It was a disaster of significant proportions. An embarrassment.
The City of Tshwane municipality under whose jurisdiction the national capital Pretoria falls, spent R65 million ($6.5 million) in preparation for the highly anticipated TribeOne Dinokeng Festival.
Sadly, all that (taxpayers’) money went to waste as the festival was canned last month. The cited reason for the cancellation was “infrastructural requirements had not been adequate to host an event of such magnitude.
Now the African National Congress’s Youth League (ANCYL) wants the R10 million ($1 million) deposit paid for headline act, Nicki Minaj, paid back. Lesego Makhubela of the league urged that the artist should “do the right thing” and repay the money.
“She knows that she hasn’t worked for the money and there are many charities that she can donate the money to. We don’t want taxpayers’ money to be used on boob jobs,” he said.
The city has been generally criticised for its poor handling of the event which was scheduled to include major international acts such as Macklemore and J Cole.
The league also called for city manager Jason Ngobeni’s resignation and Tshwane Mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa to apologise for misusing public money.
As yet, there has been no official response from the US-based artist.
