Madame Speaker,
Honorable Ministers and Deputy Ministers,
Honorable members,

The government’s medium term strategy framework, reflecting the mandate given to us by the people of South Africa at the last general elections, focuses on three areas:

The strategies, plans and expenditure commitments of the DAC proceed from this medium term framework and seek to align its budgetary patterns with it. This speaks directly to needs of the majority of our people who mandated us to govern, manage the economy and our cultural institutions on their behalf.

Many years ago Amilcar Cabral described cultural practice as an act of liberation. The manner in which we spend public finances this year hopefully will contribute to the development of the soul of our nation and promote its further liberation.

During the 2006/7 financial year, the Department will spend close to R70 million on language programmes and on activities to promote linguistic diversity in South Africa. This includes the financial resources allocated to the work of the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB), R39.09 million.

These resources are utilized to translate all documentation of all national government departments into the 11 official languages, plus a number of foreign languages. Language policy mechanisms such as the Telephone Interpreting Service for South Africa (TISSA), language research and development centres, Human Language Technologies, terminology development, literature development and promotion are all funded from the same source.

On the telephone interpreting service alone, my Department will spend more than R30 million over two years. It is one of the projects through my Department that has already created employment for over 60 previously unemployed people. The Department will continue creating new job opportunities in the field of interpretation and call centre management as the telephone interpreting service is rolled out throughout the country

TISSA gives effect to functional multilingualism by providing professional and efficient telephone interpreting services to all those who need to access the government. It particularly seeks to enhance oral communication between the public and government agencies, so that anyone can be served in a language of their choice, provided it is an official language in South Africa.

TISSA is an innovative strategy for entrenching democracy as it speaks to the rights of the citizens to use the languages of their choice in accessing government services and information. It is fair to postulate that language, as one of the most sensitive matters in South Africa, has been brilliantly tackled by the introduction of such an innovative communication tool, TISSA.

The South Africa has departed from the previous bilingual dispensation, that entailed only English and Afrikaans being promoted, advanced and utilized for government business and communication at all levels. Eleven of the languages spoken in the country have official status in our Constitution. We therefore have an obligation to promote and advance their usage. I want to emphasize that Afrikaans, like all the other official languages, is being actively promoted and protected by the government, the hysteria of certain academics notwithstanding!

The experiences of June 1976, whose 30th anniversary we are commemorating this year, demonstrate that the use of a language or languages to oppress other human beings cannot be an option for South Africa. The only sensible course for us is the equitable promotion and use of all the official languages; it is the parity of esteem for all our languages, where each language is embraced, nurtured and encouraged to grow and develop. Even though Afrikaans in the past was used as a tool for the domination and oppression of the African people, this language remains one of the official languages of South Africa. Nothing and no one will, change that. The development and advancement of the African languages will not be at the expense of Afrikaans. The status of Afrikaans as an official language in the Republic of South Africa is not under threat!

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The integration of multilingualism within developmental initiatives acknowledges the need to prepare all citizens for life in a multilingual society. Integral to the vision and mission of the Department are the various cultural and historical heritages of our diverse people. It is the vision and mission of DAC to develop, preserve and promote South African culture to ensure social cohesion and nation building. DAC is committed to the effective mainstreaming of literature and pertinent activities within the broader government goals of socio-economic development and nation building with a particular emphasis on social cohesion and national identity. In pursuing these goals, there will be a concerted effort to collaborate with the provinces and local authorities. A coherent national strategy will enable us to take this effort forward and ensure its sustainability,

Effective programmes for literature development, literary awareness, identification of community liaison personnel and other initiatives that address the unique language needs of previously marginalised language communities are equally important for full participation of these African language mother tongue speakers in all provinces and regions where these languages are spoken. A community-based approach to the promotion of provincial and regional literature is the most viable one for the implementation of the policy. A number of literary awards were established last year to ensure that deserving writers are recognized, encouraged and rewarded for their efforts.

During 2005 we spent R490-million on heritage institutions, which accounted for almost 67% of our budget. This expresses the Department’s mandate as the “custodian of the nation’s collective memory.” Heritage can best contribute to Social Cohesion and the building of a sense of South African national Identity because it is a palpable record of our past. A special Transformation Budget has been steadily augmented over the last three years to reflect the diversity of South African society and contribute to the decolonization of our minds.

