Event planners and civic groups say Cape Town’s policies are making it almost impossible to hold “innovative” gatherings.
|||Cape Town - Organisers and civic groups who want to hold innovative or unconventional events claim the City of Cape Town’s policies ensure their events are “strangled by red tape”.
The complaint was echoed by participants in this past weekend’s Toy Run, for which more than 8 000 bikers took to the streets for charity.
Marcela Guerrero Casas of the Open Streets initiative has said that costs and processes are often a deterrent to innovative events.
Making provision for “community-driven activities that fall outside the typical commercial realm and facilitating permit processes” would go a long way to encourage genuine community building in the city, he said.
The recent furore over the city’s intention to stop the Moonlight Mass night cycle because of safety concerns sparked a heated debate on social media platforms about the city’s inflexible approach to community-driven initiatives.
“Really disappointed that the permit for #moonlightmass was withdrawn without any apparent reason. Because it merely didn’t fit any box when it came to a permit applications. I find this ridiculous. I am having the same problems with the city with a food market I’m trying to start. It doesn’t fit any boxes and therefore nobody takes responsibility for the permit application,” read one of the many tweets about the event.
Rory Williams, co-founder of Open Streets, wrote that it was an “unfortunate reality that city officials often are unresponsive to unconventional requests and seem uninterested”.
He said the World Design Capital 2014 provided an opportunity for the city to test new processes and allow for creative events.
But the city has defended its sometimes “onerous” response to event applications, saying it has to comply with national legislation when it considers the merits of allowing any event to take place.
“The consequence of not doing so is that the city becomes liable for acts of error or omissions or where it could be deemed negligent for not having applied due care to the event applications,” said Grant Pascoe, mayoral committee member for tourism and events.
With a number of big events attracting thousands of people and bringing in millions of rand in revenue, Cape Town has earned a reputation as an events destination.
According to last year’s state of the central city survey by the Cape Town Central City Improvement District, the Cape Argus Pick n Pay Cycle Tour brings R450 million to the city’s coffers, while the Cape Town International Jazz Festival’s contribution is about R700m.
Pascoe said the city spent R33m on key events. It had hosted 31 events from this budget and 35 ad hoc events. A further 42 events had been sponsored by either partial funding or services.
The city also organised three annual events: the Festival of Lights, the New Year’s Eve event at the Grand Parade and the Tweede Nuwe Jaar Minstrels Parade on January 4.
The city has provided R40m for the World Design Capital 2014.
The city’s events policy is fairly new, having only been approved by the council in May. But one of its “desired outcomes” is to “create an enabling mechanism for new approaches to events”.
It also states: “Cape Town aspires to being a thought leader in the hosting of events and encourages innovation, new initiatives and creativity.”
The policy applies to all events in the city which may require the council’s services, have implications for public safety, the environment and local communities and which take place in a public or private place.
There are various ways the city could fund an event: as a sponsor; as a host, for which it will provide up to 50 percent of the costs; by buying a rights package in return for funding or by creating and funding its own events. All events require a permit issued by the city’s event permit office, and the organisers must comply with the city’s events by-law and the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
Pascoe said the office dealt with about 5 000 event requests a year, but only about 1 500 permits had been issued to date this year.
He said that the city could not issue a permit for the Moonlight Mass event because there was no event organiser and the prerequisite safety features were not in place.
The city was also required to deploy traffic officers and other support staff for each event hosted in the city, and this often meant that resources were pulled from other areas where they might be of greater use.
With the Moonlight Mass event earlier this month, staff were pulled from the flood-stricken areas to be on standby for a few hundred cyclists.
Pascoe said it was important to note that no event, not even a repeat event, would be given approval for a whole year.
“Each event must be applied for separately.”
This was to ensure the proper response to the number of participants, prevailing conditions and concurrence with other city events. He said the facilitators had been invited to a follow-up meeting next month before the next scheduled event.
Pascoe said the city was working with all event organisations to find solutions for problems or concerns.
A special mayoral sub-committee had been set up to review all new applications, “from multimillion-rand concerts at the Cape Town Stadium to smaller events in local communities”.
anel.lewis@inl.co.za
Cape Argus