VUYANI PAMBO ON MME CONNIE CHIUME
MME Connie Chiume does not deserve a building in her honor.
By Vuyani Vusi Pambo
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There is a moment in Bloke Modisane's devastating memoir, Blame Me on History, where he walks through the ruins of Sophiatown after the bulldozers have come. He stands in the dust and feels, as he puts it, "the closing of the cycle of my life in its destruction." I thought of Modisane this week when the Gauteng ANC Youth League announced its plan to build a theatre in honor of the late, great Mme Connie Chiume. Not because the proposal honors memory—but because it threatens to repeat a dangerous pattern. It seeks to build something new without first asking what we have already allowed to crumble under this government.
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Like most black South Africans, I grew up watching Mme Connie in shows such as Mohlolohadi and not so long ago, Gomora. It goes without saying that Mme Connie amplified South African storytelling to the world, as iconic celluloid texts such as Black Panther attested. Mme Connie's legacy deserves to be celebrated.
What she does not deserve, however, is a white elephant with her name on it. On the face of it, the ANCYL's proposal of a new theatre in Ekurhuleni sounds noble. But let's look at what the ANC-led administration has produced. Cast a glance if you will, at the Northern Cape Theatre in Kimberley. Reports abound of millions that were spent renovating it. Today, according to official reports, the glum truth speaks. We are told that the theatre stands empty with—"not even a single roll of toilet paper on the premises."
In addition to that, we have the R140 million Enyokeni Cultural Amphitheatre in Nongoma, built with great fanfare, and now facing an uncertain future.
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This is the pattern. The ANC-led government cuts ribbons, takes photographs, and walks away. The buildings remain, but the budgets to run them and the programs to fill them, are nowhere to be found. This pattern reminds me of Michel Foucault's idea of "regimes of practice", where governments build monuments to give the illusion of support, while ensuring that artists remain desperate, dependent, and grateful for scraps. Simply put and as the facts prove, a theatre without a budget is not a gift to artists. It is a tombstone.
We see this neglect not just in empty new buildings, but in the active decay of our existing cultural landmarks. Just this past weekend, we received the distressing news of a break-in at Downtown Studios in Joburg.
As opera singer Sibongile Mngoma passionately pointed out in a public plea, "Downtown Studios is one of the most important institutions in the recording industry history of South Africa. Some of the biggest hits were recorded there." It was a hub, a meeting place, a space where legends like Brenda Fassie crossed paths with their peers. Today, she laments, "this important institution has been neglected and used as a political tool." The Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and its agencies, like the National Arts Council, were meant to be the stewards. Instead, as the building is vandalised and communication from those in charge fails, we are left to wonder: what went wrong?
The philosopher Slavoj Žižek might describe this as a form of ideological obscenity—the moment when those in power know exactly what they are doing, but continue to perform the ritual anyway. They know the theatres will stand empty. They know the heritage sites will crumble. But they cut the ribbon anyway. Why? Because the act of building signifies progress, while the reality of neglect can always be blamed on budgets, or technicalities, or the next minister.
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Interestingly, and perhaps even more worrisome, is the danger that is inherent in this proposal and one that Achebe would have recognised immediately. That is, the metaphor of: ugo bere n'oji—the eagle perched on the iroko tree. According to Achebe, an eagle would sit on the iroko tree and become highly visible. However, while the eagle is celebrated, the tree it perches on is ignored, and herein lies the irony: without the tree, the eagle falls. As Mngoma asks, pointing to the ruined tree that is Downtown Studios, "The National Arts Council of South Africa (NAC) was said to be the stewards of this building. What went wrong?" It's the same question we should be asking about the entire Arts ecosystem.
Simply put, the narrow-minded purview of ANCYL therefore sees only the eagle. They see Mme Connie Chiume but fail to see the communitas: the crew members who lit her every scene, the technicians who built every set, the writers who crafted every line and the audiences who filled every seat. My contention is that you cannot honor an eagle by cutting down the tree. To honor her, we must strengthen the industry that made her possible to begin with.
Modisane reminds us that the dying of a community is a tragedy anywhere. Unfortunately, under the ANC-led administration, we are watching that tragedy unfold again. The film rebates approved and due to filmmakers—over R660 millions of them—remain unpaid. As a result, productions are shutting down. International investors are walking away. Showmax, once the great hope of African streaming, has collapsed following the Canal+ takeover. The market for local content is shrinking before our eyes. And the ANCYL has the nerve to propose a building.
While the Youth League dreams of concrete, Rwanda acts. This week, we learned that Rwanda became the first African country to unlock direct monetisation on TikTok. Creators there can now earn money from their content. South Africa has over 17 million active TikTok users. We have the talent, the audience, the creativity. What we lack is a government that treats the digital economy with urgency.
So clearly then the question arises - what would genuine honor for Connie Chiume look like?
It would look like the immediate payment of every outstanding film rebate—clearing the backlog that is strangling the industry and driving away investment. It would look like a government that fights for South African creators on global platforms—demanding that TikTok, Meta, and Google pay our artists the same way they pay creators in Rwanda, Europe, and America. It would look like operational budgets for the cultural facilities we already have—funding programs, paying staff, supporting productions, filling seats. It would look like a president who stands before the nation and names the creative economy as a priority—who speaks not just of mining and manufacturing, but of stories and screens and stages. It would look like an industry where young artists can afford to eat, create, and thrive. Not a future generation grateful for a building. But a present generation empowered to build.
Let the eagle perch. But for God's sake, do not forget the wood that holds her up.
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