Does the Pact crisis spell a larger problem with cultural policy? Charl Blignaut argues that implementation is the real problem
‘If I were to tell you everything that’s going on here at Pact I would be fired and you would receive a promotion,” said a Pact worker to the Mail & Guardian over the phone this week. Four years into the new government and the Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal (Pact) is still nowhere near transformed. So what has gone wrong?
It was in Pretoria in 1981, in a blaze of patriotic pomp and fervour, that the National Party introduced to the world its newest bastion of Afrikaner nationalism -the State Theatre, a monolithic concrete mass that was to be home to Pact and a new arena for the whiter shade of Suid-Afrikaanse kultuur.
In 1993, this same structure was to be the site of several highly publicised protests by the recently unbanned African National Congress’s cultural desk. A symbol of all that needed transformation in a new South Africa, the State Theatre precinct was to witness the then-head of the ANC’s department of arts and culture, Mongane Wally Serote, glaring eyeball-to-eyeball with Pact boss Dennis Reinecke just before he was taken away by the police. Pact, said the ANC, belonged to the people, and if it was not offered up for transformation, the people would take it by force.
It is this specific history that makes recent developments around the Pact situation more than just a little confounding. Fresh on the heels of the opening of the 1998 parliamentary year, Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Lionel Mtshali called the media to a briefing to announce that the time has come to dissolve the troubled “reformed” board of Pact. In so doing, he said, the ministry and its accompanying department of arts, culture, science and technology (Dacst), would be able to renew the process of restructuring the old performing arts councils.
Pact shall in future serve Gauteng province and Gauteng province only, said the minister. Until now, the board has also comprised representatives from Mpumalanga, the North West and the Northern Province, who fall under Pact’s jurisdiction. The decision to dissolve the board is the result, said the minister, of the findings of an advisory panel appointed by himself to look into “the Pact problem”.
But, although the dissolution of the board is aimed at solving problems that have arisen on the board, it is just as much a step towards initiating performing arts councils for the affiliate provinces.
Rot and nonsense, say several observers of the Pact transformation process. Why is the ministry still unable to transform the most basic of cultural structures? The real reason for the dissolution of the Pact board, they say, is that the ministry screwed up the process and must now begin again from scratch. And Pact, they say, is indicative of a larger problem of implementation of South Africa’s new arts and culture policy.
What seems clear is that the minister’s decision to dissolve the board has just as much to do with getting rid of “problem cases” on that board. The problem cases, say insiders, are the Northern Province delegate Arlette Franks and Gauteng’s Meredie Wixley, broadly nominated to the board as a dance representative. These two board members have been repeatedly identified as suffering from “personality problems”. That is, they have called on the board to account for its financial dealings and have urged the board to resolve the issue of Pact’s secret slush fund, uncovered by the new board but not made public until pressed.
A direct upshot of Franks and Wixley’s demand for transparency has been the initiation of several inquiries into the financial dealings and management of the board that is to dissolved, chairmanship of which was shared by National Arts Council (NAC) and Market Theatre head John Kani and theatre administrator Alan Joseph. These include an audit by Deloitte & Touche and ongoing investigations by the public protector, the registrar of companies and the public accounts and auditor’s board.
Kani and Joseph, deemed by Franks in an open letter to the minister to be “untouchables”, can now leave their positions before the findings of the inquiries have been made public. Is it an attempt to absolve them of any potential wrongdoing? Not at all, says the minister, he has been advised by his own commission of inquiry to establish a new framework for the board.
What the minister is saying is that he is embarking on a new “policy thrust”. But is getting rid of the critics going to make the problems disappear? Is his new “policy thrust” for the good of the arts or is it to solve a wrangle of his own making?
Arts and culture is on track, said the minister at his briefing, and 1998 is to be the year that science and technology take the spotlight.
But the situation at Pact suggests that arts and culture are not, in fact, “on track”. Certainly issues of transparency and accountability have not been resolved and Dacst seems to have used its “arm’s-length” status from the Pact board to keep its nose clean.
No one is suggesting that Dacst and the ministry are pursuing unwise arts and culture policies. These were, after all, provided primarily from recomendations to the minister from the Arts and Culture Task Group (Actag), in turn gleaned from the arts community. It was these policies that informed the White Paper. The policies are strong. It’s the implementation that is at fault. Certainly the Pact wrangle would bear out such an assertion.
If one were to draw up a report card on the ministry and its companion department, the key successes would be the establishment of the NAC funding body and the creation of a private sector funding initiative Business Arts South Africa (Basa).
Furthermore, 43 potential sites for community arts centres have been identified across the country, been budgeted and are ready for development. Iniatives to develop South Africa as a viable destination for cultural tourism are under way; a film and video foundation has been established; draft heritage legislation is ready for presentation to Parliament; legacy issues are being investigated; and Dacst has identified key problem areas in South African culture that may well need government intervention and policy – such as the music industry, the craft sector, film industry and the issue of public monuments.
It’s a list that, on the surface, should make South Africa’s arts and culture community proud. Yet critics of the department will point out that, while the policies outlined in this shopping list are solid enough, the efficient implementation of almost all of them is lacking. Even the director general of Dacst, Roger Jardine, admits: “Our failure has been the reality that we could have done things far quicker and more efficiently. We are, in a sense, still learning about governmental processes.”
“Government appears to lack the capacity, skills, experience, leadership and resources to do its work effectively,” writes policy adviser and editor of The Cultural Weapon, Mike van Graan, in the September 1997 edition of his magazine. His increasingly frustrated bottom line is that Dacst seems unable to learn from its mistakes.