SA Art community to host Palestinian concert for peace on significant day in Palestine

The African Women Writers Network in partnership with Palestine Festival SA (Palfest SA) are hosting the Palestinian Concert for Peace at the Photo Workshop Auditorium, Market Square, next week in solidarity with the Palestine citizens caught in the Israeli–Hamas war.

“We hope this concert shows solidarity with the people in Palestine, increase awareness of what’s happening there and initiates more help. They (Palestine) helped us as South Africa when we were going through a lot,” Programme director of the concert, Roshnie Moonsammy told The Citizen.

The small concert will be hosted on 29 November, a significant day on the United Nations (UN) calendar.

The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is observed by the United Nations on or around 29 November each year, in accordance with General Assembly mandates contained in resolutions 32/40 B of 2 December 1977, 34/65 D of 12 December 1979.

“We felt it was a good day to do it, we asked ourselves how we could engage and reached out to our Palestine artists,” averred Moonsammy.

On 29 November in 1947, the General Assembly adopted resolution 181 (II), which came to be known as the ‘Partition Resolution’. That resolution provided for the establishment in Palestine of a “Jewish State” and an “Arab State”, with Jerusalem as a corpus separatum under a special international regime. Of the two States to be created under this resolution, only one, Israel, has so far come into being.

The African Women Writers Network is a platform for writers and performers from all over Africa and its diaspora. The organisation has hosted symposiums since 2010 which have hosted award-winning women writers from the continent and its Diasporas.

Palestine Festival SA is a cultural organisation based in Mzansi which promotes exchanges between Palestine and South Africa.

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The concert

The programme will feature poetry, talks and music at the Photo Workshop in the Market Square, opposite the Market Theatre in Newtown, Johannesburg.

The centre piece of the evening will be leading jazz vocalist and trombone player Siya Makuzeni, accompanied by Themby Khumalo on vocals and a jazz quartet featuring Muhammad Dawjee (saxophone), Tshegofatso Teffo (guitar), Simz Tshabalala (drums) and Gally Ngoveni (bass).

The concert will be hosted by comedian and medical doctor Suhayl Essa, the evening will also include a special talk by Professor Salim Vally (University of Johannesburg), and poets Dshamilja Roshani and Vuyelwa Maluleka.

The solidarity concert expects to host at least 120 patrons who will have free entrance but can make donations of +R100 upwards, which will go towards a bursary fund for art students in Palestine.

“The Palestine Festival SA will administer the bursary fund. They have communication with institutions in Palestine,” said Moonsammy.

The programme director believes the concert is a precursor to an even bigger event, similar to the Nelson Mandela 70th birthday tribute concert at Wembley Stadium on 11 June 1988 in England that brought awareness about the draconian apartheid system in South Africa at the time.

“This is a small initiative, but definitely a precursor. I think a properly organised concert at a bigger venue with more artists can happen in future.”

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