Maropene Ramokgopa, Acting Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture be warned: a restless creative and cultural sector is waiting for you

This is as Zizi Kodwa left a short-lived legacy that did not address the underlying issues bedevilling arts funding by Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and its agencies.

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

The media release was short and to the point, posted on the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture’s website:“Mr Zizi Kodwa, MP, announces his immediate resignation as Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture. This comes as Mr Kodwa challenges the charges against him, which he strongly denies. Mr Kodwa has informed the President that he will resign as Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture and Member of Cabinet, after being formally charged.Mr Kodwa expresses his sincere appreciation to the President and the governing party for the opportunity to serve the nation.He also takes the opportunity to express thanks to all the staff at the Ministry and Department of Sport, Arts and Culture for the opportunity to serve with them, and to all stakeholders in Sport, Arts and Culture, with whom he has worked so well with as Minister,”

And so with those 121 words, the position of Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture became vacant immediately on Wednesday, June, 5, 2024. Within a few days thereafter President Cyril Ramaphosa announced as Acting Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Maropene Ramokgopa.

Immediately after this news broke, there was a burst of excitement in the cultural and creative sector, with social media platforms flooded with messages mainly from artists that were not complimentary to the previous Minister Kodwa. Under normal circumstances there must have, instead of this at face value, irrational excitement, grief that they have yet again lost a minister, sadness even. But there was none. His was the shortest stints at the helm of a department that has never enjoyed calm and peace, but restlessness, turmoil, and scandal after scandal, for the longest of time, predating Kodwa’s arrival at Sechaba House, 202 Madiba Street, Pretoria.

But it could be different.

Perhaps that is expecting too much to come out of a department that has money. Good money for that matter to disburse to the creative and cultural sector so that they do what they do best, which is to create work for public consumption, and in the process, contribute to the growth of the economy, put the cultural map of South Africa up there on the global cultural pavilion, and most importantly, feed their families. After all creators are workers and businesspeople. Creating a painting, writing a book, writing a stage play, writing a TV soapie, or writing a film script is work and a business just like plumping, electrical installation, being a mechanic, an accountant, a lawyer, a judge, a Director-General in a government department, or a taxi driver for that matter.

When I talk about scandals, I am not just talking about senior officials in the department, who over the years have left the department not covered in glory but buried under a dark cloud with their names embedded in it. There is no point here to revisit who left under what cloud for the creative and cultural sector know well who they are. Believe you me, there are more than a dozen such officials just in the past 15 years and forget the past 30 years. But here I am talking about DSAC and its agencies, such as the playhouses that we call theatres that belong to the Department, the National Film and Video Foundation, the National Heritage Council, Robben Island Museum, Ditsong, and so forth and so on. This is though not to suggest that all of them were rocked by scandals as there are a few exceptions in rare cases. If you do not believe me just Google anyone of them with the search word scandal.

Now that we are clear about that, let us go back to the issue at hand, Minister Kodwa’s sudden resignation, which has nothing to do with his work as Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, but his personal past. However, we will not dwell on that as this is a case between him and the courts where he is being charged in relation to that past.

We can only look at his brief stay as Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, one of the shortest for this portfolio since 1994. Because of his short stay, we cannot in fairness say whether he was going to be an asset to the creative and cultural sector after 30 years of democracy or not.. That is in the long run, and if he served his full term. We cannot say with certainty anyway. I will explain why.

You see, it is not easy to evaluate someone’s legacy who stayed there that short, for the simple reason that time was not on his side. Yes, the creative and cultural sector, was staring to lose patience with him, wanting things to happen swiftly to right the wrongs that are glaring in the sector, especially the funding issues, and rightly so. Those issues predate his arrival.

That did not happen. Instead, he introduced awards for the creative sector that on the main turned out to be awards for celebrities, and not necessarily artists. And it is important to point out here that when he introduced the awards, there was a lot of resistance, even open opposition and even boycott by a good chunk of the creative and cultural sector.

Yes, I know that among the winners were also artists, real artists that deserved a CCIAward statuette and the R100 000 that came with it. But the truth be told, on the night, and I was there, it appeared like it was some sort of South African Music Awards or Metro FM Awards ceremony than an award ceremony for the Creative and Cultural sector. It also felt like it was the South African Television Awards that we attended minus the chaos that happened with regards to the registration for guests.

I am also not going to revisit the omissions in the architecture of those awards for this is a subject that is now tired in relation to the CCAwards. Maybe that was the point-the designers wanted to create a celebrity awards ceremony, and not a creative and cultural award ceremony. Then they must rename them appropriately going forward, and that is if they will continue given the fact that the founder of the awards is no more with government. Remember what happened to the awards that the previous Minister Nathi Mthethwa founded after he left DSAC? Do not say you have not been forewarned.

Now let us put the awards issue aside and look at what else has gone wrong under Kodwa’s watch.

When he came in as Minister, many in the creative sector expected him before doing anything else, to consult a sector that was seething with anger over especially the funding issues and how they were being handled by DSAC and its funding agencies. Remember the chaos that followed the first Presidential Economic Stimulus and how it was mishandled by the National Arts Council and how it drove artists mad, getting so enraged that some of them occupied the offices the NAC in Newtown for two months?

Therefore, armed with this knowledge, many in the creative sector expected Kodwa once appointed, to consult the creative sector widely, getting their views on what they believed would be the right way to right the obvious wrong in the current funding models. But he did not. Instead, he consulted a few vocal individuals in the sector who cast themselves as representing the sector, while they were representing themselves and a few individuals linked to their so-called arts organisations.

After opaque, obscure consultations with the so-called leaders of these organisations, the so-called representatives never bothered to share with their broader membership what transpired or was transpiring in these consultations with the Minister, leading to a lack of openness, and therefore creating suspicion about the motive of the so-called leaders of the arts organisations.

And today there are several of them, ranging from a one-man or two, organisations to those that have a board that is elected. All ominously claim to be representing the sector as if the creative sector is limitless with regards to its size. How crazy.

However, here one cannot actually blame the Minister but the broad creative sector that had a blind faith in so called leaders to articulate honestly their issues during these secretive meetings and the vision they have for their sector as it is them who should envision what kind of a sector they would like to see, and the role of government then becomes facilitating the path towards that vision. That was indeed a lost opportunity by a sector that a lot of times thinks of through its stomach and is hunger driven instead of looking at the bigger picture for the sector.

And now where to from here?

It is critical that the creative sector now prepares itself fully to interact immediately with the new Acting Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Ramokgopa . And this time the Minister must not restrict her consultation to so called leaders of the various organisations, for they have failed the sector, but rather open it up to the whole sector, where anybody who regards themselves as a creative is invited at some sort of consultative forum with the Minister and the department’s senior officials. Everyone in attendance must enjoy the same status as anybody else, and where their voice is as much important as the next person, and most importantly, where their input is taken seriously.

This perhaps we will no longer, under the new minister witness a situation whereby a good project with superior artistic merit is turned down by funding agencies for nonsensical reasons such as one of the applicant’s references did not write down their address, or they sent a scanned copy of their original ID instead of a certified copy, or their village chief did not write his or contact email.

If the adjudicators believe this is a project that has superior artistic merit, why not call the applicant to get his or her village chief to open a Gmail account so that he can attach it to his reference letter so that the poor artist gets an opportunity to get funding and excel artistically instead of rejecting it on the basis that it lacks compliance.

And so, Minister Ramokgopa be warned. the arts sector is waiting for you with anticipation and restlessness.