Mike van Graan: picture provided
Mike van Graan currently serves as the Coordinator of the Sustaining Theatre and Dance (STAND) Foundation, an initiative which supported the South African dance and theatre sector through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
In the month of Human Rights Day 2025, Naomi Meyer now asks Mike van Graan about theatre-makers and human rights in South Africa’s Constitution – as well as human rights, metaphorically, in the theatre world.
Here are Mike van Graan’s thoughts:
Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone shall have the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community … (and) to enjoy the arts”. This right was the cornerstone of the first post-apartheid White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage. The Bill of Rights in our Constitution also guarantees “freedom of artistic creativity”.
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So, we have these rights in theory, but there are always attempts to restrict or limit the practice of these rights by those who are threatened or shamed by their exercise.
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So, we have these rights in theory, but there are always attempts to restrict or limit the practice of these rights by those who are threatened or shamed by their exercise. Just a few weeks ago, a government official tried to stop my production of Return of the ancestors – a satirical reflection on the state of our nation in 2024 and after 30 years of democracy – at the University of the Free State when it was being performed for attendees at the G20 Workshop on Research and Innovation. The show went ahead, but then afterwards he felt obliged to “contextualise” the play by defending the ANC government’s record.
We are a democratic work-in-progress. If we as citizens and artists retreat from the public domain, we allow those with the loudest voices, those who occupy those spaces, to create democracy in their self-serving image. As creatives and citizens, we have the responsibility and duty to defend and advocate democracy and freedom of expression simply by practising these!
But, as creatives, we should also be cognisant of who has access both to practise and to enjoy this right. Like with all other rights – healthcare, education, food, security, etc – it is those of us with resources, education and networks who are best able to enjoy these rights, as we have the capacity to pay for these to be delivered privately if government fails.
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But, as creatives, we should also be cognisant of who has access both to practise and to enjoy this right. Like with all other rights – healthcare, education, food, security, etc – it is those of us with resources, education and networks who are best able to enjoy these rights, as we have the capacity to pay for these to be delivered privately if government fails.
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Similarly, it is a minority of people who are able to access theatre in formal theatre spaces and festivals, because most lack disposable income or there is poor public transport and concern about crime. Yet they, too, have the right to enjoy the arts!
I regard it as part of my responsibility as a theatre-maker not only to assert democracy by practising freedom of creative expression through my theatre, but also to democratise access to theatre – and assert the rights of others to enjoy theatre even if they do not have disposable income – by taking theatre to non-formal venues, people’s homes and other community spaces.
- Mike van Graan has extensive experience in policy formulation and advocacy and in building artists’ networks, both in South Africa and across the African continent. Mike was the founding Secretary General of Arterial Network, a pan-African organisation advocating for the cultural dimension of development, human rights and democracy. He served on the expert facility of UNESCO’s 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions from 2011–2018. He is the head writer of the team that produced Breathing New Vision into Theatre and Dance: National Theatre and Dance Policy, commissioned by South Africa’s Department of Sport, Arts and Culture in 2021. As a playwright with 36 plays under his belt, he is regarded as one of South Africa’s foremost contemporary playwrights having garnered numerous awards and nominations for his work. He is the 2018 recipient of the Swedish Hiroshima Prize for Peace and Culture, the same year that he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Pretoria in recognition of his work as a playwright, and as a cultural activist.
Also read:
Human Rights Day 2025: mind your language! About language rights and recent developments at UCT
Menseregtedag 2025, belangrike dae in die onderwys – en hoe onderwysers se regte soms geskend word