By Barbara Masekela
In this year of the 75th
anniversary we salute you in the name of the ANC and congratulate
for all the risks, sacrifices and varied contributions
you have made towards the Advance to peoples power in our beloved country.
This, a conference and festival for anti-apartheid cultural workers,
comes five years after two historic cultural festivals, namely Culture
and Resistance organized by the Medu Cultural Ensemble in 1982, and
the Cultural voice of Resistance — Dutch and South African against
Apartheid in December 1982.
Among cultural activists who were the key participants in these festivals
are some who are no longer with us: Thami Mnyele, our magnificent people's
artist, whose life is a monument and example of the best we can attain,
cut down by the murderous SADF commandos in Botswana 1985; James Madhlope
Phillips, Johnny Dyani and Kingforce Silgee, to mention a few. We remember
them now for their illustrious contribution and take a minute's silence
in honour of their spirit which can never be vanquished.
This festival opening
is an occasion for paying tribute to the meritorious work done to
achieve our common ideals. It is also necessarily a time
for humble assessment of the objective we have set ourselves of eradicating
the apartheid monster which feeds so greedily on diversion, division
and manipulation. This effort is a powerful reminder of our own potential
as cultural activists and solidarity workers, hand-in-hand. We must
express our deep appreciation for
This chance of reunion and discussion with our Dutch counterparts and the all
too brief but enormous opportunity to embrace our brothers and sisters, our
compatriots who come from the frontline of politico-cultural resistance, who
in their daily confrontation with apartheid, are still decorated with the scars
and stars of courage, determination and sacrifice displayed daily by all our
people in struggle. Comrades, your example is an inspiration to us and your
patriotic performance strengthens our own dedication to our joint just cause
and the task we have set ourselves to create a united, democratic, non-racial
South Africa.
We can never be exiled from our homeland because daily your songs, your poems,
your plays, your paintings and films — magnificent manifestations — keep
our attention riveted to our inevitable freedom. Through your excellent work
the reality of the ANC presence is now even acknowledged by our enemies.
We would rather that the scene of this festival had been closer to the battlefront
and indeed, for some of us here, it may have been cause for concern that we
must meet in the Netherlands from whence the ships of colonialism sailed to
exploit our people 335 years ago.
Notwithstanding, this meeting confirms our conviction in the oneness of the
human race and that colonialism is not of the Dutch people in general, that
the resistance against apartheid is not of black South Africans only. Rather,
specific groups that sought and still seek to gain from exploitation, oppression
and other forms of barbarity design that colonialism and the support of apartheid.
Thus, we are here, because our friends and supporters in The Netherlands, in
common with the majority of humankind, have taken a principled stand against
apartheid and have constituted themselves into a significant component of the
pillar of international solidarity. Nonetheless, the major thrust is on the
shoulders of the South African people, who value the complementary efforts
of international solidarity.
Our gathering here, to share in and have discourse on the burgeoning alternative
culture in the making of South Africa, is also an acknowledgement of the integral
contribution made and still to be rendered by cultural workers in the bitter
struggle ahead. It constitutes part of the seeding that will bring about 'another'
South Africa.
The theme of CASA underlines the dichotomy of apartheid South Africa, which,
in its dying fits, is vainly struggling to throttle the birth of a democratic,
united, non-racial South Africa, refusing to yield to the inevitable.
But that which is already fully formed and shaped will emerge against all odds.
It is the law of nature and as one of our poets has sung, ‘to every birth
its blood'. The real South Africa, struggling to be born, is represented by
the fighters of freedom; the popular spirit of resistance and self- affirmation.
That real South Africa is seen in strong emergence of the mass democratic movement
that straddles every aspects of South African life and culture today evidence
of this encompassing, inclusive culture of liberation. The dying social system
which seeks to pull every one into the murky bottoms of antiquity, which does
not represent the best of South Africa or Africa, is a inhumanity which has
been progressively rooted out. That the two South Africa are not defined by
geography or skin colour is daily becoming a vindication of the ANC position
that South Africa belongs to all who live in it. While the overwhelming majority
of the oppressed have chosen to a new South Africa, the spirit of resistance
is also filtering into the former strongholds of white. Reality dictates that
ultimately those who have enjoyed the South Africa must cast their lot unequivocally
with the oppressed, in word and deed. Unarguably demise of apartheid ant of
a new order.
