Andy Duffy and Marion Edmunds
A government bash on Robben Island to celebrate Heritage Day cost the taxpayer up to R1-million R2 500 for every name on the exclusive guest list.
The guest list also excluded at least three white opposition leaders National Party chief Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the Democratic Partys Tony Leon, and the Freedom Fronts Constand Viljoen. American recording artiste Quincy Jones did, however, get in.
The Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, which controls the island and bankrolled the celebration, says it is still waiting for the interim management of Robben Islands museum to explain what the money was spent on.
Department director Themba Wakashe says the Robben Island guest list followed the normal protocol list and the recommendations of host, arts and culture minister Lionel Mtshali.
Invitations were sent to Cabinet ministers, MPs, diplomats, business and community leaders, ex-political prisoners and their wives or husbands. Wakashe says the party was expected to attract up to 600 people.
In the end, around 400 guests did attend. They included President Nelson Mandela as guest of honour, Inkatha Freedom Party president Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Pan African Congress MP Patricia de Lille and African Christian Democratic Party leader Kenneth Meshoe.
Among the absentees were 13 of the 18- strong new council for the islands museum, which Mtshali announced at the party.
Several guests said privately that they were not sure what the money had been spent on. There was no alcohol, and only light snacks and fruit were on offer. One of the main features of the 4-hour knees-up was a video about the ANC.
It was really an ANC promotion, De Lille says. Former Robben Island prisoner and former PAC stalwart Dikgang Moseneke was not invited. I dont know how they put their guest list together, De Lille says. I did not see a lot of people I knew.
Wakashe says he knows much of the cash went on ferrying the guests to the island from the Waterfront and back. He hopes that at least R200 000 of the party budget remains unspent. The Mail & Guardian was unable to elicit comment from Professor Andre Odendaal, who runs the museums interim management.
Wakashe adds that the department also spent another R500 000 promoting and marketing the idea of Heritage Day.
The party expenditure is only a fraction of the R105-million allocated to cultural institutions for 1997/98. Mandela told Robben Islands guests that most of South Africas cultural institutions, particularly museums, were still stuck in the mindset of the previous regime.
Can we afford exhibitions in our museums depicting any of our people as lesser human human beings, sometimes in natural history museums usually reserved for the depiction of animals? he asked.
The DP said it planned to raise the issue of the expenditure at the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee.
Mtshali is a member of the IFP.