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THE Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality’s spending of millions of rands of ratepayers’ money on failed commercial events over the past year has raised doubts over its sponsorship decisions.

This comes after the municipality pumped R250000 into Saturday’s Bay Summer Concert, at which rapper Busta Rhymes arrived very late at the new World Cup stadium and then did not even perform.

Not many people went to the stadium for the show. By the time Rhymes pitched up about three hours late at 2am on Sunday, many irate fans had already left.

Rhymes eventually came on stage, only to announce that he would perform at La Dee Da’s nightclub in Bethelsdorp instead – and left.

Municipal spokesman Roland Williams said acting municipal manager Dr Sithembele Vatala – who stood in for Elias Ntoba while he was on leave – had acted on a recommendation from the city administration and given the go-ahead for the R250000 sponsorship.

Sports, arts, recreation and culture committee chairman Mike Kwenaite said the application for sponsorship for the event was not tabled before the committee. He did not know where the R250000 had come from.

Six “major” events in Port Elizabeth over the past year and a half, to which the municipality contributed more than R5-million, were failures due to the organisers’ poor planning and mismanagement.

Williams said the municipality was aware that ticket sales for the Bay Summer Concert were selling slowly last week, but the organisers had assured it that they would be able to sell thousands in the last two days leading up to the event.

“The idea is to make sure there’s a fair amount of diversity and uniqueness to contribute to the local economy to position ourselves as a world class city. The issue of ticket sales was raised, but the organisers said they were confident that sales would increase dramatically on Thursday and Friday.

“It was important for us to project the venue as a multi-purpose stadium that can host soccer matches, rugby and concerts. And because it was the first major concert at the stadium, we decided to contribute.”

The DA has lambasted the municipality’s decision to fund the concert without following proper procedure.

Ward councillor Dean Biddulph, who is on the arts and culture committee, said yesterday there was no communication with the committee over funding the event.

“At this time when the city is really struggling to keep up with its commitments, how can the municipality just waste money like that?” he asked.

“There are 300000 better things the money could have been spent on. There’s just no accountability at all.

“There’s hundreds of thousands of ratepayers’ money being wasted. We’re not an events company. They should have checked to see if it would be a success first, before pumping money into the event.”

Vendors had catered for about 20000 people for the event, but only about 500 people turned up.

The municipality budgeted about R14-million at the beginning of the financial year to contribute to events that would attract tourists.

These include R70000 for the Bay to Bay Race; R1-million to Green Mile; R1-million to the Judo Academy; and R150000 to the choral association.

OTHER SPONSORED EVENTS

* R500000 sponsorship paid to then ANC provincial secretary Simphato Handi for a dismal boxing tournament late last year.

* R2-million towards an international music festival planned for last year’s festive season which did not take place. The event’s artist line-up was supposed to have included international stars like Rihanna and Chris Brown.

* The Enchanted Sounds Jazz Concert, scheduled to have taken place at the Nangoza Jebe Hall in October last year, was “called off” after it emerged that the organisers had not secured the venue. The line-up was expected to include Ernie Smith and Kunle Ayo.

* R400000 was given to the inaugural Eastern Cape Fashion Week in October this year. While the event was a success at the last minute, service providers had still not been paid more than R1-million in sponsorships weeks after the event.

* The municipality had to contribute R850000 to cover accommodation and transport for the overseas teams – Kosice from Slovakia and FC Moscow from Russia – in January after the Eastern Cape Soccer Challenge was thrown into disarray when the company organising the accommodation “disappeared”, leaving the visitors without a roof over their heads. On the first night of the tournament, only 70 spectators turned up.