{"id":21203,"date":"2013-07-18T05:56:05","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T03:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/distinguished-panel-considers-freedom-charter-as-a-cultural-text\/"},"modified":"2013-07-18T05:56:05","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T03:56:05","slug":"distinguished-panel-considers-freedom-charter-as-a-cultural-text","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/distinguished-panel-considers-freedom-charter-as-a-cultural-text\/","title":{"rendered":"Distinguished panel considers Freedom Charter as a Cultural Text"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Freedom Charter as a Cultural Text forms the topic for a public dialogue to be held on Saturday 20 July at Freedom Park at 18h00. Writer Brent Meersman will chair the panel, with panellists: poet laureate Keorapetse William Kgositsile, composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen, musicologist Ncebakazi Mnukwana, and arts journalist Gwen Ansell.<\/p>\n

Born in Johannesburg in 1938, Keorapetse William Kgositsile attended Madibane High School. His extensive writing career began in 1961 when he worked as a young writer for the radical anti-apartheid newspaper, the New Age. He is highly noted for the promotion of arts and culture as important pillars of post-apartheid South Africa. Unable to tolerate the oppressive apartheid conditions and under the direction of the African National Congress, Kgositsile left South Africa in 1961. He spent his exile years pursuing his literary, educational, cultural and political interests in countries such as Tanzania, the United States of America, Zambia and Botswana. In 1971 he obtained a master\u2019s degree in Fine Arts from Columbia University in New York. During this period Kgositsile published his first poetry collection, the critically acclaimed Spirits Unchained.<\/p>\n

Kgositsile has written ten books and published numerous articles, speeches, and other materials. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals including Guerrilla, Journal of Black Poetry, Negro Digest, The New African, Pan African Journal and Urban Review as well as in the anthologies Black Arts, Black Fire, For Malcolm and Poems Now. Worldwide appreciation of Kgositsile is evident by the presentations of his poetry, lectures on writing as a craft, revolutionary ideas on arts and culture and anti-apartheid activism.<\/p>\n

He was a founder of the Black Arts Theater in Harlem and has been an educator at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, the University of Denver, Wayne State University, the New School for Social Research in New York, the University of California in Los Angeles and the Universities of Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Fort Hare. He has also spoken in many countries, including Cuba, England and Russia. Since returning from exile, Kgositsile has worked in various capacities including Special Advisor to three Ministers of Arts and Culture, a position he currently holds.<\/p>\n

Ncebakazi Mnukwana is a lecturer in music education, ethnomusicology and co-ordinates the advanced certificate in education (ACE\/GOS) for arts and culture at the Konservatorium. She holds a BMus.Ed, a post-graduate diploma in organisation and management and a MMus (cum laude) from the University of Cape Town (UCT). Between 2002 and 2005, she was awarded a scholarship to the Oslo University College in Norway, where she received an MPhil in Multicultural and International Education. During her time in Norway, she was the musical director of the group Inkululeko, a choir formed in the late 1980s by South African exiles. In 2007, she enrolled for a PhD at UCT. In July 2008, she delivered a paper titled \u201cThe teaching of iingomazamagqirha of the amaXhosa in South Africa: An eme rgent model for oral-based transmission of indigenous knowledge systems\u201d at the International Society for Music Education (ISME) conference in Bologna, Italy. She is the South African project leader of MatikiSA a theatre-making group comprised of South African and Finnish actors and musicians. She also chairs the reference team of \u201cShades of Belonging\u201d by the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation, a project aiming to preserve African indigenous instruments.<\/p>\n

Gwen Ansell is a freelance arts writer and media trainer. She writes a regular weekly music column in Business Day, contributes to many other publications, and is the author of Soweto Blues: jazz, politics popular music: a history of South African popular music in the struggle. Ansell is also a music industry researcher, who has co-published studies on music in the context of micro-economic development for the Western Cape provincial government, and on innovation and communities of practice in the South African music industry. She has presented papers on these topics at several national conferences. Ansell runs the country\u2019s oldest arts journalism training programme, now in its 11th year, at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival. In 2008, she was Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor at the Columbia University Center for Jazz Studies in New York. Most recently Ansell was a member of the judging panel for the inaugural National Arts Festival\/BASA Arts Journalism Awards.<\/p>\n

The composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen has written a wide range of music encompassing symphonic work, opera, chamber music and vocal music. He was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music in 1998 and was selected as one of the Mail Guardian 200 Young South Africans of 2011. He was Director of the Canadian new music organisation, Ensemble Noir, from1999 to 2007; touring to Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. He is currently the Creative Director of Pina Ya Thari, a production company he co-founded in 2011.<\/p>\n

Performers around the world have performed his music; including the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Vancouver Opera Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic, Johannesburg Festival Orchestra, New York City\u2019s Vox Vocal Ensemble, Musica Noir, Chicago\u2019s Cube Ensemble, and Ossia. Ndodana-Breen has received commissions from Wigmore Hall, Vancouver Recital Society, Madam Walker Theatre in Indianapolis, SAMRO, UNISA, Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival, the Emancipation Festival of Trinidad Tobago, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Luminato Festival of Toronto, the Haydn Festival Eisenstadt for the Haydn 200th anniversary, and from the 2013 Johannesburg International Mozart Festival.<\/p>\n

