Políticas

As a choice of theme, Home Affairs was a direct reference to the acts of xenophobic violence which swept across South African cities in May 2008.76 The theme also encouraged artists to interrogate issues surrounding citizenship and belonging more generally. Announcing its arrival in the city, the logo for ITC 2009 provocatively transformed the signature cockroach image into a silhouette of a burning man – referening to Ernesto Nhamuave, the Mozambican man whose death brought international attention to the violence of 2008.77

76_{South Africa’s infamous government Department of Home Affairs is mandated to deal with matters of}

immigration and with the official documentation of South African citizens. The department has long suffered a bad reputation due to repeated allegations of corruption, poor service delivery, perpetuating xenophobic attitudes and mistreating African immigrants.

77

On May 18 2008, Nhamuave was set alight by a mob in Johannesburg and died from his wounds. The images of his last moments drew international attention and were a rude awakening to South Africans about the severity of the violence against immigrants. See Sibanda (2009) for a discussion about the issues

As a key part of the festival programme, Bailey assembled three interdisciplinary teams of artists to create collaborative performance works. Each team was made up of one international practitioner with a background in site-specific performance, one artist from the SADC78region, and two South Africans. The groups were assigned a site each within the city, and taken through a workshop and research process in order to ‘submerge’ them in the social landscape.79 They produced three 30 minute works: Limbo, Exile, and

Amakwerekwere.80

Having lived in Cape Town for little over a month, I arrived at Church Square a few minutes early and sat on a bench waiting for the performance of Limbo. I noticed several other people milling around and doing the same, among them a Coloured81Woman whom I assumed to be Homeless, given her appearance and the number of people in this circumstance in Cape Town. Seated nearby, she was eating bread and soup, and having what seemed to be a lively conversation with herself. After a while I heard the sound of music playing and noticed performers gradually emerging from different positions in and around the square. By now more people had gathered around, I stood up to get a better view, and as though choreographed we all seemed to draw back and clear a space in the centre. The show was now underway, the crowd was still growing and several people began taking pictures on their phones. Then the Homeless Coloured Woman, who was still in her place, started to dance and sing, almost as though not to disappoint us.

Over the music I now heard the recorded voices of migrants speaking in different languages. The whole space was transformed into a colourful, mesmerizing and emotive

surrounding the circulation of the photographs. Also see the looking/not looking discussion in Corporeal Networks.

78

‘The Southern Africa Development Community is a Regional Economic Community made up of 15 member states…Established in 1992, SADC is committed to Regional Integration and poverty eradication within Southern Africa through economic development and ensuring peace and security.’ From

<http://www.sadc.int/about-sadc/> [Accessed 15/05/2013].

79_{There were some ethical issues surrounding this process and the appropriation of the refugees’ narratives}

and the burning man image which was part of the festival’s logo. I will return to these in Corporeal Networks.

80_{‘Amakwerekwere’ is the derogatory term for foreign blacks in South Africa. The word derives from the}

stereotype that people from other parts of Africa speak unintelligible gibberish, hence the onomatopoeic ‘kwerekwere.’ See Nyamjoh (2006).

collage of movement and song, cast in relief against the dull tones and formal lines of the surrounding buildings. In a flurry of action the bodies of the performers were physically doing battle with the architecture, some hanging from a building, scaling the bars of a fence while others tugged at the statue in the centre.82

Meanwhile, the Homeless Coloured Woman was rolling on the ground with laughter, mimicking the action and chasing after performers as they ran from one scene to the next. Grinning all the while in between slurps of soup she joined in the action so convincingly that at times it was unclear whether or not she was meant to be a part of the performance. With time it gradually became obvious that her own performance was a spontaneous one, that her dishevelled appearance was not in fact the work of a brilliant costume and makeup artist. The soup was real, as were the crumbs of bread stuck on her leathery face, as was the odour of stale sweat and alcohol which followed her. Undeterred by the disapproving stares, jeers and laughter she was now receiving from some spectators, she continued to chat in a jovial manner to individuals in the crowd, toasting us all with her cup of soup and a near toothless smile.

I remarked on all this after the performance as I sat at a nearby café with friends, some of whom had been performing in Limbo just minutes before. I had enjoyed the performance and been moved by the work because the subjects of migration and xenophobia are close to my heart, but I think I was especially intrigued by the Homeless Woman’s presence, which seemed to strike at the very core of what the themed performance was all about. To some people she was disruptive and distracting – she did not seem to know her place. To others she was amusing – she was reading from a different ‘script.’ And to still others she was unimportant, dismissed as a drunk or a lunatic, and therefore invisible. Whatever the case, it seemed that in the middle of a designated public space, this Homeless Coloured Woman had somehow crossed an invisible line that had

82_{Parliamentarian Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr or ‘Our Jan’ (1845-1909), fought for the recognition of Afrikaans as}

been established when the performance started: a line which demarcated the role and place of the ‘public’ as outside the imaginary bounds of the performance space.

