One has to hand it to Ling Dobson, founder of the Knysna Literary Festival and Pam Golding franchisee for Knysna and Plett – she has guts when it comes to compiling her guest list for the political debates that have become a highlight at the fest.
Not only that, but the political climate exactly at the time of the festival has for the last two years been perfect for hot debate.
The three-day event, since it was founded nine years ago gets, "cheekier" all the time with a line-up of celebrated authors, but when it comes to picking her targets for the two events, Fate of the Nation and one other political event, it is phenomenal how some of the country's top political journalists/editors who are authors come to be in the same room at the same time. Not an everyday event, but somewhat of a coup!
Heavyweights
This year, Fate of the Nation comprised News24 editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson, HuffPost SA editor-in-chief Pieter du Toit, renowned journalist Ranjeni Munusamy, investigative journalist Jacques Pauw and education guru Professor Jonathan Jansen of Stellenbosch University.
The next talk, Zuma Unplugged, had Basson talking to Pauw about the political climate and what surrounded writing his controversial book The President's Keepers.
What was fascinating to me was the power in that room and with one hit should this not have been a democratic society, the perfect time to take out opponents of Zuma, the Guptas and the government as it is now.
Coals on 2017 political debate
The extra heat on political debate last year was when Western Cape premier Helen Zille had just tweeted her infamous comment about colonialism and then hopped on a plane to come to Knysna, which read, "Getting onto an aeroplane now and won't get onto the Wi-Fi so that I can cut off those who think every aspect of colonial legacy was bad."
This was after originally tweeting, "For those claiming legacy of colonialism was only negative, think of our independent judiciary, transport infrastructure, piped water etc."
When Zille arrived in Knysna and at the festival, after causing an uproar on social media, she started explaining that her trip to Singapore had opened her eyes to a different perspective and she said, “I am not claiming that [colonialism was good] and I would never.”
Obviously no sooner had Zille arrived in Knsyna, than she was in the perfect place to be tackled about her tweet – brilliant timing for extra coals on the festival political debate.
Wild card
The wild card this year was that the huge change of Zuma out and Ramaphosa in as president of the country happened after the authors/speakers were invited to this year's fest, so people who had tickets to the political sessions were riveted to their seats as the obvious question was, what now? And those who were there were privileged to be able to hear firsthand the opinions of the heavyweights in the room.
There were for me two emotional moments: one when Ling Dobson addressed the political panel and said, "I feel better about South Africa because of people like you in this room", and the other was when Glynnis Breytenbach asked the audience to give a hand to the whistleblowers in this country (dedicated civil servants who do care) and also to the media for their efforts which bring about change.
The stuff that this festival is made of puts Knysna on the map, so hats off to Ling Dobson and her team.
