MTC festival partner linked to mismanagement allegations

Founder and chief executive of OASISONE and the Rockstar Group, Jandre Louw, has allegedly been involved in the misuse of funds and mismanagement of a similar event, the Tribe One Dinokeng Music Festival, which took place in South Africa 10 years ago.

OASISONE has partnered with MTC to host a musical platform to raise awareness about Namibia’s wildlife conservation from 15-17 December at Swakopmund. The allegations were recently reported in an article and video compiled by Daily Maverick chronicling Louw’s involvement in the failed festival.

MTC communications manager John Ekongo told unWrap.online that OASISONE is well known for doing large technical productions across the continent over the past 30 years, including the Namibian Annual Music Awards (NAMAs). “Our working relationship with Rockstar Namibia spans over 10 years, and we have together successfully hosted the NAMAs with excellence and the highest levels of transparency and governance, to make the event the best on the African continent. This is, therefore, our point of reference and confidence in the partnership,” he said.

Ekongo said they have no doubt that they will pull off the OASISONE festival.

“We are well aware of what transpired at the said festival which your query is based on, but it is not our place to speak on behalf of the organisers or anybody that was involved in that event. All we can say is that the MTC OASISONE Skeleton Coast Festival is fundamentally different than the other festival in that we will be using an existing site, with existing infrastructure that hosted many other music events before,” Ekongo said.

“The other referenced festival’s plan was to build completely new infrastructure on a new site, and as it was reported in the public stories at the time, the infrastructure wasn’t ready in time, from the story it seems that the decision to cancel and refund ticket holders was avoided, rather than create a potential Fyre Festival situation,” Ekongo said.

According to an article by Daily Maverick, the Tribe One Dinokeng Music Festival, which failed terribly under Louw’s management, cost residents of the City of Tshwane at least R45 million and resulted in an empty field.

“The event would bring tourism, training, infrastructure and jobs, they were told, in a municipality with a high unemployment rate and a once thriving economic hub that was now slowly dying. It would also bring Trinidadian-American superstar, Nicki Minaj. But then, with no warning and two weeks to go, the festival was abruptly cancelled,” reads the article. The article labelled Louw as the Tribe One Dinokeng’s mastermind.

“Tribe One Dinokeng’s mastermind and the local music industry’s wildest impresario, Jandre Louw,” reads the article.

Nine years later, leaked internal documents and interviews with more than 20 people who shared with Daily Maverick their first-hand knowledge of what transpired, as part of a year-long investigation, convey the costly descent into chaos of an event that forensic investigators later described as risky, ill-conceived and poorly executed by inexperienced music executives who managed to mitigate reputational damage and walk away unscathed and uninvestigated, their jobs intact and their earnings from the debacle unaudited. Ekongo said so far, 20 of the confirmed festival artists have already each successfully performed and filmed a recorded 30-minute Music for Wildlife concert in Windhoek, which forms part of the ‘Road to MTC OASISONE Skeleton Coast Festival’ campaign.

Unwrap.online tried contacting Louw on his WhatsApp number and email. An email with questions was sent to him on 8 November, while a message was left on his WhatsApp yesterday, but no response was received. unWrap.online

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