Performing Arts Network of South Africa (PANSA)
Executive Summary
Thank you for the opportunity to make this presentation on behalf of the Performing Arts Network of South Africa (PANSA). PANSA celebrates its third birthday today. It was launched in 2001, the year after the annus horribilus for the performing arts in which hundreds of jobs were lost. PANSA serves as an organised voice for performing arts workers to influence policy and strategies that directly impact on the lives of those who makee their living in the performing arts.
We are a non-partisan, independent, democratic and non-profit organisation with branches in Limpopo, Gauteng, Free State, KwaZulu Natal, Western Cape and Eastern Cape, and interim representation from the North West Province. We represent more than 3000 dancers, playwrights, actors, arts administrators, opera singers, musicians, arts educators, technicians and service providers around the country, including the leading performing arts companies. Our vision is a simple one: to nurture, build and defend a vibrant and sustainable performing arts industry in our country.
This is the third consecutive submission on the budget that we have made to the Portfolio Committee responsible for arts and culture. In 2002, our detailed analysis of the DACST budget from 1995/6 to 2002/3 revealed that whereas arts and culture consumed 45% of the budget in 1995/6 against the 49% of science and technology, by 2000/1, arts and culture accounted for little more than 30% of the total budget against the 60% of science and technology. The stagnation and even decline in arts funding during this period had devastating impact on the morale and activities of performing arts workers.
We were pleased when a new Department of Arts and Culture was created later, and we were delighted a few weeks ago when the Department also received its own Ministry, as arts and culture would no longer have to compete with science and technology for budgetary and political importance.
Last year, we made a presentation as part of NACSA, the Network for Arts and Culture South Africa, an umbrella body that combines representative bodies in the performing arts, visual arts, heritage, literature, community arts centres, craft as well as cultural institutions of national significance.
We commended the significant increase in the DAC budget, although this increase was largely accounted for by capital works at heritage institutions and Freedom Day Celebrations. We also appreciated that after years of stagnation, all cultural institutions received real increases in their budgets.
We had a number of questions about how budgets for orchestras were determined, why subsidy increases for theatres varied dramatically and what would happen to company funding after the initial three-year period. We hoped that with the new dispensation that included a new department, new Deputy Minister, new Director General and new boards of public funding agencies, we could enter into constructive dialogue and have these questions clarified. But this didn’t happen. Decisions continue to be made for, rather than with us.
Like we did last year, again we would like to say that there is little that we can do or say that will affect this year’s budget. It is a fait accompli. And again we would like to reiterate that if our views as civil society are really being sought in relation to the budget, then it should be at a time when we can still make a difference to the budget, not after the fact.
The purpose of these public hearings is "to solicit the view of arts and culture stakeholders on the current budget and to assess whether or not public spending on arts and culture is effectively and efficiently utilised."
Our broad contention is that there IS money available for the arts, but the manner in which it is administered and managed, generally reflects little respect for and understanding of the conditions under which artists work.
National Arts Council
The National Arts Council is the country’s premier body for distributing public funds for arts and culture. Yet, there is enormous frustration with this institution.
Last year, the new Board announced the funding results in early June, six weeks after the NAC had indicated that these would be known. This adversely affected many groups intent on participating in the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, some of whom only received funding after they had staged a sit-in at the NAC’s offices. The NAC could have been excused then since it was not their fault that they had been appointed six weeks after they were due to be in place. However, this year it is even worse with companies only knowing in mid-June whether they have received funding or not.
We were extremely sorry to hear about the apparent stroke suffered by the NAC Chairperson, Dr Gomolemo Mokae yesterday. We sincerely hope that he recovers. We hope too that the forthcoming NAC meeting to decide on funding will take place for if it doesn’t, artists would not have had any funding allocated by the NAC in the first half of the year. Funds are available, but it is a lack of effective management at the NAC that is prejudicing the work of artists.
This is not a surprise though. Last November, the new Board of the NAC suspended its most senior management. After the Minister and the Department declined to intervene, NACSA made a submission to the Portfolio Committee on 20 November last year, urging them to investigate the NAC - both the board and the management - in the light of serious allegations made against both.
Nearly eight months later, with nothing having been done, the consequences are
The experiences of our members are captured in the letters in the submission we made, but in summary, companies struggle to get the funding contractually owed to them, there is no clarity if funding for companies will continue after this year leading to great uncertainty and stress in the sector and the NAC has lost correspondence from companies thereby prejudicing funding for them.
Our own experience as PANSA is that we applied for funding for a project in September last year. We lodged an appeal after the decision was reserved, and like other appellants, nearly six months later, we still do not know the outcome of that appeal. It is enormously frustrating for professionals within the industry to have their work, their livelihood and their careers affected so detrimentally by a statutory body that appears to be so unprofessional, so uncaring in its practices.
