Times Of Swaziland: ENCAC SPENDS E50K FOR AFRICA DAY CELEBRATIONS

ENCAC SPENDS E50K FOR AFRICA DAY CELEBRATIONS
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Mxolisi Dlamini on 30/05/2024 14:20:00


MBABANE – Eswatini National Council of Arts and Culture (ENCAC) spent E50 000
for National Africa Day celebrations.
This was revealed by ENCAC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Stanley Dlamini during
an interview with this publication, when asked about how much they had spent on
empowering young people during the celebrations. ENCAC successfully commemorated
African Day in all regions of the country.  This year’s African Day was themed
‘Educate an African child in readiness for the 21st century’ and according
to Dlamini, they were aligned with the theme as they only focused on the youth.
During the Africa Day celebrations, ENCAC gathered young people around
Shiselweni courtesy of the ‘Shiselweni Dance Competition,’ where there was a
grand prize of E10 000.  They went on to host another competition dubbed
‘Lubombo Dance Competition,’ where they also had E10 000 as the grand prize.
They also organised another celebration at Pigg’s Peak town and also had a
‘Cultural Film Exhibition’ on May 24, which was hosted at Julios Cinelux in
Manzini.
Exhibition
The exhibition was aimed at educating young people about sibhimbi, ummemo,
umtsimba, kubutseka, drama as well as traditional dances. According to Dlamini,
they used E50 000, which was an amount that was strictly budgeted for educating
local young people about the arts. Dlamini shared that they included the
financial incentives during the celebrations because they are looking to
professionalise the arts. According to them, there is still a gap that exists in
the local industry whereby artists are not paid for their work. He said they are
on the drive to ensure that every creative is paid whenever they are booked to
perform. “As an institution, we are on the drive to compel everyone to pay our
artists whenever they perform.
There is no performance that should be displayed without the necessary contract
and payment.
Gathering
Having said that, when gathering young people from Shiselweni, they cannot come
back empty-handed, they have to return with some incentive. Our prize breakdown
during the celebrations was differentiated by how many teams we had in each
region.  So we broke down the E10 000 prize for each region to award those who
excelled. This was compensation based on the performances showcased by the young
people,” Dlamini said. He went on to justify why they targeted young people
during the Africa Day celebrations citing that talent is going to open doors for
employment of young people in the arts sector.
“The arts are going to be a critical factor in terms of employment
opportunities in the creative sector. Talent becomes a critical competition in
the 21st century, so in the regions, we had a fixed budget to help the young
ones discover their talents. For example, in Manzini we were streaming
documentaries for kubutseka, umtsimba as well as traditional dances just to
educate the young ones,” Dlamini said. He further shared that winners of the
competitions which they hosted during Africa Day will form part of regional
dance troupes.  “Basically, during these competitions, we were establishing
the dance troupes. The winners of the competitions will then become the core of
each dance troupe from each region. We want every region to have a street
carnival, whether you call it Manzini Day, Nhlangano Day or Pigg’s Peak Day.
‘‘This is where we want to display the different regional troupes that were
given birth to, by the competitions we recently had. We want our youth to
participate in the street carnivals,” he said.