanimous.

I once boasted to some international colleagues that he was Zimbabwe’s gift to the world. But on closer scrutiny, he was the perfect gift for Zimbabweans especially during their tumultuous times.

A poem for Steve Biko, Imam Haron and Farouk Asvat

Mphutlane Bofelo was detained for eight months and given a one year prison sentence thereafter, at the age of 17 in 1985. The severe trauma of the experience has not left him and he has written a poem for those who did not survive the human rights abuses of the apartheid government and where we find ourselves in this political moment.

I have vivid memories of being detained a week before I was to sit for my standard 10 examinations in 1985. I was just 17 years old at the time.

South African theatre icon was a legend in his field

The recent death of theatre luminary and royalty Winston Ntshona closes another sad chapter for a crop of actors, writers and theatre-provocateurs who embodied and personified a particular acting style which was mostly self-taught, but which also emerged as a result of and was perfected by the times.

The annual Antoinette Perry Awards or the Tony Awards as they are commonly known were first presented in 1947.

In Things we lost in the Rainbow, artist Athi-Patra Ruga tries to reclaim the spaces from which he and many others have been historically exiled. By Ashraf Hendricks for GroundUp.

On a Monday evening earlier this month as part of the Live Arts Festival 2018, the Athi-Patra Studio took Capetonians on a two-hour procession with 35 performers through the city’s colonial origins. Using performance installations and psychedelic costumes, artist Athi-Patra Ruga was out to challenge the dominant narrative of South African history.

Cultural identity in a modern constitutional democracy

The Films and Publications Board (FPB) regulates the production, exhibition and distribution of films, video games and some publications, as mandated in the Films and Publications Act of 1996. Whilst executing this mandate the board found itself in the middle of a media storm late in 2017. At issue was the film Inxeba: The Wound.

The film producers felt that the reclassification encroached on the constitutionally enshrined right to artistic expression.

Fifty-nine years on, we still give thanks and praise to this album

On the 17 August 1959 a record album was released which would go on to change the world of Jazz and establish itself as a milestone in the history of recorded music. The record was, ‘Kind of Blue’, by Miles Davis. Exactly 59 years after its release the questions as to its allure and mystery still endure. What is it about this 5-tune album that makes it one of the highest selling Jazz records of all time, if not the greatest, and be regarded as a genre-shifting moment in modern music? Some of the answers may lie in what it wasn’t as well as with what it actually was.

A Stimulus of power to strength to power

Spirit, a stimulus of power to strength and strength to power, epitomise the everyday struggles faced by youth of colour in a society that has a strong history of segregation and emphasises the idea that survival is the only way. The title, ‘Spirit’ makes the song even more closely linked with the liberation struggle of South Africa and the resilient spirit of its people. From spinning cars and church scenes to clubs and taxi fares, the visuals depicted in the music video reaffirms its message of pure South Africanness.

Traditional Indian dance tackles rape culture and patriarchy

Thinking through the art form without boundaries has allowed the school to grow, and challenge themselves in terms of choreography, production concepts and the role they believe dance to fulfil. “Within the Indian society dance is seen as something that makes you ‘marriageable’, so once you graduate, it’s another box to tick off. But we hope to teach young women in this dance school that as long as there’s passion for what you do, and a willingness to learn, that there is no age limit,” Anusha Pillay says.

South African musician Philip Tabane, who died on 18 May 2018, hated being labelled. How he’d feel about the all official obituaries that confine him inside the jazz envelope is clear, "The jazz label – or any other label – has never worked in my case. Once, I went to play at a competition in Durban and in the end I was given a special prize because I could not be categorised. To this day, they still cannot categorise my music." That was from my second interview with the artist, in 1997 at the...

History has glorified men at the expense of women

A South African artist, Khehla Chepape Makgato celebrates rural women in his new exhibition in Cleveland, Ohio.

A pop-up art show in Cleveland, Ohio is currently exhibiting one of South Africa’s up and coming artists. Khehla Chepape Makgato has been living in the United States for the past few months and is currently an artist in residence at Zygote Press Inc, an artist workshop promoting contemporary fine-art printing in Cleveland, Ohio, in conjunction with Harris Stanton Gallery. His exhibition focuses on strong black women from rural areas in South Africa, specifically those who played a role in his childhood.

Why South Africa’s DJ Black Coffee left a bitter taste by performing in Israel

It was a coincidence that South African house DJ Black Coffee’s recent performance in Tel Aviv took place on the same weekend that saw more than a dozen Palestinian protesters shot dead, and more than a thousand wounded, by Israeli forces. But he was nevertheless criticised sharply for the visit which came in the wake of calls by political movements and civil society organisations to respect the boycott campaign against Israel.

