{UAH} Mandela the Opera: South African creator vanishes with production money

Mandela the Opera: South African creator vanishes with production money

Production celebrating the early life of Nelson Mandela draws big crowds - but cast and crew say government money provided for their wages has disappeared, along with the opera's creator who may have fled the country

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Unathi Mtirara has vanished without a trace 

 

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By Aislinn Laing, Johannesburg

3:47PM GMT 03 Mar 2016

A South African producer who put on an opera about Nelson Mandela after his death two years ago has disappeared without paying his cast or crew, according to reports.

Unathi Mtirara, who is distantly related to the former South African president, is said to have received R1m (£45,000) in grant money from the government but has vanished without a trace.

A lawyer acting for a guesthouse where Mr Mtirara put up his stars but is alleged not to have paid the bill said his colleague got hold of his wife who told him: "catch me if you can" before hanging up.

A member of the Mandela opera's production team told the Pretoria Newsdaily paper that Mr Mtirara's phone was going straight to answerphone and some believed he may have left the country.

"He disappeared with the money and left us in the lurch," the unnamed crew member said. "All his and his wife's numbers are off; his social media pages no longer exist."

Madiba: the Africa Opera was created by Mr Mtirara, a grandson of Mr Mandela's cousin, to explore his childhood in the tribal lands of the Eastern Cape as well as his well-documented struggle against apartheid.

Winnie Mandela and Nelson Mandela in 1990  Photo: Rex Features

Mr Mtirara, a producer well-known in opera circles, said he considered the Madiba – so called after Mr Mandela's Xhosa name – his magnum opus and that many of the stories he had included had been recounted to him by the former president himself.

"One of the things he taught me was that if I involve myself in something or if I agree to do something, it must leave a legacy," he told one interviewer.

The production has been beset with financial woes since even since opening at Pretoria's State Theatre just five months after Mandela's death in December 2013.

Then, it was cancelled after just three performances. Mr Mtirara said the National Lottery board had failed to fulfill its pledge. It responded that it had paid its dues.

South Africa's Department of Arts and Culture stepped in with R1m of grant money and in November last year, a production its creator promised was "bigger and better" reopened.

The cast included 60 young singers from a local university as well as professional artists and a praise singer.

By late December however, many took to social media to complain that they had not been paid.

Mr Mtirara gave a statement saying he had not been paid fully by the DAC, which rejected the claim, before going to ground. He did not return a request from the Telegraph for comment.

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Gwokto La'Kitgum

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