Network for Arts and Culture South Africa launched in Cape Town
by Paul Edmunds
On August 19, I attended the public launch of the Western Cape branch of the Network for Arts and Culture South Africa (NACSA), at the Community Arts Project and Mediaworks in Cape Town. The meeting was addressed by Patrick McKenzie, MEC responsible for arts and culture in the province, as well as political cartoonist Zapiro.
NACSA was launched as an umbrella body to represent the collective interests of the cultural sector, and comprises organisations such as the National Federation of Community Arts Centres, the Crafts Council of South Africa, Visual Arts Network of South Africa, South African Scriptwriters Association, Performing Arts Network of South Africa, Musicians' Union of South Africa, the Arts and Culture Marketing Association of South Africa, Arts and Culture Forum and the South African Museums Association.
There was not much said about NACSA itself at the launch and the visual arts were not particularly well represented in the small audience. Besides SANG curator Emma Bedford and painter Max Wolpe, I recognised no others involved exclusively with the visual arts. This might have had something to do with last week's particularly inclement weather, which typically keeps Capetonians indoors.
After taking time to shake hands with and meet almost everyone in the room, Patrick McKenzie outlined his vision for the Arts in the province. His speech was not so much a carefully prepared press release as a series of points that allowed him to expand and digress with anecdotes, which didn't always serve to illuminate. He was careful to stress his "burning passion/burning vision" for the arts, describing it as the "heartbeat of a nation", capable of "unifying a divided nation". He added that he was committed to the Mother City as "a Mecca for cultural tourism".
To these ends Mackenzie detailed the province's expenditure of R7,000,000 this year. By his accounts, most of this had gone to the performing arts - The Cape Town Opera, Jazzart and the city Ballet amongst others. The province has also established a benevolent fund, following the death of a number of impoverished artists, which had touched the Minister personally. MacKenzie also pointed out that 17% of the country's Lotto takings had been given to arts and sport in the Western Cape.
The Minister decried what he called "double- or triple-dipping" whereby organisations applied for the same funding from several different sources. To address this he proposed closer co-ordination between the Lotto, provincial funding bodies and local authorities. He was challenged on this from the floor, where someone reminded him of the climate of insecurity in which many organisations exist - they have to apply for funding from as many sources as possible.
Interpreting this as a complaint about long delays in finding out about the success of one's applications, the Minister promised to do all in his power to expedite the processing of applications in his department. I understood the response from the floor differently. The Western Province government has also recently set up a Cultural Commission to deal with these sort of issues. The Minister announced that the Cultural Commission would from now include two nominated members of the public, the election of whom would be advertised in the following three weeks. He also undertook to clarify the relationship between the Provincial and National Government cultural bodies.
The Minister also proposed wider accessibility to funding, pronouncing his bias towards the underprivileged, women and the disabled. He proposed to use the Arts and Culture as his "ministry". While I feel that he didn't quite answer the questions put to him from the floor, particularly Mike van Graan's polite but muscular inquiry about the relationship between cultural organisations and government, the Minister came across as sincere and energetic. Furthermore, he pointed out that the commitments he was making were being made in front of his personal secretary and media liaison officer, who would hold him to these.
Zapiro followed with a selection of work, which highlighted various aspects of the role and difficulty of arts practice in the political and social arena. I unfortunately had to leave immediately after Zapiro showed his work about Boesak's "nine commandments", but by the time Thursday arrived and Boesak had initiated his latest spat with the ANC, it revealed itself as a pertinent moment.
