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This week, as the country gasped in anticipation of protests against foreign nationals, the nation’s artists gathered at the National Arts Festival (NAF) in Makhanda
The zeitgeist at the NAF marked a pleasant contrast to the jingoist sloganeering in our big cities. Much of the work on show appeared poised to expand our sense of citizenship, probe our shared humanity and test the limits of patriotism
The festival brings together as many as 2,000 artists and features more than 270 productions in the visual arts, theatre, music and beyond. It is also important because it is where the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year Award winners showcase their work. This year they were Bronwyn Katz (Visual Art), Gabi Motuba (Jazz), Jason Jacobs (Theatre), Lee-ché Janecke (Dance) and Ndumiso Manana (Music)
The festival is where you find out what South African artists think and feel about the state of their country
South African art has always been at the forefront of fighting for freedom and the quality of life for the oppressed. The country of Sarafina!, Woza Albert! and Dumile Feni has been a model for how to use art creatively to grow the public square
One of the great works of theatre, whose themes carry pointed potential for debates on values and patriotism, is Kafka’s Ape. It is presented by solo actor Tony Bonani Miyambo, in an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s short story A Report to an Academy by Phala O Phala
The story was published in 1917 as the fictional autobiography of an ape named Red Peter. Captured in a hunting expedition on the Gold Coast (now Ghana) he was sent to Europe on a cargo ship, and speaks to the audience about learning to behave like humans as a way to escape life in a cage
However, this meant giving up his wildness as an ape, his freedom to be who he really is, to survive
In a season when South Africans are demanding displays of patriotism through suspicion of illegal African imigrants, Red Peter, the ape who mimics his Eupropean captors to survive, becomes a powerful metaphor. The right to belong, guarded by those who marched on June 30, can be understood as code that determines who can announce: We The People. However, Red Peter points out the undesirability of some human behaviour. In this way, Phala’s adaptation questions whether those who march are living up to South African values, and we are left wondering whether June 30 amounts to glorious patriotism or sordid sedition.
The success of the 2026 NAF reflects the determination and resilience of the sector, even though for the first time in 30 years, it did not include the National Youth Jazz Festival
Recently, many of our political figures have been exposed as counterfeit heroes. The play Children of the Buffalo Thorn Treeemerged as the most powerful example of how young South Africans are re-evaluating the moral durability of heroes of the liberation struggle. It was devised and performed by Market Laboratory students under the direction of Monageng Vice Motshabi, who won the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Theatre in 2017
Children of the Buffalo Thorn Tree confronts audiences with the harrowing story of Ntombikayise Priscilla Kubheka, who was tortured, murdered and disappeared by the apartheid forces with the collaboration of her comrades. Motshabi takes viewers on a journey into the contradictions of betrayers who become powerful government ministers, and the life of poverty inherited by the abandoned children of martyred freedom fighters
A tender tragedy that presents us with a symbol for decadence, Enyobeni is a play that uses theatre to litigate the tavern disaster of 2022, in which 21 young people died at a drinking den in Mdantsane
Enyobeniwas collaboratively created by Amandla Danca Teatro, the Gompo Arts Centre, and Rhodes University. It employs a Brechtian-style performance, designed to stop audiences from getting too emotional so they can judge the social and political messages of the story
Strict mothers duped by rechildren are, all become subject to death and grief. Enyobeniis about the collapse of values, not only in the household, but in broader society where 21 children were massacred by negligence
The success of the 2026 NAF reflects the determination and resilience of the sector, even though for the first time in 30 years, it did not include the National Youth Jazz Festival. South Africa’s premier youth jazz development programme, it failed to secure a sponsor, and a generation of our young musicians missed a crucial developmental moment in the journey to professional practice
The absence of the sport, arts & culture minister in this crisis points to negligence. But South African arts and culture succeed in spite of his neglect
