Creative Cape Town

The esteemed Albie Sachs defends his freedom of speech. Photographer: Moeneeb Dalwai

TO: the Editor

Subject : GIPCA April Programme REVIEW

Ambitious. Let’s call GIPCA ambitious. As you know, in a city with a packed calendar of creative, commercial and entertainment events, The Gordon Institute of Performing and Creative Arts carries out its mandate meticulously, competing with the best for your attention. It churns out colloquiums, interventions and celebrations. It tackles social issues and offers a more academic angle on everyday South African situations and thought processes. April’s programme was filled with  dance, art, drama, music, and on at least one occasion, placed public debate on the laps of a passive audience and had some squirming in their seats. Well, me.

The programme included many notable names, but for me none more than that of Judge Albie Sachs, former freedom fighter, author, and co-writer of a constitution we still struggle to live up to. Would he live up to the media impressions I had of him, however? Maybe. Or maybe I’d come away with more questions than answers.

My first impression was of a distinguished, gentle man steadily pushing a lectern out of his way with one arm. The other arm is in heaven, along with his fear of failure. Both were blown off in a politically-motivated bomb blast some years ago, one of those gentle, Apartheid government finger-wags that was supposed to wipe the smile off his face. Instead it gave him a chance, as he suggested to the attentive, to answer every freedom fighter’s recurrent question : will I be brave enough when they come for me?

He was. He was also brave enough to give a talk that, by his own admission, for once represented more his personal views than the morally-bound balance and measured responses that come with the territory of being a judge.

Perhaps it’s all his time in the public eye at the constitutional court pew, but the man is an excellent, effortless orator. He spoke about freedom of speech, its public and political impact, and the individual creative’s responsibilities towards both. His talk touched on the work and philosophies of satirists Zapiro and Laugh It Off, The Protection Of Information Bill, historic hurt and ‘fence sitting’, a dubious metaphor he redressed and redefined for the purpose of his presentation.

He was learned, meditative, somewhat idealistic and superbly good at giving the wise, winding granddaddy version of this great land, give or take a few sudden and exciting tales about his testicles and spectacles that his fans are probably well familiar with.

The writer should sit on the fence, he posited, it is his or her role.  The fence is precarious, indeterminable, uncomfortable and difficult – all the things that signify a true collision or reckoning with expression, self interrogation, truth, its antitheses and their collective consequences.

He very quickly had to practise what he’d preached, as audience feedback found a few fellows challenging him directly with what seemed a fair amount of preparation and research. One, familiar to The Judge for previous responses, referenced a Durban speech (now amended, and infamous, in my eyes, for its riddles and removals) that had caused a stir for supporters of Zapiro in his defence against President Jacob Zuma’s lawsuit allegations. Zapiro himself was present to defend the criticism that certain of the Judge’s sentiments may jeopardise Zapiro’s defence in court.  It got quite testy, with restrained, but intentional verbal bullets flying at the man from various directions and his own quotes being read aloud against his wishes with little help from the chair. Despite the gravity of the subject matter at hand, I felt for a man sitting alone on a stool in front of a room of staring eyes, and felt uncomfortable at the turn of the tables, and the implications it had on the aura of calm and ease of a nice, middle-class matinee session. He went quiet, and ultimately offered closure with a polite invitation to continue to dialogue under more appropriate circumstances.

Whether they did or not, the metaphor came up in a recent Zapiro cartoon published after last week’s confrontation.   This, for me, underlines the fact that expression – be it personal, political, professional or other – makes waves, and waves will always lick our shores and move the plates of our spiritual, social and political territories.  GIPCA is part of the wave, and I am grateful for their guts and gregarious generosity.

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Penned by The Pilot Fish who left the meeting reflecting on the price we pay for freedom of speech, and Judge Sach’s thoughts that  if we went new revolutions, they must be steeped in our stories and our philosophies.  She is still fence-sitting, old style, but she thinks she agrees with the Judge. Artists shouldn’t be careful; they should be daring.

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