Remember the opening scene in the “The last King of Scotland” – a 2006 movie directed by Kevin Macdonald which won Forrest Whittaker an Academic Award for Best Actor, otherwise known as the coveted Oscar – a young medical school graduate Nicholas Garrigan (played by James McAvoy) decides seek adventure around the world. The question is: which country will be his destination? He’s undecided. He then took a globe and spun it. He stopped it and placed his finger on one country. It landed landed on Canada. Disappointed. “Boring,” he said. He spun the globe again, and his finger landed on Uganda. This is how he flew to the country and reported on the reign of Idi Amin.
My point with this anecdote isn’t to dwell into the madness of Big Dada’s politics. But to let you know this opening scene that lasted less than 30 seconds impacted negatively on Canada’s tourism. This was revealed to us when I attended a weeklong nation branding workshop organised by Wally Olins in 2007 in Barcelona. Wally, like Simon Anholt, are the world’s foremost thought leaders on competitive identity. The representative of the Canadian tourism sector was aggrieved as they had to allocate extra budgetary resources to mount an international destination marketing campaign to off-set the negative impact that movie scene inflicted on their arrivals. Such is the power of the arts: they can build or destroy your reputation.
Beyond cinema, if one submits their soul to the soothing melodies of jazz music, one would be tempted to believe this art form was the source of inspiration for that English bard, William Shakespeare, when he eloquently coined such a poetic phrase: “If music be the food of life, then play on…”
Fully appreciating the depth in meaning of this prophetic phrase by Shakespeare, our cities have to adopt arts and culture productions as platforms for developing their brands. And this by the way, also enhance social cohesion. It’s for this reason that Simon Anholt’s two main variables in his nation brand hexagon are culture and heritage, and tourism. The language and purpose of arts and culture is that of bringing people together; enriching their lives spiritually; and largely giving them hope for a better tomorrow. Beyond these, as I argued a few weeks ago, source of livelihoods – hence arts and culture is included in the economic cluster in terms of South Africa’s public service architecture.
In pursuance of the bounds of possibilities presented by the ideal world that arts, culture and heritage that include introducing the publics to the nation’s sensitivities and sensibilities to, cities and countries have to know this sector is the life blood of brand positioning. These have to be used collectively as a tool to enhance another variables in the nation brand index (trade; investment and immigration; people; and governance). They are the key ingredient in getting a place’s brand develop people into a cohesive dynamic unit.
Some cities in South Africa are already doing it – for example, the Arts Alive and the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz promote the City of Johannesburg; Mapungubwe Jazz Concert (which was by the way originally conceived by Bruce Kgapane of Ziyaphenduka Promotions) promotes Polokwane; Macufe Mangaung/Bloemfontein; and Cape Town’s signature jazz jamboree, Cape Town International Jazz Festival. In terms of equitable distribution of cultural resources and geographic reach, it goes without saying that the three sleepy provinces of Mpumalanga, Northern Cape and North West (not, withstanding the Mmabana Cultural Festival) receive a raw deal.
I can’t understand why eMalahleni can’t use this sector as a platform to brand position Mpumalanga as a cultural melting pot drawing revelers from the immediate neighbouring provinces – namely, Gauteng, North West, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal. How about calling it @ the coalface cultural fest! The province’s proximity to Swaziland and Mozambique will indeed give the audience mix a pan-African slant. It is needless to say the coal mining industry in this province has attracted labour from the rest of southern Africa. The mining and energy industries do indeed feed the needs of the middle-to-top LSM professional groups that are migrant in the province and which will understandably welcome an opportunity for a weekend entertainment – thus turning the province into being a home away from home for them.
The development of the coal mining, energy (fossil energy plants) and manufacturing industries in the province have indeed reversed (to some extent) the exodus of labour from the province to Johannesburg in coal trains – a situation eloquently captured by the late Hugh Masekela in his jazz masterpiece, “Stimela”.
Such cultural extravaganza, featuring established national and international artists, will be preceded by a development project characterised by music workshops for emerging artists and a music summit to be addressed by music stakeholders such as SAMA, SAMRO, DALRO, South Africa Roadies’ Association and broadcasters such as SABC, e- TV, BET, Channel O and DSTV/Multichoice. The Indaba will address all the elements in music industry’s value chain – composition, arrangement, recording, performance, intellectual property rights and distribution.
Indeed the theme has to focus on how the fourth industrial revolution will impact on the music industry. So specialists from across the world will be invited to participate and thus empower the locals. The @ symbol in the title captures the essence of the impact of information and technological developments on the music industry.
The cultural lull as a result of no national artistic and cultural events taking place in Mpumalanga means 4.04 million people who form the total population in this province are denied their constitutional rights as enshrined in the Bill of Rights – inter alia, the right to partake in one’s cultural development. Politically, this also means the noble call made by the Freedom Charter in 1956 – a noble document upon which our constitution is largely grounded upon – that calls for the opening of doors of learning and culture to all remains an elusive dream for the people of this province.
We could be interested in mounting such a programme through collaborations with such credible institutions as Ziyaphenduka. And we will give it a conscientious touch through the Brandhill Africa Foundation NPC by ensuring it makes interventions that redress societal ills by committing a percentage of the proceeds accruing from the festival to benefiting vulnerable communities – particularly people with disabilities. We could procure wheelchairs and other assistive devices for donation to people living with disabilities in the townships and rural areas during the Disability Awareness Month from 3 November to 3 December.
