The Creative Arts and the Two Million Cedi Conundrum
In the latest restructuring
of government business, the President has created a Ministry of Culture,
Creative Arts and Tourism which presumably merges the old Ministry of Culture
and Chieftaincy and that of Tourism. Even before the Ministry is properly set
up it has to confront the strange case of the two million Ghana cedis which was
earmarked for the creative arts industry in the 2012 budget.
The issue is a very
simple one. The Ghanaian creative arts sector has been crying for government support
for years so it came as welcome relief and a good sign for the future when the
2012 budget allocated two million Ghana cedis to the creative arts. It is important
to quote the exact words of the relevant paragraphs in the budget:
“1232. Ghana can
benefit immensely if it begins to tap the creative sector of the economy,
particularly those of the music and film industry. But this will require an
evaluation of the potential of the creative industry to contribute to the
growth of the economy. Beginning in 2012, therefore, Government will
collaborate with the music industry to identify the potential of the industry
through an impact assessment study. The study will be used to support the
preparation of a medium term strategic framework that will guide the
development of the industry. Government will also support the organisation of
the 2012 Ghana Music Fair”.
“1233. An amount of
GH¢2.0 million has been allocated to support the creative arts industry in
2012”.
The best that can be
said about the wording of these paragraphs is that it is very confusing; paragraph
1232 appears to allocate the money to specific activities, namely the
organisation of the “2012 Music Fair” and an “impact assessment study” probably
as a response to the need to “evaluate the potential of the creative industry
to contribute to the growth of the economy”, as expressed in paragraph 1232,
but no agency or organisation is given the responsibility to carry out these
tasks. The common interpretation of these bewildering sentences taken together is
that the money was meant for the “creative arts industry” as stated above.
This view was
reinforced by government officials as well as industry players who explained at
different forums that the money was meant for the creative arts sector as a
whole. According to a Graphic Showbiz report in September last year, the
President mentioned the subject when he made “a policy statement in Accra on the
direction of the country for the next four months. He told the nation that his
government appreciated the potential of artists and it was in recognition of this
that the last budget allocated an amount of GH 2million to the creative
industries. He went on to indicate that his office was working towards an acceptable
way of disbursing the funds”. Indeed as Vice President, Mr. Mahama had given
the same assurance to the Ghana Culture Forum which is a network of all the
organisations in the sector at a meeting at the Castle in June last year.
As the various
organisations waited for the Ministry of Culture and Chieftaincy to come up
with the means by which arts associations could source the funds, it emerged
slowly that the Musicians Union of Ghana – MUSIGA – had succeeded in collecting
the whole of the two million cedis. We know as a fact that neither the Castle
nor the Ministry of Culture and Chieftaincy authorized the payment of the money
to the musicians union. The other organisations were understandably angry at
this turn of events and sought explanations. The Ghana Culture Forum sent a
letter to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning in August when rumours
started emerging of the fate of the money. As at this writing no official
explanation has been provided as to how one organisation got its hands on the
money and how it was able to do so without any authorization from the sector
ministry or the Castle.
So, what happened? Several
explanations have been proffered including the “justification” that the money
was solely intended for the Musicians Union, which would mean that the
President and all other state officials who said otherwise were mistaken.
Another explanation is that the Musicians Union had written a proposal for
which the government had responded with the two million cedis in the budget. If
the government intended the money for MUSIGA alone the budget statement and
subsequent government pronouncements could have made this clear beyond any
doubt. Even now, it is not late for the government to make that statement if
indeed the money was intended solely for MUSIGA.
One of the development
imperatives facing the arts community is unity of purpose and action. It has
been suggested by arts practitioners and policy makers that artists should come
together in order to strengthen their voice within the national space. The
Ghana Culture Policy makes the same point and that document was seen at the
time President Kufuor signed it in 2004 to provide a solution to the perennial
disunity and mistrust in the artistic community. Now, the two million cedi
conundrum is poisoning relations between the artistic groups with the drip-drip
of misinformation and suspicions.
That is one reason why
the new Ministry has to start its life with a clear statement on the two
million cedis. This being Ghana, there are some people who consider any
investigation into the matter as some kind of muckraking and prefer to let
sleeping dogs lie. The dogs are not sleeping; they are yelping furiously in the
undergrowth. There is another reason why the matter cannot be given to God in
the usual Ghanaian way. How did MUSIGA get hold of the money? Information in
the public domain is that MUSIGA did not go through the Ministry of Culture and
Chieftaincy as must be the case when public money is being disbursed and it has
to be established how this was done.
The artistic groups are
quick to explain that they have nothing against the Musicians Union but the
right thing must be done both in the implementation of the government’s
intensions in allocating the money and how it was disbursed. This is why the
first act of the new Minister must be to investigate this matter thoroughly and
do the right thing in order to start with a clean slate.
SHELF LIFE
Last
week saw the start of this micro-mini column where books I or Diary readers are
reading will be given a mention. I received quite a number of calls about the
first featured book, MY GHANAIAN ODYSSEY by Baffour
Agyeman Duah, published by Digibooks. A frequent question was
whether only books written by Ghanaians will be featured and the answer is no.
For example, this week I have revisited one of my favourite authors, Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle who created Sherlock Holmes, the great fictional detective. Such
classics, including books by Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare
and all the greats of English Literature classics are available for free from
the Project Guttenberg website for download.
A
word about Project Guttenberg: according to Wiki, “Project Gutenberg (PG) is a
volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to encourage the
creation and distribution of eBooks. It was founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart
and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the
full texts of public domain books. The project tries to make these as free as
possible, in long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any
computer. As of January 2013, Project Gutenberg claimed over 40,000 items in
its collection”. What I can add is that it is a book lovers’ paradise even if
its collection on Africa has a distinctive colonial flavour.
kgapenteng.blogspot.com
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