No pictures today. I need all the space for writing. A few weeks ago, the diary featured David Goldblatt’s remarkable photograph of jubilant parliamentarians celebrating the signing of the new constitution in front of the House of Assembly. You can view it on David’s current show at the Goodman Cape.
At the opening of the show, David told me he had had only thirty minutes to shoot the picture, taken from a high window in a building opposite the parliamentary buildings. Communication with his subjects was by bullhorn. After each shot was taken, the parliamentarians cheered and waved ecstatically and had to be subdued via the bullhorn for the next shot.
On Wednesday this week came the news that David has declined to accept the State Order of Ikhamenga Silver, awarded to South Africans who have excelled in the arts, in sports or in journalism. The letter was sent to President Jacob Zuma following Black Tuesday, the day on which the Protection of State Information Bill was passed in Parliament.
Wrote David, ‘Firstly … this action severely undermines our brave but fragile democracy and the rule of law. Secondly, I decline the award in protest against what has been done to the spirit in which the award was created.’
The letter in full can be found elsewhere on the net.
To my knowledge, David’s action is the first sign from artists that State patronage is no longer acceptable when that State attempts to muffle debate and silence the press.
One thinks back to the time of the 1979 State of Art in South Africa conference, when artists signed a pledge not to participate in any State backed art exhibition (and that included invitations to international biennales, then channeled through the government) until art education was open to all races. Artists refused from then on to give legitimacy to the apartheid government.
Sadly, it seems that the need of opposition to the State has once again arrived. Each of us will have to consider again what it is we need to do as artists and as South Africans to make the State understand how crucial it is to preserve the democracy which was achieved at such terrible cost.
We cannot sit back and just hope for the best.
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