SMALL businesses and musicians intend suing the organisers of the TribeOne Dinokeng music festival for loss of income following the cancellation of the event, which was to be headlined by hip hop star Nicki Minaj.
On Friday the organisers – TribeOne Festivals – and the City of Tshwane continued to blame each other for the cancellation.
TribeOne argued it cancelled the event after Tshwane failed to meet infrastructure development obligations and had incurred a loss of at least R20 million as a result of the cancellation.
However, the municipality denied this and pointed to unpaid service providers as proof that the organisers had financial difficulties.
Tshwane has filed an urgent application in the high court to force the organisers to continue with the event next weekend in an open field outside Cullinan as planned. The matter will be heard on Monday.
The Greater Tshwane Business Forum announced it would sue the organisers for showing blatant disregard for small businesses.
Chairman Abraham Mashishi said the traders attended sessions and invested resources to make sure they were considered vendors at the event. He said they received confirmation that their services would be required.
Mashishi said the forum was encouraging musicians who participated in Battle of the City and other related competitions linked to the festival to get involved in the litigation. Artists who were not paid deposits will also be included.
TribeOne said there was enough money for the event, had infrastructure been developed in time.
The Pretoria News learnt the organisers had sent a text message to Tshwane official, Nomasonto Ndlovu, requesting R20m in addition to the first R25m of the three-year agreement. The city has denied know ledge of the text.
The city spent at least R40m on infrastructure development.
There were other financial obligations which could not be disclosed as the matter was before the courts.
TribeOne spokesman Derrick Kaufmann said their priority with regards payment was artists before service providers.
He said invoices were still being processed.
“We set a final deadline of September 12, after which heavy duty trucks were to start taking equipment there, but there were no proper roads,” he said. In addition, Kaufmann said there was no running water and electricity had not been connected and tested. Neither were there sewerage facilities. He said the ground was not levelled, and putting up a stage would have been risky.
He admitted just 4 000 tickets had been presold, but said this was because there was no site to promote, as evidence of the readiness were apparent from as far back as April when the site was just 6 percent complete when it should have been 70 percent at least.
Tshwane spokesman Selby Bokaba maintained the city had met its obligations and had a potential damages claim which it may pursue if the festival was not salvaged.
DA constituency head for Cullinan, Adriana Randall, urged the city to recoup the millions spent on the festival and direct it to service delivery in the area.
Randall said the city was forced to spend enormous amounts of money on infrastructure after organisers chose a privately-owned land with no services, while residents of the affected area faced poverty and unemployment.