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The Centre for Creative Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal is set to host its fourth annual Artfluence Human Rights Festival from 3 May to 8 May 2024. This pioneering festival has, for three years, leveraged the arts as a powerful medium for advocating social justice and human rights.
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A standout feature of this year's festival is the protest theatre piece, Shakespeare to Gaza, conceived by South African activist artists. The production aims to highlight and critique global atrocities, focusing on the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine through the lens of the arts.
The piece interweaves historical moments reflected in Shakespearean text and extracts of the Gaza Monologues to highlight the Palestinian resistance to Israeli injustice.
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Ismail Mahomed, the director of the Centre for Creative Arts, expressed the importance of being mindful that authors, actors, poets, playwrights and artists at large are among the casualties of the genocide. He also added that some of the festival’s highlights since its inception include the IIE Artist Protection Fund, whose objective is to protect the careers and livelihoods of creatives.
ARTFLUENCE HUMAN RIGHTS FESTIVALWe stand for freedom pic.twitter.com/ENOrQ6mgc3
— SAHRCommission (@SAHRCommission) May 2, 2024
Mahomed declared the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) the first university on the continent to conceptualise such an initiative.
Viewers will also experience a showcase of animation, experimental film, as well as digital imagery presented by the university’s digital arts post-graduate students. Students of the Centre for Jazz and Contemporary Music will serenade the delegates.
Mahomed said:
Delegates from Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Mali and the DRC are expected to congregate at this year’s festival at the Howard College Theatre in UKZN and wrap up at the free closing event at the KZNSA Gallery.
This year’s festival will shine the spotlight on the South African constitution, the African Charter for Human Rights, as well as the establishment of the solidarity of artists in Africa and other human rights matters affecting artists on the continent.
Mahomed added:
Award-winning actress Kim Blanche will perform Mike van Graan’s critically acclaimed satire My Fellow South Africans.
Another story of Ntombikayise Kubheka, who was tortured and murdered after being abducted by the apartheid police, will be revisited in the screening of Enver Samuels’s documentary series, Truth Be Told on the TRC, titled Ntombikayise Kubheka, Bones of Memory.
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The KwaZulu-Natal Chapter of the SA Human Rights Commission has committed to throwing its weight behind the programme. The full programme can be accessed on the Artfluence Human Rights website (artfluence.ukzn.ac.za). Ticketed events can be booked on Webtickets from R40 to R100.
