South Africa, Day 4 by David Whetstone

In North East terms, suggests Peter Stark, this would be Durham - a university city with an educated, relatively well-heeled centre and a large hinterland occupied by the less advantaged (for which, in Grahamstown's case, I'd suggest, means dirt poor).

The first building we see, high and imposing on a hill, is the prison. Just below is the Rhodes campus with its mellow stone buildings and cultivated shrubs. Students, black and white, stroll around in groups, just as on any British or American campus.

But before we stop here, we take a less picturesque journey to an arts project born of cruelty and ugliness.

It involves a drive through the local township, an Eastern Cape phenomenon with which we are now becoming familiar.

Under apartheid the townships accommodated the black people who were required to work in the towns but not allowed to live there. Nearly 20 years after Nelson Mandela's release from prison, they still exist.

Imagine an expanse of North East allotments, the type with more ramshackle huts than greenery. In fact, erase the greenery and add rubbish-strewn dirt roads. These corrugated iron huts are where many thousands of poor South Africans still live and it is a shocking eye-opener.
The Egazini Outreach Project (Egazini meaning 'place of blood')is an art and craft centre housed in a large shed in the township area. Under the apartheid regime, this was the euphemistically named 'internal stability unit' of the riot police. Within its rough, breezeblock confines people were interrogated and tortured.

The historian who initiated this project, an American lady, tells us specks of blood were found when the building was first handed over and one person, venturing in for the first time, remarked: "That corner's where they knocked my teeth out." Rolls of razor wire - still ubiquitous in Eastern Cape, contrasting with its natural beauty - are retained as a reminder of the past.

It has been the home of the Egazini Outreach Project since 2001. The place is used by community groups for print-making, textile design and other crafts. A group of elderly ladies has helped to sustain it and are among its most enthusiastic users.

I am shown around by Violet Booi who proudly displays her three contributions to a calendar that will be made and put on sale if money can be raised. Deciding against her depiction of the aftermath of the Xhosa circumcision ritual (If you want to know more about that, read Nelson Mandela's autobiography), I buy Violet's image of the tree of life.

It was the Afrikaaner National Party which introduced apartheid after its election victory in 1948 but we English can't take the high moral ground - not here anyway. The Egazini building is decorated with a frieze depicting the battle of Grahamstown of 1819 when a force of Xhosa warriors was defeated by a British colonial force.

The Xhosa came close to taking the town, named after Lieutenant Colonel John Graham who had founded it as a military outpost to defend the settlers of Cape Colony.

The Xhosa had plenty of just grievances against the British, not least the fact that settlers had been lured to the colony with the promise of free land. Only when they arrived did they find that it was already occupied by the Xhosa who had been there for generations. After the battled, the defeated Xhosa leaders were imprisoned on Robben Island, more than a century before anti-apartheid campaigners were banged up there.

Later historian Bill Lancaster and I are astonished to find a marble memorial to Graham in the Anglican cathedral which is an imposing landmark in Grahamstown. That name, incidentally, like many others in the new South Africa, is to be changed. But the memorial remains, as do many plaques commemorating soldiers who died in the wars against the native South Africa tribes.

Why do the relics of the old colonial rulers remain? It's as much of a puzzle as the pristine white statue of Queen Victoria that we will later find in the Market Square in Port Elizabeth, not far from where Steve Biko died.

South Africa, we are coming to realise, is a place of many histories. Defying generalisations, it challenges you at every turn. A mosaic describes the word 'Peace' at the entrance to Egazini but that was a long time coming and even now seems little short of miraculous.

Our meeting with the new director of the National Arts Festival, relishing the chance to meddle with an institution in danger of becoming stale and unwieldy, goes well. Mark Lloyd's Taproot theatre company plans to perform there this year.

Meanwhile, our visual art experts tell us that South Africa's fine art departments are a mixed bunch, some relatively well equipped and enlightened while others have very little in the way of books or equipment.