Govt gives R17m for Festival

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Mabudafhasi said the department provides funding for 22 national and regional festivals and over 80 cultural events.

“The department of Arts and Culture has signed a three-year agreement with the festival organisers and committed an amount of R17 million (to the National Arts Festival),” she said.

Mabudafhasi said the NAF is one of many annual festivals that are supported through the Mzansi Golden Economy (MGE) strategy across the country, which include both small and large scale festivals such as the Mangaung Cultural Festival (Macufe) in the Free State; Cape Town International Jazz Festival; Diamonds and Dorings Festival in the Northern Cape; Marula Festival in Limpopo and Buyel’ ekhaya Festival in the Eastern Cape among others.

The R17m, which is R3m more than the previous contract will be spent over a period of three years.

Arts and Culture MEC Pemmy Majodina said in the past the festival hasn’t had a big positive impact towards the township, but she said they are moving towards the township. “But it won't be right to bite off more than we can chew, so we wanted to start small, to say let’s increase funding for the Fingo Festival and let’s increase the number of artists that are going to perform there and ensure that most of those are coming from the Eastern Cape and also have local artists performing there,” she said.

She said the mere fact that they are taking the concert right into the township clearly shows that they are moving in that direction. “Come 2017 we will have more programmes like this one, so we are testing the waters now because we want to ensure that no sector of Makana feels neglected during the Festival.”

• Executive Mayor Nomhle Gaga re-assured the community that the municipality had plans in place to deal with a crisis at the town’s main pump station that had left the town without a steady supply for three days.

Responding to a question about the municipality’s readiness should something of that nature happen again, Gaga said nothing is going to happen.

“As the Festival CEO has indicated there is a Joint Operations Committee which is working 24/7 with our officials. The engineers of Department of Water and Sanitation are right here in Makana as well, so as I am sitting here I know that everybody in Makana will get water,” she said.