Gauteng gets the lion’s share of NAC funding, followed by the Western Cape and KwaZulu Natal. The rest of the provinces get less than 20% of the funding between them. This unequal distribution of funds is also reflected in the DAC budget of 2004/5 too. Last year, we asked why it was that three theatres in Gauteng were all funded by the national department, yet not a single theatre in Limpopo, North West, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape and Eastern Cape received funding from the DAC. We are still waiting for a reply, and the people in provinces that have historically been neglected, continue to be neglected.
The NAC has no discernible vision to develop the arts in all nine provinces, no strategies to realise that vision, no proactive implementation mechanisms to pursue such strategies.
National Lottery
We understand that the National Lottery is not the responsibility of this Portfolio Committee but we would also like to show that here, spending on arts and culture is simply not effectively and efficiently done either - to the detriment of artists.
In 2003, funding for the five poorer provinces amounted to a total of 12% of the total while four other provinces consumed the rest i.e. more than 80% between them. But there are also other concerns
a. while the charities and sport distribution agencies were able to allocate 94% of the funding available to them last year, the arts and culture agency only distributed 76%. The balance of R54 million was one-and-a-third times the annual NAC budget, and could have made a huge difference to the sector
b. the arts and culture distribution agency met nearly five times less than their charities counterparts and nearly twice as little as their sports counterparts last year. The result is that applicants sometimes have to wait for more than a year for a response to their applications.
The point again is a simple one. There is funding for the arts. It is simply not getting to the sector because of the governance, management and administrative inefficiencies of the structures assigned to distribute the funding.
Playhouses
Publicly-funded theatres like PACOFS, the Playhouse and the State Theatre are not necessarily serving the interests of the performing arts sector at the moment. PACOFS receives millions from the lottery for the annual MACUFE Festival, but as attested to by the letters in your packs, the Festival is yet another example of huge resources being wasted through ineffective management and incompetent administration.
About two weeks ago, the Board of the Playhouse Company suspended four senior managers of the Playhouse, on serious charges, but they were also known to oppose the appointment of the Artistic Director at the Playhouse who happens to be the wife of one of the Board members. The institution has been plagued by worker go-slows in response to a perception of nepotism and conflicts of interest dating back to when the current board was first appointed.
As with the NAC Board, there is the perception of cover-ups, of the protection of individuals connected to the former Minister, of boards with governing power using their positions to get rid of management when they appear to be obstacles, while the board itself is not investigated for the allegations made against them.
Some of the subsidised theatres have combined their funding to host a revival of Mbongeni Ngema’s Sarafina and tour it around the country as part of the celebrations to mark ten years of democracy this year. That is all very well, but there has been no transparency with regard to this decision and no-one else has had the opportunity to tender or bid for the public funding that these theatres have to stage such productions. Ngema has already benefited from R14 million of public funds for Sarafina 2, if somewhat controversially, but with public funds being available, the question is: why is there no transparency in the allocation of such funds? Why is it always the same people who seem to benefit?
Again, the same refrain. Public funds are available to benefit the arts. But in practice, there are contradictions of many of the laudable principles contained in the White Paper: transparency, redress, access, equity and participation, and this means that a few benefit, while most continue to struggle to survive.
CREATE SA
CREATE SA is a body established with funds from the MAPPP SETA to fund training and learnerships within the arts and culture sector. We believe that fundamentally, this institution has its heart in the right place. But accessing funds from it is incredibly bureaucratic. The needs as we perceive them and the way in which they fund are simply not compatible, as per the example in your packs.
Again, the same refrain. There is funding. It is simply not reaching all those who should benefit from it and it is not achieving as much as it could.
Department of Arts and Culture
Finally, we would like to make the following general comments about the 2004/5 budget of the DAC.
1. We welcome the relative stability that there is now in the budgeting process as there is no longer the culling of funds from one part of the budget to shift to others. There appears to be new funding coming in to the benefit of the arts.
2. However, we note that there has been an 8% increase in the number of staff in the department in the last year and that the total compensation of staff has improved by 14,5% from R68,7m to R78,7m at an average of R196 900 per staff member. We would like to point out that this remuneration per staff member is in excess of the average project grant made by the NAC. We also note that the increase to the NAC this year is 6% against the increase in staff compensation of R14,5% at the DAC itself. We note too that the subsidies to the orchestras is exactly the same as last year, and we wonder why musicians are not deemed worthy of even an inflationary increase while DAC has a very healthy increase.
