Latest news with #Makhanda
News24
a day ago
- News24
Makhanda: The collapse of an iconic South African town
Makhanda's deteriorating municipal systems, including water supply, electricity, and road maintenance, have worsened. The municipality has faced consistent disclaimers of opinion from the Auditor General, highlighting severe financial mismanagement and unresolved corruption allegations. Once a significant economic contributor, the National Arts Festival has seen declining attendance, shows, and financial returns due to municipal neglect and infrastructure challenges. It was six days into the 51st annual National Arts Festival (NAF) in July this year, and yet there were no lights to welcome visitors entering the small city of Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown) after sunset, according to GroundUp. Only the occasional shop front cast patches of light along High Street between Rhodes University's Drostdy Arch and the landmark Anglican Cathedral. It was not a temporary power outage, but a situation that would persist for the rest of the 11-day festival. Municipal reports indicate this was mostly due to cable theft. Historically, the main thoroughfares would be filled with buskers, traders, and festival-goers, but the dark streets were now almost deserted. A decade ago the festival attracted 225 000 people to watch more than 600 theatre shows. It's now a fraction of that. (The municipality's population is about 100 000.) Usually the Makana Local Municipality makes an effort to temporarily patch up its failures over the festival period. Not this year. Financial mismanagement The municipality has received disclaimers of opinion from the Auditor General (AG) since the 2018/19 financial year. Prior to that, it had received qualified audits. A disclaimer of opinion is the worst finding the AG makes. It occurs when the municipality's finances are so mismanaged that the AG cannot provide documents to support its financial statements and therefore the AG cannot form an opinion. After a crumbling reticulation system left residents and festival visitors without water for days on end in 2016, erstwhile festival CEO Tony Lankester publicly stated that the biggest threat to the festival's continuation was not the paucity of arts funding, but the municipality itself. Under a majority ANC council for at least 25 years, the city has steadily and visibly deteriorated. (This reporter lived there in the 1990s and has visited the town at least once a year for more than 20 years.) Streets across the city are awash with potable water leaks and sewage overflows. Potholes are so prevalent that even some main streets are now little more than corrugated gravel. Water rationing and outages continue. Electricity outages are common. Municipal buildings are derelict from a lack of maintenance. The festival has now shrunk to 242 shows, according to NAF spokesperson Sascha Polkey. Polkey did not supply visitor numbers, but patrons were visibly thin on the ground this year. In 2013, the festival brought R349 million to the province (about R460 million today), including R90 million to the city's coffers (about R159 million in today's terms). Last year it brought in R132 million for the province, including R58 million for the city, according to a report by the South African Cultural Observatory. Off grid Residents have been experiencing water outages since at least 2012. Yet the municipality is still not able to ensure a continuous water supply to the whole town. This is despite supply dams being full. The lack of a continuous and reliable water supply has forced large revenue-contributing institutions to seek independent supplies. This in the context of a municipality with a collection rate of less than 60%, according to opposition councillors. Rhodes University, which has about 9 000 students at its Makhanda campus and is the single largest ratepayer, is moving to make itself independent of the municipality's erratic water supply. 'A significant challenge facing the university is the unreliable water supply from the Makana municipality,' said deputy vice-chancellor Professor Mabokang Monnapula-Mapesela at an alumni event on 3 July. 