Purpose: Promotion of Arts and Culture in South Africa and mainstream its role in social development. Develop and promote the official languages of South Africa and enhance the linguistic diversity of the country.

The branch consists of the following chief directorates:

• Chief Directorate: Arts and Culture in Society
• Chief Directorate: Arts, Social Development and Youth
• Chief Directorate: National Language Service

Chief Directorate: Arts and Culture in Society

Functions:

• To develop, promote and sustain Performing Arts in South Africa.
• To implement national programmes at Community Art Centres (CAC) in line with government imperatives and mandate of the department.
• To develop and implement national policy for the promotion of arts centres as vehicles for cultural and economic development
• To strengthen the involvement of civil society movements for the promotion of CACs.
• To build management capacity of CACs.
• To guide and assist funding bodies in promotion Arts and Culture in South Africa
• To support and promote Arts and Culture Festivals (ACF) for social cohesion, poverty alleviation, job creation, cultural development and
  preservation.
• To ensure good governance within playhouse.
• To ensure implementation of 2010 FIFA World Cup Arts and Culture programme.

Directorate: Arts Institutional Governance

Tel: (012) 441 3471

Purpose:

Develop and promote arts and culture in South Africa and mainstream its role in social development.

Sub Directorates

Sub-Directorate: Community Art Centres (CACs)
To promote a policy driven network of sustainable community arts centres throughout South Africa, which enables communities, organisations and individual users to participate in local, provincial and national programmes for artistic, cultural and socio-economic empowerment

Functions

• To implement an Arts and Culture Management and Administration Training for Community Art Centres and Centre Management
• To promote information sharing between across the country by strengthening networks for CACs, Exchange programmes and twinning centres here with centres regionally and internationally.
• Develop policy guidelines for the development of CACs at Provincial and Municipal levels
• Develop partnerships with other government departments, funders and business for the sustainability of CACs
• Implement quality arts and culture programmes in CACs

Contacts
Tel: (012) 441 3471

Sub-Directorate: Playhouses and Festivals
To implement Departmental objectives and programmes through and by Playhouses and promote access to Playhouses
Develop and implement policies and strategies for the Arts and Culture Festivals for the realization of the Departmental objectives.

Functions

• Provide strategic support to the six Playhouses namely Artscape, PACOFS, State Theatre, Market Theatre, Windybrow Arts, and the Playhouse Company. These include the appointments of boards, support to the boards, giving direction to their strategic planning.
• Develop guidelines for the implementation of festivals nationally, provincially and locally
• Financial assistance to National Festivals namely, Standard Bank Joy of Jazz, International Jazz Festival and SA Music Heroes
• Advice on the Cultural Programme for National Days eg, Youth Day, Day of Reconciliation, Women’s Day etc.

Contact
Tel: (012) 441 3050

Sub-Directorate: Funding Bodies
To promote and implement departmental policies on access to arts, culture and heritage resources through equitable funding to increase broader participation in the arts development and promotion that will lead to social and economic improvement. 

Functions

• Provide institutional management and corporate governance support to the National Arts Council and Business and Arts South Africa, in the context of promoting broader access to funding resources.
• Align the work of Funding Bodies with the Department’ objectives of developing and preserving the South African Culture to ensure social cohesion and nation building (Align and  implement DAC  national programmes with Funding Bodies),
• Providing strategic support for the development of the institutions in the areas of good governance/management, budget procedures and knowledge of the public finance act.
• Enhance funding policy with monitoring and evaluation strategy that ensures proper utilization of funds and that can detect funding irregularities as well as funding duplication.

Contacts
Tel: (012) 441 3698

Sub-Directorate: Performing Arts Portfolio
To develop, promote, preserve and sustain South African Performing Arts and provide strategic support to the Large Scale Performing Arts ensembles.

 Functions

• Develop and implement policies and strategies for the performing arts sector e.g. Theatre (drama, storytelling and poetry), Dance and Music (Choral and  indigenous music)
• Develop audience for the performing arts sector
• Provide strategic support to Large Scale Performing Arts namely, Kwa Zulu Natal Philharmonic Orchestra, Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Cape Town Jazz Orchestra and Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra
• Implement some special projects for the Ministry in relation to the performing arts sector

Contact
Tel: (012) 441 3627

Sub-Directorate: 2010 Arts and Culture Programme

To utilize a carefully designed Arts and Culture programme related to the 2010 FIFA World Cup to generate sustainable economic growth, create jobs and transfer skills in the South African economy, particularly in the Arts and Culture sector.

Functions

• Develop African cultural content and investment opportunities in Arts and Culture.
• Provide an Arts and Culture programme that contributes to social cohesion
• Supply products across the various Arts and Culture genres.
• Develop capacity through training and skills transfer
• Develop a campaign against crime
• Drawing in Pan African participation.

Contacts
Tel: (012) 441 3050

Chief Directorate: Arts, Social Development and Youth

Acting Chief Director: Mr Moleleki Ledimo

Functions:

• Promotion of the Arts, Culture and Heritage Youth Enrichment Programmes.
• Promotion of National Youth Service Program towards human capital development
• Supporting of Skills Development programmes
• Promotion of Arts, Culture and Heritage Education and Training.
• Making arts as part of social reintegration of offenders.
• To utilise arts, culture and heritage to enrich human settlements especially public, social housing, human capital and sustainable livelihoods.
• To popularise a National Social Dialogue to address issues that are barrier to Social Cohesion.
• To utilise arts, culture and heritage to facilitate the socio-economic development of vulnerable persons.
• Support of emancipation of women in SA through arts, culture and heritage programmes.
• Promotion of gender equality and equity in arts, culture and heritage.

