According to a Sunday Times report, there are now nearly 700 “ultra-high-gross-worth individuals” with assets of at least R200-million each, a number of “ultras” that has quadrupled in the last 10 years. Which some might indeed consider to be ultra gross when nearly half the country’s population still lives on less that R354 a month and when unemployment has increased substantially, standing now at more than 30%.
Wealth is relative. And if you’re a Ramaphosa, Motsepe or Radebe, wealthy is your relative. Wealthy people give to charity. Which is probably why charity begins at home.
What could buy you a decent home in Durban could get you a farm or two in Zimbabwe, or a name plaque for a house in the suburbs of Cape Town. It could also house at least 10 families in a Reconstruction and Development Programme housing estate. Context is everything.
What could you do with R100 000 a month? Pay the fuel tag for your private jet? Provide anti-retrovirals to 100 people living with HIV/Aids? Buy 5 000 lotto tickets?
I doubt that many of the 25 000 “dollar millionaires” that apparently live in South Africa simply give away R100 000 each month. Not without getting anything in return, anyway.
But this is exactly what the National Arts Council (NAC) is doing.
Each month since November last year, the NAC has paid out nearly R100 000 in salaries and benefits to three senior managers suspended on allegations that include financial irregularities, abuse of power and lack of financial accountability.
Every month, without any value being added to the arts or to the NAC, three individuals consume more than the average annual grant allocated to an arts project by the NAC. For doing nothing.
By the time their disciplinary hearing takes place in June, the total paid or owing to the suspended in- dividuals will be close to R800 000.
For some, this might not be a lot of money. For others, it is a small price to pay to get rid of corruption and maladministration. But what are the alleged financial irregularities worth? How much did they actually cost the NAC? How much is being spent in order to address the issues? If R800 000 is what it costs to suspend the senior management on full pay, what are the additional costs of the audits? The lawyers? The acting CEO? The ad hoc meetings of the board or executive committee to deal with the matter?
In the arts R800 000 is a substantial amount. Some of the country’s leading dance companies receive annual NAC grants of a maximum of R500 000 to pay their dancers, produce new work, run training programmes and the like.
Even the largest theatres receive a maximum of R750 000 a year from the NAC to stage new works. For any of these companies or theatres — let alone arts projects and institutions in neglected provinces such as Limpopo, Mpumalanga, the Free State, the Eastern Cape, the North West and the Northern Cape — R800 000 could more than double their artistic output in a year.
What should have been dealt with relatively easily and quickly has now spilt over — like the polluting effluent of a couldn’t-care-less factory — into a new arts dispensation that promises much, but first has to get rid of the stench of a recent era past.
The NAC must make sure that the charges against the suspended three stick. Or another round of costs for irregular suspensions, constructive dismissals and defamation suits could see hundreds of thousands again culled from the NAC’s budget — and the work of more companies, theatres and artists threatened.