3. It is difficult to comment on the funds used by the DAC itself and on whether the manner in which it is spent actually adds value to the sector as there is no detail. Recently, there were questions about the size and composition of the delegation to the Cannes Film Festival. There is the perception that much funding is wasted and that the sector doesn’t necessarily see the value of expenditure in concrete impact.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while there is public funding for the arts, generally, it is not administered effectively and it is not distributed efficiently so that the work of artists and performing arts companies is severely prejudiced.
We are here today despite the disappointment of previous submissions to the Portfolio Committee not being followed through. We are here because the elections represented a new beginning with a new ministry, a new Minister and Deputy Minister, new MECs for arts and culture in all nine provinces and a new Portfolio Committee hopefully with new energy and passion for the arts.
We believe that the arts and the performing arts in particular, have a huge role to play in our country. However, this huge potential is limited by poor governance, mismanagement and administrative bungling in the institutions charged with promoting and defending the arts.
Accordingly, we would like to appeal to the Portfolio Committee to
1. ensure that an independent investigation is launched as a matter of urgency into the National Arts Council, its board, management and administrative structures, and that corrective action is taken speedily
2. use the influence of the Committee to bring our concerns about the lottery to the attention of the DTI and to request an investigation of the Arts, Culture and National Heritage Distribution Agency with respect to governance, meeting frequency, composition, administrative procedures and decision-making processes, with a view to improving the efficacy of this major source of funding
3. as a matter of urgency, convene a meeting with the DAC and the NAC to ensure that funding for performing arts companies as has been allocated for the last three years, is made available again at least for the next financial year, in order to ensure a degree of certainty and sustainability within these companies
4. ensure that independent investigations are undertaken into PACOFS and the management of the MACUFE Festival, into the situation at the Playhouse and into the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra, the State, Market and Windybrow theatres
5. encourage the major stakeholders in the sector – government at all three levels, funding bodies, international donors, artists and their representative organisations – to convene a conference to review the last ten years, and to set a fresh agenda, vision and strategies to promote and develop the performing arts in the next five years so as to be ready to take advantage of what the Soccer World Cup in 2010 may have to offer
6. establish a multiparty subcommittee with whom we as civil society can liase and to which we can channel information on a regular basis. We would like all parties to take an active interest in the well-being of the country’s artists.
If you are unable to do all or any of this, then please advise us how we may best address our concerns. For the Department does not engage with us and neither does the NAC. Then, when we have to resort to other strategies defend the interests of our members, we are treated almost as enemies of the state. Now, as artists, as citizens, as voters, we are appealing to our parliamentary body to assist us. We are hugely encouraged by the emphasis on delivery by the President, and we hope that within the next one hundred days, we will see real changes in the governance and management of our sector.
Introduction
The Performing Arts Network of South Africa (PANSA) celebrates its third birthday today. It was launched in Gauteng on 9 June 2001, with subsequent branches being established in the Western Cape, KwaZulu Natal, Eastern Cape, Limpopo and the Free State. We also have interim representatives in the North West and Mpumalanga.
PANSA came into being the year after 2000, the annus horribilus for the performing arts. It was the year in which the State Theatre’s management lost millions of rands in a fraudulent investment scheme, and the theatre was shut down. Hundreds of jobs were lost. That year, the world-renowned Market Theatre retrenched half of its staff, this after it had begun to receive a major subsidy from government. PACOFS in the Free State lost R7 million in the same fraudulent scheme as the State Theatre. The Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra was liquidated. The Windybrow Theatre had to receive emergency funding or it would have had to close. Numerous NGOs, performing arts companies and arts centres faced closure or unsustainable futures, not only because of a lack of funding, but because of a lack of vision, a lack of effective management and poor management of the implementation of policy.
In the last three years, we have struggled to represent the interests of our members: dancers, playwrights, theatre companies, opera singers, musicians, administrators, educators and the like. We are a non-partisan organisation whose vision is to nurture and build a vibrant and sustainable performing arts industry in our country.
Presentations to the Portfolio Committee
This is the third consecutive submission that we have made to the Portfolio Committee responsible for arts and culture. In 2002, we submitted a detailed analysis of the DACST budget, showing the trends in expenditure from 1995/6 to 2002/3 (see attached in this document). The analysis revealed that while the overall budget more than doubled in that period, the percentage growth for arts and culture was less than the percentage growth in the DACST budget each year, while science and technology’s percentage growth regularly exceeded the percentage growth of the overall budget. It was no surprise then that whereas arts and culture consumed 45% of the budget in 1995/6 against the 49% of science and technology, by 2000/1, arts and culture accounted for little more than 30% of the total budget against the 60% of science and technology. Clearly, it wasn’t that there was no extra funding for the Department. It was that the allocation of funding was increasingly skewed – for whatever reasons – in favour of science and technology. The stagnation and even decline in funding for the arts and culture sector during this period had devastating impact on the morale and activities of institutions, companies and individuals artists.
