Arts and culture minister Nathi Mthethwa’s critics must have thought he was headed for a damp corner of one of his crumbling museums after his “peace flag’’ idea was poleaxed by President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this year.
Turns out his detractors were just being hoisted with their own petard and the minister is back in business with a showstopper, a cultural tour de force he hopes will hit the high notes.
So take a bow, SA’s new Mzansi National Philharmonic Orchestra, brought wailing into the world in a still-secret agreement between the minister and the orchestra’s principals. This is Mthethwa as our new “Phantom of the Opera”.
It marks a spectacular comeback for the minister whose fortunes seemed to take a dip, if that is possible in Ramaphosa’s freewheeling cabinet, with the flag incident. Unfortunately, though, the critical reception to his orchestral manoeuvres hasn’t been promising, but critics are notoriously difficult to please, and in our case it’s the mythical masses who matter anyway.
Who but the most backward would say no stumping up for a new national musical effort, especially one that breaches the ramparts of classical music, Europe’s most enduring cultural export besides Abba? So what if the tunes are so 18th-century Salzburg with a hint of Black Forest cowbell?
It was easy to reject an expensive flag, even the oversized version Mthethwa insisted would “memorialise our democracy’’. (But is it really that dead?) Still, it was a patriotic gesture and showed Mthethwa’s heart was in the right place, even if his hand was in our pockets to fund this towering vanity. Does anyone even notice the smaller, cheap ones?
If the flag proved a flutter of folly, one must not forget that Mthethwa did more for nation-building and reconciliation with a single stroke of his pen than the entire cabinet has ever done when he presided over the renaming of Port Elizabeth last year.
Perhaps Mthethwa was counting on the support of his cabinet colleague, industry minister Ebrahim Patel, to buy his story that the peace flag would boost the local steel industry. It was quite a long pole the minister had in mind, about 100m, but even so it sounds like the sort of thing you could pick up second-hand from an Asian dictatorship. China perhaps?
If the flag proved a flutter of folly, one must not forget Mthethwa did more for nation-building and reconciliation with a single stroke of his pen than the entire cabinet has ever done, when he presided over the renaming of Port Elizabeth last year. Sure, processes were followed, and the name Gqeberha is perfectly legit apparently, but it was Mthethwa’s response to his detractors that showed he’s not easily swayed, unless it’s to the saturnine sounds of a Viennese waltz.
As if to underline the minister’s resolve, his spokesperson explained that 690 emails and three boxes with the petition signatures of 12,402 residents of Nelson Mandela Bay municipality had been received. And the DA had collected another 17,102 signatures. These were sent to the SA Geographical Names Council to read and confirm suspicions they were all the same proto-colonial moaning. They were all rejected. Diehards may still call it Port Elizabeth, but it’s become plain old PE.
Ever quixotic in the discharge of his duties, Mthethwa has now appointed former Radio 702 broadcast boss and anticrime activist Yusuf Abramjee to guide us in the delicate matter of social cohesion, which is what you need when things fall apart. Why not Dudula’s Lux Dlamini, or was he too busy harassing Nigerian street mamas? This surely revives Steve Hofmeyr’s chances of getting that cultural ambassador post he’s been known to be secretly eyeing.
Abramjee is loud and abrasive, but very popular and with what some would call a colourful political past, all traits one wouldn’t think would put him first in line for a big social cohesion job.
It seems Mthethwa and Abramjee have at least one connection from the past. Abramjee tweeted in April 2016: “Have we forgotten how ministers Nathi Mthethwa & Siyabonga Cwele threatened the media to stop publishing Nkandla pics saying it was illegal?''
The EFF’s Floyd Shivambu, an acknowledged expert on social cohesion, said he was “amazed’’ (and not in a good way) by the appointment.
“This is a circus: a clown appointing another clown. How on earth can a confused, preposterous, divisive and captured puppet be an advocate for social cohesion?” he asked. Preposterous indeed.
Once was a time that Mthethwa warmed an important seat in the cabinet, but now he’s trying to grab a few lousy bucks for anything that seems like reliving the glory days. With Gwede Mantashe warbling on about “baseload” (and possibly getting a second Eskom to keep him quiet) and Naledi Pandor going operatic for a few more millions from Treasury for the Cubans, who can compete?
OK, so the flag was a flop. But what about the orchestra? I lived with musicians when I was a student in Cape Town, and I know from experience that they do three things apart from make a racket: drinking, fighting and loving, in that order. They’re a riotous crew, and Mthethwa should have been advised better than to stray into affairs of the harp.
In any event, it seems orchestra bosses, especially in that citadel of white privilege Cape Town, are groaning at Mthethwa’s apparent largesse towards the new vaudeville to the detriment of the established orchestral pit. Little wonder it’s being billed as a showdown between the old white elite and the new empowered elite.
At the launch of the orchestra, Mzansi NPO board member Prof Muxe Nkondo said a love of classical music “must start with children and child development”.
“Whatever [we] do, [we] must make sure that orchestra reaches our kids on the laps of their parents. So we have a programme that the orchestra is part of the institutions that we are going to use to make sure we educate our kids for a more global consciousness,” he was quoted as saying in Daily Maverick.
Squealing violins, tummy-rumbling French horns, frenetic Italian and screaming New Age kids on parents’ laps getting hooked on the classics, throwing their bibs at the players. What’s not to like? The minister’s onto a winner here.
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