As our heritage estate becomes more truly reflective of the national experience, so too new challenges are thrown up. After we unveiled the Albert Luthuli monument in KwaDukuza, in KwaZulu-Natal, last year we designated Sheik Yusuf’s Kramat in Macassar, in the Western Cape as a national monument. This year government adopted the decision to erect two more significant monuments in Evaton and Bloemfontein respectively. The first will be a statue of Charlotte Manye Maxeke, in Evaton, where she and her husband established Wilberforce Institute in 1908; the second will be a statue of Abram Fischer, one of the most illustrious sons of the Afrikaaner people, in his home town Bloemfontein.

During the latter part of this year, we shall also unveil a sculpture, executed by Noriah Mabasa, dedicated to the women of South Africa as part of the commemoration of the 1956 March on Pretoria. The Women’s monument, at Union Buildings, will also be refurbished as part of this year’s celebrations. The Wesleyan church hall, in the old Waaihoek location in Bloemfontein, will also become a heritage site as the venue of the inaugural conference of the African National Congress.

2006 is probably overloaded as a year for heritage. Apart from the 50th anniversary of the Women’s March on Pretoria, it is also the centenary of the Anti-Poll Tax Rebellion; of Satyagraha – the technique of non-violent resistance pioneered by Gandhi while he was in South Africa; the 30th anniversary of the Soweto Students’ Uprising; the 60th anniversary of the African Mineworkers’ Strike; and the tenth anniversary of our Constitution.

The DAC has been tasked with giving leadership in the marking of all these and I chair an Inter-Ministerial Committee responsible for coordinating the various departments of government.

A large amount has been allocated to development of new infrastructure and the revamping existing institutions. In July 2005, working with the Department of Environmental Affairs & Tourism, we hosted the 29th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Durban. That event was a coup for Sub-Saharan Africa and coincided with the inscription of our newest World Heritage Site, the Vrede Fort Dome in the Free State and the extension of the Cradle of Humankind, to include Taung in North West arid Mokapane Valley in Limpopo.

Significantly, this has culminated in the establishment and the launch of an African World Heritage Fund through which African governments committed themselves to the preservation, protection and promotion of Africa’s heritage. Hopefully, this will result in fewer African sites on the endangered list, and more African sites on the World Heritage List. South Africa took the lead in proposing and piloting the heritage fund through the councils of UNESCO and at the African Union (AU).

Our own National Heritage Council is rallying civil society support to put the heritage issue on the public agenda and to raise awareness of our heritage sites amongst our people. The South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) continues to identify and promote new heritage sites and is conducting an audit of movable cultural property.
This will assist us in fighting the illicit trade in African heritage resources.

R635.22 million has been voted for Heritage in this year’s budget.

The theme for this year's Heritage Day is “Our Indigenous Music”, and we will be celebrating it in Cape Town, to coincide with South African Music week and Moshito, the national music conference and expo, during which we take stock of the music industry, its development and new trends.

Heritage is inseparable from our National Archives, Libraries and Heraldry. To promote our national symbols, together with the Department of Education, we launched the “Flag in every School Project” at the A.Z. Berman School in Mitchell’s Plain. We plan to roll-out the project across all the provinces over the next two years.

We are currently building a multi-million rand, state of the art new home for the National Archives. We hope to open the northern campus of the National Library in the centre of Pretoria in early 2008. R1 billion has been set aside for the development of our libraries over the next three years and a Library Transformation Charter is being developed. The thrust of all these is to cultivate a reading culture amongst South Africans. The new library development pilot project in Mdantsane, Buffalo City will be a trial run for a new vision of public libraries as more than depositories for books, but as cultural centres which can also serve communities as points at which to access government services.

The dearth of literature in the African languages still poses a huge challenge. This year, a small publishing house, based here in Cape Town, with encouragement from the Ministry rose to the challenge and has already published two titles in Xhosa, the African language most widely spoken in this province. New Africa Books has also taken the plunge, by re-printing W.B. Rubusana’s Anthology of Xhosa Epic Poetry, “Zemk’Inkomo Magwalandini”. The DAC’s own efforts to stimulate writing and publishing in the indigenous languages are slowly bearing fruit. During 2005 we awarded a number of prizes to authors who had written in Venda, Tsonga, SePedi and Zulu. These literary awards will be augmented when we mount the Literary Heroes Campaign, which will include the celebration of the Life and Works of Solomon T. Plaatje.

