The Cultural Creative Industry Federation of South Africa has accused the Mpumalanga Culture, Sport and Recreation Department of overlooking local artists for its annual Cultural Experience festival to be held next weekend.
The federation has expressed disappointment that only national artists have been booked to perform at the festival.
This is the second year, the provincial Culture, Sport and Recreation department will be hosting the Cultural Experience festival, but the department has refused to say how much is budgeted for the event.
The Cultural Creative Industry Federation of South Africa says it is pained by the exclusion of local based artists.
The federation’s Zweli Mdakane explains: “I’m disappointed. I had a meeting with the HOD in terms of consultation from the creative industry, the issues of local artist that need to develop as the department and the federation, then we agreed that they will send me a list of artists that they proposed, they sent me the list then I was happy at least of which I had some up-coming local artists. Then I signed off sent it to the department, but now today I was shocked to see all those artist are no more there.”
Another union, the Creative Workers’ Union of SA has indicated that it is also unhappy about the treatment local artists.
CWUSA provincial coordinator is Alphious Hlabathi: “We should have a programme of development of young artists that would be developing to participate in this festival, but I see a number of artists are not included especially the up and coming artists – so that’s where there is a lack of development in this province. I was asking about the event as from June saying guys I don’t see anything what’s happening – are u still going to host the festival or not so they said we are going to host it, saying that they busy engaging with service providers we should have that development programme.”
Meanwhile, the provincial department has acknowledged the concerns raised by the unions, but it says some local artists have been included in the festival.
Department spokesperson, Sibongile Nkosi, says it’s not feasible for them to include all provincial artists in a single event.
“We are aware that most of our artist are disgruntled, so what we have done we have targeted most of the artists that are originally from Mpumalanga. We also have Mpumalanga Praise, we also have princess Indlovukazi who also come from this province, if we check our programmes that we do as government during the cause of the year, those events we normally use our local artist.”
Local artists have threatened to embark on a protest march during the festival to voice their dissatisfaction with the department.
