Pact has boycotted the first major initiative by PWV Arts and Culture Minister Peter Skosana to formulate arts funding policy, writes Mark Gevisser
‘IT was a public act of suicide,” said Johannesburg city councillor Cecil Bass of the last-minute decision, by the Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal, to boycott a conference on public funding for the performing arts this week, initiated by PWV Arts, Culture, Sports and Recreation Minister Peter Skosana.
Skosana, who called the conference to launch a policy-formulation process for the province and to acquaint himself with the issues of arts funding, was miffed by Pact’s non-attendance: “I feel snubbed. They are doing themselves and the entire debate a disservice, for such an attitude cannot but harden attitudes towards them.”
He says he will do his “level best” to bring Pact into the process. “But regardless of whether they accept my offer or not, the process will continue. There’s no holding back on it now.”
One of the younger PWV ministers, Skosana (33) comes from a youth activist background and admits that culture is a new field for him. But with a quiet, considered manner quite at odds with the hot-headed discourse of cultural politics, he has already assimilated much about this muddy and treacherous field. According to the constitution, arts and culture are a regional rather than a national responsibility, and Skosana has taken the PWV into the lead in terms of formulating regional policy.
But while all other major stakeholders — from community arts centres to the Civic Theatre — attended, Pact chose to stay out. The council’s public objection to the conference was that it would be given only 20 minutes to present its point of view before engaging in a debate.
But in a letter to Skosana, chairman Michael Cook said Pact would not be attending because “we recognise this conference as yet another recurrent attempt by the trade union Pawe (Performing Arts Workers’ Equity) and the NAC (National Arts Coalition) to use a political forum to substitute itself in Pact’s position or, alternatively, to close it down.”
NAC and Pawe have led a national call to do away with the performing arts councils and replace them with arms-length regional councils that would disburse arts funding rather than spend it themselves.
While one of the architects of this plan, NAC’s Carol Steinberg, was the conference organiser, Skosana is adamant “there were no hidden agendas. I’d be doing no one any good if I rubber-stamped one particular point of view. Rather, my intention was to consult everyone and to create a space where the different parties could begin a public and open dialogue.”
Conference participants were stunned at the arrogance and grandiosity of Cook’s letter, which claimed that “we produce, and thereby employ more South Africans doing more works at a higher standard of production than possibly the rest of the continent put together”. Calling Pact “the most effective, efficent and successful organisation on the continent of Africa”, he continued that it “has demonstrated and shown to all our fellow African nations a level of organisation to be aspired to by them”.
Pact’s message was clear: the organisation is a “national asset” that will not belittle itself by becoming involved in a consultative process with other stakeholders; it will, instead, communicate directly with the national Ministry of Arts and Culture.
It is correct that Pact, like all the performing arts councils, receives its funding directly from the national government. On top of this, provincial governments have not yet received funding, let alone claimed competence, for arts allocations. But Skosana is determined to do just that — and to fight for regional control of Pact. Given the constitution, it is a fight that he, along with the other new provinces previously served by Pact, is bound to win.
Others in the field note, however, that Pact is being buoyed by agreements previously made with former ANC head of arts and culture Wally Serote, but that these will not necessarily be upheld by either the provincial or the national government.
Skosana plans to make arts funding a major political issue. One of his first moves, at the urging of the conference, will be to convene an ad hoc group to find emergency bridging funding for private and community organisations, like the Market Theatre, that are threatened with imminent collapse.
The Democratic Party’s Peter Leon, who sits on the PWV legislature’s arts and culture standing committee, said “the bare minimum we can do is allocate funding from the small amount we have inherited from the Transvaal Provincial Administration. But in the medium term, the arts funding allocated to the PWV by central government will have some bearing on Pact’s budget, so it is crazy for them not to be involved in this process.”
The conference also appointed a task group to devise an arts policy for the PWV: it will take submissions and hold a province-wide conference in mid-October, before forwarding its resolutions to national Arts and Culture Minister Ben Ngubane. Pact has been reserved a place on this task group, but whether it takes up the offer remains to be seen.
Skosana emphasised that the reconstruction and development programme calls unequivocally for a “democratisation” of the performing arts councils and for resources and facilities to be made “available and accessible to all.” He has been moved, he said, by the flood of talent and enthusiasm for arts and culture in community theatre projects. “We have to find a way to nurture this talent. I intend making that one of my priorities.
“When I was first appointed, I suppose I held the view that the arts were a stepchild to more pressing concerns. But I have come to see that if you talk about improving quality of life you have to meet spiritual and cultural needs too.”