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The National Arts Festival is a platform on which we express the truths of our reality and the dreams of our nation, said Arts and Culture Minister, Lulu Xingwana.

Speaking at the Festival’s official opening at the Micky Yili Stadium — after she and her entourage had arrived an hour late and been praised at length by two iimbongis — Xingwana said the arts had helped South Africa overcome decades of apartheid and centuries of colonialism to become a nation free of racism and sexism.

“With arts and culture we must continue to mobilise our people to fight poverty and crime, and create a socially cohesive nation,” she said.

And the National Arts Festival was a major stepping stone to helping us reach our developmental and creative goals.

Praising the Festival further, she said the freedom of expression it engendered and the celebration of our differences allowed us to recognise and embrace one another, fostering the aims of ubuntu.

Speaking to a crowd of about 500, many of whom were local Eastern Cape artists, she touched on the subject of funding, saying “artists need to earn a decent living”, and therefore the government was investing in cultural programmes and undergoing a “cohesive” policy review which was focusing on what needs to be done to “create an enabling environment for artists and cultural workers”.

“Many of them are not able to reap the benefits of their products, and many of them die as paupers.”

With the theme of this year’s Festival being “Celebrating South African Culture as a Gateway to 2010″, much was also made of next year’s FIFA World Cup: we need to showcase our heritage, and show the world what we are capable of.

Sports, Recreation, Arts and Culture MEC, Xoliswa Tom, said the Festival, “of which we are very proud”, is a “paradise of artists and cultural activists”.

But Tom said there were artists who were skilled but had no money to participate in the Festival, and they needed to be identified and assisted by the province.

She used Wordfest, the literary festival within the National Arts Festival, as an example of a platform that had “unearthed” the skills of Eastern Cape poets and authors, who, by being exposed to a network of publishers and donors, had become published writers.

Eastern Cape Premier Noxolo Kiviet said there was a cooperative fund “ready to help artists”, and she encouraged artists to work with the tourism industry to “show off our national and cultural heritage”.

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