The social impacts of the Mangaung African Cultural Festival : a community perspective

Abstract

The main goal of this study was to measure the social impacts perceptions of the Mangaung African Cultural Festival (Macufe) from Bloemfontein’s community perspective. In order to reach this main goal, the following objectives were set: The purpose of objective 1 was to conduct a literature study to understand better how the social impacts of tourism work, as well as the models and frameworks that assist in measuring and managing such impacts. Furthermore, previous studies on the social impacts of tourism were analysed to provide a better background for the study, as well as to identify what had already been done in literature on social impacts. The findings however indicate that the festivals or events bring opportunities to the community and positive impacts are more experienced by the community than the negative impacts. Objective 2 was to analyse events with festivals as focus as well as the social impacts that festivals generate. Various forms of events were discussed. In the literature study, the social impacts of festivals on the communities where they are hosted were also examined. Previous studies done on host communities’ perceptions of the social impacts generated by festivals, were also analysed, with their attitudes towards festivals. It is found that community perceptions and attitudes are influenced by several factors such as their beliefs, length of stay in the community or it could be due to proximity to the event. The social impacts that were generated by festivals to the community were also identified. The role that each stakeholder played in events was also discussed. Obvjective 3 was to interpert the results of the empirical research and identify the social impacts of Macufe Festival as perceived by the community. To achieve this objective, a survey was conducted in selected areas of Bloemfontein where people would most likely experience the social impacts of the Macufe Festival. For the survey, 450 questionnaires were distributed, and 425 completed questionnaires were obtained. The data collected was captured in Microsoft Excel and analysed in Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 23 (2016), (SPSS). Some of the analyses performed included descriptive statistics to determine the demographic information of the respondents and a factor analysis which resulted in four factors, namely community enhancement, community degradation, tourism growth and increased public spending and interaction. Correlation analysis was also used to examine how various factors correlated with each other. It was in this case that analysis methods such as Spearman’s rho, T-testand analysis of variance (ANOVA) were employed to identify the correlations between factors and reveal the effect sizes between factors. From the results of the factor analysis, growth opportunities (Factor 3) was perceived as the most important by the community with the highest mean value of (3.655), followed by community degradation (3.637), community enhancement (3.395) and the last one was public spending with the mean value of (3.338). The ANOVA showed that, between English, Sesotho and other languages, Sesotho speaking people were identified as the ones who experienced the social impacts of Macufe Festival more than others. The last objective was to draw conclusions from the literature review and empirical findings of the study and to make recommendations based on the results. The positive social impacts of Macufe Festival to the community were identified as follow: improving the image of the city; the improved living standards of the community; tourism growth and interaction between locals and visitors. The negative social impacts were: community degradation; littering in the areas; increased noise levels and parking availability in the areas decreased. The findings of this study will contribute to the sustainability of the Macufe Festival as it will provide festival organisers with an idea of what to do to retain the community’s vital support for this festival. Festival organisers should give back to the community by improving the infrastructure within the community to increase the image of the city. They should enhance the community pride by establishing community funding programs to assist them in improving their living standards. Festival organisers should also pay close attention to degradation within the community which was high in this study and stabilise it with proper management. Festival organisers are recommended to adjust their program to accommodate or involve other cultures so that those other cultures will know about the festival and what it does for the community. This will enable other cultures to also perceive the social impacts of the festival. The contribution of this study is that a questionnaire was developed to measure the social impacts of the Macufe Festival and this questionnaire can be used to measure social impacts of other African cultural festivals.