Pretoria - The chosen venue for the scrapped Dinokeng Tribe-One Festival was not fit to even host an initiation school, the Tshwane ANC Youth League said on Thursday.
“The ANCYL in greater Tshwane region affirms the decision of the Dinokeng Tribe-One Festival organisers, Sony Music Entertainment and Rockstar400 for pulling the plug on the Music Concert,” it said in a statement.
“We have visited the site and have found nothing that suggests that there is infrastructure in place to host an event of such magnitude.”
The league said it was daylight robbery that the city had spent millions of rands on the event, and the city had to justify to ratepayers how the money was spent.
“The ANCYL denounces the ill-informed and imprudent spending on the failed festival which is a smack in the face of the many destitute families of the city,” the league said.
It called on Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Pravin Gordhan to constitute a ministerial task team to investigate the city administration.
“We call for the enforcement of the principles of transparency and accountability in an uncompromised manner as envisaged by MFMA (Municipal Finance Management Act), the Constitution... and other related legislative enactments.”
On Tuesday, there was confusion as to why the festival, supposed to have been held in Cullinan, 30km east of Pretoria, was cancelled.
Tshwane mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa said after a site visit that the city was surprised when it received a letter of cancellation from the organisers.
Pointing to the open field, he said: “Everything is ready, the infrastructure is ready. The stage is not up because the festival was cancelled but we would have been ready.”
Ramokgopa and officials in his office took the media on a site tour on Tuesday to display the infrastructure.
It was supposed to be a “virgin venue” with no surfaced roads, but with lighting and chemical toilets, Ramokgopa explained.
He said R65 million was spent on the event Ä R40m for infrastructure and R25m for marketing, promotions, and securing artists. The city wanted to recoup the R25m if the concert did not go ahead.
However, TribeOne Festivals said in a statement on September 17, that the host City of Tshwane had not met the infrastructure deadlines for the concert.
The concert would have been held from September 26 to 28, with events company Rockstar4000 and Sony Music Entertainment.
Ramokgopa said the city and organisers went on a site tour on September 3, where it was indicated that everything was ready for the festival.
He said of the 100 000 people that were expected to attend the three-day festival, only 4 000 tickets were sold at the beginning of September.
Sapa