AFRICA’S biggest music festival, TribeOne Dinokeng, is officially off – with the organisers and City of Tshwane blaming each other for the ill-fated mission.
The infrastructure development of the venue came at a cost of about R40 million to ratepayers. The city paid the organisers an additional R25m to host the event.
TribeOne Festivals yesterday confirmed the cancellation of the three-day event, with headline acts like Nicki Minaj. It was scheduled for next weekend outside Cullinan.
But the city is challenging the decision in court.
The organisers have accused the city of falling behind schedule, making it impossible to stage and deliver a festival to the scale and quality planned. But the city has strongly denied this.
The council took the media to the site on Thursday to prove it had met its contractual obligations – and that the event organisers were at fault.
The event was expected to attract 100 000 people with spin-offs for the local community and hospitality industry, but it has since emerged that only 4 000 tickets had been sold. This, and a suspected lack of money, led to the cancellation of the festival that was to feature 150 performers, according to the city.
The Pretoria News made numerous attempts to get comment from the organisers, but a consultant answering the phones said she was not authorised to comment and everyone was in a meeting discussing the pending court case.
During the infrastructure visit, the site looked almost ready. Unlike last month when the Pretoria News visited the area, there is now an access road to the stage area.
The ground has been levelled and grassed, with street lights, high-mast lights, fencing, water supply and wi-fi connectivity. Cellphone network companies have also put up towers in the area.
Grass-cutting was under way on the section earmarked for parking.
Tshwane’s Ntokozo Xaba, who oversaw the infrastructure development of the venue, said the city was ready to hand it over to the organisers on Monday, as agreed.
Xaba said meetings were held with organisers every Monday. At no point did they mention their unhappiness with infrastructure, he said. However, last week they failed to attend without a warning or apology.
Tshwane spokesman Selby Bokaba said the organisers designed the production of one main stage instead of three as originally planned.
He said they cited a lack of infrastructure as reason for the cancellation, but had not pointed out what was not developed.
The organisers wanted the festival to be held on a large piece of land with minimal development, except basic supporting infrastructure such as roads, electricity and water, he said. They indicated that the festival would need three stages and marked the location of these on a site map in July.
In accordance with this plan, the city installed high-mast lights, high and low voltage electricity transformers and water supply.
But on August 31, the organisers changed their minds without any consultation and decided on one stage, said Bokaba.
“For the first time they provided details of the infrastructure requirements in and around the stage area.
“We committed to provide these by September 15 so that suppliers could move in,” Bokaba said.
“This was done except for a few minor things such as access roads to the parking areas which were to be completed on September 23, as agreed.”
The city had since learnt that the organisers were already reneging on their commitments to their suppliers, Bokaba said.
“They even proposed that the inaugural festival be postponed to April next year, or moved to Loftus Stadium,” said Bokaba.
Tshwane entered into the multi-million rand agreement to be the host city, he said.
The city claims the organisers then sent an SMS to its strategic executive director of communication, marketing and events, Nomasonto Ndlovu, requesting a further R20m.
Bokaba said when the city agreed to the proposal to develop the Dinokeng events theme park for the TribeOne Festival, it was also planning to use the site as an outdoor events venue in future.
This was an opportunity to create infrastructure for crowd-pulling major events into the eastern part of the city, thereby stimulating economic activity. “The city will continue to pursue this objective and fully utilise this unique and expansive venue for major events.”
Petersen Mahlangu, of the Cullinan Tourism Association, said they were extremely disappointed at the turn of events. Everyone was expecting to benefit from the event, he said, and accommodation establishments, restaurants and other tourism hotspots had already spent money to renovate their places in anticipation of the festival crowds.
Details of ticket refunds will be announced later.