Abstract
Cultural and creative industries (CCIs) are attracting a growing international scholarship, including a burst of research in sub-Saharan Africa. Research on CCIs increasingly is moving beyond the confines of large urban areas and instead to explore non-metropolitan spaces, including small towns and rural areas. The novel contribution of this paper is to document in a case study of a non-metropolitan space of South Africa, the details and historical changes which have occurred in one of the six UNESCO identified 'cultural domains', namely that of 'performance and celebration'. Specifically, this research is centred on the cultural economy of the non-metropolitan space of Mahikeng which is located in South Africa's North West province. The findings draw upon evidence from a data base on the cultural economy which was built from analysing the content of 50 years of the Mafeking Mail newspaper.