I am incredibly fortunate to be an arts columnist — to write, each week, about a tiny sliver of what artists in SA and around the world are doing, making, thinking, dreaming and creating. In the midst of pandemics and poverty and warfare there are, at any given moment, millions of people doing art: from solitary painters in makeshift studios to collaborative sea-shanty remixes on TikTok.       

I’d far rather allocate this column to an artist doing something. But as our country’s arts and culture sector continues to plummet deeper and deeper into crisis, I have no choice but to write about someone who does nothing. I refer, of course, to our sport, arts and culture minister, Nathi Mthethwa...