More than 800 South African creatives and sports people have received counselling in the past 12 months to help them cope with their daily struggles.
This was revealed by the national department of sports, arts and culture on Thursday following rumblings from people in the arts space that the government-sponsored Silapha Wellness Programme hasn't done much for them.
This was sparked by a couple of incidents were creatives have taken their own lives because of depression and other mental challenges they faced. Some of the recent cases include veteran actor Patrick Shai and rapper Riky Rick, who both committed suicide.
The programme was initiated last year to assist artists and sport sector in psychosocial wellbeing. The department allocated R14.9m to Indingliz Advertising and Marketing to carry out the project for three years as a pilot.
Though not a big number, but at least 874 people have utilised the counselling services since the official launch in February. These sessions would normally be carried out through calls to their call centre or in-person counselling. Others got help through campaigns in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Free State.
According to the department's spokesperson, Masechaba Khumalo, the programme focuses on addressing emotional, physical, psychological and mental wellbeing of all artists and athletes.
Silapha report shows that more people preferred face-to-face counselling than the phone. It further shows that more men utilised the services than women.
Sowetan has learnt that some people who required counselling services were depressed because they could no longer afford to pay rent.
“The service provider brought ambassadors on board to direct and increase the number of artists and athletes towards the call centre to benefit from the services provided. Those are Penny Lebyane, Gigi Lamayne, Thandeka King, Jabu Mahlangu and Portia Modise. These were carefully selected to cover a wider spread of issues addressed by the programme, inclusive of GBV [Gender-based violence], mental illness, drug addiction, abuse and LGBTQ+ community,” said Khumalo
The department said it was concerned by the impact of Covid-19 to both sport and creative sector.
“The department introduced Silapha Wellness programme and performs continuous assessments/evaluations to ensure that it provides the intended impact. Taking into consideration that this is still in the pilot stage, wherein the department is strengthening the model to be fully functional going forward. The department has since moved towards a more inclusive integrated programme which speaks to wellness and GBVF [Gender-based violence and femicide],” added Khumalo.
The department said since Indingliz was a service provider, it was paid per invoice and report submitted.
Arts and creative activist Brian Ntombela said: “I saw the flyer on social media but I still don’t know what Silapha is about. As artists and creatives we need these service because we are all depressed since we lost everything because of the Covid-19 lockdown.
“We don’t know where it was rolled out and who benefited from it. I think the people who really sabotage the whole industry are stakeholders who were chosen to represent the sector and trusted to bring information to us.”
Indingliz owner Davis Khoza refused to comment and referred all questions to the department.
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