Local musos blast Marula gig

THE Marula festival in Limpopo over the past two weeks has been smeared by controversy.

The Limpopo government backed the multimillion-rand festival, which aims to promote the culture and heritage of the province in activities including two musical festivals. The event angered more than it pleased local musicians who cried foul.

According to the Limpopo Artists Movement, local musicians and promoters were snubbed in favour of big names such as DJ Oskido, AKA, Cassper Nyovest and Nathi Mankayi.

The movement ’ s chairman and gospel artist Mphoza Mashabela said the tender was given to popular record label owner Oscar “Oskido ” Mdlongwa who hand-picked artists who are mostly in his stable.

“How can you say this event is promoting the culture and heritage of Limpopo when most of the people on your line-up don ’ t even reside in Limpopo?

“The government does not care about local artists because even last year [at] the Mapungubwe festival they called an international artist Joe and only gave a few local artists time to perform and paid them peanuts.”

Mashabela said acts booked to perform last year were paid R3 000.

“We are not happy about Oskido being granted the contract because everything they did was secretive. They refuse to give us information on how much they paid him and why they chose him for the second time in a row,” he said.

Fellow Limpopo artist Maru a Pula said the government snubbed local acts because their names don ’ t sell.

“We had a meeting with them and from their reactions you could tell that they are not interested in developing local acts because our names don ’ t sell as much as those of people like Oskido. I don ’ t think any local person will be given a contract like that because we are not Oskido, we don ’ t have money. They don ’ t have faith in us,” he said. Department of economic development, environment and tourism (Ledet) MEC Seaparo Sekoati was not available for comment.

Government spokesman Phuti Seloba said local promoters don ’ t have the capacity to organise an event of this magnitude.

“We have problems like these every year where artists complain that they did not get picked when they don ’ t have the capacity. Some people think that they are government babies and they should be at every government event.”

Seloba, however, refused to say how much of the festival ’ s R8.5-million was for artists or how much DJ Oskido was paid.

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