Quasi-State Censorship in South Africa: The Performing Arts Councils and Politicized Theater

Cultural Politics in South Africa: An Inconclusive Transformation

“…Now they wonder if they should accept funds from sources that in the past were associated with state institutions, or whether those institutions should be continued or in what form. Should artists participate in or accept appointment to offices in festivals or exhibitions associated with establishment institutions, such as the so-called National Arts Festival in Grahamstown (Grundy 1993) or with public universities and museums? To what extent does cooptation compromise artists and lend credibility and legitimacy to once suspect organizations?…”

“…By controlling, indeed for years monopolizing the electronic media (South African Broadcasting Corporation), television and radio reflected the opinions and cultural preferences of the apartheid establishment. Likewise, state-financed provincial performing arts councils were major employers of talent in dance, theater, opera and music (Grundy 1994a). Add to that the state's efforts to regulate access to culture from abroad and the challenges to dissidence are compelling.…”

“…So did the exigencies of the art markets. During these decades the "culture as a weapon of the struggle" argument dominated the political debate in artistic circles (Grundy 1994b). There was an unsettling confusion and lack of agreement and direction to the arts scene.…”

Dancing for the Nation: Ballet Diplomacy and Transnational Politics in Post-Apartheid South Africa

“…Ballet thrived under the white supremacist regime. The national government set up regional arts councils that served exclusively white audiences, administrators, and performers, operating from the assumption, Kenneth Grundy argues, “that only European art forms mattered” (1994, 241). Gauteng Ballet Company's apartheid-era predecessor, the Gauteng Commission on the Arts’ Ballet, was the paradigm of high art for the privileged white minority in Johannesburg and nearby Pretoria 5 .…”

“…Thus, these dancers undermined the company's commitments to the nationalistic apartheid state, if only symbolically. With an exclusively white company roster, the apartheid-era company enjoyed a level of assumed prestige, as Grundy (1994) alludes to above, that enabled dancers, choreographers, and teachers to circulate internationally as representatives of the state without risking the public undoing of South Africa's white nationalist stance. As it was explained to me by those dancers and teachers who circulated between England and South Africa, the company's continued connections were proof positive of the extraordinary quality of South African ballet.…”