Plans of the South-African government to establish a National Philharmonic Orchestra (NPO) with a yearly budget of 30 million Rand (1.750.000 Euro) are generating animated discussions in the country.
The opposition party Democratic Alliance (DA) has rejected the plan of the Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa, which they call hare-brained. The CEO of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO), Louis Heyneman, said that the project would be an « unnecessary duplication ».
The DA says that there has been no proper consultation between Tembe, CEO and Artistic Director of both the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra (JPO) and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the CEOs of the country’s various other philharmonic orchestras.
This does not prevent the minister to fix the dates of the first concert in the near future and to announce two international tours in Indonesia and Algeria.
