A third bite of the Makhanda apple: Xonti, Wyatt/Brauteseth and the National Schools and Youth Bands

I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed drummer Ayanda Sikade on stage until I saw him there again.

Sikade was in what’s by now become his classic pairing with pianist Nduduzo Makathini, as part of Standard Bank Young Artist, reedman Sisonke Xonti’s, quartet gig at the National Arts Festival. Bass chair went to Dalisu Ndlazi, for what Xonti called “an exploration of modal opportunities”. 

Ayanda Sikade

But it was more than that: it was the kind of gig we’ve missed so badly (at least in Joburg) since the Orbit closed down – four musicians holding an intimate conversation about important truths with each other and us through the medium of sound. The material was new and there were no playlist announcements, so you just had to ride with it. At 44 minutes, the journey was far too short.

But back to Sikade. Like all great drummers, he has fire, power and skill. In his case, they come packaged with particularly fine judgment and restraint: there’s never a single pulse more than he needs to make his musical points. When the two play together, that has a wonderfully grounding effect on Makhathini’s more expansive approach. It makes the drummer a fine partner, too, for the younger Ndlazi: a player who’s also as interested in the time between as in the notes around it.

Over that intricate scaffolding, Xonti took us on a trip that was both familiar and fresh. Familiar, because that stylistic path out of John Coltrane by way of Winston Mankunku is one the jazz of the Cape has long been tracing. Fresh, because this is Xonti and he doesn’t do stale ideas.

The music was compelling, infused with the cry of the captive bull and some very inventive thinking too. Xonti’s technique – always impressive – was breathtaking, especially on soprano. The temptation with that lighter-voiced reed is to let it stay too long in the key of sweet. Xonti gave it diverse voices, from the croak of a healer’s incantation to the trill of a soaring bird. His SBYA show last year was a hard act to follow, but by shaping a very different format and vibe, Xonti has created a second act that’s equally un-missable.

National Schools Band Director Shaun Johannes

Perhaps unintentionally, Shaun Johannes’ National Schools Band concert provided an informative primer on the roots of Xonti’s inspiration. I’m not sure what qualities apart from skill bassist Johannes was looking for when he made his high school selection, but what he’s put together is a bunch of young players characterised by fierce, tight, joyful swing. The programme he created, including his own tribute to the Ngcukana legacy and a vocal take on Yakhal’Inkomo that wouldn’t have been out of place at Club Galaxy, let them display it in full measure. It’s invidious to play star-spotting with a band this young, but we’ll certainly see more of many of these musicians in future.

Where they go next is probably the Standard Bank National Youth Jazz Band, this year directed by and playing the repertoire of Makhathini. The pianist himself noted how odd the Standard Bank definitions of “Young” and “Youth” are – he was already sporting a long beard and raising a family by the time he was named “Young Artist” for jazz. So, too, with some of these players – for example, thoughtful, inventive bassist Stephen de Souza – who are already playing in outfits way outside the ‘youth’ bag. And so they should be: the musicianship of all was impressive, particularly in the spirit of Tembisa sounding from the tenor and soprano of Ofentse Moses Sebula who, with his trumpet colleague Michael Lefa, is a product of the Molelekwa Arts Foundation.

Makhathini has a distinctive style as an arranger, creating soulful crescendi and generous washes of layered sound, and it was lovely to hear the opportunities created for instrumentalists to sing as well as play. Alongside vocalist Rorisang Sechele’s neat, almost Abbey Lincoln-ish, sense of timing on a lyric, the voices were a real strength of the set. I’d love to hear pianist Brathew van Schalkwyk and alto/tenor player Jed Petersen in more pared-back formats, however, simply because that’s a better way to get to know players if you haven’t heard them before.