'The university is progressing plans to establish its own water treatment facility to process water from its borehole system,' she said, calling on alumni to assist in funding the initiative. The university communication office said it is also 'exploring renewable energy solutions'. Makhanda is home to three prestigious private schools. All have sought ways to provide a reliable water supply for their learners, staff and grounds. Managers at the Diocesan School for Girls and Kingswood College said most of the water they now use comes from their own borehole and harvested rainwater. Only St Andrew's College still predominantly uses municipal water, relying on its own supplies during water outages. Dry taps in the suburb of Tyantji may have contributed to 75-year-old resident Thandisizwe Nondlwana dying when his house burned down last month. Neighbours said they couldn't douse the flames as their taps were dry. Firefighters arrived too late. A senior firefighter told GroundUp, on condition he was not named, that the roads are so bad that it is difficult to get to an emergency in time. Teetering systems Makhanda uses about 18Ml (million litres) per day, municipal manager Phumelelo Kate said in May last year. The water is supplied from the Waainek Water Treatment Works (WTW) on the west side of the city, and the James Kleynhans WTW on the east. Retired water engineer Peter Sturrock estimates that the reticulation system has so many leaks that 28Ml needs to be pumped into the system per day for continuous, city-wide supply. As DA councillor Luvuyo Sizani put it: if you see the streets are wet, you know the water in that area is on; if the streets are dry, so are the taps. An upgrade to the James Kleynhans Water Treatment Works, which abstracts water from the Glen Melville Dam on the Orange/Fish scheme, was announced as the solution to the city's water troubles in 2015. It was meant to double the treatment works' capacity from 10Ml to 20Ml per day by 2017. It is yet to be completed. The costs have ballooned from an initial R160 million to more than R700 million to date, according to Makana Citizens Front councillor Phillip Machanik. Sturrock said the most it has ever supplied was 16Ml per day when three pumps were working full time. But the pumps burned out, and there is now only one operational pump at the James Kleynhans WTW. Two rising mains – a pipeline through which water is pumped uphill – are required to deliver the 20Ml per day target. A second was built as part of the upgrade. But the original, which takes water up to the Botha's Hill reservoir above the city, needs to be fixed. 'Time and money ran out before that was done,' said Sturrock. Although Amatola Water is in charge of the James Kleynhans upgrade, the municipality is supposed to exercise oversight and be responsible for operation and maintenance. The municipality reported to council that there is only one general worker at the treatment works when there are supposed to be six. Drought and maintenance failures In December, at the height of summer, the Howieson's Poort dam, supplying the west side of town, came close to running dry. The system is designed so that when this happens, the dam can be topped up from the larger Settlers Dam, which lies in a different catchment and is fed by the Kariega River. But, said Sturrock, when it was attempted, with just a few days of water left in Howieson's Poort, valves along the pipeline burst. It had not been checked. The pipe and pump had not been used or maintained for years. Disaster was averted when good rains filled Howieson's Poort again. However, the pipeline and valves have not been fixed, so the same problem would occur if there is another dry spell of three or four months without rain. Missing pump The 8Ml per day Waainek Water Treatment Works (WTW), which abstracts water from Howieson's Poort Dam, is working at full capacity. But municipal reports before council show it only has one operational pump, running day and night with no backup. Sturrock says there should be three: two pumps working on rotation, and a third for when one of the pumps needs servicing or repairs. There is a second pump, but as reported at the municipality's infrastructural development portfolio committee meeting of 10 July, it is 'on limp mode' and requires repair. A pump worth R2.7 million was ordered from Manco Business Enterprise in East London in July 2022, and paid for, but it has never been delivered. The engineering and infrastructure director Asanda Gidana was dismissed in November 2023. One of the two charges was for unlawfully facilitating its pre-payment. Gidana disputed her dismissal at the Bargaining Council, which ruled in her favour on both counts, and ordered she be paid six-months salary, amounting to R635 000, as she did not want her job back at the municipality. It appears Gidana was an innocent scapegoat, as the chief financial officer, the municipal manager and other municipal employees recommended and signed that the payment should be made. The commissioner making the award, Mandlenkosi Mini, remarked: With neither the pump nor its installation and connection delivered, nor any money recovered, Makana Citizens Front councillor and party leader Lungile Mxube laid a charge of fraud and corruption against the mayor, municipal manager, chief financial officer and council speaker at the Makhanda police station on 20 June. The municipality did not respond to questions on this and other issues.
