DA to seek full transparency on National Arts Council’s failure to pay beneficiaries

Issued by Veronica van Dyk MP – DA Deputy Shadow Minister for Sports, Arts and Culture
08 Oct 2020 in News

The Democratic Alliance (DA) will submit parliamentary questions to the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture to ascertain whether the National Arts Council’s (NAC) failure to pay 25% of funding due to its beneficiaries constitutes an unlawful breach of contracts. We will further ask for full details of the contracts so that we can find out which contracts have not been paid in full.

This follows a revelation that the Office of the Public Protector is currently investigating the NAC’s failure to pay beneficiaries.

Given the NAC’s track record, the DA is of the view that the answers to our parliamentary questions could reveal that the NAC has failed to fulfil its obligations to beneficiaries.

In light of the Public Protector’s remedial action against NAC CEO Rosemary Mangope on allegations of her abuse of power, gross maladministration and unethical conduct, should the NAC be guilty of a breach of contract, this will be another major indictment on Ms Mangope and will bring the questions of her fitness for office back on the table.

The NAC has a mandate to support South Africa’s arts, and the beneficiaries in question entered in a contract with the NAC pre-Covid-19, meaning there was a budget allocated for their funding.

While the Covid -19 restrictions may have presented a challenge for the beneficiaries’ projects to be made in totality, the NAC cannot use Covid-19 as the main excuse, as it is one of the entities that received relief funding for Covid-19.

The DA recognises the suffering of artists due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The continued failure of the NAC to fulfil its mandate and disperse funds accordingly is a challenge that the DA has always sought to address.

We maintain our view that the NAC could be in a much better position if it was run by a more capable individual without all these serious allegations against them