SA: National Arts Council suspends CEO, CFO over relief fund scheme

The decision was made by the NAC’s newly elected council following robust engagement with management over the past weeks. The consultations culminated in a meeting on 26 February, where the council established that the progress on the launch of the PESP was unsatisfactory.

“The NAC is entrusted with the responsibility to administer the PESP on behalf of the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture (DSAC),” the council said. “To this effect, the NAC was allocated a total amount of R300 million to be disbursed through two funding streams, at R100 million and R200 million for Stream One and Stream Two, respectively. Stream One was intended to enable job retention, while Stream Two was for work opportunities within the arts, culture and heritage sector.

“The council has since appointed Ms Julie Diphofa as the acting CEO, who has been the senior official at the NAC for more than 20 years and Ms Reshma Bhoola as the acting CFO, currently the financial manager of the entity.”

The council said it made the decision in the interest of supporting hundreds of arts, culture and heritage practitioners through the PESP programme.

“This council remains fully committed to completing this process as soon as possible and to ensure that the PESP funds reach all the deserving and successful applicants so that projects that will either sustain or create work opportunities are not hindered in any way.”

PESP was launched in November last year to retain and create jobs in the arts, sports and culture sectors. It acts as an aggressive injection of income into the economy that will enable ambitious proposals that create opportunities for employment and collaboration. It also seeks to assist practitioners and their projects and companies that incurred losses (actual and planned/existing, new and those that were at concept stage) during the COVID-19 lockdown period.