WeeklySA_AdminACTION: South Africa’s film talent can conquer the world, but delayed rebates and bureaucratic inertia threaten to squander its promise. Columnist Themba Khumalo calls for a government ready to match its people’s ambition…
By Themba Khumalo
There is a goal that every South African over twenty-five can replay with their eyes closed. Siphiwe Tshabalala, left foot, the FNB Stadium roof lifting off, the first goal of the first World Cup played on African soil.
For a moment, an entire country forgot to be cynical. We believed we could stand before the world and be exactly as good as we claimed.
Then the vuvuzelas went quiet, the stadiums stayed behind, and the conviction went somewhere to die.
I was reminded of this watching Dr Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh’s SMWX podcast, which broadcast the panel he hosted at Brand South Africa’s Nation Brand Forum.
He sat down with Tshabalala, Joel Chikapa-Phiri, Thato Moraka and Dr Caroline Azionya to ask what football, film, culture and storytelling might still do for this country’s future.
We lose the world’s work not because we are not good enough, but because we are not organised enough…
They discussed the World Cup’s legacy and the youth we failed to develop; rebuilding the SABC; barriers locking young creatives out of education; and who gets to own our story on the world stage.
It was a conversation full of intelligence and love. It was also, if you listened closely, full of grief for everything we have been too slow, sleepy and bureaucratic to claim.
Then Phiri spoke, and I hit pause and played it back. A film producer, entrepreneur and chairman of the Known Associates Group, Phiri has spent more than three decades in local and international media. He occupies a front-row seat in our creative economy.
His conviction was absolute: “South Africa is the best country to make films in the world.” Not one of the best. The best. He was not boasting. He was reporting.
We can shoot London, New York, Lagos and the backyards of Australia, and build the sets for all of them. We have crews and technicians the world would kill for: heads of department who can break down a script and build a world from it.
Productions such as Mission: Impossible, 1923 and Children of Blood and Bone illustrate what this country can offer. We make hundred-million-dollar films here, on our soil, with our people. And a crucial obstacle standing between us and more productions is a rebate the state cannot pay on time.
Phiri explained it almost politely, the way people speak when they still need something from those they are describing.
Foreign producers come for the talent, locations, craft and incentive. But the DTIC rebate that helps make the arithmetic work has, he said, been in trouble for twenty-four months.
Two years. In film time, that is an epoch. Productions are financed on the strength of a promise. When that promise arrives late, short or not at all, a producer in Los Angeles calls Budapest, Sydney or Vancouver.
Those places are not necessarily better than us. They are reliable. That is the tragedy: we lose the world’s work not because we are not good enough, but because we are not organised enough.
I want to be fair. Rebates are complicated. Audits matter. Public money must be accounted for. Nobody sensible wants a free-for-all.
Administrative inconvenience
But there is a vast difference between rigour and rot. Rigour pays verified claims within a defined window. Rot leaves files gathering dust while crews go unpaid, vendors go under and an industry learns to fear the programme designed to feed it.
Ask the caterer, grip, costume maker or location owner what the difference is. They will tell you in rent they cannot pay.
Meetings, task teams and assurances that matters are being addressed cannot substitute for payment. This is the language of a civil service treating a cultural and economic opportunity as an administrative inconvenience.
Nor does the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture get to sit this out. A ministry with arts and culture in its name should be fighting for an industry that employs thousands, earns foreign currency and exports our image.
Where is the fire?
Where is the minister demanding a solution from Treasury and the DTIC, with a deadline attached?
Culture is not the garnish on the national plate. Done properly, it is the plate.
Now consider the clock. Phiri spoke of South Africa being the country of focus at next year’s Berlin film gathering.
That should mean more than a delegation arriving with business cards. Buyers, financiers, distributors and filmmakers represent an opportunity to put South Africa at the front of the room.
His point was that this cannot be only about film. Germany is a major trading partner. Build a Berlin week. Bring the hydrogen people, agriculture and winemakers. Phiri mentioned plans for Wesgro to take thousands of bottles: the right instinct.
Let cinema be the front door and the economy the house behind it. Every filmmaker is a walking advertisement for a country. Give them a trade delegation to follow.
But opportunities do not execute themselves. They arrive with deadlines and expiry dates. The graveyard of South African promise is thick with moments we were handed and quietly fumbled.
We lack a midfield
We held the World Cup. What did we build on it? We have the youth. Where is the pipeline? We have the stories. Who funds the schools teaching people to tell them?
Phiri’s warning was clear: creatives and the private sector could rescue the moment while government does little, then arrives late for the photograph, smiling and taking credit.
I am tired of that photograph. South Africa does not have a talent problem. We have an ambition-of-the-state problem. The people are world-class. The crews are world-class.
The stories, God, the stories: townships, farms, mines, shebeens and the shifting borders of a rainbow nation still arguing about its colours. They are a gold seam nobody has finished mining.
Tshabalala proved that a South African can strike the ball and the whole world will roar. Film is the same goal, scored repeatedly, in ten thousand frames, for decades.
What we lack is a midfield: administrators, policymakers and rebate processors whose job is to pass the ball to people who can score. Right now, they are examining it in the centre circle, drafting a memorandum about its provenance.
So here is the demand.
Fix the incentive. Pay verified claims on time, with transparent timelines and a named official answering for delays. An unreliable rebate is a gamble, and global capital has other places to go.
Publish the backlog. Explain what is outstanding, what requires further verification and when approved payments will be made. Producers should not need personal connections or repeated pleading to discover where their applications stand. Accountability must be visible to the smallest supplier as well as the largest studio.
Rebuild the SABC.
A thriving public broadcaster can be a first buyer, stage and training ground for a homegrown industry. Let it commission, nurture and show our stories, so we are not forever auditioning for approval abroad.
Open creative education. Talent without access is wasted potential. Provide bursaries, workshops, regional film schools and apprenticeships on those enormous sets. The next Tshabalala is somewhere in a township, holding a camera instead of a ball.
Call to action
A production should leave more than credits and spending behind. It should leave young South Africans with skills, relationships and a credible route to their next job.
Build those pathways deliberately, rather than hoping opportunity somehow finds the people who need it most.
Treat Berlin as a national project: a coordinated campaign across film, trade, agriculture, energy and tourism, with a budget, a lead and a plan finalised before the red carpet is unrolled.
This is not a plea for special treatment. It is a demand that government perform the basic work required to let an existing industry grow and compete.
None of this is exotic. Other countries understand it. What is missing is will, and will cannot always be blamed on Treasury.
When Tshabalala’s shot hit the net in 2010, nobody asked for a feasibility study or convened a working group. The ball went in, and a nation lost its mind with joy.
That was what we looked like when talent was allowed to run at goal.
We are the best place on earth to make a film. That is Phiri’s claim, delivered by someone who has worked at the highest level to anyone with the power to act. The sets are built. The crews are ready. The world has been calling for years.
The DTIC and DSAC must stop rewriting page one of a script that was greenlit long ago.
Roll camera … and action!