He is the composer of Winnie, the Opera, which premiered in April 2011 at the State Theatre in Pretoria. Other operas include the children\u2019s chamber opera Themba Seliba, the chamber monodrama Umuntu\u2013Threnody (commissioned by the National Arts Council) and the short opera Hani (commissioned by University of Cape Town Cape Town Opera) premiered at the Baxter Theatre, Cape Town in 2010.<\/p>\n

Brent Meersman is a South African writer based in Cape Town. His first short story was published by the Congress of South African Writers (COSAW) in 1993. Credo is based on a poem from the collection Ophila and the Poet and other poems (Junket Press, 2010). \u201cIn that poem I tried to distil in the simplest and clearest human terms, in words as uncluttered as possible, what sits at the heart of the Freedom Charter\u2026 to get at the people\u2019s imagination, at what created the vision we still have because of that document\u2026 Freed from a certain amount of noise that comes with the language of the charter itself, it reminds us of our common purpose, in poetic terms, of us not only as South Africans, but as part of the human enterprise,\u201d explains Meersman.<\/p>\n

Meersman has been a weekly contributor to the Mail Guardian since 2003, writing on the arts, design, food, travel, and literature. He is an editorial board member of the International Association of Theatre Critics (recognised by UNESCO), and co-chair of the Cape Town Press Club. His novels include Primary Coloured (Human Rousseau, 2007), Reports Before Daybreak (Umuzi Random House, 2011), and his latest novel Five Lives At Noon was published July 2013.<\/p>\n

This dialogue will take place under the auspices of Credo \u2013 A Musical Testament to the Freedom Charter. Credo will have three performances during its world premi?re run on July 18, 19 and 21, 2013 in the ZK Matthews Great Hall at UNISA, marking the 140th year of the founding of UNISA. Credo is produced by a creative team including Bongani Ndodana-Breen, Brent Meersman, Andrew Black, Brenda Sisane, Shadrack Bokaba and the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Jonas Alber. Tickets cost R60 to R200 and are available from Computicket.<\/p>\n

For more information or to book for the dialogue, please contact gilly@thefamousidea.co.za or 011 446 7061. There is no entrance fee.<\/p>\n

NOTES TO EDITORS:
\nThe Freedom Charter is one of the key \u201cfounding\u201d documents of a democratic South Africa and is regarded as second only to the constitution in the country\u2019s hierarchy of political documents. Adopted in Kliptown on 26 June 1955, the Freedom Charter was the culmination of a long nation-wide, non-racial political consultative process among the diverse constituent members of the South African Congress Alliance, which included the African National Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats, the South African Indian Congress and the Coloured Peoples\u2019 Congress.
\n50,000 thousand volunteers were sent into various communities to canvass public opinion regarding the political future of South Africa thus, in this seminal respect, the Freedom Charter differs from similar documents found in other democracies as it is the result of this public consultation process.
\nThe Freedom Charter states the fundamental principles and core national values of a democratic South Africa, among which are:
\n\u2022 The people shall govern
\n\u2022 All national groups have equal rights
\n\u2022 The people shall share in the country\u2019s wealth
\n\u2022 The land shall be shared among those who work it
\n\u2022 All shall be equal before the law
\n\u2022 All shall enjoy equal human rights
\n\u2022 There shall be work and security
\n\u2022 The doors of learning and culture shall be opened
\n\u2022 There shall be houses, security and comfort
\n\u2022 There shall be peace and friendship<\/p>\n

Some 3,000 delegates attended the conference adopting the Freedom Charter and those in attendance recall that each section of the Freedom Charter was adopted to cries of \u201cAfrika!\u201d and \u201cMayibuye\u201d.<\/p>\n

URL<\/strong>: http:\/\/credo-freedomcharter.com\/<\/a>
Twitter<\/strong>:
Facebook<\/strong>:
YouTube<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Author: Fiona Gordon<\/strong> from The Famous Idea Trading Co.<\/a>. Originally distributed by MyPR.co.za<\/a>.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

No of Images Uploaded: Three<\/strong><\/p>\n

To gain access to Three<\/em> image\/s please Like, Tweet or +1 this article:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Images:<\/strong>
\"?????\"
\nCREDO Dialogues Photographer:\"Keorapetse-William-Kgositsile\"
\nProf. Keorapetse William Kgositsile Photographer:<\/p>\n

\"Brent-Meersman.-CREDO-Libretto-Curator-Public-Engagement\"
\nWriter Brent Meersman will chair the panel Photographer:<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Freedom Charter as a Cultural Text forms the topic for a public dialogue to be held on Saturday 20 July at Freedom Park at 18h00. Writer Brent Meersman will chair the panel, with panellists: poet laureate Keorapetse William Kgositsile, composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen, musicologist Ncebakazi Mnukwana, and arts journalist Gwen Ansell. Born in Johannesburg in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[3257,1452],"class_list":{"0":"post-21203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-mypr","8":"tag-public-relations","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}