Ten years ago, hip hop star from Trinidad, Nicki Minaj, was set to hit the stage during the weekend of September 26 to 28, 2014.
It was supposedly Minaj’s debut performance on African soil together with 150 other artists from all around the world.
The concert venue was an open field near Refilwe in Cullinan.
The Tribe One Dinokeng music festival was however cancelled two weeks before it would have taken place.
The failed festival had financial implications for the metro and has only been considered during a meeting of the Municipal Public Accounts Committee in June.
This was after a forensic report about the embezzlement and spending without proper authorisation was submitted.
The city council approved the recommendation of the accounts committee at the end of June that the irregular expenditure should be recovered during the 2023/24 financial year.
The Article 79A committee recommended that the irregular spending of R246-million must be recovered.
This amount in total includes the funds spent on the cancelled music festival, as well as other incidents where municipal funds were spent without proper authorisation or against the established financial protocols during the past few fiscal years.
A council assignment was then given to the city manager for further action against councillors and officeholders implicated in incidents of alleged fruitless embezzlement of funds for the past decade.
One of the council members who has been involved in this investigation from the start is Siobhan Muller. She said she wants to expand this follow-up action of the council on the festival.
She believes other stakeholders of the organisation of the cancelled festival must be made public.
“And with this I mean the individuals who can be linked to the metro’s partnership with the execution of the contract with Sony Music Entertainment.
The metro has paid out more than R25-million for the festival over the course of 2014 to a corporation which was established to organise the festival.
“I am going to make it my job to explain the alleged role of a management member of this music giant in South Africa in this venture and the organisation of this failed festival, to their parent company in Japan. Their international office should investigate this then,” Muller emphasised.
She said the forensic rapport underlines her suspicion during the first visit ten years ago to the planned festival venue in Refilwe.
“The first time I heard about it, I already got a feeling that something wasn’t right. I went to investigate.
“The fact that metro funds were supposed to be used to build infrastructure on private land, already had me worried. This was against the Municipal Management Act. The festival terrain was also situated near a wetland,” Muller explained.
She was concerned about the impact the three-day festival would have on the environment and the organisers’ estimation of 10 000 festivalgoers it would attract.
A cemetery would also be implicated in the creation of infrastructure.
“It would have been an international festival that would have benefited the community such as newly installed unlimited Wi-Fi, accommodation in guest houses and the selling of food and drinks,” Muller explained.
After the festival was cancelled, Muller’s concerns grew.
According to her, just more than 700 tickets were sold.
Nobody came forward asking for a refund and there was no sign that the supposed artists objected or claimed cancellation fees from the organisers.
“Nobody even complained about their tickets on social media and I found it very strange. Not one of the exhibitors has indicated that they sought damages for costs incurred. That it was cancelled without any reaction just didn’t make any sense,” she said.
When the DA took over the city council in 2016, she started investigating what really happened to the funds of more than R25-million that was supposedly spent on the festival.
“Through my research, I realised something was amiss,” Muller said.
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The report was already finished by a well-known forensic auditing firm in 2017 and handed over to the metro.
The festival’s co-ordination from the metro’s side took place in 2014 under the leadership of then-mayor Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.
Ramokgopa was recently appointed Minister of Electricity and Energy during the recent cabinet shuffling of the May 2024 national elections.
“Funds have been signed off somewhere and I constantly wondered how the spending of the funds took place. The municipal committee under then-mayor Ramokgopa’s leadership did however approve it,” she said.
She emphasised that the forensic report cannot be made public due to confidentiality reasons.
“I asked myself and also asked the drafters of the report to consider this question: Was it ever planned that the festival would take place as proposed?”
In response to a request for comment by Rekord, Sony Music Entertainment said through their spokesperson Katlego Malatji, that they do not wish to comment at this stage.
The metro’s spokesperson Selby Bokaba said forensic reports are not shared with the public on principle until the entire process, which includes disciplinary procedures and criminal prosecution, has been completed.
Comment was sought from Ramokgopa, but none was received by the time of going to print.
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