Gayton McKenzie is the last thing the arts need at the helm

It’s as we feared.

While some might have reserved some hope at first with Gayton McKenzie’s appointment as culture head, it has since been depleted.

Part of culture’s function is to defend itself and fight for legitimacy. It’s one of the reasons it has a lowly status. Among the primary reasons, to those outside of it mostly, is that it isn’t a lucrative nor seemingly effective sector. To outsiders still, its raison d’être is little understood.

When McKenzie took office as minister of sports, arts and culture I took my palm to my forehead. He seemed the antithesis of the sort of leader a culture ministry needs. His xenophobia is strident. His patriotism resembles nationalism. The arts need and deserve someone with a wide, pluralist, progressive worldview at their helm. All the same, given McKenzie’s chequered and rehabilitated past, as well as his gumption and disregard for societal moulds (inasmuch as overcoming incarceration and thriving once returned to mainstream society), I decided to suspend my judgement. However, with enough infractions accumulated in the past two years of his administration, his recent, flagrant meddling in the Venice Biennale is the coup de grâce.

The Patriotic Alliance’s participation in the fact-finding excursion to Israel, and the subsequent denial of the genocide of Palestinians, was an earlier, significant strike.

It is not necessary that ministerial leadership for arts and culture comes from someone already in the sector, but it is favourable. In the case of McKenzie, he was ill fitting from the onset. He appears to not grasp the essence and purpose of arts, culture and heritage, or simply disregards it. He approaches his portfolio as a medium to self-serve politically through perks and patronage. His epic “withdrawals” have raised eyebrows. From no longer funding flagship festival programming, to cancelling Gabrielle Goliath’s Biennale representation, after she was officially selected, because her work referenced Gaza. This act of censorship has surprised even those who are not arts sector-adjacent. This is because it is a matter of freedom of speech, not merely artistic licence. It brings into focus McKenzie’s strategy.

Read more: Goodman Gallery drops artist Gabrielle Goliath after her Venice Biennale selection

It appears that what we have as culture minister is a career politician (which is to say a power glutton) who is enterprising, single-minded and shameless. He is playing the cards he was dealt from his presidential appointment to the “backwater” Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, to further his electoral agenda and carve out space for other agendas either previously well hidden or simply inopportune.

The department top brass is stubborn, and half-baked without knowing it, all the while grossly underestimating its sectoral stakeholders as beggars without choice and (mistakenly) without allies. McKenzie is all and just as we feared, and an insult to any benefit of the doubt we’ve afforded him. For better or for worse he has roused our dormant outrage. Now just to collectively find appropriate recourse. DM

Kwena K Chokoe is a photo artist and a cultural worker working on acquiring cultural policy expertise.