Romy Brauteseth and Wyatt’s trumpet

Pared-back is probably an understatement in describing Outoftheloop, the half-hour duo set from trumpeter Marcus Wyatt and bassist Romy Brauteseth with a kaliedoscopic array of percussion loops from Tibetan singing bowls, plastic horns, cabassa, a broken cymbal, bells and more. (There’s a complete list at the end of the video, just after a white-bibbed cat puts in a brief, stylish appearance.)     

Originally developed as a format for making music under lockdown conditions, the sounds have potential way beyond that. Wyatt’s still writing tunes with the capacity to become earworms; there’s tangible and moving empathy between the two instrumentalists, and enough variety in texture and mood to keep any listener engaged. Outofthelopp is going to make a fabulous album, and there’s at least one composition – the sprightly Resurrection – that’s already screaming to get out on a stage to play with a few more musicians. Get your jabs, everybody…one day…

Andre Petersen 1978-2021

It is impossible to calculate the loss to South African music and music education have suffered with the passing of pianist Andre Petersen from Covid-related complications. Educated at UCT, Unisa and the Belgian LUCA School of the Arts, Andre was at the time of his passing Jazz Coordinator at the University of the Witswatersrand School of the Arts, having previously taught at UCT, UWC and Stellenbosch, and as a visiting teacher/artist at the Manhattan School of Music and the Oslo Academy of Music among others.  He had been first prizewinner at the Old Mutual Jazz Encounters, the SAMRO Overseas Scholarship contest among others, as well as the only African finalist at the Paris 2011 Concours de Piano Jazz Martial Solal, earning a Special Mention award. That’s a fraction of his achievements. A complete accounting, including all his appearances and collaborations, would fill several pages.

I did not know Andre well, and had only interviewed him once. Typical of his character, he didn’t demand publicity for his own work, and often recommended that journalists rather talk to his collaborators in his numerous joint projects.

Andre’s playing and composing combined the rigour and precision he had acquired through dedicated study with a wonderfully inventive approach to time and harmony, and a quiet musical wit. Listening to him was a delight – and from what  fellow players and former students have said, so was working with him. Stripping the term of all its archaic class baggage, Andre was in a very real sense, a gentleman of jazz.

It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that that we won’t see that quiet, bespectacled figure, often clad in cloth cap, tweed jacket and woolly scarf, seated at the keys again. The playlist below provides some, albeit inadequate, sense of just who, and what creative potential, we have lost. Go well; may your spirit rest in peace.

In Norway, with Jason Rebello and more, exploring Bheki Mseleku’s Angola

With Morten Halle and Halle’s Komet

https://sonichits.com/video/Halles_Komet/Nuvamp

With Kathleen Tagg, playing Moses Molelekwa’s Rapela

With Feya Faku at The Orbit, playing Faku’s In This Land

In concert at House on the Hill with Bokani Dyer, two short months ago

Talking about South African jazz to the SABC (at 4:27 in the video)

NAF 2021 Take Two. Essential watching from Mandla Mlangeni, plus Keenan Ahrends, Richard Bona and the Molelekwa Arts Foundation

The OED defines an oratorio as “a large-scale, usually narrative musical work for orchestra and voices, typically on a sacred theme, performed without costume, scenery, or action.” The Oratorio for a Forgotten Youth – conceived by The Brother Moves On with libretto by Lesego Rampolokeng, co-composed and directed by trumpeter Mandla Mlangeni and played by a large ensemble including TMBO members, pianist Yonela Mnana, the Wits jazz ensemble, the Resonance String Quartet and the eight voices of Vivacious Sounds, stretches that envelope quite a lot.

A frozen moment from Tawanda mu Afrika’s sand animation

But that’s a good thing, because this 2021 take on the oratorio  shouldn’t be confined in a concert hall or a cathedral. It’s a work you must see this week – because it disinters and autopsies the bones of everything that happened last week.  

Rampolokeng’s words trace the roots of today’s traumas from the days when “forty million became garbage strewn across the Middle Passage”, through ”Dachau, Dresden, Nagasaki” to June 16 when “an old hatred strikes the young dead”, and today’s hegemony of global capital when we “seek change and get…statues.”

