The arts community is incensed over the death of veteran actress Nandi Nyembe, and Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie has been given just 14 days to address government spending and present a viable plan for struggling legends.
In a scathing open letter, the president of the Unemployed and Unashamed Movement, Siphesihle Shabalala, charges the government with hypocrisy for neglecting Nyembe during her lifetime and then lavishing money on a lavish memorial after her death.
“Tomorrow, cameras will beam velvet speeches and choreographed mourning into our living rooms. But how much will this spectacle cost?” asks Shabalala in the letter.
“Mama Nandi died unemployed, unassisted, and unseen by the system. Yet in death, the state suddenly remembers her.”
Nyembe, who passed away on Saturday at the age of 75, was well-known for her roles in Yizo Yizo, Zone 14, and Adulting.
Plea for work
In her final years, she pleaded not for pity but for work, reportedly saying: “Give me a script, and I’ll show you.”
However, both the industry and the government remained silent.
Shabalala asserts that McKenzie needs to take responsibility. He demands that all expenses associated with Nyembe’s memorial, from tents and flowers to sound systems and television coverage, be disclosed in full within 14 days.
More significantly, he demands that the department present a specific plan to guarantee that no other icon experiences the same fate.
“We are not calling for charity. We are asking for structural change, for policies that ensure our artists can live from their legacies, not only be remembered by them,” writes Shabalala in the letter.
He slammed what he calls the “grotesque theatre” of state-funded funerals.
“When artists live, they languish; when they die, they are deified. Minister, do not mistake flowers for honours. True honour is not found in the casket; it is found in the care.”
Nyembe’s case not isolated
The letter also criticises the government’s fixation on consultants and frameworks that yield no results.
“Millions are spent on the thinking class while the performing class dies hungry. Reports gather dust while legends beg for work,” he writes.
Shabalala warns that Nyembe’s case is not an isolated tragedy but a pattern.
“Until strategies replace speeches, until care replaces coffins, our icons will spend their remaining years ashamed not of their talent, but of a government that buries them with pomp after starving them in life.”
Should McKenzie fail to take action within the allotted 14 days, Shabalala warned that history will harshly judge him.
“It will be remembered that under your watch, the government perfected the art of burying its legends while abandoning them alive.”