The Herald
a day ago
- Politics
- The Herald
Frustrated Makhanda residents claim vacant municipal land to build homes
Frustrated by years of empty promises and stalled housing developments, hundreds of Makhanda residents have taken matters into their own hands, illegally demarcating vacant municipal land for their own use. Residents blocked the N2 towards Qonce and the R67 that runs along the demarcated area on Sunday and Monday, burning barricades made of tyres and debris. The Makana municipality was preparing to file a court application to interdict the residents from occupying the land zoned for commercial use. Police used stun grenades to disperse residents who had gathered on the field that runs along the R67 on Sunday and again on Monday to ease traffic congestion. The protesters then moved to Joza township where they blocked intersections of taxi routes until early evening on Monday. On Sunday, hundreds of residents gathered on the field known as eGolfini [old golf course] on the R67 and demarcated the land using poles, sticks, rocks and building material. For many years, the land has been used for initiation schools for Xhosa boys transitioning into manhood. Dozens of cars lined up along the road behind Extension 5 and the Eluxolweni communities when the drama took place. Community leader Simphiwe Mdluli said elderly people and the majority of the working class in Makhanda lived in back yards or were renting because they did not qualify for bonds. 'There is no new housing project on the cards, while the municipality has previously promised to commence with phase two of the old Extension 10 housing development,' he said. 'It's been years with nothing being said, hence the community identified unused land for occupation while they wait for the municipality because we are tired of this incompetent municipality.' Mdluli said elderly people had joined the cause because during the first phase of the Extension 10 development, people who did not qualify allegedly got houses and more than one person in one family had benefited. 'If you checked title deeds in Extension 10 you'd find that one person [allegedly] owns three houses and this is why we can't discuss this any further but just want land so we can erect our structures.' Mdluli said the community would make Makhanda ungovernable until their concerns were addressed. An Extension 5 resident, who did not want to be named, said an informal settlement near bond houses was a disaster waiting to happen. 'I know many people who are understandably desperate for houses will disagree with this but we can't be paying millions for our houses and live next to an informal settlement; this will devalue our properties,' the resident said. 'Looking at socioeconomic conditions of this town and the high unemployment rate, a combination of a community of haves and have-nots will develop and that will lead to violence, crime and intolerance. 'The municipality is correct to stop it but it has a responsibility to hear the people and come up with a solution for their valid complaints.' Municipal spokesperson Anele Mjekula confirmed they were preparing court documents in a bid to interdict any land grabs in the city. Mjekula said mayor Yandiswa Vara had visited the scene on Sunday to explain why informal structures could not be built. 'The mayor explained that the land they wanted to occupy had been earmarked for business developments and that they were not allowed to build there,' Mjekula said. 'Despite the explanation, residents insisted that they would forcefully build houses on the land. 'Among the issues raised during the meeting in support of the illegal land occupation were the lack of housing developments for local people. 'In an attempt to de-escalate the situation, the residents were advised to form a committee which would formally engage with the municipality on the way forward regarding the need for housing developments.' Police spokesperson Warrant Officer Majola Nkohli said they were working with traffic officers to monitor the situation. 'Police can confirm that they are investigating a case of contravention of the prevention of illegal eviction from an Unlawful Occupation of Land Act 19 of 1998, and with a possibility of an additional charge of contempt of court at the later stage, after the Makana municipality opened a case on Sunday afternoon. 'Police have activated members from Public Order Policing to monitor the situation.' The Herald
Mail & Guardian
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mail & Guardian
Clay Formes and the resurgence of African sculptural traditions
Martine Jackson shapes clay to document emotive journeys, such as Silent Resolve At the periphery of Joza township in Makhanda, just before its core unfolds, cliff faces rise in majesty — striations of ochre, rust and gold glowing with a celestial intensity. Clay appears to form itself there, as though the earth is recalling its own shape. And yet the nearby institution insisted (at least during my tenure) on importing clay for its sculpture department. The material on its very doorstep dismissed. Clay can symbolise this paradox: abundant yet overlooked, persistent yet devalued. The book, Clay Formes: Contemporary Clay From South Africa (2023), is something of a response to this limitation. It has a compelling survey of artists, many rooted in that very region, working with the earth beneath their feet. Clay Formes emerged from this ethos as a result of extensive travel, door-to-door conversations and nearly 100 interviews. I spoke to Olivia Barrell, whose path was destined to lead to this publication, about how she came to map the contemporary landscape of local clay and ceramic practice. 