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Analysts came to a range of conclusions about the budget speech delivered recently by South Africa’s Finance Minister Tito Mboweni. But few paid attention to his comments on arts and culture. He made a commitment that National Treasury will identify funds to support a new national theatre and museum, among other initiatives.
Mboweni justified making financial commitments to these institutions by arguing that they could be seen as tools of “soft power”. Soft power is a term coined by American political scientist and former Clinton administration official, Joseph Nye, nearly three decades ago. It is,
the ability of a country to persuade others to do what it wants without force or coercion.
Applied properly, soft power can help play a part in the way a country wants people to see it. A creative industry example is the K-Pop phenomena, which took a Korean music subculture to a global audience. So it’s no surprise that Mboweni said:
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