Abstract
This study investigates the development of the cultural and creative economy in a non-metropolitan space of the Global South. The geographical focus is Mahikeng in South Africa’s North West province. The research uses mixed methods by combining interview data, audits of the cultural economy in Mahikeng and an archival analysis. The research adopts an historical approach. Through a reading of the archives of the Mahikeng Mail for the period 1974-2023 a fifty-year longitudinal database was derived. This database consisted of the recording of performance events, of which there were approximately 3000 entries. The data was disaggregated and analysed using the six cultural domains proposed by UNESCO. This allowed for the construction of a narrative which uncovered the rise and fall of a local cultural economy, which was deeply affected by political, social and economic change, accompanying the Bophuthatswana period and subsequent re-incorporation into South Africa. The results disclosed the dominance of the domain of Performance and Celebration throughout the 50-year study period. Using additional archival sources and interviews further analysis was undertaken of three tourism-linked specific elements in the cultural economy of Mahikeng, namely cultural heritage, skydiving, and festivals. The issue of festivals was explored in regard to the Mahika Mahikeng festival. Overall, key findings from the cultural economy of Mahikeng confirm that creative clusters can emerge in non-metropolitan spaces both in the environments of the Global North and the Global South. In the historical experience of Mahikeng it is shown that although it was unplanned, a non-metropolitan cluster emerged and consolidated in Mahikeng during the Bophuthatswana era. The development of the Mahikeng cluster was state-led and with critical government support for the overall development and health of the cultural economy and of its various domains. The cluster did not continue to prosper after the state was transformed resulting in the withdrawal of support and funding in the post-apartheid period which caused the onset of the decline in the Mahikeng cultural economy.