'I was born in Johannesburg, but I went to Paris at 18 because I got into Sorbonne University, where I studied history of art with a specialisation in ceramics. I stayed for 10 years and did my postgraduate degrees in Chinese and 17th-century ceramics,' she says. 'When I moved back to South Africa about eight or nine years ago, I became aware of the ceramic artists here; the level of the work was really world class. I have a background across the art world; I've worked as a writer, academic, in auction houses, the secondary market, market analysis and with collectors. I decided to build something that filled a gap I saw in the contemporary African art space.' Her gallery, Art Formes, is devoted solely to contemporary sculpture. Opened in 2021, it foregrounds marginalised sculptural practices through a slow, text-rich and museologically inspired approach. Art Formes is a hybrid institution; part gallery, part living archive. Its name, drawn from the French forme, meaning 'shape' or 'work of art', redefines how contemporary African sculpture is viewed and valued. Works by Sbonelo Luthuli, such as Umsamo (above), draw on Bantu spirituality and cosmology. Photos: Iterations of Earth Barrell explains, 'I wanted to disrupt terminology around sculpture. Sculptural works have often been categorised as craft or design, implying mass production and distancing the artist's hand. I wanted to move away from that. 'Our main focus is clay, both because it's close to my heart and rich in this country's history. We also use [the term] clay formes instead of ceramics because ceramics only refers to clay when fired. So you're ruling out all artists that work in earth-based practices, which we include. We work with clay and we work with all offcuts of the earth as well.' Barrell elaborates, 'I like the term 'ceramic master' because it's an ancient term that refers to an artist, whichever gender, that has mastered the art of ceramics.' The focus on language is palpable. Barrell says, 'It's also why I like ancient terms such as 'pot' or 'vessel'. I don't think that these are tied to utilitarian functions. For many, many centuries, cultures have been making pots and vessels that are not utilitarian.' This linguistic depth broadens the understanding of earth-based art beyond craft and utility to encompass deeper cultural and artistic significance. I kept seeing this term 'slow curation' and I was curious about its implications. 'It's based on my interest in … more slow, text-heavy, explorative curation,' Barrell explains. 'I felt that South African galleries were dominated by a white cube approach to curation aka a lack of curation. And I wanted to bring the museum curatorial style into the contemporary art world 'We don't just believe in selling works. I only work with artists that insert into our art history. So the narrative is essential — it's paramount for me as a gallery owner. 'At Art Formes, there's a strong archival focus … Clay is indigenous to this country, unlike painting, which is a Western import … Many ceramic artists have passed away undocumented. 'Clay is embedded in the cosmological realm; Nguni communities used it to communicate with ancestral worlds.' Her vision is not nostalgic but decolonial; shaped by a feminist commitment to recovering lost legacies. 'Sculptural ceramics in this country were often pioneered by women in the 1970s, which is a history that has also been almost undocumented.' Art Formes represents artists such as Siyabonga Fani (born in 1981), whose smoke-fired terracotta evokes ancestral memory and township life; Sbonelo Luthuli (born 1981), whose conceptual ceramics draw on Bantu spiritual and cosmological traditions; Nicholas Sithole (born 1964), a master potter known for hand-built Zulu forms held in major collections; Clive Sithole (born 1971), whose work bridges Zulu and Venda traditions and explores land, race and animal life; and Nigerian artist Eva Obodo (born 1963), who uses charcoal, unfired clay, wild clay and raw earth. Dante wrote, 'All other means would have been short … but that God's own Son humbled Himself to take on mortal clay' (Paradiso, Canto VII). These words elevate earth-based materials to the sacred threshold where divinity consents embodiment. Making with earth therefore, is entering this liminal space, both medium and metaphor: archive, altar, agent inviting communion with the grounded sublime. Clay's continuum is proof of a collective yearning for substance even amid a screen-saturated, artificial intelligence-driven contemporary moment. 'We crave what is real. We crave what is tactile,' Barrell notes. 'We're drawn to objects that are still made by the human hand.' If Gen Z's technocritical refrain is 'touch grass', Art Formes offers an audaciously ancient call: touch clay. Iterations of Earth: Exploring Multitudes is a revolving group show reimagining earth as sculptural medium, on view from 7 June to 4 September at Art Formes, The Old Biscuit Mill, 375 Albert Road, Woodstock. An exhibition walkabout with select artists, including Ledelle Moe, Martine Jackson, Clive Sithole, Sbonelo Luthuli, Jo Roets, Eva Obodo, Nic Sithole, Siyabonga Fani, and Astrid Dahl, will take place on Saturday, 26 July, from 10am to 11am.