Mlangeni’s passionately played and intelligently arranged music draws out ironic contrasts between lush sounds and stark horror, traces the solemn menace of the death march; illuminates the bitter taste of existing on Chicken Dust, but also honours the ideals and courage of those who must never be forgotten, including his own father in a closing, poignant rendition of Bhekisizwe.  

Behind it all, the remarkable sand animations of Tawanda Mu Afrika call up oceans, cities, a waste-picker dragging his laden trolley. Mu Afrika’s art-making constantly returns to and re-visions motifs of struggle: raised fists, the fall and rise of a living tree, an Africa that morphs into a lamenting face and a marcher on the move. The graininess of the sand echoes the abrasive edges of words and music; the physicality of its making (unlike slick computer graphics) underlines that these are human beings, not textbook events, we’re talking about here.

Sometimes the shock of the production is physical. Rampolokeng’s “bullets, bombs and food parcels” were written long before last week – now, they hit you between the eyes. TBMO have a gift for catching the spirit of the times: evidenced in their track You Think You Know Me, released last Friday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQNqrdbjB1M. I plan to be writing much more about the oratorio from the perspective of its makers in New Frame next week and I’ll post the link here – but before that, if you catch nothing else from Makhanda this year – You. Must. See. This. Show.

What else have I been watching? 

Guitarist Keenan Ahrends with reedman Domenic Landolf, trumpeter Lukas Thoeni, bassist Romy Brauteseth and drummer Sphelelo Mazibuko were recorded performing at the Birds Eye Club in Basel. Ahrends’ time at the Swiss Musikerwonhaus has developed his composing. His new music retains the meditative, exploring voice that was so striking on his 2017 debut album, Narrative, and his technique still makes you go ‘Wow!” But he’s foregrounding hard-edged rhythm and the flavours of grunge and even thrash (certainly hinted at on Narrative) more often. These elements burst through like spices exploding on your tongue, creating moments of dramatic light and shade. The strings against strings of Ahrends’ interactions with Brauteseth are breathtaking, and there’s a wonderful solo from Mazibuko on the opening number, embroidered around a simple, three-note guitar riff. The show rounds off with a goema encore, demonstrating that those Swiss players are spending far too much time around South Africans – to brilliant, joyful effect.

Richard Bona

The term ‘folk music’ has often had a bad rap, associated as it is with hairy, middle-class people in sandals trying to pretend they’re farmers, fishers or weavers. What that hipsterish pretension conceals is the vast quantity of acoustic music created all over the world by working people on affordable instruments to record and reflect on their lives. It was that kind of folk music, and the modern urban sounds that inherited its mantle, that Richard Bona brought us in a one-hour, acoustic, solo set for which the only word is beautiful. Assuming the role of a chanteur on the model of fellow-Camerounian the late Francis Bebey, singing to his guitar in multiple languages, Bona presented seven songs (plus another three on electric bass) in which he talked directly and intimately to his listeners. Two highlights were his take on Mercedes Sosa’s Alfonsina y el Mar and a witty masterclass in bass technique on Lese Pale.  Most striking was his instrumental Redemption Song. Many covers of Bob Marley’s classic focus on the words; Bona took the chords seriously, sailing them from the Caribbean to Central Africa and back in a journey invoking a history that was far more than just musical.

The National Youth Jazz Festival this year presents a whole bunch of short performances from youth bands and music classes around the world: a lovely idea and one that demonstrates something online streaming can do that live but limited travel budgets can’t.  I sampled half an hour from the Moses Molelekwa Arts Foundation: six young musicians playing three of the late pianist’s compositions in updated arrangements with commitment and invention. As is far too often the case with youth performances, no full production credits were printed. If they’re good enough to be on the bill, the festival ought to tell us exactly who they are. A young woman playing flute, whose first name is Keitumetse, featured in the Molelekwa ensemble — but it’s concerning, looking at the photographs of all those youth jazz outfits, how many of them appear still to be instrumental boys’ clubs. Nevertheless, worth checking out.  

