Youth Day is a public holiday of national significance for South Africans and, while our Youth Day Festival was a tribute to those who died in the Soweto Uprising (June 16, 1976) at the hands of the apartheid police, our festival also aimed to celebrate young people among us today.
Our programme featured artists, creatives, storytellers and caregivers from our town of Porterville, and beyond in venues across our town. Acts ranged from live music and poetry reading to a visual art exhibition, and a travelling magician.
Among the many highlights, two moments registered as significant growth areas for our Purple Mountain Arts Residency.
The first of these is the poetry competition we ran in the build-up to our Youth Day Festival. The competition was in collaboration with award-winning poet, Jadrick Pedro – from the nearby town of Ceres – who also donated the first prize of R500 cash to the winning entry. We received more poems than we expected, and the winning poem, Hier Stan Ek (Here I Stand) penned by one of our local policemen, Allen Daniels.
Another highlight was Remo, a solo performance by Rameez Cassiem, who led us through his experience of being in a fatal road accident. His years to full recovery were later set back when he was diagnosed with a rare degenerative nerve disease, which will eventually leave Rameez bedridden. Rameez arrived in Porterville with his wife, Anika, and child, and a couple who serve as his caregivers. This ‘family’ blew us away with their understanding of otherness, their embodiment of compassion, empathy, and humanity, and they held us captive with their conversation, well after Cassiem’s performance ended.
To single out these two highlights among the many would, however, be unfair to all our other participants and events. These two events do, however, aptly reflect the inner and outer virtues Purple Mountain Arts Residency aims to explore, particularly as we continue to grapple with the wounds of apartheid’s continued legacy.
Purple Mountain Arts Residency also grew in its efforts to constantly invest in local businesses and home industries. We estimate that our PMYDF was responsible for approximately R60 000 being spent locally.
Finally, we were commanded to start working on our Heritage Festival for September ASAP by quite a few of our audience members who remember it from last year, and by a few of our artists who want to return. All these prods seem to indicate that Purple Mountain Arts Residency’s work is on the right track.
