C R E A T I V I T Y  in the  D R A M A T I C  A R T S

APARTHEID’S evil regime of 50 years locked down all political protest.

Because of this oppression there was an incredible flowering of the arts, by necessity, subtly subversive.

The theatre exploded with the Welcome Msomi  zulu production of Macbeth in the 60’s, which he told me would be understood by Zulus as being anti-Apartheid. It became nationally and then globally famous.

The play-writing and acting trio of Athol Fugard, Winston Ntshona and John Kani with The Island, Sizwe Banzi is Dead, (South Africa’s own Samuel Beckett), really pushed the envelope, but were never banned, because of the cerebral content that was lost on no-one but DID NOT break the law. John Kani also played an unforgettable Othello, even Apartheid couldn’t ban William Shakespeare.

C R E A T I V I T Y  in  M U S I C

Miriam Makeba on her first world tour had her passport torn up and was cruelly banned from returning to South Africa. We all knew by heart her songs of longing for freedom, as those of the torch singer Brenda Fasse who lived to embrace Madiba at the abolition of apartheid. There were many, many more musicians for freedom Julian Bahula of Black Malombo, Dollar Brand’s African Sketchbook and of course the white Zulu warrior Johnny Clegg who wrote and performed the global tear-jerker Asimbonanga.

C R E A T I V I T Y  in  L I T E R A T U R E

The pen is mightier than the sword – Nadine Gordimer, André Brink’s Looking on Darkness, Alan Paton with Cry the Beloved Country, Breyten Breytenbach and others mocked, ridiculed Apartheid and it’s vile racism. More, their words and emotions wormed their way into their readers’ hearts to plant the uncomfortable seeds of denial.

C R E A T I V I T Y  in  V I S U A L  A R T S

Walter Battiss, my professor of Art was the supreme jester. An early fan of graffiti he slashed the the racist rigidity with his superbly seditious, sometime inter-racial sexual, camel-hair paint brush.

SO WHAT IS OUR CONCLUSION? 

This volcanic outburst of creativity by women, men, black, white, brown was the ONLY non subvertly political expression possible. Television was banned, the Beatles were banned, an English cricket team with a black player was banned, Bobby Kennedy was banned outside the university precinct and on and on.

But you cannot ban people from thinking, from writing, drawing, singing, making music. And this is precisely what happened in the creative hothouse that Apartheid unintentionally produced and thereby imploded.

« By the delicate, invisible web they wove – the… mystery of freedom » T.S.Eliot.

A R T  over  A P A R T H E I D