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Ashraf Johaardien’s “Provenance” Meets Its First Audience at Fak’Ugesi

JOHANNESBURG: PROVENANCE, a new theatre work by Fak’ugesi Writer in Residence Ashraf Johaardien, had its first public development reading on Thursday 15 October, 12:00 to 13:30, at the IBM Lab, Tshimologong, as part of the Fak’ugesi African Digital & Innovation Festival 2026. Listed on the programme as Provenance + AI-Curious, the session was directed and facilitated by Lesley Wright, with Johaardien reading the role of Alec.

PROVENANCE begins as a stand-up set and becomes an interrogation of where material comes from. Alec, a comedian in his 50s, tells his story through a comedy frame, performing everyone but himself. What starts as crowd work, two names taken from the audience and improvised nightly, unravels into a fight over origin, memory and ownership: where a joke comes from, who has the right to tell it, and what happens when a machine can imitate voice, style and lived experience.

The work moves in three acts, Stand Up, Stand Down and Drown: steep ascent, standing on the cliff, then the dive. At the reading, the gunshots did not resolve the piece; they suspended it mid-fall.

“The moment they give their name, they’re inside it,” said Johaardien. “Not watching. Complicit. Provenance is the chain of custody: who held this story, who signed it, who gets to claim it.”

The reading was developed during Johaardien’s Fak’ugesi residency and programmed within this year’s festival theme, African Imaginaries. His residency research, developed through his M\e. practice across writing, image-making and systems design, sits where intuition meets systems trained to predict it.

“My residency question was simple: can a machine be funny?” said Johaardien. “In controlled settings, it already is. The harder question is what kind of funny, under what conditions, and who gets the credit or the blame.”

The post-reading conversation turned on what a comedian owns when style becomes instantly reproducible. If a machine can do your voice, your timing, your trauma, what is left that is yours? Wright connected those questions to the festival’s wider enquiry into how African makers originate, own and circulate work within and against global systems.

The room was not the usual theatre crowd. It included representatives of a medical consultancy working through the use of AI in client-facing work, a cinematographer from Berlin, a recent UCT graduate, a parent who left at the hard stop of school pickup, and a facilitator presenting on arts funding and AI in the next session in the same venue.

Developed at Tshimologong, PROVENANCE is now being shaped toward full performance.

ENDS

About Ashraf Johaardien
Ashraf Johaardien is a multi-hyphenate writer whose thirty-year career spans theatre, fiction, essay, image-making and cultural leadership. He has served as General Manager of Wits Theatres, Head of Arts & Culture at the University of Johannesburg, Executive Producer of the National Arts Festival and CEO of Business and Arts South Africa. His interdisciplinary practice, developed through M\e. Creative, moves between creative production, cultural strategy and technology. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of the Witwatersrand and is Writer in Residence at the Fak’ugesi African Digital & Innovation Festival 2026.

About Lesley Wright
Lesley Wright is a director and facilitator working across education, performance and collaborative development. A former drama teacher and Head of Dramatic Arts at Roedean School (SA), she creates spaces for students, artists and audiences to interrogate ideas through live exchange, critical thinking and storytelling.

About M\e.
M\e. is the practice through which Ashraf Johaardien works where writing, image-making, editorial thinking and systems design meet. Multidisciplinary names the ground; interdisciplinary names a method. The work forms in the encounters between them, as text, image, publication, process, or something that has not yet found its form. M\e. is interested in what happens when intuition meets a system trained to predict it: what survives, what changes, what neither side expected. Language, visual reduction, cultural memory, machine-assisted thinking. The work moves between all of it, looking for forms that stay human under pressure.

About Fak’ugesi African Digital & Innovation Festival
Fak’ugesi African Digital & Innovation Festival is a festival of digital culture, art and technology, based at the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Johannesburg.

Media contact
Xeenit Smith
nazlife.za@gmail.com

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Author: Xeenit Smith from M\e. on behalf of Ashraf Johaardien.

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The Oriental Plaza: A Phoenix in Fordsburg

If Johannesburg is a city of forced displacements, the Oriental Plaza is its most resilient response. While the Rand Club was built for the elite and Ponte for the “jet-set,” the Oriental Plaza was born from the trauma of the Group Areas Act—a piece of Apartheid legislation designed to geographically separate the races. Yet, in true Johannesburg fashion, what was intended as a tool of containment and financial ruin for the Indian community transformed into one of the most vibrant, independent commercial powerhouses in the country.

The story of the Plaza begins with the destruction of Pageview, affectionately known as Fietas. In the mid-20th century, Fietas was a legendary multicultural hub, centered around the bustling 14th Street. It was the city’s premier destination for textiles, clothing, and spices, where shoppers of all races would rub shoulders in a “jazzy, soulful” atmosphere. However, because Fietas was located so close to the white-only city center, the Apartheid government declared it a “white area” in 1962. The community fought back for decades, but by the 1970s, the bulldozers arrived. Homes were leveled, and the thriving traders of 14th Street were forcibly relocated to a purpose-built, modernist complex a kilometer away in Fordsburg: the Oriental Plaza.

The government’s intent was cynical: by moving the traders into a controlled environment with high state-mandated rents and strict rules on what could be sold, they hoped to break the back of Indian commercial dominance. The early years were devastating; many businesses folded, and the “Grand Bazaar” felt like a sterile warehouse compared to the street-level energy of Fietas. However, the traders refused to vanish. They eventually won the right to purchase their own shops, making the Oriental Plaza unique among South African malls because it is owned by the shopkeepers themselves rather than a corporate landlord. This ownership model changed everything. Without the burden of massive monthly mall rentals, the 360+ independent stores can offer prices that national retailers cannot touch, turning the Plaza into a “bargain-hunter’s paradise” that draws millions of visitors a year.