A Strategy for Social Intervention
6.3 Celebrating Difference: A Stimulator for Change and Transformation?
project of the Festival that provoked negative and controversial public opin-ions. For example, the make-over of the statue of South Africa’s first presi-dent, Louis Botha, in front of the Houses of Parliament by Cape Town based artist Beezy Bailey, who turned Botha into an ‘abakhwetha’, Xhosa initiate, to symbolize South Africa’s ‘coming of age’, was perceived by some as
“offensive” and in “exceptional poor taste” (Cape Times, 23.9.1999; expert 25, personal communication): “I am not an Afrikaaner, but all members of the ‘Rainbow Nation’ should respect our collective heritage with tolerance and understanding,” reads one letter to the editor, illustrating the sacredness of historic symbols in the city (Cape Times, 24.9.1999; see Figure 11).
6.3 Celebrating Difference: A Stimulator for Change and
Multiculturalism, a Relevant Concept?
The Festival’s conceptual approach to celebrate difference is based on the concept of a pluralist, multicultural society. In this instance, intercultural tol-eration is premised not on suspending but on celebrating difference. Differ-ence is thus not viewed as a reason for fear, nor does it reinforce the con-struction of otherness that legitimised the conceptual and practical exclusion of certain population groups from society and from the notion of ‘civilisa-tion’. The state-imposed conceptualisation of difference in terms of ‘race’
that was inherited from the past is thereby re-conceptualised in terms of ‘eth-nicity’, and social and cultural forms of identity (Hall 1992). This assertion of difference, as I have illustrated in Chapter 2.1, has been welcomed by inter-national theorists writing on ethnicity and group identity, as an expression, not of social discord, but of a new form of democracy through which sections of society previously silenced have been given a voice, thus enabling a more democratic form of social dialogue (Hall 1992; Young 1990). Moreover, as Hall writes in the context of British society, “new ethnicities” posit a “non-coercive and more diverse conception of ethnicity, to set against the embat-tled, hegemonic conception of ‘Englishness’, which … stabilises so much of the dominant political and cultural discourses” (1992, p. 258). As a result, challenging such exclusive notions of political and cultural discourses shaped in the past by a White/European minority can be seen as an important role of the One City Festival in legitimising its approach to celebrate difference.
However, opponents of this conceptual viewpoint argue that pluralism re-asserts the notion that ethnicity is a central part of people’s identity, and thereby ironically re-confirms ‘culture’ as a defining and divisive force, lead-ing inevitably to the questionlead-ing of equality as a social and political concept (Malik 1996, p. 16). This critique is particularly valid in South African society, as Apartheid did not aim to distinguish between ethnic differences, but to use them to legitimise an unequal society (experts 1 and 26, personal communications; see also Chapter 4.1).
The One City Festival sought to solve this ambivalence towards its pluralist approach by staging different cultural expressions on a single platform, sym-bolising that Cape Town as a city is constituted by differences within and not without: The theme of the ‘One City’ served as a conceptual reference point, symbolising a ‘hybrid’ culture, characterised by unity and equality (experts 2, 4 and 25, personal communications). However, the fact that audiences re-mained largely separated throughout the One City Festival suggests that
Capetonians did not celebrate the many cultures as part of the one city, but rather the many cultures reproducing the many cities. The theme of the One City, standing for intercultural and interracial harmony, was instead a theme in search of a reality rather than already a reality. Neither the theme nor the chosen strategies were strong enough to create a new reality of the integrated and equal city.
The One City Festival therefore requires a more coherent effort to create an awareness of commonalities and to make them tangible. A more coherent programming of events with the aim of consciously attracting different audi-ences and thus facilitating the crossing over of cultural lines (as occurred in the case of ‘The Granary’), is very important. The proactive encouragement of cross-cultural projects, in which artists and/or members of different social and cultural backgrounds work on a common theme, creating not only a
‘hybrid’ product that fuses different cultural expressions, but more accurately creating a tangible space of a ‘hybrid’ experience, could be another important step. The One City Festival had such projects in mind, although they failed, however: This was partly because of a lack of interest from both artists and communities, because of a lack of time, as the preparation time for the Festi-val was limited to 4.5 months, and because of a lack of funds, which limited the possibility to pro-actively encourage such long term projects (expert 25, personal communication). A stronger commitment of the City Council to the strategy of the Festival is thus clearly needed, and this is a point to which I will return later.