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Our government made a commitment to rescuing the Timbuktu Manuscripts and ensuring that they are restored and the information they contain preserved for posterity. That project now is very well advanced and we hosted an academic conference on the Timbuktu Manuscripts here in Cape Town during August 2005. The papers written and discussed at the conference will be reproduced as a book towards the end of January 2007, as both a contribution to knowledge, but also for the more utilitarian purpose of disseminating information about these important writings and their restoration. As we consolidate our democracy and our people become more certain about the future, interesting gems are being uncovered in the dust of yesteryear. It recently came to light that a number of Cape Muslim families have in their possession what might be invaluable diaries and manuscripts, written in various Indonesian dialects as well as in Afrikaans, employing the Arabic script. In cooperation with the Muslim community leaders of the Cape, we shall be embarking on a project to have some of these translated. We trust that our scholars and universities will be prepared to play a role in rescuing such works from oblivion.

Arts and Culture in peri-urban and in rural areas has transformed the lives of many and contributed directly to the fight against poverty. By March 2006 we had created 1612 new jobs. The overwhelming majority of beneficiaries (68%) were women; 8.2% were disabled. They have thus far performed 196154 person days of work, 44526 of which were devoted to training.

More than 100 learners have been enrolled in learnerships and skills development programmes directly linked to the arts and culture.

To grow the economy and to narrow the gap between the first and second economies, through our Investing in Culture Projects we have invested 31.5% (of available funds) in nodal municipalities to support the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development and Urban Renewal Programmes. The successes we have scored are exemplified in:

A R55000 labour contract awarded by Woolworths to the Tsohang ke Iketsetse Basotho Project, located in Qwaqwa in the Free State;

Award-winning projects we have supported, like the Hothouse Film Incubator in Gauteng; the Cape Craft Design Institute and the Grand-Mothers Against Poverty in the Western Cape have all been celebrated for innovation and their contributions to national life.

We shall be allocating the following amounts for Job Creation in these sectors:

Crafts R10million
Music R5million.
Film Incubators R9million.
Archival Paper-making R9million
Community Arts Centres R1.5million
Heritage R8million
Arts Education R5million
Design and Fashion R5million
Visual Arts R4million.
Overall, we will be allocating R91million to Investing in Culture.

The DAC adds an important dimension of South Africa’s international relations through the cultural agreements we have reached with a number of countries. Beyond the shores of our continent, we have concluded a number of agreements during the course of the past year, yielding remarkable results for our country and its people. Thanks to a cultural agreement with France, South Africa was able to host the first-ever exhibition of the work of Pablo Picasso on the African Continent. Picasso and the school of modern art he was associated with readily accepted their debt to African sculptors, which gave birth to the movement known as Cubism.

With the assistance of the Standard Bank, the Embassy of France and the Picasso Museum in Paris, IZIKO National Gallery in Cape Town played host to this important exhibition. Reports indicate that it was amongst the best patronized exhibitions to visit our shores, including large numbers of school pupils.

I had the opportunity to sign yet another agreement with my French counterpart when I attended the Cannes Film festival last week. We hope to reciprocate the Picasso exhibition by mounting a major South African cultural festival, spread across a number of artistic disciplines, in France before 2009.

My recent visit to Europe also saw the signing of a Film co-production agreement with the United Kingdom, building on a Memorandum of Understanding signed two years ago in Cape Town. We already have eight of ten trainee-curators seconded to British galleries and museums. The Slave Lodge, here in Cape Town, will be entering into a relationship with a sister institution in Liverpool. The twinning of the two museums will not only be mutually enriching but could add an important dimension to our understanding of one of the darker chapters in human history.

In the performing arts, with the assistance of the British Council, our two countries will engage in exchanges that will see more South African performers gain access to arts festivals in Britain, which we will reciprocate by inviting British performers to ours. We can expect to stage a number of performances during the Commonwealth Games, due to take place in Manchester in 2008.

Norway, Sweden, Germany, Canada and Australia are some of the countries we have reached similar agreements with. The long-standing cultural agreement with Flanders continues to give support to our Community Arts Projects.

Our cultural links with the rest of the world have increased exponentially as South Africa assumes her rightful place in world affairs. South Africa will participate in the Venice International Biennale during September this year. When Brazil hosts the artists from India and South Africa later this year we can expect to see a number of South African acts showcased. Two years ago, Mexico showcased South African performers at her most prestigious Arts Festival, the Cervantino; this June, the city of Cartegena, in Spain, Cervantes’s native land, will host South Africa at its annual festival.

We have been invited to fly the “Africa’s Time Is Now” flag during the 2006 Soccer World Cup in Germany. At the invitation of the German authorities we will be mounting a cultural programme that will include the performing arts and crafts in Berlin and Cologne, to create a top-of-the-mind awareness of South Africa as the next host country for the World Cup in 2010.

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Madame Speaker,
Given these ambitious plans we shall be allocating R19million to International Relations in this year’s budget.

