HAZEL FRIEDMAN reports on the controversial Section 13 clause and an outcry over control of state arts funding
CULTURAL workers this week lashed out at the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST) for trying to hijack the independence of the newly established National Arts Council (NAC), the non-governmental statutory body that holds the key to the South Africa’s cultural funding coffers.
The reason for their anger is a controversial clause called Section 13, which was inserted by the DACST into the draft NAC Act to be debated by Parliament in the third quarter of this year. Dubbed by some as “Unlucky Thirteen”, the clause gives the director general of the DACST the final right – in cases of appeal – to override any decision made by the NAC. But the department has denied responsibility for inserting the controversial clause.
In an editorial in the May issue of The Cultural Weapon, a monthly journal providing information on cultural issues, editor Mike van Graan pulls no punches in his condemnation of the clause and its implications for the future credibility of the NAC. He writes: “It is interesting to note the appeal is to be directed for a final decision to the director general, a paid official who may or may not have any understanding and history of or sensitivity to arts and culture, rather than the minister who … should at leat bear ultimate political responsibility for the Act and the NAC.”
Van Graan is a veteran cultural activist and former adviser to the Minister of Arts and Culture, Dr Lionel Mtshali. He was instrumental in the formation of Actag (Arts and Cultural Task Group) in 1994 to spearhead the democratic transformation of art and culture in South Africa. He helped write the government’s White Paper on Arts and Culture as well as the first draft of the NAC Act. In that draft, he insists, Secton 13 did not exist.
When approached for comment this week, the director general of the DACST, Roger Jardine, insisted that the department was not responsible for inserting the clause. Speaking on his behalf, the DACST’s Carol Steinberg said: “The department does not want the burden of responsibility for taking final decisions concerning the NAC, and we intend going to the parliamentary portfolio committee to have the appeal clause amended.” She insists that: “The initial proposal for the Bill was changed, not by the department, but by the state law adviser.”
But Gideon Hoon, state law adviser with the portfolio committee, who was responsible for drafting the Bill, dismissed the department’s denial as “utter nonsense”. He added: “I received a fax in September 1996 from the department, which included the Section 13 Right of Appeal. As a legal adviser, I am not part of the policy-making process. I only follow the department’s instructions.”
And it seems that those who will be most affected by the clause, the NAC body, is unaware of Section 13’s existence. Actress Vanessa Cooke, who sits on the NAC executive board, said this week: “It would be unfair to comment, because it has not yet been discussed by the board.” But fellow executive member from KwaZulu-Natal, Professor Musa Xulu, was more outspoken. Speaking in his “personal capacity” he said: “It is essential that the NAC gets off on the right footing. I would expect extreme problems with the expectations of the arts constitutency if we set up a structure without credibility. This clause will irreparably violate the principle of independent arm’s- length funding.”
In his editorial, Von Graan also warns against the dangers of bringing party polics into the cultural arena. The DACST is ANC-aligned while Minister Mtshali belongs to the IFP. Von Graan writes: “Perhaps it is one of the legacies … where an IFP member presides over a department whose senior officials generally owe allegiance to the ANC that inevitable tensions manifest themselves in such a manner. This places even more of an imperative to be vigilant and protective of the NAC.” He adds: “If an official within the department be deemed to have the legal right to overturn a decision of the NAC, then the NAC may as well not exist.”
Ministry spokesman Frans Basson has given Mtshali’s assurances that the principle of arm’s-length independence free from government intervention will be honoured when he steers the Bill through Parliament later this year.