The South African government tabled a draft White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage in 2016 as a new policy statement twenty years after the adoption of the first post-apartheid cultural policy document in 1996. Then, the challenge was to affirm the right of all South Africans - rather than only white South Africans - to “participate in the cultural life of the community and to enjoy the arts”. The current draft policy document seeks to respond to the key contemporary challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality, legacies of the apartheid past but exacerbated over the last twenty-two years.