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The Democratic Alliance (DA) Youth believes the Minister of Arts and Culture Paul Mashatile owes South Africa an apology, after we this afternoon received confirmation that R3-million of departmental funds were wasted on the National Youth Development Agency’s World Festival of Youth and Students.

Minister Mashatile said, in response to a DA parliamentary question:

“My Department provided financial assistance of R3-million to the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) for the Cultural Programme of the World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS), including the opening and closing ceremonies.”

He also confirmed that the funds had been designated from a household budget that is usually used for Department of Arts and Culture projects, and that the request for funding was made directly by the Minister in the Presidency, Collins Chabane.

The minister provides the laughable justification that:

“One of the Strategic Objectives of this Department is to improve economic and other development opportunities for South African arts and culture, nationally and globally, through mutually beneficial partnerships, thereby ensuring sustainability of the sector.”

This is totally ridiculous. Arts and culture funding, limited as it is, is meant for projects that contribute to our country’s cultural and artistic life through a variety of media and performance genres. There is naturally some disagreement amongst key stakeholders about what type of projects should qualify for public funding. Indeed, the limited amount of money means that competition amongst our varied artistic community is often fierce.

However, what is not in dispute is that funds intended for the support of South African artists and the sustainability of our diverse heritage should not be squandered on pointless cocktail parties that allow the junior brigades of the world’s most backward and repressive political parties to get together for kissing contests and drinks in the supposedly imperial sunset. This utterly pointless and disgraceful event, anachronistically themed, ‘Let’s fight imperialism!’ has done nothing but cost the South African public at least R72 million and prove that the NYDA is nothing more than a farcical smokescreen for the ANC Youth League and its bizarre preoccupations.

Minister Mashatile joins a list of shame in contributing funds to this festival. The presidency allocated it R29-million last year and the National Lottery Board, supposed funder of charities, an additional R40-million. We are waiting to see which other departments contributed money to the festival.

This at a time when heritage sites and agencies across the country lack adequate financial support from the Zuma administration, when theatres lack funds to provide opportunities to local artists and when many communities have yet to experience an exhibition or musical festival or other artistic performance sponsored by the department. We in the DA Youth had hoped that Minister Mashatile would be an improvement on his disastrous predecessor, Lulu Xingwana. However, given that these funds must have been approved by Minister Mashatile shortly after assuming office, he is off to a very inauspicious start. He owes South Africa an apology.