City’s closed book policy slammed
By-law ‘frustrating positive change events’
SEVERAL organisations that promote social cohesion through events and festivals are complaining the City is undermining their efforts through an onerous events by-law and only funding traditional arts and culture organisations.
Some of the complaints include the cost of public display permits for advertising, application for grant-inaid funding and onerous and expensive event permit requirements.
Open Book Festival director Mervyn Sloman said dealing with the City has been a frustrating experience.
“One of the issues is that funding from the City is conditional on us paying for an external audit as well as having to buy public liability insurance and this takes a significant chunk out of the support that we get from the city,” he said.
The five-day Open Book Festival will be hosting its ninth event next month. According to the City’s Arts and Culture report that was issued in March, it awarded Grants-In Aid funding to the sum of R1.2 million.
The beneficiaries are College of Magic, Zip Zap Circus School, Cape Town Opera, Craft and Design Institute and Dance for All. Cape Town Opera received the most, funding of R80 000, while others received between R40 000 to R64 000. Rebecca Campbell, managing directors of Open Streets, an event that organises car-free days in various communities said the by-law and bureaucracy around events make it very hard for both officials and event organisers to pull off non-commercial and smaller community events smoothly.
“We would love to see strong leadership and a more enabling environment for events and initiatives that are supporting the City’s objectives to create a more inclusive, caring and sustainable city to match the way that large profit-driven events are treated,” said Campbell.
Open Streets has been challenging the City’s by-laws since 2014. According to them, in its current form, the events by-law focuses on liability and regulation, rather than facilitation and support of initiatives that work for positive change in the city.
They are calling on organisations to join their petition and comment.
Another organisation, Heal the Hood which is a 20-year old establishment that works with youngsters living in various suburbs of the Cape Flats, said they lost hope trying to get funding from the City or to organise their own events.
Mayoral committee member for safety and security JP Smith said he was aware of the planned “shutdown”.
“We have had no direct engagement with the organisers, so we cannot predict the extent to which the shutdown will be supported and what impact there will be. However, the City will provide any support to the South African Police Service that may be required around road closures, impact on traffic and other public safety measures required. SAPS is the lead agency in terms of public order policing,” Smith said.
He said that he respected the right to protest, but called on the participants to respect the rights of others.
“We do not believe it is helpful to limit mobility to already vulnerable communities as nothing is achieved by that. Such a protest simply harms the community one claims to be wanting to help, and further disincentivises investment and job creation in that community,” Smith said.
Western Cape Human Settlements MEC Tertius Simmers said the proposed “shutdown” by certain Cape Town communities should not infringe on the rights of others, particularly those who might need to get to work, school and health facilities.