Lottery blocks payment to lavishly funded new music celebration
Lottery blocks payment to lavishly funded new music celebration
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The Lottery has stopped a grant to the lavishly funded annual SATMA awards. Illustration: Lisa Nelson (SATMA logo superimposed in excess of initial illustration)
From 2019 to 2022 the South African Common New music Awards been given about R16-million with the Lottery.
Though the Lottery has withheld payment on the 2023 grant subsequent an investigation.
The NLC has asked the Exclusive Investigating Unit to probe alleged “double dipping” in yrs exactly where funders besides the NLC also chipped in to assist fund the awards.
The scale of funding for that once-a-year two night time event is astonishing.
The Mpumalanga federal government has funded the awards with about R41-million following it “was awarded the correct” to host the SATMA awards for three a long time, beginning inside the 2020/21 economic year.
This has been As well as Lottery funding.
The National Lotteries Fee (NLC) is refusing to pay a R1.two-million grant it originally authorized for an once-a-year classic music awards ceremony. A similar function also received tens of a lot of rand in the Mpumalanga provincial govt.
From 2019 to 2022 the NLC awarded a number of grants totalling Practically R16.four-million into the Mageza Heritage Basis, the organisers of the annual South African Standard Audio Awards (SATMA).
But it really halted the payment of the 2023 grant immediately after an interior investigation.
GroundUp has uncovered substantial corruption from the NLC that befell until the earlier board and management was replaced in 2022. The new NLC leadership is trying to cleanse up the corruption on the past.
The NLC’s investigation focused on both the 2023 funding and before grants awarded to Mageza to phase the awards. The investigation also probed a payment of above R718,000, allegedly compensated from Lottery money to G4 Brothers, of which Dumisani Gobe, the founder of the SATMA awards, is a director.
Requested if Mageza compensated G4 a licencing or almost every other fees to stage the awards, Goba explained: “G4 was commissioned to carry out a production of the occasion and acquired paid out for anyone products and services, like to deal with and produce the primary event, roadshows, and so on. I'm the founding father of the SATMA Awards; I am the one who must be compensated for building the strategy determined by affordability and what Mageza decides.”
The NLC has handed a dossier of its investigation into the Specific Investigating Device (SIU). It's questioned the SIU to investigate 4 different lottery-funded initiatives that received grants amongst Oct 2020 and May 2023, together with the payment to G4 Brothers.
The NLC has also asked the SIU to probe alleged “double dipping” in a long time wherever funders in addition to the NLC also chipped in to assist fund the awards.
This includes a grant of R400,000 from your Nationwide Heritage Council and just in excess of R62,000 from “SABC Cellular” in 2020 - precisely the same money yr during which the occasion received almost R2.six-million in lottery funding and R13.5-million from the Mpumalanga Office of Tradition, Sports and Recreation (MDCSR).
MDCSR funded the awards to your tune of above R41-million after it “was awarded the appropriate” to host the SATMA awards for three several years, commencing while in the 2020/21 financial yr.
The Mpumalanga govt’s funding for SATMA over that time period was considerably better than grants to another organisation for cultural projects and activities.
The MDSCR gave R3.5-million to SATMA inside the 2019/20 monetary year prior to ramping up its contribution right after signing the arrangement to host the awards above the next a few yrs.
The whole price range submitted towards the NLC when Mageza used for your disputed 2023 SATMA funding was R1.two-million. But of this, only R500,000 was allotted for the particular staging on the event. Other line objects within the finances integrated R400,000 for “personnel salaries and Added benefits”, R200,000 for “stipends” and R100,000 for “travel.”
The awards had been held on 15 December for the Durban Intercontinental ltpbet Conference Centre. Mageza says it urgently desires the blocked grant to pay the function’s company providers.
The SATMA awards, which have been to start with held in 2006, are staged more than two nights and it can be unclear how the tens of tens of millions in grants in the NLC, MDCSR and also other funders have been expended.
Desmond Msomi, the chairman of Mageza, did not respond to particular concerns from GroundUp, including the expense of staging a SATMA awards ceremony.
As a substitute, he claimed: “Your inquiries are mentioned. Nevertheless, we have been recommended through the NLC this issue is being investigated with the SIU. Therefore, we simply cannot respond to your inquiries until we're recommended the investigation has been finished and the amount owed has become paid out to Mageza.”
Just after Mpumalanga “received the right” to host the awards for 3 decades, the then provincial Society, Activity and Recreation MEC, Lindiwe Ntshalintshali, described it as “a boon” for your province.
“Hosting the SATMA Awards has positive financial spinoffs for that Mpumalanga coffers and Furthermore, it talks for the Department’s mandate of endorsing social cohesion.”