Art: Not a saviour, a mirror for SA

Life stranger than art? Satirical artists such as Pieter Dirk Uys run riot with theatrical characters to lampoon South African racial politics. The racial absurdities in the country provide countless artists with fertile ground

IN this country’s nightmare under President Jacob Zuma and his mafia-like network who run the place, the political power play is mainly in black arenas with the entire gamut of good, bad, pure and corrupt. Whites – some 9 per cent of the 56-million population – try to understand it mostly from the sidelines.

Making sense of such things often falls to artists, as in twentieth century Germany between the world wars, when exceptional, radical art was produced capturing the spirit of the times. South African art holds a troubled mirror to society today, epitomised by two recent theatre productions.

The first is by veteran 71-year old satirist Pieter Dirk Uys, called Evita Bezuidenhout and the Kaktus of Separate Development at Pieter Toerien Theatre in northern Johannesburg. During apartheid the character he created, the Afrikaans woman Evita Bezuidenhout, lampooned racist white South Africans and their leaders such as President PW Botha. She became so famous that she boasts she is mentioned in Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom. Now, in the post-apartheid confusion, she says she belongs to the ANC. Her commentary remains piercing.

Her audience at this venue is largely white and middle aged. The content focusses on ‘white’ perspectives about black politics. Jacob Zuma and former presidents Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela and Kgalema Mothlanthe feature in it, along with other politicians.

Describing herself as a ‘non-black’ South African – an inversion of the pervasive phrase ‘non-white’ which defined blacks when whites held power – she articulates how Afrikaners’ political relevance has waned, amidst the barrage of fake news and the residue of the fake history Afrikaners were taught at school many years ago to bolster ethnic fervour.

One theme is white fear in today’s hyper-PC atmosphere of expressing critical political views lest one be accused of racism, now that power lies in black hands. Evita also mentions in a telling aside the Weimar republic in Germany which had a role in producing Hitler, as a reference to EFF leader Julius Malema’s possible rise to be SA president one day, with his populist anti-white diatribes.

The second production, Hallelujah! at Wits University’s theatre, portrays the abominable practice of ‘corrective rape’ still exercised in some corners of black society on lesbians. It was written by coloured playwright Xoli Norman. The cast contains talented, young and mostly black drama students from Wits, who portray their characters brilliantly under the direction of a drama lecturer at the university who is also a leading light of South African theatre – and who happens to be white.

But here’s the rub: At the post-performance Q&A she was challenged by an aggressive black student who questioned her entitlement as a white person to direct a play dealing with pain in black culture.

The answer, of course, is that pain is universal, as are the tools of art such as a theatre director’s finely-honed skills. But despite attempts to articulate this, the accusative question remained hanging in the air, with the whites present feeling defensive and frustrated.

Evita Bezuidenhout’s portrayal of the ‘irrelevance’ of white South Africans, and the black student’s rejection of whites’ entitlement to employ their skills in areas black radicals consider to be their preserve, are elements of a crucially needed debate for SA society. The feeling whites have that they are silenced and disenfranchised by radical blacks is not surprising, as the latter assert their identities after centuries of colonialism and apartheid.

Where to from here? For years to come, this society will be healing its wounds. The common decency of most South Africans, and the generally warm relations between blacks and whites on the ground, means there is a chance it will succeed, if only expedient politicians – including President Zuma – will stop stoking the racial embers.

(GEOFF SIFRIN is a journalist in Johannesburg, South Africa, and former Editor of the SA Jewish Report. Email:  geoffs@icon.co.za )

• Read a review of Evita Bezuidenhout and the Kaktus of Separate Development
• Read a review of  Hallelujah!