Chronicle Editor
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
WHEN the Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo was born, its founders might not have thought it would live to celebrate its 20th birthday.
Two decades ago Intwasa was just a seed, a mere idea that lived in the minds of a few visionaries. Like all good ideas, a dialogue was needed to bring Intwasa to life and so a discussion on the concept of an all-inclusive arts gathering started from the offices of the local Mayor, the Governor, and the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe.
After consultations with local artistes, the discussions were concretised, giving birth to Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo.
Since then, Intwasa, a festival that heralds the arrival of spring in the City of Kings has grown, nurtured by the talent of the city’s children and the love of the community that surrounds it.
It has not been an easy two decades and Intwasa has survived its fair share of storms.
In its time, Intwasa has survived a few financial crises on more than a few occasions, as sponsorship and donor money dried up. Other festivals such as the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA), the crown jewel of the country’s arts extravaganzas, have since folded as economic reality set in.
Yet Intwasa soldiered on, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable financial odds.
When Covid-19 struck the world, the arts were some of the hardest hit, as a trade that relied on crowds found itself at odds with a pandemic that thrived in large gatherings. The world of showbiz had caught an excruciating cold, yet Intwasa only coughed, fixed itself, and again soldiered on.
Countless times, the festival’s obituary has been written but it has defied any predictions of its demise. Twenty years later, Intwasa has taken the blows, battered and bruised, it still stands, ready to celebrate two decades spent as the premier platform for the arts.
In an interview with Sunday Life, Intwasa’s long-serving director Raisedon Baya said the festival was still standing because of the grace of the local community.
This year’s festival, set to run between 25 and 28 August, will once again run under the theme, Imagine It! Experience It!
“Things have not been as smooth as we would like and I guess that’s the story of Intwasa if you look at our history. We are now into our 20th edition and ours, as we have always said, has always been a festival of faith. We have said that even with the struggles we have in terms of resources and finances, we always make sure that there’s an edition, a festival every year. We have proved that for 19 years and we hope that we will deliver the 20th edition this year in a similar manner,” said Baya.
In the 20 years that Intwasa has been present on the local arts scene, a lot has changed. Nowadays, people do not have to wait a long time to find events that cater to their tastes. It is for this reason that Baya said this year’s edition would be streamlined, as they focused on events that they thought would bring unique value to Intwasa.
“Our idea now is to curate the festival and give people an extravaganza that is different from everything that’s out there. In the past, our idea was to have as many events as we could because we wanted everyone to get involved.
“Now, what we have realised is that a lot of people are showcasing events left, right, and centre so the idea is not to create space for events for the sake of it. I think the idea for us now is not just to host any event as part of our festival. Instead, we want to be separated from everything else happening out there,” he said.
Spring is a time of renewal, rebirth, and new beginnings. With this in mind, Baya said on its 20th edition, Intwasa was eager to incorporate a few changes that would transform the outlook of the festival.
“We are now very particular about what we showcase and how we do it. You will find that this year we will be having several changes, particularly about how our days go. We will also be quite particular about what artistes and acts curate. Most importantly, we always say that the festival belongs to the community so we would like to see a lot of collaborative ideas coming from people from within our area of influence and also see things that are relevant to the city and keep the tag that Bulawayo is the cultural capital of the country,” he said.
While a lot of changes are in the offering, Baya said they had decided to stick with their theme for at least one more year, as they felt that it captured the spirit of what the festival wanted to deliver to Bulawayo.
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