The Culture and Resistance Symposium was held in Gaborone from 5-9 July 1982. The symposium and the accompanying exhibition and festival of South African Arts was an initiative of a number of South African artists living in Botswana. They felt a need to establish contacts and exchange ideas and experiences with other South African cultural workers. The theme for the symposium ("Culture and Resistance") arose out of their need to discuss the artists' position within the milieu in which they found themselves.