{"id":258531,"date":"2018-07-15T07:22:48","date_gmt":"2018-07-15T05:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=258531"},"modified":"2018-07-15T07:22:49","modified_gmt":"2018-07-15T05:22:49","slug":"dance-venue-could-cost-taxpayers-r1-billion-after-completion-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/258531\/dance-venue-could-cost-taxpayers-r1-billion-after-completion-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Dance venue could cost taxpayers R1 billion after completion: report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An unfinished reed dance venue could cost taxpayers R1 billion upon completion.<\/p>\n<p>According to a report by the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/sunday-times\/news\/2018-07-14-king-zwelithinis-pet-project-could-cost-r1bn-to-complete\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sunday Times<\/a><\/strong>, this would put the final cost of the venue at around eight times its original budget.<\/p>\n<p>The only other option is to demolish the venue, with R129 million of taxpayers money already spent on the development, said the Department of Arts and Culture.<\/p>\n<p>Originally requested by\u00a0King Goodwill Zwelithini in 2013,\u00a0the cultural village at Enyokeni Palace in northern KwaZulu-Natal\u00a0hosts the annual reed dance in September, and Umkhosi Wokweshwama (first fruits ceremony) in early December.<\/p>\n<p>Arts minister Nathi Mthethwa halted construction work in 2016 and appointed Gobodo Forensic Investigative Accounting to probe allegations of wrongdoing and overcharging.<\/p>\n<p>The report found that prices had been inflated and consultants had charged up to 200% more than standard industry rates.<\/p>\n<p>In addition:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One contractor received R11 million for items that had nothing to do with the reed dance precinct;<\/li>\n<li>A consultant inflated a statutory fee by R3 million;<\/li>\n<li>A construction monitoring fee was inflated by R450,000; and<\/li>\n<li>An engineering fee was overstated by R5 million.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/256389\/two-senior-officials-were-paid-r2-6-million-for-not-going-to-work-for-almost-a-year\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"bookmark noopener\">Two senior officials were paid R2.6 million for not going to work for almost a year<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An unfinished reed dance venue is set to cost taxpayers R1 billion upon completion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":20450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-258531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258531"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258539,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258531\/revisions\/258539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}