It's official - Munsieville's got talent!

This week’s focus on showcasing Munsieville’s talent continued with the auditions for our 'Munsieville’s Got Talent' contest. All week we had been spreading the word about the competition, through posters, schools, loud-hailing, and word-of-mouth. Excitement built feverishly about the prospect of winning the prize of performing live at the Silverstar casino at our charity fund-raiser on 3rd March. As usual though, we had no idea of what to expect would happen on the day itself – just what talent was out there waiting to perform?
The day began in bright sunshine around 7am at the Munsieville community hall, our venue for the day. The contest was due to start around 8am but African time prevailed and we didn’t get going til 10am. It transpired that the reason for the late start was one of our judges, a Miss Soweto finalist, was putting extra effort into her hair.
The judges introduced themselves before we began the proceedings. We had Xalani, a hip hop dancer; Samantha, the beauty queen; and Teddy, a stage and TV actor. We’d briefed them to look out for stage persona, originality, appearance, and interaction with fans, and they had big crosses and STOP signs to hold up if an act was terrible and had to stop (used fairly frequently). They did a great job of assessing the performances and giving constructive feedback. Teddy adeptly played the part of Simon Cowell, casually crushing the dreams of a whole series of Munsieville hopefuls.
The performances started slowly, with mostly stage-fright-struck primary school-children screeching hymns or Westlife songs into the microphone. Then, bit by bit, Munsieville’s talent began to reveal itself through some weird and wonderful acts. There was Johannes, who could do bird and animal noises. Neo and his group from Mayibuye (who performed at the Tshepo festival) put together a heart-stopping and foot-pounding display of traditional dancing. Simon, in a wheelchair, performed a blistering set of stunts (with only one tumble). A gospel choir raised the rafters with their harmonies. There were poets, acrobats, models, actors and divas. Perhaps most impressive of all were several groups of young male dancers, who set the stage (and the audience) on fire with their awesome manoeuvres.
Sixty-four acts in total rolled out on the stage over the next five hours. As the day wore on, the crowd swelled, with people poking their heads through windows at the top and back of the building. There were some notable differences from a talent contest back home. There were no pushy mothers shoving their little darling forward. In fact, there weren’t really any parents at all. Imagine if your 4-year old had plucked up the courage to perform in front of 500 people – there would be mum, dad, grandparents, aunts, uncles all out to give support. Not so in Munsieville - most of the children just performed for themselves or in front of their friends. It struck me as sad that the adults can’t or don’t want to take time to celebrate their own children’s achievements. I hope in some way the Thoughtful Path project can address this so that children are better cared for and cherished within the community.
Thanks for reading,
Neil Davidson, GSK PULSE volunteer with Project HOPE UK