Mail & Guardian
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mail & Guardian
The world through Calvin Ratladi's eyes
Calvin Ratladi sees beyond the script, conjuring ghosts of land, legacy and loss in 'Breakfast with Mugabe' The first thing I noticed about Calvin Ratladi were his eyes. Huge, mysterious pools of something warm and comforting. We met on the stairs leading up to Rhodes Theatre in Makhanda where the play he directed for this year's National Arts Festival was about to premiere. Instead of the jingle-jangle of pre-show nervousness, what I saw in his wise and gentle eyes was calm, unabashed patience — an artist's quiet expectation minutes before the public sees a work for the first time. And below the eyes, an openhearted smile, the kind you cherish long after you meet him. For those few moments — 'hello', 'great to meet you', 'break a leg' — Ratladi, who is this year's Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre, looked at me with such intensity it was as if we were old friends. His eyes were, I thought, those of someone with a talent for baring his soul, someone familiar with the sensation of opening himself up in front of an audience. It was weird then to later hear him tell me that he avoids looking at people for too long. 'Usually, I don't look at people when I speak to them,' he told me during a lunchtime interview a few days later. 'I hardly look at people at all, because when I do, I start seeing beyond …' And although his words trailed off then, I understood what he meant, knew that what he was alluding to was a gift, a sensitivity that has doubtlessly fuelled his artistic vision. 'I've always known about this,' he says. His ability to see below the surface, see 'beyond' what exists in the physical realm, is precisely what catches you off guard in his new play, Breakfast with Mugabe , which — after its debut run in Makhanda — opens this week at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. It's a curious and demanding play, one that works hard for the audience's attention, and requires intense listening. If you do fall under its spell, you're rewarded with insights you don't see coming. It also appeals to what Ratladi refers to as 'an African palate' — something that might just throw you off guard with its alternative imagining of an otherwise well-documented sliver of history. 'In my storytelling, it's never just entertainment,' he says. 'There's also advocacy, and there's a conversation.' And, yes, there's a potential provocation. Breakfast With Mugabe – Calvin Ratladi. (MARK WESSELS) In his work, he wants to take you somewhere you haven't been before, and it's not necessarily a comfortable place. When he created a performance about his father, a miner in his childhood home of Witbank, he says he imagined what it must be like to spend so much of one's life far beneath the surface of the earth. And that was the emotional journey he shared with his audience. In Breakfast With Mugabe , he uses a classically-shaped play to take the audience through the veil, to share insight into a realm of spiritual reckoning beyond the rational, and to drive home the dichotomy of two worlds co-existing. The play, written in 2005 by the Cambridge-based writer Fraser Grace, feels particularly poignant at a time when populist authoritarians are having a global moment. It is not a play about Mugabe's rise to power, though, but of a period during his rule when he is plagued by some manifestation, haunted by unresolved grief. And the play hints that what's generally ascribed to paranoia might be something quite different, something unknowable if viewed through a Eurocentric lens. The play has weighed on Ratladi since he first read it in 2016. He tried to produce it previously but couldn't raise the funding; he says it's not the kind of show that can be staged on the cheap. There have been passing thoughts, too, such as casting himself as Mugabe, with non-binary performance artist Albert Ibokwe Khoza in the role of Grace Mugabe. 