Ten years on from the achievement of democracy, there can be few parts of the world where the practice of cultural management is as frustrating, exhilarating, demanding and profoundly rewarding as South Africa. Peter Stark and Brian Debnam reflect of the cultural development of Johannesburg.
At 45 million, South Africa has the same population as England but a land mass equivalent to France, Germany and Italy combined. It has eleven official languages, more cars, cellphones and ATMs than the whole of the rest of Africa, up to 40% unemployment and 5 million people with AIDS. National arts and cultural policy is based upon a White Paper of great quality but one which presumed a level of financial resources and skilled cultural management way beyond anything that has been available, given other (understandable) government priorities in housing, health and education. Resource limitation left a National Arts Council with a budget of R40m (£4m) in 2004.
Fallout
National structures and programmes have faltered, and artists and independent cultural projects have survived through extraordinary personal commitment and the skills of improvisation, ducking and diving learnt through the years of apartheid.
Justice Albie Sachs, wrote of the current position in 2001: ?We are in a strange position, no group is in charge; no section exercises cultural hegemony. The old establishment has lost its hauteur, but no confident and powerful new establishment has emerged to replace it? What we lack is confidence, organisation, focus and leadership? We have to learn to enjoy and be invigorated by the multiplicity of our cultural forms, and to get used to being as we are, even while we are changing.?
City focus
Looking to the immediate future, commentators agree that, in addressing these challenges, the role of the big cities will now be critical. In striking contrast to the UK experience, South African cities raise almost all of their income directly from the rates. Thus, if resources are to be available to address social priorities in disadvantaged areas and communities, then growing the ?rate base? of the central city swiftly and substantially is critical.
Of the big three cities, Johannesburg ? Egoli, the City of Gold ? is by far the most important. This economic powerhouse of the country is the social and political crucible and the test-bed for evolving cultural policy, programmes and projects. It was between the World Wars that the City consolidated its place as the home of Capital in Africa. Post 1946, apartheid triumphalism and the strength of the increasingly sanctioned Rand produced a frenzy of high rise construction in the City Centre alongside the spatial and social impact of the Group Areas Act in forcibly relocating black and other non-white communities such as Sophiatown to areas far from the centre. Cultural facilities in the Inner City were extremely limited and only available to the white population who were, in general, not prone to cultural consumption, or even to sophisticated dining. The City Centre was, effectively, closed in the evening.
Cultural poverty
By 1986, as apartheid faltered, some inner areas were becoming more mixed and sub-culturally vibrant. After 1992, the pent up forces that draw lower paid workers and the rural poor to live near city centres were unleashed alongside continuing white flight.
By 1998, the City of Johannesburg was on the verge of bankruptcy and the Inner City was increasingly seen as a no-go area.
The City Centre, however, represented far too important an asset to the country and,
perhaps, to the interests of international capital in Africa for it to be allowed to decay further. The bounce back began, spearheaded by a new City Council and then by its principal regeneration agent, the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA).
The City aspired to be a ?world class? African city, so its marketing consultants offered the statement that ?Johannesburg has theatre, music and the visual arts to rival the best in the world?. It took an outside eye to suggest that (with a very few exceptions) it did not have music, theatre or the visual arts to match the best in Swindon.
In 1999, the Johannesburg Civic Theatre was open for only half the year and was playing to houses of around 35% when it was open. Johannesburg?s Art Gallery and MuseumAfrika saw themselves as under siege and attracted barely 40,000 visitors a year. Even the Market Theatre was struggling with the withdrawal of donor funding, the slow arrival of replacement government finance and the immense cultural and management challenge of moving, overnight, from an internationally renowned ?struggle? theatre to being, de facto, the National Theatre of South Africa.
Strategy for change
As part of its establishment phase in 2000, the JDA commissioned an audit of inner city cultural assets and development policies and their capacity to contribute to economic regeneration. The three-part strategy that resulted began with the adoption of an ?identity? for the cultural sector in the City ? The Johannesburg Cultural Arc. Physically, this proposed a development corridor linking the new Constitutional Court (to be built immediately adjacent to the, by then, redundant Johannesburg Fort and Jail), The Civic Theatre, the cultural precinct at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and the faltering Newtown Cultural Quarter. Metaphorically, it spoke of connection and of hope to a factioned and beleaguered cultural constituency.
The second part of the strategy saw substantial infrastructure investment to provide the new court (and a heritage attraction at the fort and jail), a new bridge, on-and-off ramps from the freeway to connect the University and the outer suburbs directly to Newtown, a taxi interchange for 2,800 vehicles, new public housing, the upgrade of the public environment (including a R10m public art programme) and improvements to the fabric of cultural buildings in Newtown.
Newtown, lying immediately next to the City Centre and the site of a recently demolished power station complex and redundant fruit and vegetable markets, was secured in 1984 as a Cultural Quarter. At that stage its only cultural project was The Market Theatre, established in 1976. Between 1984 and 2000, four ?launches? of the area had taken place and each wave of development left one or two additional projects, though the area never attained critical mass and cynicism was rife. The final part of the Newtown cultural strategy was, therefore, to build a sustainable quantity and quality of production there and to attract audiences throughout the day, week and year, thereby guaranteeing a footfall that would attract the private sector investment needed to complete this part of the inner city. Bernard Jay, the dynamic chief executive of the Civic Theatre had already shown what could be done ? the Civic is now open 50 weeks a year and regularly plays to over 85% capacity!
Green shoots
In Newtown, half way through the three-year programme, there are grounds for cautious optimism with a core group of stronger cultural organisations and venues increasingly working together. These include The Market Theatre, Newtown Music Hall, Dance Factory and resident performing companies; Museum Africa, World of Beer and a new Science Museum; a National Crafts Centre and the Market Photography Workshop. Plans for new cultural organisations to relocate to the area are well advanced.
Productivity has increased by 100% and audiences by 200%. We are on target for tripling productivity and quadrupling audiences by the end of 2006. Almost all cultural organisations are involved in workplace-based training and the first Cultural Management Masters courses in Africa have started at Wits.
Most important, the private sector is now substantially involved, with plans for new catering, residential, retail and commercial development approved and the development interest spilling into the surrounding areas.
Parallels
There are three important points of similarity with the UK ? specifically the NewcastleGateshead experience. First, this culture-led regeneration does not displace working class communities (they were already displaced). New public housing for lower earners is being built in Newtown alongside the arrival of the loft conversion and cappuccino-drinking brigade. Secondly, surveys show that the Arc and its projects have become firmly rooted in the public imagination, and strongly linked to the perception of positive change in the City Centre. Finally, though not always fully appreciated by those with a solely economic regeneration focus, the project as a whole is absolutely reliant on the continued quality of programming by cultural managers.
As Director of Northern Arts and then Special Projects Adviser to Gateshead Council between 1984 and 2000, Peter Stark (e: peterstark@dogbank.fsnet.co.uk; {http://www.pstark.com) was the initiator of the Gateshead Quays project and then a member of the development team. Since 2000 he has been working as an adviser on culture in regeneration in South Africa, and project manager in the Newtown Cultural Quarter in Johannesburg. He offers his perspective with Brian Debnam (e: brian.debnam@blueyonder.co.uk), who, after twenty years in Australia and then senior roles with Northern Arts and The Sage Gateshead, now splits his time between the UK and South Africa.