A row has broken out between the City of Cape Town and some minstrel organisations.
|||Cape Town - A row has broken out between the City of Cape Town and some minstrel organisations over the contract allocation process for an events organiser for the Tweede Nuwejaar Minstrel Carnival.
Mayor Patricia de Lille and several minstrel organisations met at the City Hall on Thursday to sign an agreement in support of the event. But the Cape Minstrel Carnival group and Cape Town Minstrel Association voiced their disapproval that an events organiser had not been chosen from their community.
Sedick Soeker, vice-chairman of the Cape Town Minstrel Association, said the whole process was fraudulent: “We want the process that we first agreed upon. A white company which doesn’t care about our community was appointed. We don’t make money from the carnival, it’s a free show. It costs around R150 000 just for a small team to show at the carnival.”
De Lille said: “We have been through months of negotiation and it is regrettable that a minority of minstrels has decided not to participate due to dissatisfaction with the tender process. The appointment… was conducted in a fair manner.”
The city had tried to strengthen its relationship with the minstrel community as part of efforts to revive the historic and cultural significance of the Cape Minstrels’ annual carnival.
“Last year, the city appointed retired Constitutional Court Justice Kate O’Regan as an independent mediator to lead negotiations between the city and the minstrels’ organisations,” De Lille said. “Our constructive engagements resulted in the return of the event to its original date on January 2 every year and its traditional route through Bo-Kaap.”
Igshaan Higgins, an attorney for the Cape Minstrel Carnival group, said: “My clients understood that someone from the community would be given an opportunity (in the tender process) and they were not given an opportunity due to public process. We want an audience with the mayor to get to the bottom of this.”
Higgins added that the group would still participate in the carnival on January 2.
natasha.bezuidenhout@inl.co.za
Cape Argus