After a game of ministerial musical chairs that saw Nathi Mthethwa replace Paul Mashatile, Sean O’Toole wonders if Mthethwa is suited for the arts.
ANALYSIS
It has been a year of boos and heckling for Nathi Mthethwa, the country’s new minister of arts and culture. This chorus of disapproval started long before his reassignment by President Jacob Zuma, a game of ministerial musical chairs that saw Mthethwa replace ousted Cabinet member Paul Mashatile in the arctic arts and culture portfolio.
In January, while still serving as police minister, water-starved residents of Mothutlung, a township in the North West, booed Mthethwa after he visited the family of a service delivery protester allegedly killed by police.
North West residents have been especially vociferous against Mthethwa, who between 2009 and 2014 presided over a department prone to blunt metaphor in this strife-torn region. In May, before his demotion (as it has been described by many commentators), residents of Mmaditlokwe near Marikana heckled Mthethwa when he responded to their demands for the release of 16 people arrested for public violence.
In response to Mthethwa’s appointment the arts community has been comparably tame, using social media to register their complaint – sometimes humorously, but just as often not. “Nathi Mthethwa says he is looking for the next great SA artist and an arrest is imminent, but hopes the public will come forward with names,” tweeted writer and popular columnist Tom Eaton.
Playwright and arts administrator Mike van Graan adopted a more strident tone. “Mthethwa’s roles in suppressing the right to protest and in defending the Nkandla expenditure render him completely inappropriate to the position of minister of arts and culture,” he wrote.
Not everyone in the wildly disparate arts sector necessarily shares these dim views of Mthethwa, who takes over a portfolio created a decade ago during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki. Eugene Mthethwa, the sartorial pantsula formerly with kwaito pioneers Trompies and now the slick-suited acting secretary general of the Creative Workers Union of South Africa, called for the arts community to give the minister “the benefit of the doubt”.
For a full report see Mail & Guardian
