They might have achieved democracy, independence and the right to blame the past for any subsequent shortcomings years before we did, but our Namibian cousins are only just about to establish their equivalent of our National Arts Council. Perhaps they’ve waited to learn from our mistakes, which we’ve managed to make all by ourselves.
Introducing the National Arts Fund of Namibia Bill in Parliament a few weeks ago, the Minister of Basic Education, Sport and Culture, John Mutorwa, stated that the fund ”aims to secure the well-being of artists and the arts they create because artists mirror the strengths and weaknesses of our society, add value to our lives, provide us with choices and highlight issues to make us think”. In societies with more insecure political leadership, some of these may be considered good reasons why not to support artists.
But, in one of the more enlightened speeches in the debate posted by New Era on AllAfrica.com, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, Minister of Women Affairs and Child Welfare, strongly supported the establishment of the fund, and the powers that it would have in deciding on funding and investments in arts projects. ”However, such powers should go into the hands of those people with real knowledge, vision and who truly understand both the developmental needs of our society and the role art can play in it,” she said. ”In my view, members of such a to-be-established art council … should be persons with insider understanding and knowledge of art, our most prominent writers, filmmakers, painters — all exclusively nominated on merit and in their personal capacity. Otherwise we risk putting true artists into a very awkward and unequal relationship versus politicians, or worse still, civil servants. That would not be good either for arts development or for society at large,” she continued.
As if speaking at a Human Rights Day rally in support of freedom of creative expression, Nandi-Ndaitwah exhorted her parliamentary colleagues thus: ”We politicians must trust artists and assist them by creating conditions for free expression and relative material comfort so that they give the best they can for our common benefit. Our intervention should be aimed at creating conditions for the arts to flourish.”
Other speakers in the debate hailed it as a new era for artists. An opposition MP decried the fact that artists were used to project a positive image of the country at international expos, but on their return, are unable to continue their work because of a lack of funding. A Swapo MP said that ”with the introduction of this Bill, Namibian artists should be celebrating because, for 14 years, they have been starved and neglected”. (If they were children or women, this would be a case of criminal abuse, but then, they were only artists.) The Deputy Prime Minister, Hendrik Witbooi, appeared to agree with this view when he suggested, during the debate, that artists should be retrospectively compensated for the hardships and losses they endured in the years prior to the establishment of the National Arts Fund.
These enthusiastic statements conjure up déjàvu feelings, for there were many similarly positive sentiments at the time of the founding of our NAC. Today, though, the National Arts Council is virtually non-existent with the Minister of Arts and Culture having fired the board for alleged mismanagement of public funds.
If some of the fired board members could have their way, they would prefer the NAC to cease to exist altogether. These individuals — hardly the country’s ”most prominent writers, filmmakers and painters” — have taken a ”scorched earth” approach, arguing in court that the minister had no right to fire the board without dissolving the NAC in its entirety.
If the allegations against them have any substance, these board members should be in court being tried, and not be in court arguing for another chance at abusing public funds. Let’s hope this insanity is temporary, or local artists may end up applying for asylum in a capital called Windhoek.