SA court orders arts council to pay National Arts Festival R8m balance

The balance was put aside for consideration following a court ruling on 31 March when the NAF took the arts council to court for reneging on its grant offer of R8m. At the time, the court had instructed the council to pay the NAF R3.4m within 72 hours. The R8m grant forms part of the Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme (PESP), which is managed by the NAC and is intended to support several projects administered by the NAF.

“The conduct of the [NAC] in unilaterally reducing the contractual amount at a point at which the time for payment of the first amount of funding had passed, and a mere two weeks before the project completion date, is accordingly unlawful and irrational,” Judge Colin Lamont said in his judgement.

Additionally, the legal costs, including those of the two counsels and the hearings that took place in March and another on 31 May, were awarded in favour of the NAF.

NAF CEO Monica Newton welcomed the court’s ruling and said she hoped that it would set a precedent for artists who are in a similar position.

“It has been an incredibly tough 18 months for artists, and the PESP-funded projects were meant to be a welcome relief,” she said. “Instead of finding themselves with paid work, many artists, who were already struggling to pay their bills, found themselves out of pocket when the NAC reneged on its contractual obligations to us. We hope that this outcome will allow others to follow through with their own claims and submit these findings to strengthen their cases”.

Meanwhile, a recent report titled ‘NAC PESP Grant Funding Streams 1 and 2 Analysis – A Preliminary Report‘ compiled by the South African Roadies Association (SARA) found conflicts of interest and maladministration in the awarding of PESP grants.

According to the report, more than R128m, or about 46% of the total fund, was paid to connected individuals who together accounted for 12% of all the grantees. The remaining 1 142 recipients shared R150m. When the report was compiled, the NAC released data that showed it had paid out R278m of the fund, which included payments to NAC council members Sipho Sithole, Kim Matthews and Madré Loubser, among others.

During a meeting that took place in May between disgruntled artists and public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, who had stepped in to mediate the ongoing dispute, the artists complained about conflict of interest for some council members who were beneficiaries of the PESP. However, Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa had denied that the accusations had any veracity, according to a statement released by Mkhwebane.

The SARA report also suggests that about 39% of the funding went to companies that do not operate in the arts and culture sector, and some of the top 140 recipients are either not registered with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission or the government’s non-profit organisation database, or have been deregistered. Other inconsistencies include payments to recipients approved for multiple funding applications across several companies.