'I wondered what it would have meant if I played Robert Mugabe with my body, to go against expectations, push boundaries.' His reference to 'my body' is an allusion to his small stature, an effect of kyphoscoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine which is chronic and incurable. Despite its effect on his physical health and on his ability to do some things most of us take for granted (like drive a car), the condition has not stood in the way of his focus on advocating — through storytelling — for a better world. Nonetheless, while his theatre work has earned him acclaim and has been even more widely embraced overseas, he's perhaps best known for his role as Goloza in Shaka iLembe , the popular television series that last month entered its second season on Mzansi Magic. While Ratladi has wanted to be a director since his early-20s, he says he has spent his career accidentally being cast in performing parts, a number of them created specifically for him — despite trying to avoid performing. He says just about everything he's ever acted in, including Shaka iLembe , 'came from coincidences'. Breakfast With Mugabe was no coincidence, though.'I love classics … Macbeth , King Lear , Miss Julie … I love them. And this seemed like a classical play to me, a big story with great depth.' Breakfast With Mugabe also grapples with ideas and themes that recur in works Ratladi has created. (Mark Wessels) It also grapples with ideas and themes that recur in works he's created. 'What seems to come up over and over in my work are issues of land, of memory, and of power. I found these issues paralleled in the play.' In the end, he cast Themba Ndaba as Mugabe and Gontse Ntshegang as Grace, with Craig Jackson as Dr Peric, the psychiatrist summoned to attend to the Zimbabwean president's mounting psychological torment. Ratladi says the play requires actors with stamina who can carry the weight of the drama, endure the heaviness, not to mention the many words. What you notice first about the play is the set, which suggests an almost violent collision between two worlds: a presidential living room imbued with all the trappings of modern Western existence and, surrounding it, a disconcerting African wasteland of dirt and rubble and shattered earth. It is as though some colonial edifice has been torn out of the earth. Discussing the design, Ratladi spoke of the fact that, growing up in a mining environment, this shattered landscape was his reality. 'I think it's what I grew up surrounded by — the mining industry. I grew up in the mines. So it's about the landscape I grew up with. That's what the set is.' The issue of the land — and the destructiveness of mining — is, of course, a key issue in any sort of post-colonial analysis of African history. And there's something elegiac about this part of the set. It's barely used, though, until — during a truly creepy and ethereal moment in the play — it dawns on you that it is a kind of spiritual wasteland. It's a realisation that shifts the play's entire axis of meaning. For Ratladi, the set's design visually and figuratively sets up the dichotomy that's at the heart of the play. 'There's the European side and there's the spiritual side in Africa.' In his sketches of the set, he says he referred to it as 'a split personality', which is something 'a lot of Africans have'. He says the set represents these dichotomies, such as the capacity to embrace African spirituality and Christianity. Ratladi says he was fascinated with the idea that 'what was being regarded as paranoia, a psychological issue in the play, for me was a spiritual issue — that's what I saw this figure of Mugabe actually grappling with as a person'. 'I think some audiences will come with a racial eye,' Ratladi says. 'It's hard not to, because there are so many triggers. Some will feel cheated, some will feel otherwise. For me, that's the conversation I'm trying to have with people. To discuss the fact that as much as Mugabe was so passionate about the land and taking it back, he's the same man who earned seven degrees while in prison, and who had embraced Western ways of thinking. He sought medical help in Europe rather than from the people around him.' Ratladi is interested in the paradoxes and in the possibilities those paradoxes open up. Which is why, when he looks into the story, it seems to him that 'there was a spiritual awakening that wasn't fully embraced — and it caused a lot of suffering'. 'I was interested in what's not in the media, and also not in the script. I was interested in where we might be missing parts of the story of this man about whom so much has been said and written.' He says that, as much as the work might have a political message, there is always a human element, always a personal story at the heart of the wider picture. A nation might be suffering, but what if the cause is a personal pain or affliction being experienced by the nation's leader? It's that dichotomy — between the public and personal story — that he's also interested in with this play. Ratladi says that is the power of theatre; to convey big ideas through a very personal, intimate and digestible story. You sit there in the dark for an hour or two and are not lectured to, but get to witness — and feel — another worldview. Breakfast with Mugabe plays at the Market Theatre from 16 July until 10 August.