We were delighted in the following year when a new Department of Arts and Culture was created, and we were more delighted a few weeks ago when the Department also received its own Ministry as arts and culture would now be an entity in its own right with its own budget on its own terms, as opposed to having to compete with science and technology in a single department and ministry.
When we made our submissions in 2002 and placed the comprehensive analysis in the pigeonholes of each committee member, we did not receive any response from any committee member. When we listened to the subsequent debate in parliament on the Minister’s vote, it was clear that no hard questions would be put to the Department or the Minister and there were generally speeches congratulating them despite our experience and knowledge to the contrary. Except for one or two opposition MPs who highlighted some of the issues in our presentation, it appeared that the voice of civil society, having been invited for comment, was thoroughly ignored.
Last year, we made a presentation as part of NACSA, the Network for Arts and Culture South Africa, an umbrella body that combines representative bodies in the performing arts, visual arts, heritage, literature, community arts centres, craft as well as cultural institutions of national significance.
We commended the significant increase in the DAC budget, even though this increase was largely accounted for by capital works at heritage institutions, an allocation to Freedom Park and Freedom Day Celebrations, rather than ongoing operational costs. We also expressed our appreciation that after years of stagnation and decline, all cultural institutions received real increases in their budgets.
We expressed our great anticipation of the following year. After general decline in the sector, a new deputy minister had been appointed. A new department with its own budget had been established. A new Director General was to be appointed. New boards of publicly-funded institutions like the NAC and the NFVF were to be put in place. NACSA was about to be launched, and there was much room for dialogue and for taking the sector forward collectively. While there was a degree of cynicism about whether such hearings were anything more than a public relations exercise to give the appearance of consultation since it was unlikely that such hearings would have any impact on a budget that had already begun to be implemented, we expressed our desire as civil society to engage with the new Department around new policies and strategies for the sector, and consequently with the preparation of budgets that would be aligned to these.
We had a number of questions requiring clarity like how budgets for orchestras were determined, why subsidy increases for theatres varied dramatically and what would happen to company funding after the initial three-year period. We hoped that with the new dispensation, we could enter into constructive dialogue and have these questions clarified.
However, the last year has probably been the worst year for the performing arts in our country since 2000 in terms of relations between government and organised civil society. There has simply been no dialogue at all between us, and attempts from our side to meet with the Department have generally been rebuffed. Not surprisingly, the frustrations within the sector have grown as a result.
With President Mbeki indicating at the announcement of his cabinet that the arts have been neglected over the last number of years, and with the appointment of a senior ANC member – rather than a junior political partner – to the position of Minister, there has been a general enthusiasm and again, anticipation that things will get better at last.
Whether they do or not, will have little to do with this year’s budget which the new Minister will have inherited from his predecessor and from the Department, and more to do with whether governance and management within the sector will be improved or not.
Commentary on budget 2004/5
According to the letter of invitation to these hearings, "the purpose of the public hearings is to solicit the view of arts and culture stakeholders on the current budget and to assess whether or not public spending on arts and culture is effectively and efficiently utilised."
As for this year’s budget, again we would like to say that there is little that we can do or say that will affect this year’s budget. It is a fait accompli. And again we would like to reiterate that if our views as civil society are really being sought in relation to the budget, then it should be at a time when we can still make a difference to the budget, not after the fact, like now.
Accordingly, we would like to concentrate much of this presentation on the second part of the purpose of this hearing i.e. to assess whether or not public spending on arts and culture is effectively and efficiently utilised.
National Arts Council
First, we would like to talk about the National Arts Council, the country’s premier body for distributing public funds for arts and culture. In anticipation of this presentation, we asked our members to write to us about their experiences of the NAC. We have enclosed these letters as appendices for your direct information.
Last year, the a new NAC Board was appointed, six weeks later than it was supposed to have been in place. The previous Board had developed two cycles of funding: apply in February with results known at the end of April, and apply in September with results known at the end of November. The NAC works on the basis of advisory panels of experts in the field considering applications and making recommendations to the Board for approval of funding. These panels had met after the deadline for applications last February, and made their recommendations for funding. However, there was no Board in place to consider these recommendations, largely because of the mismanagement of the process by the Department. When the Board was eventually appointed, they took a further month to consider the applications, and when they announced the outcomes, there were many artists who had applied to participate in the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown who were aggrieved to hear that they had not been funded. They received this news mere weeks before the Festival was to take place. A number of theatre groups then occupied the premises of the NAC and insisted that their applications be reconsidered, and eventually, most of them received funding.