Directorate: Arts and Social Development

Directorate: Arts and Youth Development

Purpose:

To develop, promote and protect all official languages through policy formulation and implementation.

Functions:

• To provide translation and editing service to government departments.
• Promotion and protection of language profession.
• Facilitation of the establishment of language units in government departments.
• To provide skills development in the language profession.
• Facilitation of development of Provincial Language Policies.
• Literature Development in compliance with the National Language Framework.
• To develop specialized terminologies in official languages.
• Establishment of National Centre for Human Language Technologies.
• Facilitation of production of Human Language Technologies
  

Directorate:Terminology Coordination

Directorate: Language Planning

Functions:

• Plan, conceptualise, develop and review language policies/legislation
• Conduct language policy/legislation consultations through workshops, meetings, seminars and conferences. For instance the DAC established a National Language Forum in an effort to encourage language discourse.
• Assist provinces and local government with the development of their language policies.
• Facilitate the establishment of Language Units within government departments.
• Monitor and evaluate language policy implementation (e.g. language units, development of policies by other government departments and provinces).
• Build capacity for language facilitation by providing financial assistance to Institutions of Higher Learning for language study through a Bursary Scheme.
• Oversee Language Research and Development Centres (LRDCs) for language enhancement through terminology development and research; literature development; writing and publishing; establishment of heritage and language museums and community outreache programmes.
• Facilitate the development and promotion of literature.
• Plan, coordinate and facilitate multimedia communication campaigns.
• Facilitate the establishment of Language Units within government departments.
• Facilitate the establishment of the South African Language Practitioners’ Council (SALPC).
• Oversee and maintain the language policy development database.

Directorate: Translation and Editing

Functions:

• Translation and Editing has two components that translate and edit the official documents with the aim of facilitating communication between the government and the public.
• This process promotes good governance by making information and resources accessible to the public.
• The official documents are translated form English into ten official languages and vice versa.
• The section translates documents for the national and provincial government departments, government entities, Presidency, parliament and the parastatals.
• These documents include Acts, regulations, manuals, notices, social grants and health documents.

Directorate: Human Language Technologies (HLT)

Functions:

• The aim of the DAC HLT initiative is to actualise the constitutional provision and National Language Policy Framework (NLPF) requirement on the development and use of South African Languages through the development of human language technology products in the official languages.
• The HLT Unit has commissioned a number of projects which contribute to the implementation of the National Language Policy Framework. These include:
• National Centre for HLT: This virtual centre was set up to facilitate the development of world-class reusable text and speech resources, as well as a management and licensing agency. The latter became fully functional in 2012, by creating and maintaining a catalogue of available resources and facilitating the licencing of these to researchers and developers with a view to overcome the obstacles of resource scarcity in the local HLT domain. We envision that the Centre will grow to become the hub of HLT activities in the country, facilitating research, development and capacity building conducive to building a flourishing HLT industry
• Machine-aided translation tools: Named Autshumato in remembrance of one of the first interpreters in South African history, the objective of this project is to improve the speed, consistency and quality of translation of official documents in government offices and legislatures, as well as in other language offices. The project has produced the following technologies:
• Open source translation software that is freely available to anyone for download (http://autshumato.sourceforge.net/).
• Machine translation systems that perform automatic translation from English to isiZulu, Sepedi and Afrikaans, and future phases of the project will see similar systems developed for other South African languages.
• A national termbank to facilitate internet access to multilingual terminology and contribute to improved translation work.
• Multilingual telephone-based information system: Lwazi means knowledge and it is an apt name for a project which aims to help all citizens gain access to information regardless of their location or literacy levels. The Lwazi project will enable callers to access government services in the official language of their choice through a simple speech-orientated interface in all 11 official languages. A number of pilot studies are currently conducted to prove the project’s viability and potential for implementation in real-world applications.
• Spelling checkers: To enhance the quality of documents rendered in the official languages or translated into them, spellcheckers customised for government purposes for ten official languages have been developed. Licences were made available to government language offices in 2009.
• A number of smaller projects were awarded in 2011 to stimulate interest and HLT work from universities and SMMEs, and thus get more role players involved in HLT development. IsiZulu-isiXhosa machine translation, genre classifiers and semantic wordnets are some of the projects that have been developed within this initiative and the outputs are freely available.
• Besides the specific deliverables the projects also produce spin-offs like capacity building in the field of HLT, creation of jobs for linguists and other specialists, published research articles and collections of reusable text and speech data.
• In 2011, the Department signed an agreement with the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union), to collaborate on a number of topics, including HLT. The aim of the agreement is to promote coordination and cooperation between South Africa and the Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium). Some examples of the collaboration in the domain of HLT include organising intensive training events, facilitating student exchange, and network-building.
• The HLT Unit is advised by a ministerial HLT expert panel consisting of experts from the HLT industry. We work in close consultation with this panel to ensure that our investments in HLT are targeted to developing the most appropriate technologies and resources for the benefit of our official languages.