Festival directors threaten boycott

Budding Grahamstown puppeteers practice their “rubbish art” at the National Arts Festival. Picture: David Macgregor

Irate prominent play writers and directors are set to boycott next year’s National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and start up their own over alleged “bad treatment” by Makana Municipality, reports Lindile Sifile.

The directors are accusing the municipality of sabotaging their shows by pulling down posters advertising their shows on walls and street poles in the Grahamstown CBD. They claim to have lost revenue due to this act.  Several directors, namely Darlington Michaels from TV soap Isidingo, Bongani Linda, Martin Koboekae,  Duma Mnembe, Thapelo Motlou,  Mike Lubisi and Julian Seleke-Mokoto attended the meeting in which the  removal of posters was the main issue. They are all members of United Theatre Practitioners of South Africa.
During the meeting it was decided that they will form their own festival somewhere else to run concurrently with the Grahamstown festival.
“We will take all the people that are dominating in the Fringe to another province…, maybe Durban. We’ll take our money and enrich another province,” said Seleke-Mokoto, adding that Durban might be a good venue.
This move could see next year’s programming of the festival being affected as there are already other festivals planned in Cape Town and Johannesburg around the same time as the Grahamstown festival.
Seleke-Mokoto claims to have spent R6000 to print posters for his show, Money Maker, which was one of the more successful shows on the Fringe.
He attributed the success, which other directors did not enjoy, to word of mouth.
“I’m no longer coming to Grahamstown. It’s horrible here. We are angry at the way the municipality of Grahamstown is ripping our posters  from the posts. Most of the directors I know have the same problem. I  have created jobs for people living in  Grahamstown’s township and I’m  renting a house in the township for  R9000 for the ten days that I’m  staying here. We bring so much to Grahamstown during the festival to deserve this kind of treatment,” said Seleke-Mokoto.
He claimed that one of the directors caught municipality workers removing posters.
Michaels confirmed his involvement in the setting up of another festival, but could not comment further as he was rushing to another show.
Festival CEO Tony Lankester said nobody had approached him or his committee about the boycott planned for next year.
“The municipality doesn’t have a policy to take the posters down as far as I know. We don’t have any jurisdiction whatsoever when guys decide to put their posters up on the streets. The only time the municipality might take off posters is when they are covering a street sign or a street name. I would be surprised if the municipality is taking them off without any reason except for those,” said Lankester.

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