DA calls on Arts Department to release criteria for disbursement of NAC funds

21 May 2021

Note to Editors: Please find attached soundbite by Veronica van Dyk MP.

The DA has written to the Chairperson of the National Arts Council (NAC), Her Royal Highness Princess Celenhle Dlamini, and the Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa, to request that the criteria used to determine which applications would successfully receive funding from the Presidential Economic Stimulus Programme (PESP) be made public.

The Mail and Guardian recently reported that 46%, a staggering R128 million, of NAC PESP funding went to only 12% of the beneficiaries. The other 1 142 recipients would have to be content for the remaining R150 million to be divvied between them.

To add insult to injury, a report by the South African Roadies Association (SARA) found that 20% of the top 140 of recipients in a list made public by the NAC were either not registered on the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) database or government’s nonprofit organization (NPO) database, or deregistered or in the process of being deregistered and did not have tax certificates.

The DA also notes NAC spokesperson Tsepho Mashiane’s statement that two separate processes of investigation need to take place regarding the NAC PESP funding – one with independent adjudicators investigating the process of awarding the grants, and another into the fiduciary role of the NAC council in the PESP funding. The DA would support such investigations, provided that they are independent and above reproach. In the past we have called for an independent forensic, and a Special Investigating Unit (SIU) investigation.

The NAC must also reveal how it monitored whether disbursed funds were indeed used in aid of pitched projects. There can be no room for malfeasance. Especially not when deserving artists are literally starving.

The NAC and the Department needs to take South African artists into their confidence. The parliamentary portfolio committee on sports, arts and culture has still not been updated on what transpired during the Public Protector’s mediation, despite the DA’s request to the Minister to account to the committee.

The South African arts and culture sectors are under enormous pressure and have had to face the Covid-19 pandemic with minimal and ineffectual intervention from the NAC, as well as Minister Mthethwa and his Department.

Issued by Veronica van Dyk, DA Deputy Shadow Minister for Sports, Arts and Culture, 21 May 2021