Criticism was levelled against him from a number of fronts. This included South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) which issued a call on artists to remember the role played by the international anti-apartheid solidarity movement in the isolation of apartheid South Africa:

On the limits of landscape art and the land question

As the call for land expropriation without compensation steadily reaches a fever pitch, how might we begin to think of the land question within the practice of landscape art and visuality? Without exception, the land question in South Africa always strikes into the heart of colonial matters and the genre of landscape art is no different.

Out of all genres of representation, next to ‘still life’, it is perhaps landscape painting that is treated like a quaint apolitical subject, which it is not. Images are far from innocent and landscape art is a bit more surreptitious in its operations, particularly because it appears so self-referential.

Pulling off a festival with a dream and empty pockets

The Cape Town International Jazz Festival took over the Mother City this weekend and the annual event had the sweet sounds of jazz filling the streets. The festival has grown phenomenally since its inception in 2003. WARREN LUDSKI spoke to the founder of the Cape Town International Jazz festival, Rashid Lombard.

Rashid Lombard is a name that has a bit of clout in Cape Town’s music circles. Not as a musician though. He probably couldn’t play an instrument to save his life. Yet, his name is as well-known as any of our best-known musicians.

Reading rank and race in the Constitutional Hill’s Women’s Jail

The everyday manifestations of race and rank followed women all the way into prison during the apartheid era. The women’s jail at Constitutional Hill, now re-purposed as a museum, holds artwork from a number of former inmates including anti-apartheid activist, Fatima Meer.

If you thought that incarceration was a potential leveler amongst women during apartheid then think again. Amidst the recent revival of rainbowism, a trip to the woman’s jail at Con Hill may serve as an unwanted reminder of Apartheids institutionalization of rank according to race.

A play. A remedy. A movement.

Rape. A global evil which constantly tears the heart of society apart. It’s deadly. And the silence around it only continues. Unspoken of. Even acting against it almost seems too taboo an act. Voices is a play, made up of monologues of women who have survived brutal encounters with this beast. It recently debuted at the Bloemfontein Civic Theatre. Linda Fekisi reports.

We read about her. How she was raped. News stories provide us with profiles on her and certain details of the ordeal. She’s a teenage mother, a farm worker, a student, a married women…a toddler.

“Say No, Black Woman”: ‘The Giant is Falling’ and the erasure of Black women in
South Africa

The narration of anti-capitalist and anti-white supremacist struggles in post-apartheid South African public discourse generated by events such as the #FeesMustFall movement and the Marikana massacre have tended to privilege certain voices. They have fallen into “‘malestream’ African history” characterised by the silencing of women’s voices, a tendency seen in previous anti-colonial struggles in the country.

A heritage philosopher and seer, a stylish man and raconteur par excellence 1939 – 2018

An artist with verve and unique talents, a heritage philosopher and seer, a stylish man and raconteur par excellence, we will never see or experience his type again. He was of his era. But also saw the future. Thus he was a futurist. He was more than a mentor or an uncle I never had. He was a friend. Age and pain disappeared whenever we were together. Hughskie was selfless and generous in spirit and with his time and wisdom.

“For me songs come like a tidal wave”

When trumpeter, flugelhorn-player, singer, composer and activist Hugh Ramapolo Masekela cancelled his appearance at the recent Johannesburg Joy of Jazz Festival and his remaining October shows, taking time out to deal with serious health issues, fans were forced to return to his recorded opus for reminders of his unique work. Listening through that half-century of disks, the nature and scope of the trumpeter’s achievement becomes clear.

Music is shared love

That’s changing. On September 22, trumpeter Marcus Wyatt launches the debut recording of his Blue Notes Tribute Orkestra in Johannesburg. In a recent interview with me Wyattt declares the work of McGregor, Dyani, Pukwana and the rest as “gold”. “Not many people knew about it, but it’s music people should know.”

His project is just one flower of a slow growing interest in recovering the legacy that seems finally to be breaking into bloom.

Honouring the lives of girls and women in South Africa

Over the course of the month a number of artists and art groups performed at the ‘We Cannot Be Silent’ exhibition including Jazzart Dance Theatre, South African-born pianist and composer Malika Omar and American music trio The Betty Effect. Award-winning filmmaker Nadine Cloete, known for her film Action Kommandant about anti-apartheid activist Ashley Kriel, screened her intimate short film featuring women talking about how unsafe the streets of Cape Town are for them after sunset.

Exhibition investigates our overworked eco-system and the hope for repair

“The Mesh”, an art installation by Keith Armstrong, with contributions by Thabang Mofokeng was exhibited at the University of the Free State’s Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery earlier this month, Thabo Twala reports.

Following a lecture on cultural studies with a particular focus on the broadened definition of the concept of a “text”, I felt the need to try and look at things from that perspective. Now, I certainly wasn’t going to read an activity like studying, as a text. That gets enough attention as it is.