Big Ideas: South Africa: From Africa to the worldd

One of the key themes to emerge at the recent World Summit on Arts and Culture in Johannesburg is that we live in a world characterised by enormous structural inequities in the distribution of and access to resources, with extreme wealth on the one hand and abject poverty on the other. This global phenomenon is reflected in regions and within countries. The inevitable conflicts that arise out of the struggle for resources and power play themselves out in the cultural arena, or take on a cultural dimension with culture being appropriated as a mobilising force within that struggle. Culture is then both the site and the means of struggle, with the arts and the media – with their embedded worldviews, values, beliefs and ideas – reinforcing or challenging dominant cultural and power positions.

PARADOXICAL THINKING
Against this background, the World Summit raised a few contradictions or paradoxes that need to be grappled with: Firstly, whether cultural hegemony is asserted through force – like the Taliban publicly burning books or obliging women to dress in a certain way on pain of punishment – or through market forces dominated by major international or regional economies, the intention (or effect) in terms of homogenising values, worldviews, ideas and beliefs are similar. Secondly, that cultural diversity has in recent times been promoted as an antidote to such homogenisation, and yet, cultural diversity can be both an affirming assertion of self-respect and dignity, and the premise or tool for conflict between nations, communities and people. Thirdly, within the context of material inequities and its concomitant skewed power relations, culture, the arts and cultural exchange (often with wealthier nations or communities providing the resources for such collaboration) can be strategies for co-option to maintain the status quo, or, more rarely, the means for resistance and change. If these assertions are true, then whether it is recognised or not, the individual artist’s work takes place in an ongoing struggle for hegemony, for upholding or challenging dominant values, ideas, beliefs and social patterns of behaviour, so that the arts are never neutral.
For policy-makers in the arts, and for those distributing public funding, particularly when such funding – whether overtly or implicitly – is expected to align itself with national interests, the allocation of funding has never been and can never be simply about ‘supporting the arts’. The allocation and use of funding occurs within the context of structural inequities in economic and political power, and against the background of cultural struggles that are symptomatic of the tensions caused by such inequities. As those engaged in the arts, it is our lot to dwell within that Gramscian paradox: the pessimism of the intellect versus the optimism of the will. With our rational senses we are able to analyse and reflect, and this may give rise to pessimism because of the intractability of the structural problems that lie at the root of our conflicts. Yet, it is in acting to change our world, starting perhaps at a local, micro level, that we reflect our optimism.

OPTIMISTIC FUTURE
The fourth World Summit on Arts and Culture was the first to be held in Africa, a continent which, for many, has been a symbol of pessimism. Of the 179 countries ranked on the Human Development Index, 27 of the bottom 29 are on the African continent. While the world average life expectancy is 66 years, in Africa, only 9 countries out of 53 enjoy a life expectancy of 50 or more. Even in South Africa, the miracle, rainbow nation that gave the world so much hope since the victory over apartheid, life expectancy has declined significantly, the gap between rich and poor has grown to one of the widest in the world, and unemployment has never been this high. South Africa might be the only country in Africa with the resources to host the FIFA World Cup, but our football team is ranked lower than 13 other teams on the continent.
Herein lies a two-fold metaphor appropriate to the World Summit and its key themes of global inequities and cultural diversity: simply because countries have (even significantly) fewer resources than other countries does not mean that they cannot be competitive in the realms of ideas, values, beliefs: in such contexts, talent, imagination and sheer will could count for more and, secondly, most of the Summit speakers were selected from countries that are not part of the usual international conference circuit. It is this diversity of speakers that contributed in no small degree to the quality, richness and freshness of the discourse at the Summit. In the final analysis, the World Summit was not about culture, or the arts, but about people, people from very different countries, cultures, contexts; people making connections across language, gender, resource and cultural divides. And out of these connections, new partnerships emerged, new projects were catalysed, new networks were established, all of which will no doubt continue to give content to the Summit’s theme: Meeting of Cultures: creating meaning through the arts.