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Swart Rassime of net bietjie Kritiek? [boodskap #42416]

Mon, 21 May 2001 11:46

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Junior Lid

Hierdie artikel was in die Mail& Gaurdian.
Na aanleiding van die Volksfront se klag indiening dat hierdie
artikel rassites is teenoor die Afrikaner kan mens tog net wonder wat die
reaksie sou wees as die rolle hier omgeruil was.
Is dit rassties of is ons maar net bietjie fyn gevoelig?

http://www.mg.co.za/mg/art/music/0104/010420-karoo.html

Arts festival or Boerfest?
The producer of the magazine Hei Voetsek, Zebulon Dread, visited Oudtshoorn
at festival time only to run in horror from what he found on the town
streets.

t was the fifth consecutive year that I had loudly, brazenly and quite
crazily taken it upon myself to go into the heartland of the enemy - the
Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees. To raise the hackles, the roof and the
enemy's ire through ribaldry and satire. To try to make somebody understand
that the course of history has changed.I wanted to make them laugh by using
their own language with such succinct and lyrical nuance that they would
stand awed by this kaffir who spoke Afrikaans better than most of them could
ever dream of.

They stood, awed and amazed, by this obese, flatulent and bombastic Hotnot
who did not mind telling them that from now on they were to call him
baaskaffir or else he would use his spear, carried along for all to see, to
pierce their thick-skinned buffalo hides.

They fled with their children when I, with demonstrative verbosity, used the
Cape lingua franca to the extreme by telling them that they were naaiers
(fuckers), fokken dom konte (fucking stupid cunts), varkvretende
(pig-eating) honkies and a bunch of deluded idiots for thinking that Brother
Jesus even took the time to listen to meat-eating beasts who cared more for
their pit bull terriers than they did for their fellow black humans.

The lyrical nuance of my writer-enabled Afrikaans had some of them drawing
their children close to listen to how one should speak the language, only to
drag them away forcefully when I wilfully swept into the "12th" official
language - that good old Cape lingua franca with all its concomitant swear
words.

Thick-skinned, cellulite-ridden and varicose-veined tannies would routinely
mutter their "Sies! Sies!", only for me to berate them for not saying
"Sies!" when they and their husbands perpetrated the apartheid wars against
the nation. Icy glares from double-thighed, double-chinned and
double-stomached males were met with sheer arrogance and a fearlessness that
scared the carcasses in their overfed bellies as I would scream, for all to
hear, that there they were again, the volk, the fokken volk, eating,
drinking and talking kak (shit) as only they could.I would walk through
their eating areas, like Hap en Tap, where one could buy a cardboard box
filled with steak, sausage, kerriemaalvleis (curried mince), roosterbrood
(toast), offal, beer, beer and more beer - hence Hap (bite) and Tap
(drink) - and vilify them for coming to an "arts" festival and yet sit
around all day and vreet, vreet, suip, suip (eat, eat, drink, drink), while
all the time cajoling them to buy one Hei Voetsek, the ultimate item in
obnoxious humour.

It was always the coup de grâce to witness their intrigue swell to such a
level that they, even against their better knowledge, would fork out the R10
and take with them a Hei Voetsek, not knowing what to expect. The cover of
my magazine has a picture of myself - a giant, superimposed, black,
dreadlocked man - stepping over Table Mountain with a humongous penis being
upheld by military helicopters. A side caption reads: "Hei djy Cape Town,
your European imitation ma se poes, otherwise Holland se fokken moer." I had
them in paroxysms of distress as I paraded it blatantly through the streets.

One tannie bravely took it upon herself to berate me in front of a large
crowd only to be insultingly told the festival wasn't her kitchen and I not
her meid. I've taken up war with Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging-looking types,
challenging them to a fight upon which I'd threaten to "toor julle swart
[bewitch and turn them black]" or to use my witchcraft and remove their
pencil-thin penises.