Mail & Guardian
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mail & Guardian
Jonathon Rees: Finding stillness in a note
A moment in time: Images from Jonathon Rees's show titled Stillness. At this year's National Arts Festival in Makhanda, I stumbled upon a quiet revelation in the Monument — a photographic exhibition titled Stillness, where images of jazz musicians mid-performance stood suspended in time — full of intensity, intimacy and grace. The photographer behind them is Jonathon Rees. He might not be a household name in the South African art world just yet but his debut solo exhibition made a powerful case for the visual possibilities of live music. Rees's portraits are stark, focused and emotionally charged; they don't just capture musicians playing music. They distil a moment of devotion, a flicker of transcendence, the quiet just before the applause. The photographs feel like jazz itself — improvisational yet studied, free yet focused. What makes his work all the more remarkable is that Rees is not a full-time photographer. He came to photography — and to jazz — as an outsider. And perhaps that's exactly why his perspective is so refreshing. When I spoke to him, he began, quite unexpectedly, with journalism. 'I studied journalism and history at Rhodes University,' he told me. 'It was at the festival actually, late at night, in a smoky bar, that I discovered jazz. It absolutely moved me.' This was in the 1980s, during apartheid. Rees remembers the jazz venues of that time as some of the only truly integrated spaces. 'It was mixed, but authentically mixed. It just felt natural — it felt like the world we wanted.' And maybe that's the thread running through his work — the longing for unity, beauty and presence. Freeze frame: Photographs from Jonathon Rees's exhibition Stillness which was on at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda. Although he had always taken photographs, Rees never considered himself a professional. It wasn't until 2016, when he attended the farewell concert of Max Luner, a young jazz drummer and the son of a friend, that something shifted. 'He played with Caroline Mhlanga, and I took photographs. That night gave me the bug. I realised I could make visual art out of live jazz performance. And that excited me.' Rees didn't grow up with art and music: 'There were no paintings in our home and we didn't really listen to music,' he told me. That context, the absence of cultural exposure in his early life, makes his soulful connection to jazz and photography all the more poignant. 'I felt like I had an opportunity to be an artist in the musical world, even though I never imagined I'd be here,' he said. And once he caught the bug, he chased it obsessively. Rees started attending jazz gigs around Johannesburg two, three, sometimes four nights a week, learning how to work with bad lighting, getting familiar with venues and musicians, and developing a style. For the first five or six years, it was purely about learning. 'As an older person, that was really rewarding. It proved you can still learn something new later in life.' He set out initially trying to capture full-band shots, faces, fingers, full instruments, but quickly realised that between lighting limitations, stage obstructions and constant movement, that approach wasn't sustainable. Instead, he began to move closer, literally and metaphorically. 'I realised I was making portraits. I was focusing on the person and their concentration, their passion, their communication.' Many of the images in Stillness are not of performance in the traditional sense. They show the moment after a solo, the breath before the applause. A moment in time: Images from Jonathon Rees's show titled Stillness. Take the photo of musician Thandi Ntuli right after her final piano note. 'She looks up, absolutely quiet. That moment before the clapping starts, that's the stillness I'm after.' And in another image, of Nduduzo Makhathini, taken on a freezing night at Constitution Hill, vapour rises from a musician's mouth as he exhales into the cold. 'He was making a connection with someone else on stage. That's why I love that image. You can feel the environment, the music and the intimacy,' Rees said. These in-between moments when the musician steps back from the microphone or pauses between phrases are when he feels closest to his subject. 'It's in those gaps that you really see someone.' But stillness, he admits, is also something personal. 'I think I'm also looking for the stillness within myself. We live hectic lives and we need to find a way to be quiet over the chaos.' Photography, as any journalist knows, is technical. In journalism school, we get a crash course at best. So, I asked Rees when he knew he'd taken a solid image and how he developed confidence in his craft. 'I look at a lot of other photographers,' he said. 'There's a strong tradition here — Ernest Cole, Cedric Nunn, Oscar Gutierrez. I admire them deeply.' But, ultimately, it's a matter of internal validation. 'I have to look at a picture and say: 'This is good for me. This is the best I can do.'' He has developed a recognisable visual style — tight black backgrounds, clean compositions and a singular focus on the musician's face or hands. 'I don't want clutter. I want the image to be clear and reflective of what I felt in that moment.' And maybe that's why his images don't fall into the usual tropes of South African photojournalism —poverty, protest, pain. 'We've seen enough of that. I want to show people in their power.' Stillness marks Rees's first full exhibition. He's done mini-shows before in a small town, in a hotel, but this was different. 'To show my work at the National Arts Festival, where I first discovered jazz and where I've come back year after year to shoot jazz, meant everything to me.' Many of the musicians in the photo were performing at the festival. Some came to see the exhibition. Some gave feedback. Most, he says, were gracious and warm. 'You don't always get feedback in a gallery space but I got enough from people I respect to feel validated. And it's motivated me to keep going.' Now, back in Johannesburg, Rees is planning to show Stillness again —possibly at Afrikan Freedom Station in Sophiatown. He might tweak the selection after seeing how the images sat on the walls in Makhanda. But, mostly, the show will stay the same, with a few new additions. He's not slowing down. 'I've never worked so hard on anything in my life. And the question I ask myself constantly is: 'Have I done my best?' With this show, I believe I have.' And that, perhaps, is where the real stillness lies — not just in the silence between two notes but in the quiet, unflinching pursuit of one's own artistic truth.