The point is that funds were available, but artists were severely prejudiced in accessing these funds and their work was compromised, not because of anything that they had done, but because the structure that had been created to nurture and promote the arts, was simply not able to do its work efficiently.
One could forgive the new Board of the NAC as it wasn’t their fault that they’d been appointed late, and one could understand that they would have wanted to go through the applications themselves so that they simply wouldn’t rubberstamp recommendations made elsewhere. But one would also have thought that the NAC would have learned from this experience. However, this year, it has been just as bad. There was no call for funding in February. The first call for applications was made in April with deadlines in May. Companies wanting to take part in the National Arts Festival will only know on 14 June whether they have received funding or not, two weeks before the start of the Festival. Yet, companies have to apply by the end of February to be part of the Festival. If a company applies, is accepted and then does not arrive for lack of funding, they are then barred from the Festival for the next three years. The late funding also impacts directly on the Festival that, without applicants able to confirm their participation, then has great difficulty in printing the programme with confirmed shows.
Again, funds are available, but it is the incompetence of the NAC that prejudices the work of artists.
This did not come as a surprise though. Last November, the new Board of the NAC suspended its most senior management on the basis of a variety of serious allegations and instituted a forensic audit. Before her suspension, the CEO of the Board, Ms Doreen Nteta, had lodged a document with the former Minister and Director General outlining serious complaints against the Chair and Deputy Chair of the NAC Board. The Minister and the DG however, chose not to investigate these complaints and indicated that they would look into these once the Board had completed its investigations into the suspended management.
We – as part of NACSA – made a submission to the Portfolio Committee on 20 November last year, urging them to intervene in the crisis, and to investigate the NAC as a whole, both the board and the management in the light of the seriousness of the allegations against both. We pointed out then that the crisis would seriously impact on the channelling of funds to the arts, and on the international reputation and credibility of the NAC. The Portfolio Committee did nothing in response to this submission.
Nearly eight months later, the consequences are
that artists have yet again been seriously compromised in the planning and the execution of their work because of the internal governance and management problems at the NAC
international donors that were working with the NAC such as the Flemish government and the Swedish International Development Agency, have withdrawn their funding from the NAC
the three suspended individuals are still under suspension and by the time their disciplinary hearing takes place in mid-June, the NAC would have paid them R100 000 a month in salaries and benefits for the period of their suspension, or nearly R800 000 in total, more than any company has ever received from the NAC in annual funding to do creative work
two Board members – John Kani, the previous Chairperson, and Jill Trappler - have resigned because of the manner in which the Board is governed and there are indications of further potential resignations, unfortunately, from those for whom the arts sector has some respect given their track records. It is possible that with further resignations, the Board will eventually become un-quorate, and will not be able to take decisions, and yet again the arts sector will bear the brunt of this.
Some of the more direct experiences of our members are captured in the attached letters, but the following is a summary:
a company was given a letter to inform them that they received a certain amount of funding, only for another letter to arrive a month later stating that actually, the amount should be R20 000 less. Such incompetence impacts directly on the morale and planning of the companies concerned.
making the application forms available in PDF which limits the accessibility off the internet for those who don’t have this, and even where PDF is available for free, companies and artists outside the urban centres are intimidated by such software
lack of conformity to contracts with instalments being paid out irregularly so that it is difficult to plan and some companies are placed under huge stress as they are unable to pay salaries; often companies receive no response to the letters they send to query the status of these payments
no indication of whether company funding will be made available for the next three years which is extremely disconcerting for the country’s leading performing arts companies that are somewhat dependent on such funding for planning and sustainability purposes
the NAC turned down an application by an award-winning playwright because her play about Muslim women post 9/11 only focused on one particular religion and one racial category. She was advised to reapply once she had rewritten her play to include other racial groups, a most preposterous interference in the creative process by a body that is obviously completely out of touch with its constituency.
Our own experience as PANSA is that we applied for funding for a project in September last year. We received a reply in November querying some items in the application – although the application had been approved for funding by the expert panel in dance. We submitted an appeal with the required information, yet, six months later, we still do not know the outcome of that appeal. We know that the appeals committee has met, but it would appear that the Executive Committee and/or the NAC Board have not met to consider the recommendations from the Appeals Committee.
It is enormously frustrating for professionals within the industry to have their work, their livelihood and their careers affected so detrimentally by a statutory body that is so incompetent, so unprofessional and so uncaring in its practices.
Some members have had good experiences of the NAC. One letter from Cape Town Opera testifies to that. Yet even they struggled over a number of years to get to that point with applications having been lost, then turned down, then sums of funding were given that were much less than that given to other opera practitioners, for no discernible reason.
