A STRIKE, A WARNING IGNORED, AND A SECTOR ON THE EDGE By Thami aka Mbongo Manzana Day 21 of the National Arts Council (NAC) staff strike. Three weeks of silence. Three weeks of institutional denial. Three weeks of a government watching a crisis unfold — and choosing not to act. But let’s be clear from the beginning: This did not start 21 days ago. This crisis was diagnosed, documented, and debated in Parliament nearly a year ago. Parliament Saw It Coming On 27 May 2025 , the Portfolio Committee on Sport, Arts and Culture convened to engage the NAC and the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture (DSAC). What happened in that meeting should disturb every single stakeholder in the arts sector. “The Committee unanimously agreed that proceeding with a presentation by the NAC would amount to legitimising a potentially unlawful board… the Council was not properly constituted… decisions taken by the current Council could be legally questionable.” Read that again. Parliament refused to even engag...

Why South Africa’s Cultural and Creative Industries Must Rethink Their Vote South Africa’s democracy is rich with political contestation, ideological diversity, and manifesto promises.  Yet, beneath the noise of service delivery, infrastructure, and economic reform lies a quieter crisis — the systematic sidelining of the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) .  For a sector that shapes identity, preserves heritage, and contributes to economic activity, its marginalisation in political thought is not just an oversight; it is a structural failure. THE MANIFESTO MIRAGE Every election cycle, political parties release manifestos — glossy documents filled with commitments. However, these mentions are frequently symbolic rather than strategic. Arts and culture are typically framed as “soft sectors” — appendages to tourism or social cohesion — rather than as economic drivers or tools of transformation. This framing diminishes the sector’s potential and reduces practitioners to cere...

Non-Scholars vs Scholars: A Manufactured Myth There is a quiet lie we have learned to live with — that some people are “scholars” and others are not. That knowledge belongs to a select few, while the rest must sit, listen, and accept. But when you strip away the titles, the institutions, and the language of power, something simple remains: people are people. Knowledge is knowledge. Experience is experience. So where does this division come from? It begins in the way society has chosen to measure intelligence. Formal education — degrees, certificates, academic language — has been elevated as the ultimate marker of worth. Those who pass through lecture halls and graduate ceremonies are crowned as thinkers, while those who learn through life, labour, struggle, and survival are often dismissed as lacking. Yet this logic is deeply flawed. A farmer who understands the rhythm of the soil, a street vendor who reads human behaviour better than any textbook, a grandmother who carries generations...