Soon after watchingLimbo, I attended a performance ofExileat the Adderley Street Fountains. The Fountains were built in the 1960s and are today located in the centre of a busy traffic roundabout circle close to Cape Town Station.83Created in collaboration with Cape Town’s Jazzart Dance Company, Exile loosely incorporated the personal stories of the immigrant collaborators with whom the team had met over a period of weeks. One of them, Prosper Tafa, recounted the story of his real-life journey across the Limpopo River from Zimbabwe to enter South Africa illegally. Using parts of his narrative, Exile

conveyed with striking clarity the desperation, fear and hope which characterise the migratory experience for many African immigrants in South Africa. Some of the images conjured up subjective associations for me: a procession of dancers approaching the water seemed like a funeral march on a river bank; a plastic basin floating away from a woman reminded me of the biblical story of Moses; a man struggling with a load of suitcases resembled a modern-day Atlas.

Amidst the chaotic flows of the everyday transit zone, the performance was an Island of narrative continuity and deeply symbolic meaning. The amplified sound of Tafa’s solitary, pleasant sounding voice created an air of calm amidst the noises of bus engines and car horns, and music blaring from stationary taxis. Meanwhile the bodies of the dancers became seemingly inseparable from the Fountain itself, which was transformed before my eyes from an ugly concrete circle into an oasis, then a crocodile-infested river, and finally a cleansing spring.

Throughout the performance, objects were used to manipulate the water in the Fountains and to evoke empathy and emotional and embodied engagement between the performers and spectators: the repetitive rhythms created as the women waded through the

83_{The main train station in the city also adjoins a bus terminus and a taxi rank serving long-distance}

knee-deep water, wringing their soaked Chitenges84and contorting their bodies evoked for me the sense of a mourning dance; a plastic hose hitting the surface sounded like a whip striking flesh and the force of the blow, which sent streams of water shooting upward, was reminiscent of people scattering in fear from the lashings of riot police.

The power of such imagery was not only a matter of what historical and cultural connotations the objects and actions evoked, it had to do with the physical presence and abundance of the water itself in this place – a traffic island in the middle of a main street, in a city defined by water, but where there is very little actual presence of water in the CBD. The proximity of bodies in a large crowd, in an outside space, gave me a sense of anticipation and excitement that marked out the performance and its space as apart from ‘everyday’ events. At the same time the ‘everyday’ could not be obliterated, the sights and sounds of the place gave an immediate and real energy to the performance which I think would not have felt the same in another space. The most arresting image from Exile was the reproduction of the burning man – a wire and rubber sculpture was set alight, referencing the death of Ernesto Nhamuave. At this moment there was a palpable sense of horror in the crowd as we watched the figure quickly become engulfed in tapering flames and clouds of black smoke billowing into the sky, the suffocating smell of burning tyres bringing to my mind the practice of necklacing in the 1980s and 1990s.85Then as the flames died out, a spray of water cascaded over the same kneeling figure. The sheer contrast of the elements of fire and water, and their symbolic connotations transformed the image into one of redemption, and the figure with its arms upraised now appeared to be rejoicing in the spray of a fountain or spring. At the same time, the dancers created a spectacular show of water spirals in time to the closing music. This final image of ‘hope’ reduced most of the audience to tears (myself included), while others were so filled with joy and excitement that they enthusiastically waded into the fountain upon an invitation

84

A cotton print cloth worn by women and associated with foreigners in South Africa.

85_{This was a practice of mob justice used to demonstratively punish suspected informers during the apartheid}

from performers. This performance affected me intensely on a personal level, and had an equally strong effect on the rest of the crowd.

By the time the event came to an end and performers began to make their way on foot through town, Exile had attracted so much attention that traffic was momentarily disrupted by the large crowd trying to follow the performers as they left the scene. Although I was not researching ITC at the time, in my capacity as researcher/scholar I was wary of what seemed to be a rather simplistic ‘happy ending’ tacked onto the very complex and unresolved social problem of xenophobia. I could see that other spectators responded positively to this hopeful ending, but I myself resisted the involuntary effect the performance had had on me and fought against the urge to join in and wade into the Fountain with the crowd.

My experience of ITC in 2009 left a lasting impression which I have previously tried and failed to capture in writing (A.L. Moyo 2009). In the first place, the thematic focus resonated with aspects of my own work at the time.86Whilst I had a very clear personal attachment to the 2009 theme of Home Affairs, I also appreciated the fact that although the collaborative works were dealing with very particular stories, they avoided prescriptive judgments about the issues being explored, so that the appeal of the works I saw was largely in their multivalent nature. The performances mapped my own sense of not belonging in Cape Town, at the same time as they attempted to draw attention to the broader social landscape within which they were taking place.

