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The Newtown Precinct, which still houses creative institutions such as The Market theatre, the embattled Museum Africa, Bassline and Moving into Dance Mophatong, as well as the Dance Factory and the Newtown Music Factory, has been plunged into darkness.
The last three on the above list are currently operating with no electricity, resulting in them losing business, placing unnecessary strain on productions that use the rehearsal spaces and on musicians looking to record.
Nadia Virasamy of Moving into Dance said: “For about a week, someone kindly lent us a generator, but we can’t run it continuously as the petrol is expensive.”
Inside Moving into Dance’s space, aside from the studio where the dancers in the show The Nutcracker were rehearsing, the lights were off and the generator at the door growled loudly.
Moving into Dance is a nonprofit organisation that relies a lot on funding.
“We keep the generator on for three hours at a time and try to get through as much as we can in those hours. We have missed a proposal briefing, which means we won’t be able to submit that proposal to, surprisingly, the City of Joburg,” said Virasamy.
The missed proposal is a dance initiative for children with disabilities and, ironically, was denied by the City of Joburg, which is partly to blame for the state of the precinct.
“This has been a 10-year problem. The Johannesburg Development Agency has always treated us poorly. This building was built for us, and we were invited into Newtown as part of the revitalisation project. We moved there in the early to mid-1990s. We brought our training programmes and our dance company with the hopes of bringing business to the area,” said Virasamy.
She added that part of the deal to move to the area was a fixed rate on utilities.
However, she alleges that, in 2014 and 2015, they started receiving bills for the amount of R25 000.
Kim Adams, the admin manager at the Newtown Music Factory, which is an iconic venue housed in a building that is a heritage site, seemed completely deflated as she expressed her frustration about the blackouts.
“Nothing can be operated. We turn clients away. Our generator has been fixed, but only for when the guys come and rehearse.”
City Press met with the legendary band Bongo Maffin the following day at the Music Factory.
They were rehearsing some new material, which you can read about in #Trending next weekend.
There was no power in some rooms at Bassline.
“It is a dangerous position for our company to be in. There have been a lot of missed opportunities as I can’t show a client the venue or have a meeting in my office in the dark. This, of course, deters people. At night, you can’t see a thing as even the street lights don’t work,” said Adams.
All of this leads to worries about security, and people have been mugged in the dark.
“You can’t see the people coming at you. Thursday night will be Ragga Night. How do we turn around 200 to 500 clients in the dark?”
Ragga Night is a famous party with a reputation to live up to. If it is forced to relocate this event, the Music Factory stands to lose revenue of about R100 000, says Adams.
Susan Moyani, the City of Joburg’s acting executive manager for marketing and communications, said: “We had a meeting yesterday with our internal stakeholders, ourselves and some sister entities. We are doing an assessment around the issues of the electricity and we will then take the next step. We have contacted City Power, which will be coming to survey the situation.”
She was unable to answer queries related to billing or leases.
The department of arts and culture did not respond to requests for comment.
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