Social Transformation without Spatial Transformation?
Related to the first point of concern discussed above is the Festival’s strategy of transforming social relationships relatively independent from space. An important reason for the failure of the One City Festival to bridge and inte-grate the ‘many cities’ into ‘One City’ can be seen in its neglecting to make space central in redressing social and emotional divisions. To make a socio-spatial impact on the city was a secondary aim of the Festival, arising mainly out of strategic considerations and legitimising, too, the decision to locate the main festival district in the central city40. As I have sought to show in
40 Prior to the Festival, a number of community and cultural organisations expressed their dis-content about the plan to locate the Festival primarily in the central city (expert 4, personal communication). These groups argued that this would reinforce the existing spatial divi-sions by emphasising the privileged status of the central city and of those population groups
ter 4.3 the construction of identities (and with that, social divisions) has been inextricably bound to space in Cape Town; different population groups have developed alternative ways of mapping and using the city, thereby not living in the ‘same’ city and producing a fragmentary, divisive and exclusive sacredness of Cape Town’s urban landscape. The outcome of the Festival has shown the persisting entanglement of identity and space reproducing the
‘many cities’ also in its spatial dimension: Whites avoided the spaces that were populated by Blacks and Coloureds and Blacks avoided historically exclusive spaces, such as the Nico Malan complex, but also more generally other venues in the central city.
The notion of the place-making values of festivals is well reflected in socio-logical, anthropological and geographical literature on festivals. Festivals transform landscape and place from everyday settings into temporary envi-ronments (albeit with permanent identities), created by and for specific groups of people: the everyday space of the familiar and mundane is tempo-rarily transformed to one that is otherworldly and spiritually uplifting (e.g.
Waterman 1998, p. 58; Cohen 1982; Jackson 1988; Soja et al 1993). There-fore, if the Festival wants to take advantage of the place-making values to contribute to the restructuring of exclusive spatialities, it must address space as it exists in its many symbolic meanings more explicitly, both in its strate-gic aims, chosen projects and choice of specific venues and places.
Central to such an approach would be, firstly, a more coherent approach to the programming of events. The example of the Grand Parade suggests that venues are well accepted when a positive identification with the particular space is possible or when it is bound to the practice of everyday life. The Grand Parade has a history of public (particularly Black) protest, and also lies in close proximity to Cape Town’s central public transport interchange points, which are predominantly used by Blacks and Coloureds. The exam-ples of the Granary and the Castle indicate that a mixture of events can attract mixed audiences even in a symbolically charged space that is rather unfamil-iar and not bound into the everyday life of audiences. However, if the Festi-val wants to intervene substantially in the entanglement of identity and space, and if he wants to prevent the reproduction of the many cities, it needs to
that have access to arts and culture events and activities anyway (ibid.). As a result, many organisations and community groups organised their own events in community centres or other venues in their areas, which then became part of the Festival’s fringe programme (ibid.).
strategically create confusion about and stirr up the entanglement of space and identity: The strategy of the Festival to locate events mainly attractive to Black and Coloured population in traditionally White spaces of the city must, then, be extended to the traditional Black spaces of the city, to which Whites need to be attracted. Instead of having arts exhibitions, public lectures, dance and theatre shows that usually attract White population groups in the tional White spaces of the city, those events should be staged in the tradi-tional Black and Coloured areas of the city. Precisely because there are so few reasons for Whites to visit the Black and Coloured areas of the city dur-ing everyday life, a Festival could create a reason for dodur-ing so, at least for a limited time.
Secondly, developing a spatial strategy, then, would mean the incorporation of the Festival into long term social and spatial strategies, which also requires close co-operation with other line functions within the Municipality, such as the spatial planning and economic development departments, with the differ-ent functions supporting, incorporating and balancing each other’s strategies.