RIP Tshepo Tshola 1953-2021

It’s no longer news, but no less saddening for that, that the glorious burnished baritone of Tshepo Tshola, born in 1953 in Teyateyaneng, Lesotho, was silenced by Covid on 15 July 2021. Tshola, son of a preacher and a church organiser and singer, started his music career in a church choir: “I was a little child of 10 when I started making grown ladies cry in church,” he recalled in 2018.  Now, the tears come for a more tragic reason. Robala ka khotso.

See a full obituary here: https://theconversation.com/the-village-pope-has-passed-remembering-tsepo-tshola-lesothos-musical-giant-164650

A Tshepo Tshola Playlist

1984 with Hugh Masekela Pula ea Na

1987 with Sankomota Now or Never

1989 with Sankomota Tough Talk

1995 Stop The War

2001 Bonang Sefapanong from Lesedi

2003 Joala from New Dawn

2008 with Thandiswa Mazwai Ndilinde

2017 With Maduvha Tshedza Tshanga

2017 With Rebecca Malope Nkarabe

Live in 2020 Holokile

Makhanda Reviews 2021: Feya Faku, Siya Charles, Bokani Dyer, Siphelelo Ndlovu

If I was going to catch one set only from this year’s Makhanda jazz, it was going to be Feya Faku. The hornman battled serious illness for much of last year, but on the evidence of this performance, recorded at the Bird’s Eye Club in Basel, he has overcome it triumphantly.

Feya Faku

So respected has Faku become that we’ve developed a somewhat limited lexicon to describe his work: he’s an ‘elder statesman of the trumpet’; his playing is ‘magisterial’, his manner ‘serious’. Although we know he certainly has the chops to do it, we rarely call his playing ‘hot’ and we’d not dare label him a ‘speed merchant’.  

But that Basel set might have us eating our fastidious words. Right from the wonderfully evocative street-scene opener, this was a self-assured musician who’s retained all the beautiful, grave and lyrical trumpet sonorities we expect. He’s still our magisterial elder statesman of the horn. But in the company of a bunch of Swiss modernists  – Domenic Landolf on reeds, Fabian Gisler on bass, Dominic Egli on drums and Jean-Paul Brodbeck on piano – he was also often playing red-hot, risky and fast. There’s a flugelhorn solo at about 36 minutes in that’ll blow your socks off.

South Africans know these Swiss players: some of them visited regularly before Covid. Their work alongside Faku was as inspired and inventive as ever: there was a particularly empathetic conversation between Faku and Landolf on bass clarinet that showed just how much like family they’ve all become. Guitarist Keenan Ahrends guested, beautifully in tune with Faku’s vision – but he has his own show, so next time for discussing his work.

Since intros were trimmed to fit the set into its hour slot, I can’t offer titles for some of what sounded like new material. That’s one of the presentational aspects that needs rethinking for streaming. Artists are often exhorted to add all kinds of visual bells and whistles to an online show – but when the music is this good we simply don’t need them. The filming wasn’t anything special, but it showed us everything we needed to see: hands on brass or ivory keys; appreciative smiles and shared glances; sticks blurring above the cymbals as Egli crafts his intelligent architecture of support. But alongside the personnel list at the end, could we in future also see a set-list, so we can identify numbers when they’re not announced?

Sometimes, though, you still really miss being in a club. That was the case with trombonist Siya Charles’ sextet set from Cape Town. Charles is a precise, melodious player; her disciplined sense of swing found a good foil in pianist Blake Hellaby’s enthusiastically ornamented playing. 