Xenophobia has long been a concern in South Africa and existed even before the first democratic elections in 1994, but the events of May 2008 drew wider international and media attention than previous outbursts particularly after the death of Ernesto Nhamuave.87

86_{I was in the process of finishing my Masters dissertation and at that point struggling to articulate my}

subjective experiences of migration and displacement, whilst at the same time in a state of uncertainty pending the outcome of my application for a work permit to stay in South Africa legally. Much of my first month in Cape Town was spent queuing for hours at the Barrack Street Home Affairs offices alongside many other foreigners.

87_{Often, researchers and commentators have attempted to explain the violence by blaming either the anti-}

The events of May 2008 were shocking because of the scale of the aggression; as attacks against foreigners spread from city to city over a relatively short period of time. In Cape Town, xenophobic violence was an unwelcome reminder of the divisions of race, class and ethnicity. Sporadic clashes between ‘locals’ and ‘aliens’ had been reported in the Cape Town area from 1996 but, perhaps because of the city’s liberal reputation, the 2008 violence was more alarming than anything that had happened before. The fact that this could happen in what has popularly been considered the most tolerant and relaxed city in South Africa was a major embarrassment to city officials, as it problematised the view, expressed by many, that Cape Town is somehow more ‘European’ than perhaps Johannesburg and Durban were. Violence had shown the Mother City to be ‘all too African’ in that it was not exempt from the social ills which plague South Africa’s other major cities.88 Certainly, there were questions here to be asked about South Africa’s relationship with the rest of the continent.

Venturing into such a volatile and pertinent subject required, first and foremost, that participating artists bring a degree of openness and empathy to the process, which involved meeting some of the African immigrants who had experienced the violence of 2008 at first- hand. However, what transpired in the performances of Limbo and Exile was more than storytelling, the events in each case mirrored conceptions and experiences of encountering ‘difference’ in the context of the city space. In particular, the incident in Limbo

demonstrated that the terms of identification (ie. being a performer or a spectator) have a bearing on the reception of ‘otherness,’ whether as ‘strangers’ (ie. the Homeless Coloured

or poor service delivery and the on-going struggles of poverty and unemployment which affect many citizens in post-apartheid South Africa (see Dodson 2010); while others have suggested that the research has not yet tackled the phenomenon directly or in any real depth (Crush 2008: 1). Notably, most of the violence has been directed at African immigrants, although there have been cases of Asians, mostly Pakistanis and

Bangladeshis, being attacked as well. Negative attitudes towards foreigners have also caused problems for some South African nationals who, because of their physical appearance – i.e. having a darker complexion or a certain shape of nose – have either been targeted by civilians or harassed by the police and immigration officials. The severity of the abuse has varied, ranging from unlawful detention by police and Home Affairs, to the eviction and destruction of property, brutal beatings and in the most extreme cases the loss of lives (see the timeline of xenophobic violence in Crush 2008: 44-54). There have also been conflicts between communities of internal South African migrants and host communities.

88_{See Mbembe (2001) for an indepth discussion of how Africa functions discursively as a sign of violence}

Woman). We might even take ‘strangeness’ to be a kind of performance enacted by and for various individuals (audiences) towards particular ends, effectively suggesting how the notion of a ‘stranger’ is a relative and malleable construct.

While I was attempting to read the woman’s body in order to identify her presence in the performance, I also made assumptions about her background, and value judgements about her motivations. In fact, she may not have been Homeless at all, she may or may not have been drunk as most of us assumed, and she may not even have been Coloured. What my experience ofLimbotherefore inadvertently highlighted are contradictions and tensions between: the everyday and the spectacular, the liminal rite and the carnival, the real and the imaginary, formal and informal, active and passive, centre and periphery, self and other. The performance did not necessarily reveal this, but the space it opened facilitated this everyday encounter alongside the performance event, with the effect that it highlighted the constructions and potential reactions to performative bodies in the city.

As I saw it, the Homeless Coloured Woman deliberately made her presence felt in

Limbo to make her own comment on the work. Whereas the art represented one form of marginality, she extended the boundaries in asserting her own presence which was usually ignored. As such she forced the audience to extend their awareness of other marginal identities – with the homeless body being a particularly unsettling presence in urban space (Kawash 1998). Because her act of transgression was sustained throughout the performance, it seemed to be a deliberate rather than a momentary lapse on her part. Yet she remained entirely absent from the documents of the performance, and there are no official photographs of her presence. She does not exist, then, other than via my own strategic recollection here (and the recollections of other spectators who saw her), and so she haunts the performance in two senses: re-tracing the map in performances and the map in my memory.89

If she had not already been marked as an ‘outsider’ or a ‘social misfit’ on account of