THAMSANQA DUNCAN MOLEKO

1. Is implicit cultural policy a risk to cultural rights? The case of Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality. Ki

2. THAMSANQA DUNCAN MOLEKO ….We have to realise that both government spheres local provincial government (by the ruling party) understand and know the power of arts and culture, they know what arts and culture have done for them in dismantling the apartheid regime and they are afraid that it might be used in the same way against them. That is why issues of arts and culture are not a priority for this government, we have to be confrontational in our approach, because their silence is confrontational when you understand what they are not saying publicly (Moleko, 2007).

3. LEBOGANG LANCELOT NAWA • In his PhD dissertation, Nawa reveals that; • What seemed to be a haphazard approach to culture, particularly during the erstwhile NP government’s tenure, was actually a pre-determined falsification and concealment of the power of culture. The NP removed culture from its public agenda and instead created clandestine structures, such as the Broederbond, to carry out the government’s cultural mission as underpinned by the Calvinist doctrine or ideology, which regarded the Afrikaner culture as superior to the African culture (2012:169).

4. ENEMY (2012) ….It's all about control, every dictatorship has one obsession, and that's it. So, in ancient Rome, they gave the people bread and circuses. They kept the populace busy with entertainment. But other dictatorships use other... other strategies to control ideas and the knowledge. How do they do that? They lower education they limit culture censor information. They censor any means of individual expression. And it's important to remember this, that this is a pattern that repeats itself throughout history (Enemy, 2013).

5. COMPLICATING ACTIONS • Nawa’s empirical findings in his doctoral studies • Moleko’s observations and his experience as cultural activist • History lessons gleaned from the movie Enemy • Sharply cautions against the dangers of implicit cultural policy.

6. MUNICIPAL CULTURAL POLICY • Cultural policy as an instrument through which various cities create conditions for cultural expression in their development agendas • Local government has been identified as a locus where culture-led development best finds expression • International cultural agencies such as the United Nations Educational, • Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) hold the same view.

7. LEGISLATED MANDATE • local Municipal Systems Act (Act 32 of 2000) Section 23 makes it mandatory for a municipality to assume developmentally-oriented planning. • Many scholars agree that cultural policy is the vehicle the enables this cultural development at local government • Culture-led developed in South Africa is inferred in the Integrated Development Plan (IDP); a legal requirement in terms of the Municipal Systems Act.

8. COMPLEXITIES OF CULTURAL POLICY • Cultural policy it can either be explicit or implicit. • Cultural policy is said to be explicit when it is articulated and designed in a structured way through a process officially defined by an agency or structure charged with that responsibility • Implicit when it is not directly pronounced

9. CULTURAL POLICYSCAPE IN S.A • Cape Town has a pronounced cultural policy • Cultural Policies initiatives in cities cities The City of EThekwini Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality (NMMM) City of Tshwane were initiated but have not seen the light of day • Cities in Free State, Mpumalanga, North West, Limpopo and Northern Cape) do not have a pronounced cultural policy • Johannesburg, as cultural hub of the creative and cultural industries and South African and perhaps in the Southern African development countries, does not have a pronounced cultural policy either. • This glaring observation that only City of Cape Town has pronounced cultural policy, may suggest that other cities perhaps have perhaps opted to create conditions through which complete lack of cultural policy create space and conditions for the existence of a default cultural policy

10. Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality • MMM have been explicitly advancing the creative and cultural industries through the support of initiatives such as Mangaung African Arts Festival (MACUFE) since its inception in 199 997 • MMM did not consciously and independently took a decision to realise that staging of a festival can be employed as a mechanism for growing cities, towns and villages as a way of generating an income from tourist attraction Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality did not initiate MACUFE. • The arts festival was it initiated in 1997 as a partnership between the Free State Provincial Government and the Performing Arts Council of the Free, through Department of Arts and Culture, Sport and Recreation and the Performing Arts Council of the Free State (PACOFS)

11. Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality • MACUFE was more politically ‘to stage an event that would recognise and celebrate the indigenous African cultural heritage, balancing out the other arts festivals which were perceived to be doing little in that regard • However, according to their current communiqué they claim that the key objectives are ‘promoting social cohesion, nation-building, tourism and economic development

12. Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality • The other instances where the MMM has explicitly pronounced ‘arts and culture’ policy it’s within the Mangaung, Youth Development Policy (2015). In this policy they proclaim to support youth centric arts festivals like ‘Basha • It also promises to advocate for ‘a quota for inclusion of local and emerging artists in privately coordinated events that it sponsors’ and ‘establish partnerships with existing arts and culture institutions, including funders to implement programmes and projects in arts and culture; ‘avail resources for establishment of the local structure of Free Stay Youth Arts Council

13. Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality • MMM IDP of 2017/2018 does not explicitly pronounce provision for the creative and cultural industries, yet reference is made to the domains within the creative and cultural industries • This is consistent with finding by Nawa and Connor’s observation that “IDP’s tend to subsume cultural matters into different categories related to natural heritage sites, sports and recreation and infrastructural development” • Yet they lack a bigger picture outlook because there are used only as ticking the boxes for demands and plans for basic services

14. Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality • Therefore, they will always be without the maximum efficacy compared to when these domains are incorporated into regional cultural framework. • Therefore, this default cultural policy within Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality is akin to what Williams (1984) characterised as being bended towards government’s use of culture for purposes of aggrandizement and economic reductionism and not necessarily premised by public patronage of the arts, media regulation and the negotiated construction of cultural identities in a broader context.

15. DIFFICULTIES OF IMPLICIT CULTURAL POLICY • Does not advance MFMA is a quest for that planning budgetary items must be linked to strategic objectives • Does not advance transparency and accountability which is about moral and legal the moral and legal duty, to explain how funds, equipment or authority given by a third party has been used • Does not mitigate against preferential treatment among arts practitioners for financial and infrastructural resources

16. DIFFICULTIES OF IMPLICIT CULTURAL POLICY • Does not mitigate against the manipulation manipulating of culture clandestinely for other issues other than the core ideas that underpin cultural policy which are ‘culture is a pure public good, one that should be equally available to all’, and ‘an idealist-humanist notion that culture is good for the soul and that exposure to culture has a civilising effect’

17. DIFFICULTIES OF IMPLICIT CULTURAL POLICY • A perception that implicit cultural policy inherently upholds censorship in that it might limit access to culture and artistic expression. • Deploy and camouflage inaction and incompetence through implicit cultural policy stance and in this way avoid making it quintessence of governmental activity

18. IMPLICATIONS ON CULTURAL RIGTHS • Does not promote, guarantee and uphold several rights within the UNESCO declaration of Human Rights and the Fribourg Declaration May 7th 2007 • In particular articles 7, 9, 12 and 8 Cultural Rights

19. IMPLICATIONS ON CULTURAL RIGTHS • Article 7 states is about the freedom to seek and receive and impart information; the right to respond to erroneous information concerning cultures, with full respect of the rights expressed in this declaration • Article 9 ensures the ‘respect for cultural rights and developing means of consultation and participation in order to guarantee their realisation

20. IMPLICATIONS ON CULTURAL RIGTHS • Article 8; everyone, alone or in community with others, has the right to participate, according to democratic procedures; in the cultural development of the communities of which one is a member; in the elaboration, implementation and evaluation of decisions that concern oneself and which have an impact on the exercise of one’s cultural rights; and in the development of cultural cooperation at different levels

21. IMPLICATIONS ON CULTURAL RIGTHS • Implicit cultural policy does not promote and advance the Right to Development (art. 1): The right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized

22. A CASE FOR IMPLICIT CULTURAL POLICY • Only through explicit cultural policy as a developmental instrument that artists, cultural workers and citizens have at their disposal to effect change but they cannot effect change if the cultural policy is implicit.

23. CONCLUSION The underlying argument this paper advanced was hinged on the consciousness that if we as humanity, scholars and cultural activists do not offer critique against a seemingly hegemonic society and challenge dominant interpretations and constructions of the world we run the risk of constantly re-creating fundamentally the same world, the same evils and the same dysfunctions from which historical were forceful immersed in and from which upon the democratic dispensation we had emerged from.

24. CONCLUSION THANK YOU!