Visitors to the Festival should be thinking of how they can get a slice of the birthday cake as Egazini Outreach Project in Grahamstown turns ten years old this July.
Visitors to the Festival should be thinking of how they can get a slice of the birthday cake as Egazini Outreach Project in Grahamstown turns ten years old this July.
Located in a former apartheid-era police station, the Egazini Outreach Project is a dynamic community arts, culture and heritage initiative.
The project was founded in June 2000 by two Grahamstown academics, Dominic Thorburn and Julia Wells, to enable local township residents to re-interpret the local historical Egazini battle site.
Today, the Egazini Outreach Project functions as both a heritage initiative and as an economic empowerment project for local artists and crafters.
Egazini means “A place of blood” because it is the battlefield where the Xhosa Chief Makana attacked the British settlers of Grahamstown in 1819.
The battlefield is protected by the South African Resources Heritage Agency as a heritage site. But the Egazini centre is more than just a place that pays homage to those whose blood was spilled in the battle.
It is a place from which creativity and hope is kindled. A number of elderly township women work at the project centre to make prints and designs on fabrics.
Their enthusiasm is overwhelming as they welcome you to take a walk through the craft shop and its accompanying workshop spaces.
As you walk through the building, you can only marvel at how the haunting brutality of an old apartheid-era security police base has been transformed by the artworks on display and for sale.
The Egazini Outreach Project is an empowering example of how the arts can allow local communities to take ownership of telling their history and through which they can sustain themselves economically.
To get to the centre turn down Bathurst Street into Raglan Road. Egazini is next to Joza Indoor Sports Centre. You can contact Bongani Diko on 076 980 2764.
