Recipients of the Arts & Culture Trust (ACT) Nedbank bursary who completed their master's degrees – Relebohile Mabunda, Simangaliso Thango, and Lunga Khuhlane – are pursuing successful careers in South Africa’s cultural and creative management sector. They are applying their knowledge and experience to identify the gaps and address what is needed to advance arts and culture in South Africa.
Simangaliso Thango
'I have a rural and urban upbringing, as I spent my childhood in KwaNongoma in KwaZulu-Natal until I was 12 when my father, who was a maths and physical science teacher, passed away, and we then moved to Richards Bay where my mum secured an officer administrator position.'
'I was very active in the creative arts at Khula High School in Richards Bay where I was in the school choir and competed in the South African Choral Eisteddfod. The pianist for the soloist section, Mr Ashan Peiris, who was also a lecturer at the University of Zululand at the time, encouraged me to pursue my talent further and to apply to Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), which I did, starting my first year in 2012.'
At Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), Thango completed a national diploma in vocal art followed by a bachelor of technology in vocal art, graduating in 2016. He spent a year in Greece as a resident singer in a local company to repay his university loan, before enrolling at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in 2019 for his honour's degree in arts, culture and heritage management.
Cultural policy and management encompass arts management and the creative economy, both of which are crucial for artists to understand, as they cover the whole value chain of the industry. Thango says a persistent issue is the survival and sustainability of micro-, small- and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the cultural and creative industries. 'Most continue to battle and depend on grants, and there is a pressing need to develop their entrepreneurial skills.'
Throughout his studies, he continued singing, performing mainly at corporate gigs, including crossover, opera, and musical theatre. He still does so through the company he’s been with since 2013, called Elegant Entertainment.
'My master's assisted me hugely in my career in the cultural and creative management sector, and in 2020, I was offered a contract by the National Arts Council as not many people have a master's in this area. After this, I joined the provincial and national Department of Sport, Arts and Culture as a project manager. I worked with the government-funded South African Cultural Observatory which researches and identifies gaps in the cultural and creative sector and informs funding for all sectors in the arts – performing and visual arts as well as books and publishing.
'During my time with the department, I administered the fund and cultivated strong partnerships across all spheres of governance; national, provincial. It was rewarding but also frustrating as so much needs to be done, including advancing music and all the arts at school level, which is not happening. The arts sector is also still not recognised as a serious industry despite contributing 4% to the GDP.'
'Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture, Gayton McKenzie, is working on addressing this and he recently established the Cultural and Creative Industries Sector cluster to try and regroup the industry and address ongoing issues, such as struggles in disadvantaged communities to grow creative talent and audience development – for which thriving community arts centres are essential, and to address issues such as the intellectual property rights of performers, and to educate people in the arts about contracts and business.'
Returning to his love of research, Thango joined the University of South Africa's Department of Art and Music as a lecturer in February this year. 'Continuing my research is very much part of this decision,' he says. 'I'll be starting my doctorate next year focusing on music education at all levels, formal and informal, and hopefully use my position to encourage many more schools to offer music as part of their curriculum.'
Relebohile 'Lebo' Mabunda
'I have a particular interest in community theatre and the importance of community art centres in advancing theatre and all the arts across South Africa,' says Mabunda, who is currently an administrator in the Department of Theatre and Performance at Wits.
'It concerns me that most of our community art centres have been deteriorating over many years. It motivated my master's degree in cultural policy and management at Wits in 2019 to find out why this is happening and how to turn it around, as community arts is a critical component of arts and culture in the country.'
Mabunda found out about the ACT Nedbank postgraduate bursary through her lecturer, Avril Joffe, who holds the joint United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) chair in cultural entrepreneurship and policy at the Wits School of Arts (WSOA) and serves as the postgraduate coordinator for the Department of Cultural Policy and Management.
'What I discovered then, and what continues to be a major issue today is how cultural policy is practised in community art centres. Local government structure is responsible for their funding, but they say they are only responsible for the infrastructure and that provincial is responsible for programme implementation. The frustration is that this creates a serious disjuncture, and in many cases, both are not doing what they should be doing as prescribed by the White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage of 1996, which clearly stipulates support for these centres should be given.
'To try and revive those that have collapsed and support those still hanging on, we need to partner with other departments, notably the Department of Social Development, as well as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), so that community arts centres go beyond the arts to serve the whole community. This way, communities can be encouraged to take ownership of the centres over and above what the government contributes,' says Mabunda.
She experienced first-hand how effective this is when she went to Germany after being awarded a German Chancellor Fellowship from 2022 to 2023 on the strength of her community theatre research. At the time, she was Head of Programmes at the Dumisani Masilela Theatre in Ekurhuleni.
She was hosted in Stuttgart at the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) in the Department of Media, Dialogue and Research. The ifa is Germany's oldest intermediary organisation for foreign cultural relations, promoting dialogue in arts, civil society, and research. It is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.
'While there, I engaged with numerous community projects and organisations, such as the Volkstheater Lab in Stuttgart – an experimental neighbourhood or community project that engages the whole community through participatory neighbourhood art, multi-perspective storytelling, and the exploration of current urban and social topics,' Mabunda explains. 'The success of it is that it is not only the arts community but the whole community, young and old, getting together and engaging in the space which they all look after. I directed a theatre production here called Life, Death and Neighbourhood' adds Mabunda.
Lule Productions and Lunga Khuhlane
As part of her community theatre commitment, Mabunda is also the co-founder of Lule Productions together with theatre director, producer, and cultural manager, Lunga Khuhlane. 'At the core of my artistic and academic interests is the preservation of indigenous African knowledge systems, languages, and heritage,' he explains. 'I am currently developing an interprovincial festival dedicated to indigenous language storytelling, creating spaces for cultural memory, oral traditions, and multilingual expression.'
Khulane was also supported by an ACT Nedbank postgraduate bursary for his master's in cultural policy and management at Wits, as he explains:
To address this, they recently opened the Lule Foundation through which they are working with different departments, such as Social Development and numerous schools where learners get to tell their stories. One of their collaborations is with the Harvey Cohen Foundation for the disabled, with whom they explored disability and the arts in a production called DisArtibility. They also partner with major venues such as the Joburg Theatre in educational and community theatrical productions, such as the production of the Grade 10 literature setwork, The African Dustbin by Victor Mtubani about the dumping of toxic waste in Africa.