As indicated by one of our members, Ballet Theatre Afrikan, the lack of communication, inconsistency, lack of accountability and lack of transparency with which decisions are made, and the apparent lack of knowledge of how the sector works on the part of the NAC, lead to huge frustrations. Artists feel like beggars and victims, rather than as partners, or as respected professionals.
Finally, members in Limpopo have often raised the poor distribution of funding nationally. Gauteng gets the lion’s share of NAC funding, followed by the Western Cape and KwaZulu Natal. The rest of the provinces get less than 20% of the funding between them. This is simply unacceptable. But it is understandable in that the NAC is a reactive organisation in that it responds to applications received by it, and it is largely people in the major centres who are able to complete the forms and submit them. However, this unequal distribution of funds continues to be reflected in the DAC budget of 2004/5 too. Last year, we asked why it was that three theatres in Gauteng – the State Theatre, the Windybrow and the Market Theatre – were all funded by the national department, yet not a single theatre in Limpopo, North West, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape and Eastern Cape received funding from the DAC. We asked what criteria were used to place theatres on the national funding list. We are still waiting for a reply, and the people in provinces that have historically been neglected, continue to be neglected.
The NAC has no discernible vision, no strategies to realise that vision, no proactive implementation mechanisms to pursue such strategies. Quite frankly, the NAC is a huge disappointment to the arts sector, and the performing arts community in particular.
Needless to say, there has been no communication, no dialogue, no consultation between the NAC and the organised arts sector.
National Lottery
We understand the National Lottery is not the responsibility of this Portfolio Committee and falls within the ambit of the Department of Trade and Industry. However, the Minister of Arts and Culture appoints the arts and culture representatives to the Distribution Agency for Arts, Culture and National Heritage, so that it is a concern of this committee.
We would also like to show that here, spending on arts and culture is simply not effectively and efficiently done.
The Lottery is the single most important source of new funding for the arts. It is also able to make substantial funding available to institutions and companies, with some receiving grants of more than R2,5 million per annum.
Yet here again, funding for the five poorer provinces amounts to a total of 12% of the total while four other provinces consume the rest i.e. more than 80% between them.
There are reasons for this. The lottery requires audited financial statements for two years for applicants to be eligible. Most arts organisations are only beginning to acquire these and there is no assistance to complete the relatively demanding forms. Those who are supposed to benefit, remain marginalized.
But there are also other concerns.
while the charities and sport distribution agencies were able to allocate 94% of the funding available to them last year, the arts and culture agency only distributed 76%. The balance of R54 million is one-and-a-third times the annual NAC budget, and could have made a huge difference to the sector
the arts and culture distribution agency met nearly five times less than their charities counterparts and nearly twice as little as their sports counterparts last year. The result is that applicants sometimes have to wait for more than a year for a response to their applications.
Sometimes, when meetings are not quorate, they are postponed and a number of applications is then prejudiced by the busyness of the people involved, all of them CEOs of national funding agencies like the NAC, BASA and the NFVF or of the SA Heritage Resources Agency.
The point again is a simple one. There is funding for the arts. It is simply not getting to the sector because of the governance, management and administrative inefficiencies of the structure assigned to distribute the funding.
Playhouses
PACOFS/MACUFE
PACOFS, the publicly-funded playhouse in Bloemfontein, receives millions of rands from the lottery to run the annual Mangaung African Cultural Festival (Macufe). Yet, here again, artists were treated with utter contempt generally. Their experiences – and this is reflected in the attached letters – included the following: transport by bus had not been paid for when actors went to board the bus, they were not collected at the drop off point as arranged, there was no marketing of their work so that they played to pathetic houses and some cancelled their runs as a result, some artists were flown while others had to be bussed, some were housed in more expensive hotels than others, etc. Generally though, artists felt abused, cheated and that they had wasted their time.
The MACUFE Festival is yet another example of huge resources being wasted through ineffective management and incompetent administration.
Playhouse Company
There is a crisis of governance and management at the Playhouse Company that has resulted in a public facility for the arts that receives major public funding simply degenerating over a number of years. About two weeks ago, the Board suspended four senior managers of the Playhouse, including the CEO, on a range of serious charges related to financial mismanagement. Some of these managers were also known to oppose the appointment of the Artistic Director at the Playhouse who was the wife of one of the Board members. Management and workers had over a period of time resisted her appointment due to a perception of nepotism and conflicts of interest dating back to when the current board was first appointed.
