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Graffiti artists 'targeted'
25/01/2008 12:31 - (SA)
Johannesburg - Melville residents have been asked for their views on the graffiti murals spray-painted on the walls around the Melpark Primary School.
This, after graffiti artists accused the local ward councillor Sharon Sabbagh of targeting them to score cheap political points.
"There has been a fair amounts of comment regarding the graffiti on the walls...," residents of the area were told in an online community news brief.
"...Our councillor Sharon has asked that we should please respond with our views as the 'interested parties' of Melville."
Sabbagh was instrumental in the arrest of three graffitos last year for painting on the wall.
Permission was granted
They were released after it emerged that the school principal had given them permission to decorate the wall.
Sabbagh said she also had a group of 16 or 17 youths taken in by police last Saturday for painting on the wall. They too were released, when the school intervened.
"Some of the professional walls are very colourful, but does this not lead to an acceptance of graffiti?" the community news brief asked.
It questioned whether the murals perhaps encouraged amateurs "to want to tag here". Tags are the graffitos "signatures" simply scrawled on walls.
"Are some of the professionals tags not the same as the ones sporting your garden wall currently?" the forum asked.
"Do you like the graffiti? Should there be a dedicated graffiti wall? How do you feel about tagging - what if it was your garden wall?"
The school's principal Nalini Padayachee said she gave the graffitos permission to spraypaint the wall to cover-up an offensive slogan and tags, on condition the murals themselves were not vulgar.
Complaints from residents
Sabbagh said she became involved after receiving complaints from residents about tagging.
Graffitos were tagging "wherever they feel like it", defacing road signs, walls of private property, electricity meters, robots and street lights, she said.
The same tags were to be seen all over the city - some as far as the East Rand, Sabbagh added.
She believed it was not the school's place to give permission for graffiti in a residential area. "Residents have a say," she said.
"I can't believe that kind of art... inspires children, particularly (those at) primary school) she said, but added: "I suppose everybody has their personal perception of art."
She claimed residents in the area were struggling to sell their houses and that people were saying the area had become "like a ghetto".
Padayachee said the school had received no complaints about the murals.
Sabbagh said she had not met with the school about the matter, nor could she identify the by-law which prevented it from allowing graffiti on its walls. She was still "trying to obtain clarity", she said.
She had asked the graffitos to stop until then and had asked them to identify walls she could ask the council to have declared "legal" graffiti walls - similar to The Star Graffiti Wall in Jan Smuts Avenue.
A reasonable solution
A reasonable solution would be for the graffitos to put together a portfolio of murals from which residents could choose what would be on the walls, Sabbagh said.
"I am not saying I am not prepared to work with them. I am," she said.
What it came down to was that the residents did not know the school, and the school did not know the residents. This was an opportunity to resolve not just the graffiti issue, but a lot of other matters too, Sabbagh said.
- SAPA
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