We are a generation that has witnessed the birth in the sub-region of Angola,
Mozambique and Zimbabwe. We know of the apartheid efforts to nullify the hard-won
independence and sovereignty of these states because of what they represent
and because they support our cause. Certainly we are also products of an era
when economic and political destabilization, when military aggression is commonplace.
We are also familiar with the impunity with which apartheid causes mass hunger
and famine, massacres, and dislocation. The apartheid tactics of divide and
rule, paternalism, promotion of negative traditional customs and the co-option
of collaborators as a buffer system — all these are carried out in a
'constructive engagement' with those Western powers that bolster and support
them. Indeed, it is a wonder and achievement that in the face of such concentrated
racist sway we have never succumbed to racial solutions. The challenge of these
grim conditions of necessity dictates that we cultural workers are freedom
fighters first, that political reality is the mirror in which we reflect our
creativity. Thus, we are an integral part of the overall struggle, not artists
who merely contemplate on the cataclysms of our era. Our art springs directly
from the experiences that have been moulding our national consciousness over
the centuries to the present. Now, at the brink of the dawn of our freedom,
in the process of becoming, it is essential
that, as our President has stated when dealing with the role of cultural workers
in his 8 January 1985 address: 'Let the arts be one of the many means by which
we cultivate the spirit of revolt among the broad masses, enhance the striking
power of our movement and inspire the millions of our people to fight for the
South Africa we envisage'.
As the tactics of our enemies become more refined and also more brutal,
so must we call on all our reserves of strength and creativity to make
the day of triumph come sooner? Our resistance today is built on the
cumulative experience of our forebears from the ancient Khoi-Khoi and
Nama to Sekhukhune, Moshoeshoe, Makana, to the giants of the present,
Mandela, Sisulu, Kathrada and our other political leaders in the resurgent
mass democratic movement. Recently we have witnessed the release, after
23 years of imprisonment, of Govan Mbeki. Last Friday Govan Mbeki was
placed under a strict banning order by the racist regime. The banning
of Govan Mbeki makes a mockery of his supposed unconditional release.
Clearly, the welcome accorded him on his release by the people has
frightened the racists.
However, it is not an accident that Plaatje, a writer, or Vuyisile
Mini, a composer, was an also political activist. It is in the tradition
of our history of resistance. We have not invented revolution and we
have never imitated (nor shall we ever imitate) the presuraptiousness
of the unwashed voyagers of the colonial era who claimed to have discovered
what was already there and commonplace to the owners of the land. That
is why it is customary in our culture that on great days of celebration
or observance, the mlbongi always praised the ones who charted the
path before them. The performances, exhibitions, discussions at this
festival are in no small way a praise song to our predecessors. They
are also an encouragement and spur on the long and difficult journey
ahead.
At the present moment there are various organizational forms for progressive
people's artists. We need to address the question whether they are
reaching the people, whether they represent the majority of patriotic
artists and serve to accommodate the needs of groups at various levels
of consciousness. It is pertinent that in the late sixties and early
seventies it was the Black Consciousness cultural awakening which emphasized
the building of self-confidence and the national spirit of the oppressed.
The positive contribution of this movement has been acknowledged by
the ANC. In a statement issued after the Second Session of the ANC's
National Executive Committee meeting in 1973, our Secretary-General
pointed out that:
'The assertion of the revolutionary identity of the oppressed black
peoples is
Not an end in self It can be a vital force nary action involving the masses
of the people, for it is in struggle, in the actual physical confrontation
that a lasting confidence in their own strength and in the inevitability of
final victory – it is through action that people acquire true psychological
emancipation'.
Happily, we now say with confidence that with workers, students and many others
sectors these words have become true. Is this a fact for the cultural sectors?