Siya Charles

What’s been written about less is her composition. Numbers like On the Seven and Coffee and Sunshine definitely have legs outside interpretation by her own band; good composers are far rarer than good players, and we should acknowledge them. Over a rock-solid rhythm section (drummer Damian Kamineth and bassist Sibusiso Matsimela), reedman Zeke le Grange has definitely built on Robbie and Basil as well as Bird, and trumpeter Shaw Komori’s astringent trumpet offered interesting ideas. But in an audibly bare room, with occasionally out-of-focus video, this straightforward Cape Town jazz set didn’t land on the vibe it needed. An intelligently structured programme clearly had its potential audience in mind, building up to an energetic closer, Charles’ Jaiva Kuze Kuze. And if there had been more warm bodies around, I promise you, we’d all have been dancing.

Apart from the smoke machine (good music never needs dry ice), the production and filming for Bokani Dyer’s Kelenosi set were, by contrast, near perfect. We were promised “an entirely different sound” and indeed this was: not only from some of Dyer’s other ensemble incarnations, but also from last year’s solo Kelenosi album. Accompanied by keyboards and effects artist Clement Carr (ex-The City), bassist Tendai “Shoxx” Shoko and drummer Leagan “Starchild” Breda, Dyer employed material from the album, but transformed and mashed-up.

Carr painted with the digital patterning and found sounds of Afro-futurism, including newsclip audio of bottlestore raids and Uncle Cyril’s family meeting refrain, “my fellow South Africans”; the extra layer of electronics sometimes brought it close to art music.

However, the points of reference for this idiom are obviously as American (eg Robert Glasper’s Black Radio and all that followed) as they are African. In that context, I suppose I shouldn’t have found the American accent of some of Dyer’s vocals so grating. But – I confess, it’s probably my age – I did.

Bokani Dyer

What mattered about the set, though, wasn’t the accent but the musicianship. At no point did Dyer ever compromise on his pianism. Alluding to the funk and groove of 80s club music, the complexity of West African rhythms (the closer, Kalakuta, was a blast), some mutant offspring of Monk meets stride piano and a whole lot more besides, the range of keyboard references was even more dazzling than on the album, but also more shadowed and experimental. Breda’s one of a current generation of South African drummers (another is Tumi Mogorosi) who play textures against the obvious; sticks often as subtle as brushes, while Shoko’s indispensable deep groove keeps the whole train on the track. Spikier than a porcupine and with more edge than a Stihl strimmer, this new Kelenosi is definitely headed somewhere intriguing.

There’s something extremely reassuring about a video that opens with Romy Brauteseth playing upright bass. Whether you know the other artists or not, you know it’s going to be good music. And so it was, for another distinctive piano voice: that of Siphelelo Ndlovu with the SN Project. I missed the 2020 album when it first landed, and now I’m regretting that a lot.

As well as Brauteseth, Ndlovu’s group includes two of my favourite brass and reed players, trumpeter Lwanda Gogwana and saxophonist Muhammad Dawjee, with Sphelelo Mazibuko on drums and guest vocalist Mihi Matshingana. The set’s seven originals began with the album title track Afrikanization; the centrepiece was an extended take on the pianist/vocalist’s tribute to his mother Song for Ma Tshabalala; the closer, the rousing Ingqalabutho.

There were so many striking musical moments I can’t list them all. Gogwana’s first solo brought us right back to what Faku’s generation have given to South African trumpet: honouring the tradition but also never afraid to stretch it. The subtle engagement of Brauteseth (on electric bass) with Mazibuko in The Seeker, as Ndlovu’s piano wove in and out, demonstrated the power of quiet musical conversations. Dawjee’s solo on Song for Ma Tshabalala journeyed through soulful emotions, never mechanically fixating on a neat homecoming.

Siphelelo Ndlovu

Matshingana is an intelligent and powerful singer, whose ability to pace her vocal movements from whisper to full-throated shout pairs perfectly with the way the leader shapes a tune. Because Ndlovu’s music is essentially about ebbs and flows, transitions that value and explore their liminality, and the piano as much a percussive as a melodic instrument.

