Chairperson, firstly let me take this opportunity to thank members of the committee and all the hon members for supporting the Budget. We are very pleased that you are supporting this Budget.
Clearly all the views expressed in the debate indicate that arts and culture are at the core of our human endeavour and are the soul of our nation. Therefore, all of us must work together to ensure that we bring people together, unite the nation and develop social cohesion. We are very pleased that members expressed their views in that regard.
We may have differed on one or two things, but it is also quite clear that we all agree on what needs to be done. For example, we need to develop new museums and upgrade the older ones.
There are those who are concerned about access, particularly for ordinary people, citing the example of Robben Island. Although the people of Khayelitsha are very close to it, they are not able to reach Robben Island. Therefore we need to look at the issue of affordability. How do we make it affordable for ordinary people to reach all these institutions and all our museums, including schoolchildren, to make sure that they can learn our history? Access is therefore very important.
All of us agree on the need for more libraries in our communities. We will work with provincial governments to ensure that we accelerate the programme of libraries' being provided for by provincial governments and municipalities. That is quite important.
I can say that everybody here is passionate about language. We have institutions whose role it is to promote all official languages and those beyond them, including the Khoi languages, Nama and sign language - it is not only the 11 languages. There is PanSALB and we are going to make sure that we strengthen it so that we can develop all languages.
We will soon be bringing a Bill to Parliament to ensure that all the national government department institutions have programmes to promote official languages. The Bill is going to help regulate and monitor the use of official languages. It was approved by Cabinet today. I think it will take care of the work that needs to be done through legislation to enforce the use of the official languages.
There is a lot of work that is being done, but of course we can't replace the development of languages through usage right from when children are young. If they don't speak these languages, they will never know them. One does not only learn the languages in libraries. In fact, the best way to learn languages is at home.
Ntate Mashamaite, ge le bolela dipolelo t?e kua gae, le ruta bana gomme ba tla di tseba. [Mr Mashamaite, if you speak these languages in your homes, your children will learn and master them.]
That's what we must do. Let's work together as Members of Parliament to ensure that we give priority to the development of our languages.
For our part, we are looking at the history of the Khoi people. We are not going to neglect them. We are currently looking at creating heritage sites, including a possible museum for Sara Baartman. We are looking at all other icons as we go forward. We just recently declared most of the graves of our icons as heritage sites. We have also included places like the Voortrekker Monument, which we have declared a heritage site. We are not discriminating against anybody, because when you preserve history, you must preserve it correctly. Then it can be interpreted as to whether it is bad or good, but it is still history. We are not going to run around and look for things to destroy.
We will put things in museums where our children can see them. We even have to go and find that statue of Verwoerd in Midvaal from whoever stole it, bring it back and put it somewhere in a museum so that it can be seen.
Chairperson, we are pleased at the support of members. We are going to ensure that we implement the resolutions of the summit. Most of you who were there will recall that very good resolutions were taken by that summit.
At the moment we are busy with task teams that will ensure that we come up with concrete plans. Some of those plans are going to require additional funding, but we can't go to the National Treasury without concrete plans. We need concrete plans. We will then be able to go to the National Treasury and say, for example, that we have plans to create an outback touring company and we need to look at the funding for the film industry so that we can have films that tell our stories, the South African stories.
At the same time we must develop skills so that we have more young people who participate. I know that there is a concern that we don't have many programmes for young people. That is something that we are going to look at, because we do have a programme that addresses issues of youth development.
At the core of what we are going to do is to ensure that we grow the economy and create jobs.
With those few words, hon members, we would like once more to thank all of you for the support. We will continue to work with you as we take arts and culture to a higher level. Ri khou livhuwa. Inkomu. [We thank you. Thank you.] [Applause.]
Debate concluded.