A three-year-long spending wet dream...
TONY Kgoroge’s election as president at the inaugural Creative Industries Federation of South Africa (CCIFSA) in 2015 was received with a cocktail of emotions.
One camp was lamenting the fact that he was a novice and would fail; another was swept up by his bold promises to plot his triumph in the ink of the night. His victory speech was drenched with platitudes about unity and development of the creative arts.
The last time I attended a conference brimful with creative people was in 1988. Time was when a motley crew of writers from across the length and breadth of South Africa converged in Durban under the auspices of the Congress of South African Writers (Cosaw).
It was preceded by the Cosaw launch a year earlier at Wits, under the theme “South Africa – Beyond the Platitudes”.
It was quite a memorable event, minus the speech by then president Njabulo Ndebele. A flurry of poets launched their careers on a national stage, including Sandile Dikeni, Lesego Rampoloken, Vusi Mahlasela, Alfred Qabula, Nise Malange, Mi Hlatshwayo, Gladman Ngubo, Zithulele Mahaye, Mike van Graan, Andries Oliphant, Ari Sitas and Mzwakhe Mbuli.
They delivered the kind of poetry pregnant with promise of a new South Africa – poetry that mirrored society and our collective consciousness.
Fast forward to 2015, the launch of the CCIFSA was a raucous event laced with platitudes and, unlike the Cosaw event, there was not a single artist whose career was launched – but it delivered a promising executive that looked smarmy beneath their revolutionary veneer. They have not delivered on a single one of their objectives during their term in office. But, to be fair, they were able to spend the R15784000 allocated by the Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) with the bravado of Gucci revolutionaries.
Year 1: R5 784 000 was allocated in the 2014/15 financial year. This funding was to facilitate the establishment of the organisation, including sectoral and provincial consultation, and the inaugural conference.
Year 2: R5 000 000 was allocated in the 2015/16 financial year. This funded the CCIFSA’s action plan for the year.
The plan was developed based on recommendations made prior to and during the elective conference in March 2015, where many participants raised the need for further engagement with stakeholders.
These engagements never happened and, by his own admission to Parliament, Kgoroge said “the federation was extremely disadvantaged by lack of funding as important skills could not be appointed, nor could the CCIFSA properly market and advertise itself to all corners of SA”.
Year 3: R5 000 000 was allocated in the 2016/17 financial year for broadening of the organisation’s scope on consultations with the sector.
You do not need a scalpel to trace the trend of fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
I understand why they want a second term – they have just woken up with the sensation of ejaculating or urinating – and do not know whether to feel embarrassed or ecstatic. It’s been three years of a wet dream.