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PESP relief for artists and practitioners in full gear

MyPR: PESP relief for artists and practitioners in full gear:

NAC logo Photo: NAC

PESP relief for artists and practitioners in full gear

Some 1 215 practitioners in the arts, culture and heritage sector are receiving much needed relief as the National Arts Council (NAC) moves to full gear to ensure distribution of PESP grants to successful beneficiaries.

After careful due diligence in ensuring that equity, fairness and administrative justice is applied for approved beneficiaries, the NAC is going ahead with contracting and effecting payment to all compliant and approved applicants.

The new Council that was appointed in January 2021, chaired by the Acting Chairperson of Council, Princess Celenhle Dlamini, is now confident that all approved, contracted and compliant beneficiaries will be paid by 31 March 2021.

This is as a result of the tireless work by the Council, over the last few weeks, which was to ensure that all hurdles and challenges discovered in the distribution of the PESP are addressed. Whilst a total 1 215 practitioners’ applications have been finalised, deemed compliant and approved, Council has revealed that there are still a few outstanding approved applications that are yet to be finalised. The work of cleaning up all outstanding approved applications have been assigned to the Council’s War Room. This work is expected to be completed in due course.

To ensure that an honest and transparent process was undertaken, a list of the recipients was published including amounts related to each applicant. The successful applicants are expected to retain and create 24 735 job opportunities through the PESP intervention.

The NAC is urging all published beneficiaries to submit the required information and return the contracts urgently, so as to allow NAC to effect payment for intended beneficiaries.

NAC acting chairperson, Princess Celenhle Dlamini, has confirmed the Council’s pledge towards the arts: ‘The NAC is committed to continuously engaging with the industry to solicit counsel from all industry stakeholders, especially practitioners, on how to best work together. The improvement of the lives within the arts, culture and heritage sector remains our top priority. The Council has equally set up communication mechanisms to allow the industry to engage with it in addition to industry briefings.’

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The Geological Miracle of the Witwatersrand

The very existence of Johannesburg is a geological fluke. Unlike most major global cities, Johannesburg was not built near a river, a coast, or a natural harbor. It sits 1,753 meters above sea level on a rocky ridge called the Witwatersrand (Ridge of White Waters). This ridge is the edge of the world’s largest known gold deposit, formed over 2 billion years ago when an ancient inland sea began to evaporate, leaving behind layers of gold-bearing conglomerate.

When George Harrison, an Australian prospector, stumbled upon an outcrop of gold on the farm Langlaagte in 1886, he triggered a “gold rush” that changed the course of African history. Within a decade, a dusty collection of tents and wagons transformed into a permanent city of brick and mortar. The “Main Reef” proved so vast that it eventually produced nearly 40% of all the gold ever mined in human history. This geological wealth dictated the city’s layout: the mining belt runs east-to-west across the city’s center, creating a physical divide between the wealthy northern suburbs and the industrial, working-class south. Today, while most mines within the city limits have closed due to the extreme depth and cost of extraction (some mines reached over 3.9 kilometers underground), the physical legacy remains in the form of “mine dumps”—massive yellow-white hills of crushed rock and sand that define the Joburg skyline.