South Africa’s cultural industries and their potential for wealth generation and job creation have been under-estimated for far too long. Under the stewardship of the incumbent Ministry we have begun a comprehensive mapping of our cultural industries with a view to maximising their contribution to the national economy. A delegation sent to London to learn from Britain had its mission interrupted by the bombings on the London Underground. With the agreement of the British government they will be able to resume it soon.

After the extremely successful Crafts Expo in Mafeking last December, we will be mounting a major crafts expo in Pretoria in November this year to offer a high profile showcase to our crafters. The Beautiful Things Exhibition, designed to showcase crafts in Soweto, will hopefully become a retail brand. We have already secured an important contract with a major overseas retailer which can become a platform for South African crafters to become major players on the international market.

The impact of South African music and musicians on the world stage is an established fact. Despite this no one could claim that our musicians are getting a fair deal, at home or abroad. The DAC has tried in a number of ways to improve the situation of our musicians, where necessary, by giving them the necessary backing in their dealings with international promoters and companies. With the DAC’s assistance the family of the late Solomon Linda, the composer of “Mbube”, won an out of court settlement from Disney Studios after years of litigation over the use of their father’s composition in the block-buster film, “The Lion King”. Securing the intellectual property rights of South African musicians remains a huge challenge, which has been compounded by the rapid development of new information and communications technologies as well as the shameless pirating of music that takes place here in South Africa. A proposed levy on the sale of blank recording tapes and CDs has been mooted, but I suspect technology has already has overtaken us.

We have repeatedly told the Moshito conference that South African recording industry is an untapped gold mine. During Heritage month we plan to fast-track the entry of South African music onto the international market by commencing a well targeted campaign to promote our music product internationally. The establishment of an Independent Record Companies Association, our recently gained access to Midem in France, as well as the footholds we have gained by exposure at international festivals should serve us well.

This year will also see the realization of a project that is very close to my heart, the unveiling of South Africa’s first jazz orchestra, under the leadership of Abdullah Ibrahim. This will be the first of the two large instrumental ensembles I undertook to build during my first budget debate in 2004. The building blocks of the second are being slowly assembled through initiatives such as “Mzantsi’s Tribute to Oliver Tambo”, which was very successfully staged by Victor Ntoni at the Gallagher Estates of 28th October 2005; ESP’s “The Exile’s Re-Initiation”, staged in Port Elizabeth in December 2005. These highly experimental initiatives have served not only to revive choral classics by indigenous composers, but have also demonstrated the versatility of the various musical idioms and styles that were thought to be incompatible.

Despite the advances we are making the plight of our performers remains a scandal. I was consequently very happy to lend my support to the merger of two of the unions operating amongst South African performers last year. The merger has already brought forth some results in the shape of a project, supported by two corporations in the financial sector, to create a social security net for performers. I want to take the opportunity to congratulate the founders of the Creative Workers Union for showing initiative. I once again want to urge South African performers to emulate other people who work to earn a living, by organizing themselves into unions that can marshal their collective strength to win improved conditions of work, better contracts and to exert greater control over the indispensable entity they bring to the market-place – their creative talent.

Over the past twelve months, South Africa’s relatively young film industry has again won kudos in the international arena. Most recently, a young South African who has chosen film as his career, won the student’s Oscar at the Hollywood Academy of Motion Films. Four others, from Cape Town had the courage to enter their short film for the Cannes Festival. Though they did not walk away with the prize, their film was amongst the top ten in that category. Coming so soon after the Oscar won by our local feature film, “Tsotsi”, these are portents of a promising future for our film industry.

During the first decade of democracy South Africa became a favourite destination for movie-makers from every part of the world attracted by our beautiful climate and low prices. Foreign film-makers continue to shoot their films here and their work contributes billions to our national economy. In order to make South Africa even more inviting our Department of Trade and Industry introduced an indirect subsidy for foreign film-makers by offering them a handsome tax rebate. While this rebate makes perfect sense from every point of view, as we begin to establish ourselves as a film-producing country, we shall need to revisit such measures so as to maximise the benefits accruing to our South African film industry and to our film-makers.

The National Film and Video Foundation, through which the DAC supports film and video production, will see its budget increased to R35.08 million this year. The DAC is also engaged in exploring new and more creative ways of funding films so that the NFVF will not be exclusively dependent on government for its finances. I was happy to attend the inauguration of FilmFund, a private sector initiative aimed at leveraging funds from our financial institutions for film-makers.

I have recently received assurances that the much talked about studio projects for Cape Town and Durban will take off either this year or during 2007.

