By Steven Lang
Together, leaders of the National Arts Festival and Makana Municipality are acutely aware of the negative impact Makhanda’s infrastructural problems have on Festival. At a media conference held to mark the opening of the 2024 Festival, the collective leadership outlined their plans for overcoming these challenges.
The Mayor of Makana, Yandiswa Vara, explained to national and local media present, that Festival is of vital importance to the health of Makhanda’s economy and well-being of its residents. For this reason, she wished to re-assure visitors that the municipality “has taken great strides in ensuring that you enjoy this festival without any interruptions”.
She said that her team had taken “adequate precautionary measures to ensure that there are enough resources to deal with any service-related issues that may arise during the festival”.
Vara then went into some detail explaining what the Makana Municipality is doing about tackling sewer challenges; dark streets due to broken street lights; the irregular supply of water; illegal dumping and the poor state of the town’s roads.
The CEO of the National Arts Festival, Monica Newton outlined some of the challenges facing Festival from a different perspective. She said one of the biggest problems in the lead up to Festival was the lack of media space. The national and provincial elections dominated the “gaze of news houses and pretty much everybody” so that less space was left over for anything else.
It was very difficult to get noticed when there were so many other things happening.
Newton added that they were worried about “what sentiment there was going to be post the elections”. She said that after such a momentous occasion, would people want to be out and about so soon after the elections.
The Festival CEO highlighted further concerns about people who wanted to use the event to raise awareness about the internal problems of Makhanda. She acknowledged that it is important to talk about these infrastructure challenges , but when they are exploited to get some kind of resolution, they “represent the city in a very negative light”.
She said that of course, the city has its water and pothole problems and these are very real issues, “but they have become the almost, the defining conversation about the city of Makhanda”.
Newton levelled additional criticism against Makhanda local businesses that unreasonably raise prices during Festival. These inflated prices might raise profits in the short term, but will discourage visitors from returning for future editions of Festival.