Often they'd laugh uproariously and throw back ribaldry, playing along with
my devil's advocacy. Sometimes it was fun. Actually, it used to be great
fun, but halfway through this year's festival I threw in the towel and left,
never to return again.

It was an e.tv journalist who asked me what the motivation was for my coming
every year and while thinking and searching for an answer, I began to ask
myself the same question. What was I doing giving street credibility to a
festival that had, over the years, advanced little beyond the mundane
middle-class mediocrity that personifies the Afrikaner and his viewpoint of
the arts? My black face would find itself plastered in many media giving the
notion, maybe, of some inclusivity, whereas, if truth be told, there is
practically none.

This is a festival that demands that Afrikaans is spoken by everyone from
traders to artists and street urchins performing woeful Christian songs. I
myself engaged fully in this Afrikaans, though in the form of cultural
terror, until I felt the chains of neocolonisation pulling too tight at my
throat. I was playing into their hands, giving their language credibility
beyond what it really deserves.

I questioned Nelson Mandela's coming here! What was he doing overstretching
the hand of reconciliation to those who had, have, no notion of ever
reconciling with their African nationhood? Is reconciliation going to remain
just an old man's sentiment or will these people ever change their
behaviour?

I was in the toilet when some young bucks entered and one asked the other if
he had seen that "fokken kaffir" with his naked body on the cover of that
magazine, when I shouted, "You naai, that fokken kaffir is sitting here,"
upon which they fled. I witnessed the "sies" tannies remonstrating with
coloured people drinking in public ("Julle moenie hier drink nie [you
mustn't drink here]") while all over the town their young bucks were walking
with their beer, wine and spirits getting pissed and very irritating and no
one said a word.

It can be said, with impunity, that these young bucks saw little of the
artistic fare and came primarily for the drinking binge these festivals
allow in the name of art.

I saw the anger of the coloured beggars who this year stole to their hearts'
content after years of simply watching their town being invaded by an
avalanche of Boer arrogance. I saw the coming of the Christian train and
their particular brand of religious oppression - what are they doing at an
arts festival? - and the banal fare put out by the Afrikaanse Taal en
Kultuurvereniging with never a black face on stage.

As for being a national arts festival, please, think again before using that
term so loosely. It is an Afrikaner Boerfest, a tannie and oompie affair at
best.

Breyten Breytenbach summed it up very succinctly when he said that the
festival is "die bont begrafnis van die Afrikaner [the motley graveyard of
the Afrikaner]".

He was one voice with the ability to perform, one who spoke the true colours
of art. And what did he get? People leaving his shows were not capable of
accessing his talent.

Yes, it is a graveyard and one that I shall not visit again, for truly, in
my opinion, these people are going to take ages to grow and I've lost
patience with their vulgarity. Enough is enough.

What about street theatre and its survival amid the monstrosity and banality
of Huisgenoot, radiosondergrense, Sarie and every conceivable marketing
idiot plastering the streets with the vulgar sounds of Dozi to a point where
the damnable noise is everywhere? Is anyone out there thinking?

Arts festival? Sarie? Rooi Rose? Die Burger? Naspers? These are the bastions
of Afrikaner mediocrity raping and pillaging what could have evolved into
some semblance of discovery for the volk. But it is just another piece of
their own brand of banality, making a senile volk even more so.

It was Breytenbach, again, who rallied against the penkwakke (fatuous hacks
or so-called arts journalists) who fed the volk more froth with their
inability to reflect the truth and scope of the arts. What, he wanted to
know, are their qualifications? What indeed?

All hats off to the Marthinus Bassons, the survivors and activists, who
continually give the volk something to think about, who try to embellish
this boerewors parade with something of an intellectual quality beyond the
petty, miscellaneous froth called "dramatic art".

This is not a national arts festival and never was. I for one feel emptied
of my effort and drained by those oxygen thieves who take so much, yet offer
so little back to artists who need the challenge that allows them to
continue their forays into the mind.

The rape will undoubtedly continue, but how many true artists will remain
standing?