This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

8th December 2007

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If you’ve visited Grahamstown before, the chances are you were there for the National Arts Festival – for a few dirty days of hedonism (some overindulge in theatre, dance and music, others in beer, wine and spirits, but the effect is often the same) in a windswept, rained-out, freezing cold, nondescript dorp. Well, I’m sorry to say, in that case you haven’t been to Grahamstown.

Don’t get me wrong, the festival is an annual highlight and an institution of which we should all be proud; the South African arts scene would be much the poorer without it. But Grahamstown in July is not Grahamstown. It’s the time each year that locals love to hate; the city’s economy depends heavily on the cash injection and increased profile that it brings, but it also takes about a month for the fliers to be picked up, the streets to be cleaned, the mud to dry and for life, generally, to return to normal.

Having said which, “normal” is a relative term in Grahamstown. In one sense, it’s a sleepy little place that carries its long history with a weary charm. Yet, for the 6,000 or so students of Rhodes University, it’s a hive of intellectual activity interspersed with heavy bouts of partying and drinking. Moreover, like most South African cities, it is also still divided according to the legacy of apartheid: comfortable white suburbia and poverty-stricken black township. The geography of the area makes the contrast all the more stark. Looking down from any one of the hills surrounding the valley in which Grahamstown sits, the impression one has is of a circle split neatly into yin and yang halves. There are, fortunately, ongoing initiatives to undo this – hampered though they may be by the Eastern Cape’s notoriously understimulated economy – and there is a sense that the wider Grahamstown community is “taking ownership” of the city’s activities.

Apart from the arts festival, there is a Science festival (Scifest), various schools festivals, Eisteddfods and conferences. All of these pivot around the bulky 1820 Settlers National Monument, which hovers at the edge of Grahamstown on Gunfire Hill (the name is self-explanatory – Fort Selwyn, one of many old forts still standing in Grahamstown, bears testimony to the battles fought there). The hill offers lovely views of the city, but opinion is divided over the aesthetic appeal of the monument’s exterior. Sipho Sepamla saw it as “a ship moored in a virgin green sea”, whose “portholes glimmer at night” while, by day, it “stands forlorn, awaiting sailors”. Inside, however, it is an impressive space; standing in the central atrium, one is struck by the combination of elements: light streaming in from above, water in the fountain below, and the multi-storied structure of wood and stone rising on each side.

The monument was designed in the 1970s as a non-racial, functional venue rather than a self-congratulatory symbol of the achievements of a certain section of the population, but it is nevertheless problematic. Conceived to commemorate the arrival of the British settlers (and by implication to affirm the role of English-speaking South Africans over the century-and-a-half following that arrival), the monument was consciously pitched as a form of “liberal English” opposition to Afrikaner nationalism. The role of the English in aggravating and even formalising racial conflict in South Africa is, however, well-documented; as a result, Grahamstown’s status as an “English” centre is somewhat controversial.

Colonel John Graham, who gave his name to the town, was not a particularly nice person – he came to frontier country with the express purpose of instilling “a proper degree of terror” in the Xhosa tribes. Still, although the colonial British authorities were a greedy and cynical bunch, Eastern Cape historians such as Guy Butler have insisted that most of the settlers came from humble working-class or professional stock, were down on their luck in England and simply hopeful of making a fresh start in South Africa. With this in mind, it’s easier to like the settlers and to admire their enterprise. It’s also easier to enjoy the most tangible reminder of the settlers and their descendents – Grahamstown’s historical architecture.

If ever oil is discovered in lower Albany (the regional name for Grahamstown and surrounding districts) and George W. Bush or his cronies decide to raze Grahamstown to the ground in pursuit of it, we would lose a substantial portion of our historical buildings. Some of the older structures date back to the early 1800s: trading stores that now serve as restaurants on the High Street, or settler cottages dotted in amongst the more modern structures nearby.

The most distinctive of Grahamstown’s architectural features is reflected in one of its nicknames: this “City of Saints” has so many churches serving its relatively small population that, if you really wanted to, you could visit a different one each Sunday for an entire year. The chief landmark is the Cathedral of St Michael and St George – having a cathedral and therefore a bishop is, technically, what makes Grahamstown a city – which reached its present form in the 1950s but had been more or less under construction since 1824. Standing at the front of the building, craning your neck to look beyond the Gothic arch and the huge clockface at one of the highest spires in the country, you can see why HF Sampson felt that “the great spike of the church ... uttered an exclamation!”

The cathedral is Anglican, but other denominations have their own architectural gems: the Methodist Commemoration Church, or “the Commem”, dates back to 1845, while the Catholic St Patrick’s Church had its foundation stone laid in 1839. There are other, more modest but equally attractive spiritual structures, such as the quaint Chapel of St. Mary and all the Angels (which used to be attached to a convent but is now part of the Rhodes campus) and the Chapel of St Andrew’s College, designed by Herbert Baker.

Baker, best known as the architect of the Union Buildings – although his work can be seen across South Africa, from Pretoria to Cape Town – was also primarily responsible, in 1904, for the layout of the Rhodes campus on the site of the old military barracks. Passing under the Drostdy Arch that links “town and gown” to stroll through the university’s well-kept lawns and venerable old buildings, visitors may momentarily be caught up in the spirit that has led some to declare Rhodes and Grahamstown an “Oxford-in-the-veld”.

Ultimately, however, it’s a simple place. Its residents (transitory or otherwise) tend to eschew airs and graces. Redoubtable local poet Don Maclennan has, in fact, dubbed it a “city of gentle mediocrity”. But he also acknowledges its charms; walking through the Botanical Gardens or passing by the cathedral on a summer evening, he has experienced it as a “city of bells and birds”. Fellow-poet Dan Wylie has been equally moved by the sight of Grahamstown’s trees bursting into colour, describing how “jacarandas jettison their mauve crisis”.

If it seems like I’ve quoted lots of other writers in this article, it’s only appropriate; as Jeanette Eve notes in her Literary Guide to the Eastern Cape, Grahamstown is the quintessential city of word artists. If you go there, you’ll probably end up writing too.