Those pulsing ivories occasionally reminded me of Moses Molelekwa; Ndlovu’s arrangements – which often make a five-piece sound much bigger and bolder – recalled some historic Eastern Cape bandleaders, and particularly Victor Ndlazilwana and the Jazz Ministers. Gogwana can be creative with that kind of trumpet sound too, and it all came together beautifully on the closer, where horn and reed traded first instrumental, and then vocal phrases: SA jazz history through a sharply 2021 lens.

Now, when can I find time to catch another few gigs?

Makhanda 2021: the jazz starts here

It has been a busy news week and that’s putting it mildly. So it’s worth remembering that the Makhanda National Arts Festival – snatched from the jaws of NAC-fuelled disaster – opens today. The majority of the Standard Bank Jazz Festival https://nationalartsfestival.co.za/category/naf2021/naf-online/standard-bank-jazz-festival-2021/  is being streamed as video on demand, mostly from today until month-end. It’s an excellent sampler of what South Africa currently has to offer. For fans of vocal music, there’s Lira, Judith Sephuma, Dumza Mazwana (a live stream on July 10 only) and Asanda Mqiki (live stream on July 11 only).

Siyasanda Charles

Instrumental jazz includes – it’s far too long a list to mention everybody – a strong KZN contingent with the ensembles of both Neil Gonsalves and Melvin Peters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg9bG6zsiHA . The South Coast is definitely the rising force in current SA jazz, and Peters in particular is far too little known outside his home town.  

From Cape Town, there are groups led by trombonist Siya Charles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SmhMdGyvN8  and trumpeter/vocalist Mandisi Dyantyis; and from Joburg a rare duo performance from trumpeter Marcus Wyatt and bassist Romy Brauteseth. Working in Basel with Swiss ensembles, there are concerts led by guitarist Keenan Ahrends and trumpeter Feya Faku: that last, an eagerly awaited return to the stage that I’m particularly looking forward to.

Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz Sisonke Xonti (from July 9) reunites one of the best rhythm duos you’re ever likely to hear: Nduduzo Makhathini on piano and Ayanda Sikade on drums, spiced up with top younger-generation bassist (and another KZN rising star) Dalisu Ndlazi.

For a touch of the unexpected, Bokani Dyer brings Kelenosi to the stage: not solo, as on the recording, but in a trio. It’s going to be interesting to hear how those meditative musings translate to a format where he’s actually not alone. Cape Town vocal creator Jitsvinger – who’s always been closer to jazz than his various media labels have suggested – introduces another new trio project, Restorians https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEESWv5S3Gs .

Pianist/vocalist/composer Sipheleo Ndlovu’s SN Project album Afrikanization https://www.facebook.com/TheSNProject/ was released just over a year ago, but because of a certain pesky virus it didn’t get the stage exposure it would otherwise have received. Unless you got the album, the SN Project set (from July 10) is likely to be the newest concept you’ll discover this year.   

Richard Bona

International guests include saxophonist Chad LB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2DnkYsJsUA , child prodigy smooth jazz multi-instrumentalist Justin-Lee Schultz with Gerald Albright https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVoxCW_4OqY  – and Richard Bona.

Whoever decided to describe that last bass titan as “Africa’s Sting” probably thought they were offering praise. But calling a unique performer “Africa’s” anything is patronising and reductive. Sting’s a great pop musician, but his musicianship isn’t even playing the same game, never mind in the same league, as Bona’s. Never mind: Bona’s on the bill and you need to hear him. 

PESP funding report: another fine mess at the National Arts Council

The Theatre and Dance Alliance (TADA) released its investigative report into the National Arts Council(NAC) PESP funding chaos last week. This was shortly after the Gauteng South High Court ordered NAC to pay the PESP balance it has owed to the National Arts Festival in Makhanda since a previous court judgment back in March. With costs.

