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For 11 days this winter, Makhanda once again became the cultural capital of South Africa.
The 2026 National Arts Festival brought together more than 2,000 artists and over 270 productions, exhibitions, and performances spanning theatre, music, dance, visual art, comedy, and literature.
It demonstrated, once again, the extraordinary creativity found across our country and the power of the arts to bring South Africans together.
However, the festival unfolded against a deeply troubling backdrop.
Visitors arrived in a municipality plagued by unreliable water supplies, sewage spills, deteriorating roads, and failing infrastructure, due to years of financial and administrative collapse.
These are not new problems.
In January 2020, the high court found that Makana municipality had breached its constitutional obligations and ordered the dissolution of its council.
Six years later, the SA Human Rights Commission has again recommended that dissolution be considered because repeated interventions have failed.
The Festival’s organisers, artists, residents, and local businesses should not have to overcome a dysfunctional municipality simply to keep one of SA’s most important cultural institutions alive.
Despite these obstacles, the National Arts Festival remains an irreplaceable platform for artistic development.
It gives emerging artists access to audiences, critics, producers, and fellow practitioners whom they might otherwise never encounter.
Programmes such as the Standard Bank Young Artist Awards have helped identify and elevate generations of SA talent.
Its value also begins long before an artist reaches a professional stage.
Hundreds of pupils and teachers participate in the schools’ programme, attending performances, workshops, and other opportunities for creative learning.
For many young people, particularly those from communities where access to formal arts education is limited, the festival offers their first experience of professional theatre, dance, music, or visual art.
That exposure can unlock talent, confidence, and career ambitions.
It reminds pupils that the creative economy is not a distant or inaccessible world, but one in which they can participate.
The festival is equally important to Makhanda’s economy.
Research calculated its direct economic impact on the town at approximately R57.9m in 2024, with a wider impact of R131.8m across the Eastern Cape.
Accommodation establishments, restaurants, informal traders, transport operators, and other small businesses depend on the annual influx of visitors.
This contribution is especially important in a province struggling with unemployment and weak economic growth.
However, the festival has become smaller.
It presented more than 600 productions in 2019, compared with fewer than half that number in 2026.
Government funding has declined, while the municipal environment in which the festival operates has continued to deteriorate.
The National Arts Festival cannot be expected to survive indefinitely on resilience, emergency funding, and goodwill.
National and provincial government must provide stable, transparent, multi-year support that allows the festival to plan confidently, invest in artists, and rebuild its programme.
At the same time, decisive intervention is required in Makana.
Protecting the festival cannot mean temporarily cleaning streets while ignoring the government failure that caused their deterioration.
We extend our sincere appreciation to outgoing CEO Monica Newton for her courageous stewardship of the festival through the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, its difficult recovery, and an increasingly uncertain funding environment.
We wish her well in the next chapter of her career, and congratulate Palesa Kadi on her appointment as CEO from August 1.
She inherits an institution of immense national importance, and we wish her every success in protecting, rebuilding, and growing the festival.
The festival has preserved opportunity, creativity, and economic activity in Makhanda despite the surrounding municipality’s collapse.
Government must now show the same determination to preserve and support the festival.
- Leander Kruger MPL, DA Eastern Cape shadow MEC for sport, recreation, arts and culture
