Tshwane metro is refusing to table a motion for discussion of the aborted TribeOne Dinokeng Music Festival.
An urgent Democratic Alliance (DA) motion that the full particulars about the aborted TribeOne Dinokeng Music Festival be reported to the metro council at the next meeting, was derailed by the speaker who refused to table the motion.
DA councillor Andre Van der Walt, asked for full disclosure about finances, contractual agreements and risk mitigation plans associated with the cancelled festival. The speaker refused to table the motion claiming it was sub judice because the matter was still in court. It was pointed out to the speaker that the city had just lost the case against Sony and there was nothing pending in court. She responded that the city may still in the future submit the dispute for arbitration.
Although the DA protested and claimed that she was abusing her chair to avoid embarrassing the ANC, thus putting the ANC above the interests of the city, she persisted in her refusal.
According to Van der Walt, the process was flawed right from the start. In the mayor’s September 2011 report to council, when the planned festival was first mooted, it was stated the city’s financial cash contribution towards the festival would have been capped at R20 million over a period of three years and an investment in infrastructure and services of no more than an estimated R25 million over the same period.
“No feasibility study was ever done for the project. The contract never served before council and ticket sales of only 3 000, three days before the festival, proved that the project was never viable,” Van der Walt said.
According to Van der Walt, the mayor was daydreaming when he took on a project of this size when the comparable benchmark festivals such as the KKNK had a total operating budget of R20 million and the Grahamstown Festival a budget of no more than R30 million. He said this knowledge should have cautioned the mayor that the figures of R65 million seed capital and the mooted turnover of R235 million was unrealistic and he should have known this, had he done the required feasibility study.
‘’The fact that the city was a partner of the event’s organisers in terms of the 2011 report to council, creates a risk that we might be liable for the R235 million rand worth of sponsors and merchandising contractors for the cancellation of the festival – especially if it is true that the city is the cause of the cancellation for failing to provide the infrastructure it had agreed to,’’ Van der Walt said.
He said it is for this reason the DA submitted an urgent motion in council, calling on the municipal manager to provide a comprehensive report at the next council meeting with regard to all aspects of the cancelled festival.
‘’We want to know, if a feasibility study was done, what risk mitigation plan was in place and if regular monthly project management progress reports were submitted to the municipal manager and the mayor. More importantly we want to know how the mayor and the municipal manager responded to red flags in such reports”, Van der Walt said.
The DA is concerned because it had become known that the same group, consisting of the mayor, Kosientso Ramokgopa, the municipal manager, Jason Ngobeni, and the deputy municipal manager, Mrs Lindiwe Kwele was the project team who managed the 2008 Miss World Pageant in the City of Johannesburg. Van der Walt said the the pageant lost R90 million through similar mismanagement.
He said there should have been some red flags around the project, such as the R235 million sponsorships that had never materialised and merchandising that had not been done.
Both the ANC Youth League and the SAMWU (the South African Municipal Workers Union) independently came out with statements criticising the wisdom of the mayor’s choices of a venue and demanding the city manager should personally make good the losses of the project to the city .
Lesego Makhubela, chairperson of the ANC Youth League, said the area earmarked for the event was a barren piece of land not even good enough to host an initiation school.
“This is daylight robbery and the city must justify to ratepayers how the millions was spent, because the public Finance Management Act prohibit municipalities from making payments for services before they are rendered,” he said.
He added the city management had no mandate from the public to host the festival and accused the city manager of not being fit to meet the demands of the public and therefore should be axed.
South African municipal workers (SAMU) also released a statement where the regional chairperson Nkhetheni Muthzavhi asked that the matter be investigated.
Coinciding with the ANC Youth league’s meeting, came the statement of Derrick Kaufman, TribeOne’s spokesperson, saying that the organisers were considering damage claims against the metro after the cancellation of the event. This follows after the city tried to compel the organisers by means of an urgent court application to go ahead with the concert.
The case would have been heard yesterday but the metro withdrew their application when Judge Eben Jordaan of the provincial division of the High Court said the matter was not urgent and removed it from the roll.
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