A national theatre indaba, planned for 2006, will be a partnership between the Community Theatre Development Network and the DAC to create a platform for theatre practioners to meet at the national level to deliberate on the key challenges facing theatre in South Africa. Theatre in this country has blossomed and grown impressively over the past twelve years, but most South African actors spend months without remunerative employment. Despite the vibrancy of South Africa drama, imported productions or productions of foreign inspiration still tend to dominate the South African stage. These, and other issues related to theatre, need to be dissected in depth by all the stakeholders so that we can collectively begin to chart a way forward.

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We will witness interesting developments in theatre during the course of the next six months, including the staging of Samuel Becket’s “Waiting for Godot” in Pollsmoor Prison, by a cast drawn from the inmates as part of the Arts in Prison project run by us in collaboration with the Department of Correctional Services. In that context I must mention the name of Albert Thomas, one of Cape Town’s oldest theatre practioners, whose untimely death last year, robbed this country of a major talent. “Waiting for Godot” behind bars was his idea. I once giant extend our condolences to his family and friends.

During 2005 the first consignment of works collected by the Ifa Lethu Foundation were exhibited at the premises of Dimension Data in Bryanston. They comprise paintings and other visual works executed by Black South African artists during the 1970s and ‘80s that were bought up by diplomats serving in this country. With the support of my Ministry, the foundation is diligently collecting these as donations for repatriation as a way of preserving a significant chapter in this country’s art history for the people of South Africa. Some two hundred works have thus far been identified. Once completed, the collection will toured around the country in a mobile exhibition, then exhibited at one of our national galleries.

IZIKO National Gallery in Cape Town also mounted the important “Revisions” exhibition during the first part of 2006. These are works from a private collection, that tell a rather different story to the conventional account of South Africa’s 20th century art. That collection is being compiled onto a book that should be available soon.

In addition to the Dumile Feni Retrospective, mounted in Johannesburg and Cape Town, we can expect an Ernest Mancoba Retrospective here in Cape Town and possibly one for George Pemba.

I had hoped to be in a position to announce the success of “ A visual History of 20th Century South Africa”, conceived by Gavin Jantjies, during today’s debate. Gavin Jantjies, an extremely talented art historian from Cape Town, was compelled to seek and find opportunities outside his land of birth during the apartheid years. Because we could not mobilize the funds required for this project from private donors, we have had to put it on hold for another six months. Hopefully, by this time next year a few purses will have opened and put us in a position to proceed.

THE NATIONAL ARTS COUNCIL.

I was compelled to dissolve the board of the National Arts Council towards the end of 2004 because that body no longer enjoyed the confidence of the Arts Community. After some nine months of litigation, the courts ruled in our favour and I was in the position to call for nominations from the general public.

The law stipulates that the Minister shall receive recommendations for constituting the Board of the Arts Council from a panel of art fundis. This was duly done after the conclusion of the nominations process. Unfortunately, the list of recommendations was extremely gender imbalanced and found unacceptable by Cabinet. The Minister was consequently constrained to appeal to the MECs of Arts and Culture from the provinces to tilt the balance the other way by naming women to represent their provinces on the National Arts Council. That process unfolded for more slowly than I had anticipated.

I am however, happy to report that we now have a list of recommendations that is better balanced that our first list. I shall therefore be in a position to constitute a new board for the National Arts Council with a healthy gender balance by the beginning of July.

It is important to note that despite the misgivings, fears and skepticism expressed by many hasty critics, the National Arts Council’s personnel have been able to perform their duties well, even in the absence of a board. To be sure, there are inevitably companies and personalities who are unhappy or disappointed by the decisions about their funding. But, on the whole, the arts community does not appear unduly aggrieved by the absence of a board. The NAC will receive R62.08 million for its work this year.

Madame Speaker,
We are indeed living during An Age of Hope as the people of South Africa begin to harvest the fruits of freedom and democracy. In the Arts and Culture our country has repeatedly been crowned with a laurel wreath for the its achievements. We aim to keep it that way by ensuring that we create an environment in which the South African people, in all their diversity, have the opportunity to express themselves culturally.

Thank You.

I want to thank all the honourable members who participated in today’s debate.

A special word of thanks goes to the Deputy Minister, Ms Ntombazana Botha, who shares the burdens of leading this Department with me.

A word of thanks to the Director-General, Professor Itumeleng Mosala, the Deputy DGs , Messrs Victor Julius and Themba Wakashe and all the personnel in the DAC. Let me also thank the people in my Ministry beginning with Mr Freddy Mashamba, the Chief of Staff and all those who work under him. Last, but not least, Professor Kgositsile, my advisor who has to take the blame for all my mistakes.

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