Of course we are aware of our own traditional attitudes towards artists as
well as apartheid regime's monopoly and control of culture that have impeded
the development of an authentic ‘people’s culture. But we are greatly
encouraged by fine work of the relatively young UDF, Cultural Desk and the
COSATU Cultural formation of COSAW (Congress of SA Writers) is also a happy
addition to these forces. We hail these efforts and have confidence in their
strength. The work of organizing cultural workers is on its way but a major
part of the tasks still lies ahead of us. To break down certain assumptions
about artists, we have to guard against sometimes raising our own consciousness
to a fetish. We must exclusivism or arrogance lest we lest alienate potential
activists. We also need to guard against relegating to irrelevance the contribution
of our white compatriots. We must encourage the trend of Afrikaner cultural
workers of the past and present, take cognisance of and support their efforts
to identify with the national democratic struggle Cultural workers being of
and for the people cannot merely assume the role of teaching or prescribing
for the people. We can learn from the overall activity of the people and, on
occasions when they seem slow to respond, then we must exercise patience and
persuasion because mobilization, political education and involvement differs
and it takes more time than the coercion that is the overwhelming characteristic
of the enemy.
As comrade Alfred Nzo, Secretary-General of the ANC, has pointed out:
'The speed of a column on the march is determined by the pace of the slowest
and weakest soldier and not the fittest and fastest. The most advanced sections
should therefore at all times seek to advance the least developed ones, keeping
in the fore-front the principle of the greatest and highest unity of the people
and at all times fighting against all tendencies of seeking to "go it
alone" through impatience and contempt for the less developed forces of
the revolution.'
Logically this statement infers that the advance contingent of cultural workers — many
of whom are here today — should of necessity move at the pace of our
people.
The work
of an artist is mirrored in the popular response of the masses and
the latter would gain a lasting confidence in their own strength
and in the inevitability of final victory.
People's culture, born of cross-pollination among the artists and the
people themselves in the democratic mainstream of socio-political and
economic change, is a growing dynamic process which is defined by subjective
and objective circumstances. It is a scientific growth in the conduct
of struggle that determines and paves the way towards the assumption
of people's power. For instance, marabi, mbaqanga, micathamiya, kwela,
are today universally accepted as authentic South African peoples'
art forms, but it was not always the case. Their practitioners were
at one time despised and shunned, and at other times completely 'buried'
by the notorious Gallo and other institutionalised capitalist-orientated
recording companies. It is precisely due to the development of the
struggle, the involvement of the masses of our people that these art
forms have now been given their rightful place incur people's culture.
Given what our President has referred to as the changing balance of
strength in our country and the shift of strategic initiative into
our hands, there is, therefore, a sense in which the apartheid forces
are becoming the opposition by unleashing indiscriminate violence upon
the ascendant democratic movement, rather than the other way round.
The advancing forces of a new social order in our country — of
which you are part — as against the degenerating and collapsing
machinery of apartheid, are moving at a pace apartheid finds difficult
and impossible to reverse. We must, as President O.R. Tambo exhorts,
'move from a position of an indestructible force to a conquering force'.
It is a critical situation which requires vigilance on our part against
complacency and arrogance. The gains made must be guarded and augmented.
Among these gains has been the success of the cultural boycott of apartheid
South Africa. Due to the emergence of alternative structures which
are actively implementing the boycott inside our country, and the complementary
actions from the international anti-apartheid movement, there are relatively
very few foreign artists at the moment coming into South Africa to
perform. The few mediocre artists prepared to earn bloodstained money
are still lured by the lucrative contracts offered. There is no doubt
as to the origin of this collaborative funding. However, it can no
longer be concealed that a fully fledged democratic culture is in place
in South Africa, as stated by our President, 'a definable democratic
culture — the people's culture — permeated with and giving
expression to the deepest
Aspirations of our people in struggle immersed in the democratic and
enduring human values”. Referring to the cultural boycott issue,
President Tambo in his recent ground breaking analysis at the Canon
Collins Memorial Lecture stated that:
The core cultural workers engaged in creating this people’s cultures
are simultaneously engaged in developing our own institutions and structures
which are aligned to the mass democratic organizations in our country.
He therefore concludes that:‘ This is our position that those who belong to the category of dedicated
fighters of a genuine and democratic culture should not be boycotted
but should be encouraged and be treated as democratic counterparts
within South Africa and similar institutions and organizations internationally.'
What this conference urgently needs to consider are the methods and
means to realize the fullest achievement of our revolutionary cultural
objectives which are at the core of our overall struggle, let us exhaust
ourselves in the service of all our people as cultural workers with
a vision of another South Africa, a united, non-sexist, non-racial
South Africa. Let us work tirelessly for a new South Africa
Amandla!
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