Even though the Festival did become part of the City’s strategic priorities, this form of interdisciplinary planning failed in the case of the first One City Festival in 1999. While the Spatial Planning Department was not involved at all, the Economic Development Department was only involved, because it was responsible for the planning and co-ordination of the Millennium cele-brations for New Year 1999/2000, which were to be launched during the Festival. There was, however, otherwise no co-operation to develop cross-functional strategies with regard to the One City Festival (experts 4 and 25, personal communications).
The need for long-term social and spatial strategies, within which the Festival is embedded, leads to the third and final critical point to be made with regard to the Festival as a strategy itself.
The Festival as a Strategy for Transformation
Festivals are ephemeral: They come and go. As anthropological literature suggests, festivals can be understood as a liminal ritual that removes people from their habitual daily lives (Falassi 1987a, p. 2). As such, they can create a time and space where exploration beyond predominant socially constructed boundaries can take place. In such celebratory spaces, fantasies about the self and the other can be embodied that extricate people from the limitations of their everyday lives. The potential of suspending the everyday rules that
gov-ern people’s lives during festivals can open spaces for subversion of domi-nant ideas and identities. However, a festival can only be a starting point: it can initiate change, but it cannot transform what has been established and internalised over decades, even centuries. If, therefore, a three-day festival was to be more than a big party that glosses over rather than addresses social and emotional divisions in society, and if it was to have a long-term social and spatial impact, it must be incorporated into the day-to-day functioning and thinking of the Municipality, which needs to recognise arts and culture activities as a valid means of dismantling exclusive imaginations of urban space.
There is, however, another danger involved in the strategy of the festival. The One City Festival eventually gained political support as a result of its poten-tial to become an internationally known event, such as the Edinburgh Festival in the U.K., for instance, and thereby contributing to a marketable identity of Cape Town that stimulates economic growth in the city through foreign investment and tourism (experts 13, 21 and 25, personal communications). In the contribution of the Festival and the arts sector in general to economic development, the Festival co-ordinator sees a chance for the arts to justify themselves in terms of the strategic aims of the city and therefore to receive greater support from the city (expert 25, personal communication). The sym-biosis of the aims to stimulate economic development and to create an inter-nationally acknowledged festival and to contribute to the social development and integration of communities is, however, a difficult one. It evokes the danger that the Festival has to compromise its content for one that is attrac-tive and marketable to a wider, international audience, which might not be interested in community dance shows, school children’s poster exhibitions, or the SABC celebrities and other events that seek to include those who are oth-erwise not necessarily interested in the arts by celebrating, the local, daily culture of Cape Town’s diverse population. In fact, these were events that attracted large audiences that had never before gone to an arts gallery. The central focus on these events and therefore people, is essential, though, if the One City Festival wants to play an integrative and reconciling role for the city. The international marketing of the Festival might undermine this role by forcing future organisers to increase the proportion of high-brow arts and cultural events and by marginalising popular community events as well as people. In such a case, the Festival might become an exclusive space, taking away its very potential to be a liminal space for the subversion of dominant ideas and identities. The fact, however, that international tourism to South
Africa in general and Cape Town in particular has a strong element of cul-tural tourism, with tourists being particularly interested in South Africa’s history and transformation from colonialism and Apartheid to liberation, which is documented in the great interest of international tourists in organ-ised trips into Cape Town’s Townships as well as in the great popularity of trips to Robben Island41 (expert 21, personal communication), suggests, however, that a focus on the international marketability of the Festival does not necessarily require a shift away from local culture and local issues, but could instead be used as an argument for a strong local focus.
In conclusion, the social strategy of the One City Festival, which focuses on reconciling emotional divisions amongst Capetonians, should be understood as an important mechanism for contributing to the social and cultural inte-gration of Cape Town. However, as it also indicates that the transformation of identities and social divisions cannot be addressed separately from space, it should be integrated in long-term social and spatial strategies in order to fully realise the positive potential of the Festival.
41 Robben Island, lying about 10 km offshore in front of Cape Town, was a state prison for political prisoners under Apartheid, and it was here that Nelson Mandela served most of his 27 years imprisonment. Recently, Robben Island has become recognised as a World Heri-tage site, and, as the cell of Mandela became a virtual shrine, Robben Island became a
‘sacred space’ of local and international pilgrimage that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit over the forces of colonial oppression (Chidester 2000, p.16).