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| L-R: Delme Cupido, Lesle Jansen, Abhishek Choudhury, & Kabir Bavikatte |
Natural Justice, in collaboration with LEDLAB and Srishti School for Arts, Design and Technology (India) participated in the Open Book Festival at the Fugard Theatre on Saturday, 20 September 2013. The Open Book Festival is an annual literary festival that features top international and South African writers of today. It aims to showcase the best of South African writing. It also aims to make a contribution to ensuring the youth of Cape Town has a love of reading and books.
The Hoerikwaggo Chronicles: The Return to the Kalahari, along with some other items, based on the novel, was featured at this festival’s market stalls. Many South Africans had the opportunity to engage this novel. It is a 5-part series being developed by the illustrator Abhishek Choudhury and Kabir Bavikatte as the script writer. The Chronicles are based on Joseph Campbell’s idea of the Hero’s Journey and Carl Jung’s archetypes of the king, warrior, trickster and lover. It seeks to tell the story of four young people growing up in the Cape Flats. The Chronicles unfold as a conversation between the material reality of their everyday lives and the mythical world of Khoi-San myths and legends. While the Chronicles began as a way for the Heroes Project to assist youth in the Cape Flats and townships in the Northern Cape to engage with their Khoi-San heritage, the anticipated audience for the Chronicles are young adults in both South Africa and beyond.The day ended with participation in a panel discussion featuring this graphic novel. The panel consisted of Delme Cupido from the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa as the discussant; Lesle Jansen, Kabir Bavikatte and Abhishek Choudhury. The name of the panel discussion was: The Khoisan experience: Healing historical trauma through Storytelling and Creative Action.
