DStv Delicious Fest: Africans unite amid chaos and confusion

The event’s vision is simple: to be a convergence point that unites music and food lovers in one space. Despite widespread criticism, this year’s edition could be seen as the most successful iteration in terms of attracting culturally diverse backgrounds and maintaining its vision to unite people through music and food.

We can also confidently say that the event attested to South Africa and Nigeria’s dynamic love-hate relationship, with an estimated 100 000-strong crowd passionately singing along to songs by Nigerian Afro-fusion star Burna Boy during his performance. An ironic observation after the xenophobic attacks that took place in South Africa in 2019. If you recall, Burna Boy vowed to never set foot in the country, while South Africans retaliated by belittling the megastar.

That aside, the high turnout partially led to a logistical nightmare and a horrible experience for many attendees on Day One of the event.

The mayhem of the event, which was returning to us after a two-year hiatus, evidently frustrated many attendees who paid lots of money to have fun, but had to endure the pain of waiting in long queues. A number of them hastened to Twitter and other social media sites to lambast the event. One comment that accurately captured the dire situation read: “To pee, to eat, to park, to drink, to enter... You will spend at least three hours queueing.”

The organisers quickly reacted to the situation early on in the day and released a statement, which pinned the blame on people allegedly entering the venue with fake tickets. However, the situation carried on for the remainder of the evening in every area across the venue until the evening. “We are aware of the issues that have occurred today in and around the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit. Our teams have been working to rectify this. We apologise for the inconvenience caused to festival attendees,” the organisers said.

We must also mention the clear shortage of staff. Several sold-out food stalls in the early evening must also share in the blame. Not to forget overpriced food and drinks, and an unpleasant attitude from some staff members in the Windhoek camp who deliberately ignored people in the front of the queue to serve those behind. This myriad of issues took away the intended experience. And for media professionals on duty, there was a lack of onsite support, most surprisingly by DStv’s own disinterested media team who failed to direct others to the main media room. 

Another attendee tweeted: “This excuse of fake tickets is nonsense. Don’t lie guys. You guys did not plan this event properly. Security did not check tickets from driving into the venue. No one knew what was happening from parking vs drop-off zones. Do better. Hopefully, people will have a better experience tomorrow.”

In an interview on 702, founder and festival director Lloyd Cornwall said his team did not anticipate “the level and velocity of fraud” that took place through fake tickets on Saturday. According to Cornwall, the venue is licensed for 20 000 people, about three to five times less than the estimated attendance. Music In Africa tried to get an official count of tickets sold to no avail. Nonetheless, tickets to the event were sold out quickly and one could argue that the organisers could have contemplated for a big crowd and exercised more stringent control measures.

DStv Delicious International Food and Music Festival was launched in 2013. Over the years, it has grown to become one of the biggest fixtures on the South African events calendar. Generally, many were looking to dust off the cobwebs after a lack of live music for some time.

More specifically, it is safe to assume that with Burna Boy, who sells out many international venues boasting capacity in the hundreds of thousands, many would be flocking to see him perform. He also recently released his album Love, Damini, which has the most streamed song in Africa, ‘Last Last’, with more than 100 million streams on Spotify alone. Burna Boy salvaged the little fun that the festival had to offer and lived up to his affectionate moniker as an ‘African Giant’. South Africans displayed an authentic love for Burna Boy as they passionately sang along to every song he played – word for word.

Perhaps, if any lesson can be learnt from the disastrous event, it’s that when people want something, with enough patience, they can come together, overlook the challenges they face, and celebrate each other beyond their cultural differences and personal experiences.