Both of these are positive developments, even if they still leave un-answered the elephantine hanging questions: how could the Department of Sport Arts and Culture have permitted this mess to develop in the first place. How can it remain so slow and silent in even commenting on the debacle, while performances go back into lockdown with even less than the zero cushioning they had last time?

There will be a forensic audit, DSAC has announced. Terms of Reference have been issued and, according to the tender bulletins website https://tenderbulletins.co.za/custom-tender/the-appointment-of-an-audit-firm-to-audit-the-presidential-employment-stimulus-programme-pesp-allocation-of-funds/, tender no NAC 01-2021-2021 closed on 3 June. Who will conduct the audit and when, remains opaque. And before DSAC protests that its silence on the judgment and the TADA report are because the proposed audit now renders it all sub iudice – it doesn’t. (When somebody not involved in an actual ongoing court trial hedges by citing sub iudice, what they really mean is: “We don’t wanna talk.”)

Judgment first. On June 21 Judge Colin Lamont ruled that the NAC’s conduct “…in unilaterally reducing the contractual amount at a point at which the time for payment of the first amount of funding had passed, and a mere two weeks before the project completion date, is accordingly unlawful and irrational.” That’s not only good news for the festival, its artists and audiences, but also provides a handy precedent for anybody else planning to sue for their originally-promised monies.

Report second. The broad findings about “poor governance and gross mismanagement” contained on its 53 pages are unsurprising, but no less shocking, to anybody who has been following the unfolding tragedy. The report adds valuable, solid detail to what started as occasionally wildly inchoate suspicions.

There were six main findings. The disbursement timeframes were absurdly short: five months for an amount three times what NAC normally needs a year to allocate. That’s primarily on national government, which structured the overall programme, although DAC and the oversight structures it set up also appear not to have pointed any of this out to their masters. 

Added to that, the overall timing was the worst possible. National government did not take into account how Covid would make implementation of proposed creative projects near-impossible. DSAC did not prepare the newly-inducted NAC Board with information about how to factor Covid conditions and constraints into their decision-making.

Then there was NAC’s very own, long known, management mess. Personnel were inexperienced, systems including communication were full of glitches, checks and oversight were absent and adjudicators were never given an overall budget figure, so they were allocating grants ‘blind’.

The TADA report is scathing about excuses that the fund was “oversubscribed” and wrong-footed by an unexpected “last-minute surge” in applications. It finds these pretexts “disingenuous as there is always a surge of applications just before a funding deadline (so this should have been expected), just as every call for funding is over-subscribed (but NOT over-approved as was the case with the PESP funding).”

Then the report turns to the focus of the PESP fund on job-creation. TADA is not the first – the number probably runs into three or four figures – to try and get DSAC to understand that focusing on jobs, rather than work “represented a misunderstanding of the nature of the sector on the part of government” as well as taking the NAC into an area (employment-creation) in which it had zero expertise and its parent department, DSAC, had zero plans. TADA breaks down how inappropriate the figures attached to the creation of on-paper jobs were, but how those on-paper manipulations provided a way for the NAC to demonstrate it was obediently fulfilling the mandate handed down by its political masters.

Then comes the finding everybody was waiting for. Past and current NAC members did indeed benefit illegally from NAC funds. It cites five specific instances, which does not preclude the occurrence of more. As a result of this, the report’s sixth and final finding is that the new NAC Council “has acted with dishonesty, with arrogance and insensitivity towards the creative sector, and has lost the respect of the sector.”

TADA concludes by recommending that the Council be disbanded, with National Treasury or an equivalent body acting as interim manager pending the appointment of a new Council and a new Minister, and that the members of the current Council be banned from standing for public office for at least four years.

You can get a copy of the report from TADA’s media officer, Jaco van Rensburg at jaco@tada.org.za. It’s worth reading in full. Perhaps the deafening silence from DSAC is not so hard to understand after all – because there’s no way any of this can be explained or justified.