As our readers will recall, Toverview recently hosted a visit by the one-person actor David Muller – who specialises in performing Herman Charles Bosman’s ‘Oom Schalk Lourens’ stories — to Hanglip Farm and the Hantam Community Education Trust.
Just a week or two previously, he had also performed at the annual Bosman Weekend in the Groot Marico, where Bosman taught for a while, and his Oom Schalk Lourens stories were gestated. David has, for several years, been a star performer at the festival, which has run almost continuously for the past 32 years.
All of this has rekindled our interest in Bosman as well as the festival. In the event, an excellent article on the festival has appeared on the literary website LitNet. Written by Maryke Roberts, and titled ‘Bosman se werk is tydloos en leef voort met jaarlikse fees’ (Bosman’s work is timeless and lives on with annual festival), it provides a vivid description of this year’s festival, as well as an analysis of Bosman’s ongoing relevance to the South Africa of today.
According to the article, the most recent festival — held as always in the last week of October – was the 32nd since the formation of the Charles Herman Bosman Literary Society in 1993. The only year in which it was not held was in the time of COVID.
Invitation to a previous Bosman Weekend. The event has been running for 32 years.
The entire weekend centred on the works of Bosman – who taught here for six months in 1926 – and the stories of his legendary character, oom Schalk Lourens.
Due to limited accommodation, the festival was restricted to 100 registered and paying guests. It was spread over numerous venues – the local DR Church, the church hall, the HCB Museum, and a guest farm. It comprised ‘music, readings, mampoer tastings, puppet plays, speeches and tributes, bread baked in clay ovens, ginger beer and moerkoffie’. Works of numerous artiswts were exhibited, and writers spoke about their work.
David Muller in Groot Marico during the Bosman weekend. Image: LitNet.
David Muller performed two productions, namely ‘Bushveld Boo!’ and ‘Blood and Silver’. The first comprised stories by Oom Schalk Lourens, and the second was based on the book Blood and Silver by Jan Glazewski about how his Polish family fled from Eastern Europe in the time of Nazism.
The article also contains a detailed account of a significant address by Advocate Christiaan Bester about Bosman’s continuing relevance for the South Africa of today.
According to the organisers, the theme of this year’s weekend was a passage in Bosman’s essay ‘Marico revisited’ in which he wrote that, upon visiting the Marico after an absence of many years, he ‘found what I should have known, all along (…) that it was the present that was haunted, and that the past was not full of ghosts’.
Next year’s festival is still some way off, but if you wish to enquire about it, or book early, contact Santa van Bart at cel 083 272 2958, Email info@marico.co.za.
Moerkoffie on the boil. Image: LitNet.
Featured image: A historic photograph of Herman Charles Bosman, taken at the University of the Witwatersrand. Undated.