By Maiko Zulu

AG REPORT UNCOVERS THE ROT AT NATIONAL ARTS COUNCIL

When we said the Artiste Empowerment Funds which were triggered by the bush protest were marred with suspicion and smelled of corruption, some people thought we were being negative towards the initiative because we were anti establishment. Government leaders called us names and some of our colleagues in the industry even refused to take pictures with us for fear of being denied the loot. Others cut all interaction and communication.

Well, the latest Auditor General’s Report has today vindicated us with shocking but unsurprising revelations of how a number of recipients where allocated millions of kwachas without having to follow National Arts Council guidelines.

We said openly then that those funds smelled of corruption and abuse of authority of office and we are still saying now that the Ministry of Tourism and Arts together with the National Arts Council abdicated their role of being impartial arts administrators and became shameless political cadres with no vision of development of the industry. We said then and we are saying now that NAC is the greatest of the arts and that reforms therein are long overdue.

The truance in NAC has unfortunately spilled over to some affiliate associations to a point where there in no accountability and AGM’s are held without financial reports. Meanwhile, NAC is always present and counting votes in these kangaroo meetings.

It was just a matter of time before the rot would be laid bare.

We hope that lessons will be learned from what will become of these serious revelations. The arts are bigger than a few individuals who shared tax payers money illegally amongst themselves while thousands of deserving artistes were sidelined.