At that time, the former Minister appointed an "interim board" after he had dissolved the previous board due to allegations of racism levelled against them. The Minister appointed his adviser to the interim board, who was also the Artistic Director of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra that rented space as a client from the Playhouse. Workers at the Playhouse through their union petitioned the Minister not to appoint his adviser to the board as there would be a serious conflict of interest for the person involved. The minister appointed the member anyway, and he is the only arts person on the board, the others all being politicians, civil servants or business people.
Despite the board confirming that he had recused himself from all discussions related to the appointment of his wife as the artistic director of the Playhouse, there has been increasing resistance from staff to the appointment of the board member’s wife from within the Playhouse as well as from outside. For example, the artistic director and the board member who’s her husband are still involved in a legal dispute with Opera Africa, an opera company that they accuse of reneging on an agreement that they should have first preference to the principal roles for five years, in an opera produced by that company. This dispute was investigated by a three-person committee appointed by the previous minister, but their report has simply never been made public or acted upon.
As with the NAC Board, there is the perception of cover-ups, of the protection of politically-connected individuals, of the boards with governing power using their positions to get rid of management when they appear to be obstacles, and they as board members do not themselves get investigated for the allegations made against them.
All of these internal governance and management wranglings have direct and adverse consequences for the arts and artists who struggle to use the public spaces because staff are too busy dealing with internal strife.
At an elections forum prior to the elections, the ANC representatives announced that they were concerned about the conflicts of interest at the Playhouse and that should they come to power, they would do something about it. However, since then, management has been suspended and those accused of conflicts of interest remain in power.
State Theatre
After the DAC took away the production budgets of the playhouses and declared them spaces for rent, the NAC recognised that these theatres required some funds to put works onto their stages. They allocated funds to a range of theatres around the country, specifically to produce or co-produce new work. Yet, theatres used the funds differently, and few, if any, actually informed the performing arts community that such funds were available for production purposes. The NAC itself complained about how theatres were not using the funds for the intended purpose. We suggested to the NAC that they host a joint meeting between the theatres that received the subsidies, the Theatre Managements Association of SA, the NAC and PANSA where we could discuss and agree on a protocol on the use of these funds. However, this was never done and the problems generally remain.
Some of the subsidised theatres have combined their funding to host a revival of Mbongeni Ngema’s Sarafina and tour it around the country as part of the celebrations to mark ten years of democracy this year. That is all very well, but there has been no transparency with regard to this decision and no-one else has had the opportunity to tender or bid for the funding that these theatres have to statge such productions. Ngema has already benefited from R14 million of public funds for Sarafina 2, if somewhat controversially, but with public funds being available, the simple question is: why is there no transparency in the allocation of such funds? Why is it always the same people who seem to benefit?
The same thing applied to the funds used for the inauguration of the President that were reflected in DAC’s budget last year. There were no tenders and no open bidding process. A small group of politically-connected artists were given the right to organise the event, and to choose the artists they wanted to work with. Some made fortunes on the day, and many who were not fortunate enough to be invited, were excluded.
Last year, in our presentation to the Portfolio Committee, we welcomed the extra funding made available for the celebrations, but we asked what will the funding be used for? How may projects and institutions access such funds, if at all? Who will administer them? Who will decide? We wrote to the official in charge of the celebrations but did not receive any response to these questions.
Again, the same refrain. Public funds are available to benefit the arts. But a combination of mismanagement on the one hand and deliberate contradictions of the principles contained in the White Paper of transparency, redress, access, equity and participation mean that a few benefit, while most continue to struggle to survive.
CREATE SA
CREATE SA is a body established with funds from the MAPPP SETA to fund training and learnerships within the arts and culture sector. We believe that fundamentally, this institution has its heart in the right place. But accessing funds from it is incredibly bureaucratic. The needs as we perceive them and the way in which they fund are simply not compatible.
For example, we are concerned that there is no coherent plan for the training of high-level managers to take over positions of importance within the arts e.g. directors of major theatres, directors of major festivals, management of leading performing arts companies. Our proposal was to identify 20-30 leading candidates drawn particularly from historically disadvantaged communities, and locate them with the country’s top administrators like Mannie Manim at the Baxter, Lynette Marais at the National Arts Festival, and so on. Over a two-year period, they would be mentored and acquire hands-on skills, and even if they did not go on to take over the management of the institutions run by the mentors, they would nevertheless have acquired major experience and would be able to plough it back into the sector. This is a relatively simple proposal but it took months to discuss with CREATE SA, and eventually we gave up as the bureaucratic processes were simply too demanding for an organisation like ours that is essentially run by volunteers.
Again, the same refrain. There is funding. It is simply not reaching all those who should benefit from it and it is not achieving as much as it could. It is having some impact, but it is questionable as to whether it is making the strategic and sustainable impact that is required.