While affuent provinces such as Gauteng and the Western Cape have rehabilitation hospitals, such as the Tshwane Rehabilitation Hospital which is attached to the Steve Biko Academic Hospital, that admit people with disabilities and attempt to rehabilitate them so that they could reintegrate into their societies, there are cases of abuse of disabled people in rural areas who are hidden from their broader communities and as such remain isolated.
This festival will quench the cultural thirst that Mpumalanga people are currently subjected to. Imagine an international superstar, Salif Keita – the Paris-based African musician who is touted as the “mansa of Mali”, a title depicting his Malian royal heritage and his commitment to preserving the tradition of the griots (traditional poets who narrated the country’s heroic history from one generation to another), leading the line-up. Among key South African jazz musos – such as Sipho Hotstix Mabuse, Jimmy Dludlu, Jonas Gwangwa, Caiphus Semenya & Letta Mbulu, Gloria Bosman and Lira – who will be featured to perform alongside the Hugh Masekela Band, which will be paying tribute to the late jazz maestro.
Our commitment as organisers has to contribute to local enterprise development and community development and upliftment – which are some of the core principles of Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE). We will be enlisting the services of the local enterpreneurs such as hawkers, caterers, ushers, marshals and those providing security services. We will mobilise the local youths to distribute our marketing collaterals to local communities. We will also measure the economic impact of these programmes and projects on the number of accommodation bookings in the district. We will avail stalls within the venues for these small and micro enterprises to ply their artistic trade (by selling crafts).
Since this project has both provincial, national and regional implications, we have to bring onboard provincial and national stakeholders. Finally, we have to explore possibilities of soliciting participation from cultural workers – writers, fine artists, musicians, dancers and so on and so forth – from the SADC member states such as Swaziland and Mozambique that share borders with Mpumalanga. This is how a sleepy province such as Mpumalanga could become a cultural melting pot for the southern-eastern part of SADC.
World Investment Forum 2021
You may have realised that our recent editions have been focusing largely on funding schemes offered by governments, development finance institutions and multilateral organisations. We have thought it necessary to share such valuable information as funding is one critical element that can drive us out of this “pancession” – that is, pandemic induced recession. I implore all of you to chase after those opportunities. Your policy should be it’s your responsibility to develop compelling proposals and it’s up to them to decide whether they approve or not. Just be consistent even if your proposals are rejected, don’t despair because one or two will soon materialise.
This series of empowering articles has climaxed in my virtually attending the World Investment Forum, an annual global event organised by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. So we do have a number of articles covering proceedings at this economic development conference.
What I found interesting was the focus on family businesses. Presenting case studies, the forum explored both opportunities and threats faced by this kind of business. Although in South Africa this phenomenon is prevalent in Jewish and Indian families, it was only prevalent among African families before 1994 as many village and township businesses were family-owned.
But post-1994 I’ve realised that this has been waning and has escalated especially now during the State Capture Commission. For me, there are two collateral damages arising – the family business or a need to leverage on family resources (particularly human capital) and the profession of facilitation. The mainstream media has been casting aspersions on family businesses particularly among African families. Of late, people who have visited the website Brandhill Africa group (https://www.brandhillafrica.com) will admiringly tell me about how great the site looks.
But many will then single out my brother’s profile – as if he’s the only one among over ten officials who doesn’t belong there. The questions and mannerisms suggest he’s there simply because of nepotism although he has a university degree in public relations. Family businesses are bastardised in this country. The lesson I learnt from WIF is that family business businesses could be corporatised as much as any other business entity. By the way, Harvard Business Review did publish an extensive research to this effect.
So I so wish South Africans were attending the WIF to realise that micro, small and medium enterprises – which should form the bulk of the mainstream media as they are the biggest employers – often are started by ordinary people who do not have access to commercial lending services so they often have to tap into their most available human capital that happen to be their family members.
Furthermore, our challenges are compounded by the post 2020 pension or post-February 2021 provident fund legislation that makes it impossible for many of us from the previously disadvantaged communities to tap into our pension savings to capitalise our businesses. The state’s obsession to impose a culture of savings is inadvertently resulting into killing entrepreneurship – particularly now during the “pancession”.
The other inadvertent victim of our anti-corruption drive is the criminalisation of independent business facilitation – and this became prominent during the commission that probed the state of affairs at the Public Investment Commission (PIC). A prominent businessman who facilitated a transaction between the PIC and the SA Homeloans had to launch his defence through social media as he was vilified at the commission and the mainstream media never gave him the opportunity to present his side of the story to justify the success fee he was charging.
In the United States of America, facilitation is professionalised as lobbying. My comrade, David Maimela described this facilitation sector as the “think industry” a few months ago (https://ewn.co.za/2021/05/04/david-maimela-state-capture-and-its-discontents-what-lies-ahead-for-south-africa) and advocated that the country should begin to appreciate it and then regulate it appropriately. He correctly drew the distinction between “state capture’ and corruption as the mainstream media has conflated the two concepts into one by ignoring the nuances that exist.
Before signing off, let me congratulate the investment promotion agencies of Mauritius and Seychelles for winning coveted awards at the WIF – yes, Africa was the only continent to win two. To say we are proud of these two nations will be an understatement.
Enjoy your weekend.
Saul Molobi
Publisher
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