Behind the scenes, writers, musicians and filmmakers keep homegrown culture alive

South Africa loves its culture. Not as much as it loves other countries’ cultures, obviously, and not enough to spend any actual money on it; but still, if we happen to see some Mzansi vibes through the window as we speed to the airport to go and dump our life savings on restaurateurs and theatre impresarios in London or Dubai, we definitely get misty-eyed for at least 10 seconds.

To be clear, I don’t blame us, not when our government’s official line seems to be that the arts are either an annoying afterthought or a low-grade con, like in September when minister Gayton McKenzie accused arts festivals of “entitlement” for asking for funding. Thank heavens somebody is keeping these bohemian Marie Antoinettes in their place as they make insane demands like wanting to almost cover their costs for doing something that gives half of McKenzie’s ministry its reason for drawing a salary.

Of course, most South African artists take this in their stride. The suspicion they face from the government and many of their compatriots is nothing compared with the abuse they get from their spouses and children, who glare at them resentfully over the kitchen table every morning, asking why they couldn’t be chartered accountants.

It wasn’t all penury on the cultural scene this year, mind you. The local publishing industry enjoyed some big successes, with Antjie Krog’s autofictional Binnerym van Bloed/Blood’s Inner Rhyme topping both Afrikaans and English lists, while the Eben Etzebeth biography delighted rugby fans — and writers, whose slightly less marketable efforts might now be considered for publication thanks to all that sweet sports bio cash. Eben Etzebeth: man mountain, patron of the arts.

Filmmakers, too, continued to craft their work against mounting odds, with crime drama The Heart Is a Muscle, written and directed by Imran Hamdulay, named as South Africa’s official entry to the 98^th Academy Awards. Having won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlin Film Festival in January, it seems to be a more than worthy successor to last year’s Oscar-nominated South African short, The Last Ranger.

Special mention should perhaps also go to a film named My Fok Marelize, inspired by the 2019 viral video of a comment on a woman accidentally riding her bicycle into a rugby post. The film was not selected for consideration for the Oscars, but according to Box Office Mojo, it took in a very respectable R11m worldwide, so I hope someone sent the real Marelize a bunch of flowers or at least an honorary tube of Voltaren.

The biggest movie in South Africa by far, though, was Mufasa: The Lion King, which raked in almost R63m locally. I must confess I didn’t see it, but I gather it is the heart-warming story of some Disney intellectual property that goes on a quest to maximise shareholder value, along the way learning life’s most important lesson: children will watch anything.

It wasn’t all penury on the cultural scene this year, mind you. The local publishing industry enjoyed some big successes

Last year Tyla was South Africa’s biggest cultural export, and the 23-year-old enjoyed another year in the sunshine of pop superstardom, but this year new names shared some of the glow: at the time of writing, The Most Wanted by Jazzworx & Thukuthela was on track to be the most streamed album on Spotify in the country this year.

If only Spotify paid artists more than roughly five South African cents per stream, our top musicians might have fortune as well as fame, but then again, that would mean its CEO had less money to invest in AI-guided killer drones, and when late capitalism has to choose between creative people celebrating life and mechanised death, well, it’s a no-brainer.

(It’s also a no-brainer for music lovers, of course. If you want to sponsor the apocalypse, keep streaming those tunes, but if you want to support artists, buy albums and merch.)

Speaking of apocalypses, spare a thought for Afrikaans gospel singer Danie Botha, who had to apologise to his fans after announcing that the Rapture would take place in September. According to Botha, “big golden letters” had appeared on his TV reading “Flight 923: You must be ready to depart”, but alas, Flight 923 was delayed once again.

It also looked a bit like the End Times for Steve Hofmeyr this year, as his Cape Town IKOON concert was cancelled due to lack of interest. Hofmeyr’s critics reacted with schadenfreude, but I think they underestimated his artistic vision: anyone who publicly says that “Blacks were the architects of apartheid” and still believes they can fill the 55,000-seater Cape Town Stadium has clearly crossed over from being a mere showman into pure abstract conceptual art, and his installation, Empty Stadium With Crying Clown, was a masterpiece.

Elsewhere, other slightly more traditional masterpieces also stirred controversy, as an Irma Stern portrait was sold for R21m on auction, and 48 hours later the Irma Stern Museum in Cape Town slammed shut, apparently forever. Trustees released a statement about new beginnings and how the collection would be moved to a “secure archival facility”, but the apparently unseemly haste of the whole thing means the story will no doubt continue to bubble quietly in the background.

Speaking of things bubbling quietly in the background reminds me of the knee-deep water in some of the rooms of the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), but here, at least, there was a happy ending. This year the city finally began a tentative refurbishment of the ruined JAG. Granted, it probably only happened because the ANC-run city thought JAG was a British sports car, but still, we’ll take the win.

Yes, 2025 was a year of ups and downs on the cultural scene, but let us not linger on the downs, and instead let me leave you with one final uplifting and remarkable fact: at the end of the first year in which the majority of online articles were reportedly written by AI, I am proud to tell you that this one was written entirely by a very glum human.

There’s life in the old dog yet.