Department of Arts and Culture
Finally, we would like to make the following general comments about the 2004/5 budget of the DAC.
We welcome the relative stability that there is now in the budgeting process as there is no longer the culling of funds from one part of the budget or from some institutions to shift to others. There appears to be new funding coming in, and all institutions appear to have received an increase in line with inflation.
However, we note that there has been an 8% increase in the number of staff in the department in the last year and that the compensation of staff has improved by 14,5% from R68,7m to R78,7m at an average of R196 900 per staff member. We would like to point out that this remuneration per staff member is in excess of the average project grant made by the NAC. We also note that the increase to the NAC this year is 6% against the increase in staff compensation of R14,5% at the DAC itself. We also note that the subsidies to the orchestras is exactly the same as last year, and we wonder why musicians are not deemed worthy of even an inflationary increase while DAC has a very healthy increase.
It is difficult to comment on the funds used by the DAC itself and on whether the manner in which it is spent actually adds value to the sector. Recently there was a fax emanating from within the DAC itself questioning the size of the delegation that went to the Cannes Film Festival recently and the participation of some Departmental officials who appeared not to have anything directly related to the event. There is the perception that much funding is used for international and other travel, and that the sector doesn’t necessarily see the value of such travel in concrete results and impact.
Conclusion
In response to the question about whether public funding is used efficiently and effectively, it is possible to conclude that while there is public funding for the arts, generally, it is not administered effectively and it is not distributed efficiently so that the work of artists and performing arts companies is severely prejudiced. Artists struggle absolutely unnecessarily to obtain the funding that is available, that even has been contractually promised to them. This places huge stress on the sector.
We are here today despite the disappointment of previous submissions not being followed through, and despite the fact that the previous Portfolio Committee did not have public hearings on far more important matters such as the changes to legislation that gave the Minister the right to appoint chairpersons of publicly-funded institutions that have now had a direct and adverse effect on the practice of freedom of expression in the sector. We are here because the recent elections represent a new beginning with a new ministry, a new Minister and Deputy Minister, new MECs for arts and culture in all nine provinces and a new, albeit ad hoc, Portfolio Committee hopefully with new energy and passion for the arts.
We believe that the arts and the performing arts in particular, have a huge role to play in our country and that we have some of the most talented performers and writers and creators in the world. However, the huge potential is limited by poor governance, mismanagement and administrative bungling in the institutions charged with promoting and defending the arts. Much of this has to do with baggage that comes from a previous Ministerial dispensation and unfortunately, this baggage needs to be address in order for us to move forward and realise the potential that we have.
Accordingly, we would like to appeal to the Portfolio Committee to do the following six things:
To ensure that an independent investigation is launched as a matter of urgency into the National Arts Council, its board, management and administrative structures, and that corrective action is taken speedily. This could be done through an ad hoc subcommittee of this Portfolio Committee hosting public hearings around the country, and/or commissioning its own investigations through an independent agency. It is imperative that this is done.
To use the influence of the Committee and the parties represented here to bring our concerns about the lottery to the attention of the DTI, the Portfolio Committee in charge of DTI, the respective Ministers of DTI and DAC and to similarly request an investigation of the Arts, Culture and National Heritage Distribution Agency with respect to governance, regularity of meetings, composition of the Agency, administrative procedures and decision-making processes, with a view to improving the efficacy of this major source of funding.
As a matter of urgency, convene a meeting with the DAC and the NAC to ensure that funding for companies as has been allocated for the last three years, is made available again at least for the next financial year, in order to ensure a degree of certainty and sustainability within these companies
To ensure that independent investigations are undertaken into PACOFS and the management of the MACUFE Festival, into the situation at the Playhouse and into the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra, and to expedite the release of the report into the Princess Magogo affair with action being taken as appropriate.
To encourage the major stakeholders in the sector – government at all three levels, funding bodies, international donors, artists and their representative organisations – to convene a conference to review the last ten years, and to set a fresh agenda, vision and strategies to promote and develop the performing arts in the next five years so as to be ready to take advantage of what the Soccer World Cup in 2010 may have to offer, and which will hopefully confirm the strategy of supporting performing arts companies on a medium-term basis.
To establish a multiparty subcommittee with whom we as civil society can liase and to which we can channel information on a regular basis. We would like all parties to take an active interest in the well-being of the country’s artists as argued by Mr Kgalema Motlanthe, the ANC’s General Secretary in the City Press three weeks ago.
The President has placed much emphasis on delivery, setting tight time frameworks for departments to deliver on achievable outcomes. We warmly welcome that, and in the same spirit, we appeal to the Portfolio Committee to set concrete goals in relation to the above six points that it will pursue and achieve within the next 100 days.