kevin carter photo police executing 3 awb members

The goal of THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY conference and festival is to initiate public debate on censorship and to place the issue on the national political agenda.”

The artistic and creative community has so far failed to articulate its views on what form, if any, censorship should take in a New South Africa. And yet the issue of Censorship, so crucial during the years of political struggle, is being ignored at this vital juncture. Policy relating to the governance of the country should have been formulated by the major parties for that election. To quote at length as to the intention of the festival: “With the current pace of political negotiations, South Africa will see its first non-racial election in April next year. Graced with a terribly rude poster designed by cross-dressing Steven Cohen, the festival was designed to cause fur to fly and fly it did. I was part of the curation of Limits of Liberty as I had been on the Weekly Mail & Guardian Film Festival and both of the events were presented under the directorship of Liza Key.

This initiative was informed by meetings at a festival of activist arts held in Amsterdam called CASA – Culture and Arts in a New South Africa. Limits of Liberty was an off-shoot of the combative Weekly Mail & Guardian Film Festival, which, with a green light shone from the ANC in London, were given the go-ahead to operate under the aegis of a Selective Cultural Boycott. In this piece I will begin with a reminiscence of the Limits of Liberty Anti-Censorship Festival held at the Wits Theatre in July 1993, a time of considerable disruption as the Old Political Guard gave way to the New and, within the halls of the Old Censor Board, the wielders of power were struggling to come to terms with the changes from without.

This was certainly a welcome initiative concerning a subject that has seemed to slip out of public debate or, more egregiously, from activist resistance. In the Days of the Shifting of the GoalpostsĪt the recent, online, Artfluence Discussions held courtesy of the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of KZN, one of the sessions was entitled Gagged: Film Censorship as a Tool for Repression in Democratic Societies. Experiences with Censorship Structures in South Africa Old and New, with particular emphasis on film censorship – episode 1

Kevin carter photo police executing 3 awb members