The role of European cultural agencies in promoting the arts in post-apartheid South Africa can barely be overstated. Ask anyone who has been trucking through the local visual and performing arts landscape for the past few decades and it’s likely they will tell you about receiving support in the form of seed funding, an award, a residency or travel opportunity, networking events, audience development … the list is long.
Of course, one should always remain sceptical about the operation of soft power. Artists do not want to be pawns in some geopolitical long game — though there is a place for grim pragmatism in these matters. When the literary and anti-apartheid luminary Es’kia Mphahlele discovered that the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Fairfield Foundation (both of which had enabled his work in exile by bankrolling conferences and publications in the 1960s) were fronts for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and part of America’s Cold War strategy in Africa, he didn’t apologise for being duped.
“Yes, the CIA stinks,” he wrote in a letter to the editor of the magazine Transition. “We were had. But we have done nothing with the knowledge that the money came from the CIA; nor have we done anything we would not have done if the money had come from elsewhere. We must naturally bite our lips in indignation when we learn the CIA has been financing our projects. But it is dishonest to pretend that the value of what has been thus achieved is morally tainted.”
Now, there’s dirty money and then there’s dirty money. If representatives of, say, Russia, Israel or Saudi Arabia were sponsoring South African artists today, I’d question their ability to produce work that is not a form of propaganda. And you can be pretty sure that the income of some of our right-leaning so-called “creatives” can be traced to antidemocratic, Maga-aligned sources.
It must be emphasised, then, that those who work in the European cultural agencies in South Africa are very far from this “morally tainted” end of the spectrum. Hyperattentive to the colonial past, they tend not only to be vigilant about precluding the more malicious aspects of European soft power as exercised across the African continent in the latter decades of the 20th century, but also to carefully avoid the clumsy missteps of predecessors who (however well-intentioned) remained somewhat paternalistic in their approach to African artists.
Between the German Goethe-Institut, the British Council, Switzerland’s Pro Helvetica and others, millions of euros and plentiful human resources are poured into the local creative economy each year. Standing head and shoulders above the rest, however, is the French Institute of South Africa (Ifas), which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2025.
This presents an opportunity for some boasting, and the Ifas has rightly done just that. Earlier this year the institute put out a short film highlighting some of its projects over the past three decades. In October, it launched a book, 30 Years of the French Institute of South Africa, which adds more detail. Among the many talking heads and contributors are ambassadors, diplomats and Ifas insiders. What makes the combined message of film and book so persuasive however, is the evident admiration and gratitude of various artists, academics and administrators for the ways in which French support has enabled their work.
Art publisher and dealer David Krut calls it “the most successful contribution to South African arts, culture and literature by any foreign government”. It is a success premised on the Ifas’ willingness to enter the often messy fray of the arts scene with the desire to learn rather than direct. This has also meant investing in physical locations, from the institute’s first offices in Newtown in 1995 to the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct and the more recent “Occupying the Gallery” initiative led by artists Mary Sibande and Lawrence Lemaoana that saw the Ifas premises in Braamfontein converted into studio and exhibition spaces.
Sibande puts it succinctly: “What’s exciting about Ifas is that they are not afraid to play.” Perhaps this willingness to take creative risks is the greatest driver of collaboration between South African artists and the French mission. That — and, it must be said, the money helps.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.