Festival facing funding battle
Change in grants regulation threatens to cut premier national show’s lifeline – and hit jobs ‘Cult Clit’ puts a taboo topic in the spotlight
FUNDING has become a tricky issue for the Grahamstown National Arts Festival (NAF) since the change in regulations for grants.
Festival chief executive Tony Lankester said a third of its funding came from the national lottery, which had assisted the event since 2002.
The change implemented last year means if an organisation receives a grant such as the festival did last year, it may only apply for a new grant the following year – “in other words it’s a cooling off period,” said Lankester.
The new regulation means the organisation may not apply until October of the same year it received a grant.
NAF receives R10 million from the National Lottery and this year Eastern Cape Premier Phumulo Masualle had to step in to “bail out the festival to keep the lights on”. Other funding comes from Standard Bank and the Department of Arts and Culture.
“How this happened was there was a time we got threeyear grants, which obviously made it easier, but with the new regulation it means effectively there is this hiatus.
“For 2018, once again we will be okay but then it’s the same scenario,” said Lankester.
He maintains a possible reason for the new regulation regarding grants is that large organisations need to be audited and there are many that side-stepped this by creating smaller organisations to apply for a grant.
“My issue is with how badly this is being handled. The whole notion of cooling off is not right. One size does not fit all.
“We are employing artists, and we’re creating a platform. It’s actally immoral,” he says.
Lankester, who has been living in Grahamstown for the 10 years since he has been at the helm of the festival, added: “The Lotto will turn around when criticised and say organisations shouldn’t be so dependent on them. But that’s why the lottery exists. The regulation is for everybody and we’re talking billions upon billions of rand. So actually the new regulation’s unintended consequence is extremely damaging. There will again be uncertainty in 2019 despite the fact we’ll be fine next year.”
The festival employs about 400 people, from security officers to technicians and facilitators to make sure all runs smoothly for the hundreds of thousands of festival-goers. It generates some families’ sole income, if not for the whole year, at least several months.
Lankester says unemployment in the Makana district stands at about 70 000. While many festival enthusiasts walk around the streets in a state of euphoria, it’s difficult not to notice the dozens of people begging on the streets and the countless times that festival-goers are asked for food or to pay for looking after their cars.
Like those seeking official, albeit seasonal employment, the more indigent folk are also trying to make the most of the money outsiders bring in.
So it’s a ripple effect starting from those who hold the purse strings at the lottery down to those who give out the jobs at the festival and to the last step in the ladder of those who are dependent on the few rand they score daily from the showgoers. Cult Clit, which made its debut at the festival this week, explores female initiation, along with a range of challenges faced by women and girls. EARLIER this week, photographer and stylist Trevor Stuurman posted several images on his Instagram account of an insider’s view of Ndebele boys returning home as men after spending a period of time at an initiation camp.
While there is some transparency and knowledge as to what happens at male initiation schools, the same cannot be said for female initiation ceremonies.
Young girls also undergo the right of passage and the coming-of-age ceremonies known as Iqhude in the Ndebele culture, returning home as women every year. However, to many, female initiations and female sexual identity remain taboo topics, with not much known about the practices that girls have to undergo on their journey to womanhood.
For Ndebele girls, Iqhude is roughly a three-month journey. The young girls are warned not to discuss their ritual, being told they would “lose their minds” if they happened to do so.
The ritual begins with a physical examination to determine a girl’s virginity, followed by the removal of the clitoris. It’s suggested that apart from the physical changes they undergo, the girls also develop a deep emotional bond with one another as a result of spending so much time together.
Cult Clit, a production by the Rhodes University Drama Department that made its debut at the National Arts Festival this week, explores female initiation, along with a range of challenges such as male prejudice, stereotypes about women, and the culture of angry black women.
The production is based on the story of Peter Frederiksen, 63, who was arrested for the possession of 21 clitorises in 2015. The Danish man allegedly surgically removed and froze women’s genitals at his home in Langehoven Park, Bloemfontein.
In a re-imagining of the crime, the six all-black female cast form a cult in retaliation to Frederiksen, using “alternative methods” to get rid of him. The aim of the cult is to step in where the justice system has failed them.
The women are charged with Frederiksen’s murder.
They then interchange characters displaying how police officers rubbed their bodies against them in a sexually provocative way as they are being searched.
Three slides are used to depict a change in scene and roles.
A box in the middle of the stage is another important element as this is where flashbacks are shared, with the women narrating their stories and living out the horrors each has encountered.
One such chilling story is when third-year drama student Yolanda Soji shares how she was forced by her mother and family members to remove her clitoris at the age of 12.
Another is when Nthastis Mashike, who portrays a Rhodes lecturer, is sexually assaulted by two male students, a real-life incident noted on the #Rhodesreferencelist (naming alleged sexual offenders at the institution).
Director Mmatunisang Motsisi said the ensemble of the stories within the play are important for society to come to terms with them.
“We realised we didn’t want to tell a story about just the pain. Our focus really was about this sisterhood that these women had created.
“It’s not that they kill people, they create a space for women to come forward and tell their stories and be comfortable and have some sort of closure. ”