BAC drops P180k bill on SRC festival
Katlego Isaacs | Sunday May 15, 2022 06:00
The BAC SRC and all 23 scheduled performing artists were awakened on the morning of the show to a memo by BAC management informing them that the SRC had violated the terms of their agreement to organise a Semester Shutdown, and as a result the school will not pay for or endorse any aspect of the event.
BAC alleges that the students broke several terms of their agreement to fund the Semester Shutdown without first consulting management including a change of venue, change of date and time, a failure to incorporate an edutainment aspect to the event and the engagement of more international artistes than originally agreed upon.
Most prominent of the issues were the engaged international artistes and failure to include an edutainment aspect to the event as the school had been prepared to pay for a vaccination campaign for the event and all-local performing line-up, or one international artist at most.
The school asserts that the engagement of four international artists including Kabza De Small, Musa Keys, Uncle Vinny, and DJ Jury as well as the absence of any vaccination campaign or edutainment was a deliberate breach of contract.
SRC President, Theo Monageng, however, contests that BAC was fully aware of the proceedings of the events and purposely sabotaged students' efforts.
"We had initially wanted artists of a specific caliber; we created a budget and an outline of what we were seeking. The school then told us they can't afford the type of event we want, so we concluded with the school that we will find a partner for the event," Monageng said.
"We had spoken with AmaHot Entertainment to assist us in bringing in international acts at their expense because the school said they can't afford such big name artistes. We presented our agreement contract to management and they denied it stating that they need to run it by their lawyers," he said.
"We then came to find out that the school finance manager is looking to pay promoters to come conduct the event, without telling us anything which was against the constitution," he added.
Monageng further expressed that the school repeatedly violated the constitution that both the SRC and management are bound by to consistently being at odds with the SRC without consultation, reasoning or communication.
"The school was forcing us to push the date of the event back to May 7, from it's original May 6 date, even though they knew we had already communicated with all the artistes, signed contracts and were ready to go ahead with the event. We told them pushing it back would be a bit impossible but they didn't want to hear it," he said.
"The school then told us the event should end at 12 midnight instead of 6am claiming crime rates are high at that time. We insisted on 6am so that people could leave the event at a safer time," he allayed.
"We told them that BAC is too small to hold this event so we should move it to Fairgrounds and have our partners pay for it, which they also refused," he added.
The SRC's expressions of concern, however, seemingly fell on deaf ears as management consistently snapped back at every decision made by the students, up to refusing to pay for the event if their demands are not fully met.
This inevitably culminated into the BAC pulling all funding for the event. This then left the SRC and AmaHot Entertainment to settle the P180,000 outstanding balance to the artistes and service providers, which has yet to be paid to date.
Failure to release funds to the SRC, however, is allegedly an issue that backdates multiple SRC administrations over multiple years.
Monageng stated that the school was constitutionally obligated to pay out roughly P870,000 in subvention funds to the SRC last year, which it failed to do.
His last two predecessors also assert that they never received their subvention funds, which would roughly estimate to over P2 million in funds having been retained by management without cause.
"I fear my education being spoiled, but we plan to take BAC to court for repeatedly failing to abide by it's constitution and running this school like a dictatorship," Monageng said.
"We want to send a message to all schools that the SRC isn't afraid to stand up for themselves," he said.
AmaHot Entertainment managing director, Abednico Malepa, also expressed that he will be taking legal action against BAC for loss of business.
"We are writing a letter of demand to BAC requesting full payment be made for causing us a loss of business and violating our agreements," Malepa said.
"If they refuse to settle we will be taking them to court over pulling out late, harassing on social media, and writing letters to the artistes, which convinced some not to come at all which was a big loss for us and we need our expenses recovered," he elated.
BAC management representative, Mbatili Ntobe, stated the school would remain in communication with artistes and service providers that were already partially paid and make payment arrangements.
It remains unclear how the school will deal with all the other incurred costs.