The popular Cape Town International Jazz Festival will not take place again this year after the banning of indoor and outdoor gatherings due to the spike of Covid-19 infections and national lockdown.
Other events will also be affected by the situation in SA.
The celebrated Cape Town event that normally takes place about March was postponed last year, just two weeks before the national lockdown and will be back next year.
According to festival director Billy Domingo the decision to postpone the festival was motivated by the desire to put the safety of the people first. He said: “We made that decision last year.
The festival is not about the musicians only, it involves a whole chain which suffers when everything is on lockdown. We decided to put it on hold until it is safe to have the event in 2022.”
Domingo said even if the country could be put on lockdown level 1, the festival would not happen this year because the preparations for the festival start a year ahead.
Asked about hosting the festival virtually, Domingo said: “We can stage the event virtually but if it was going to be shown on a platform like SABC1, where everyone in the country can watch and enjoy the music. But what we plan to do is to stream selected live concerts for the fans online.”
It was still unclear if other major events that make up the local entertainment calendar like the Mangaung African Cultural Festival (Macufe), Standard Bank Joy of Jazz and Moretele Park Music Festival will happen after all the events did not happen last year. Many promoters were left despondent.
Some of the promoters told Sowetan that they were still hopeful, while others want to try a virtual edition if the situation does not improve.
They argued that even if the country was opened with a limitation on the number of patrons, it was still not viable for them due to the cost involved in staging shows.
Co-founder of the Moretele Park event, Sam Mhangwani, said he felt like his career as a promoter was coming to an end. Mhangwani, who founded the festival 20 years ago with Leonard Sithole, said he was praying for Covid-19 to end in time to organise the event for September.
Peter Tladi, the man behind the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz, said preparations for the staging of this year’s event were in full swing.
“The lockdown affects our business dearly but we will continue preparing for the event because it happens in September. The situation might change in the next months ...”
Joe Chakela, who has been organising Macufe, doubts if major live events, including his, will take place this year.
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