Hon Chairperson, Deputy Chairperson, Ministers, Deputy Ministers, members of the executive here today, hon members, heads of departments, it is a great honour today to stand in front of you at this very important gathering and give my maiden speech or input.
We are gathered here during the month we celebrate the birthday of our respected icon, Comrade Rolihlahla Mandela. I would like to wish him a happy birthday in advance.
I would also like to join the world by paying tribute to the fallen world- renowned artist, Michael Jackson. May his soul rest in peace.
We welcome the debate on Vote No 12, and it reminds me of a clause in the Freedom Charter:
The doors of learning and culture shall be opened! The government shall discover, develop and encourage national talent for the enhancement of our cultural life; All the cultural treasures of mankind shall be open to all, by free exchange of books, ideas and contact with other lands; The aim of education shall be to teach the youth to love their people and their culture, to honour human brotherhood, liberty and peace ...
In the ANC manifesto, which we were selling to each and every house prior to the elections, we talked about prioritising youth development. This department can play a vital role in bringing hope to this generation - a generation which is unemployed and disillusioned as they feel that this government does not care about them - by providing an enabling environment for talent identification, nurturing and the promotion thereof. Hence, we are happy to see that the strategic framework focuses on arts, social development and the youth and has measurable outputs, and we hope there will be close working relations with the National Youth Development Agency. By working together with the youth in the first and second economies, we will contribute towards the creation of the 500 000 jobs.
With regard to arts and culture in society, we welcome this objective which links very well with the creation of jobs and sustainable livelihoods. This will address the problems facing emerging artists or people who are active in cultural activities who migrate to Gauteng, Durban and Cape Town looking for greener pastures and better exposure. We hope that this can also be linked to rural development so that all provinces can receive equal exposure by having data on any artistic or cultural item in a databank irrespective of where they reside.
An example I want to share with you is of 1 May 2009, when we celebrated Workers Day and had booked three established artists. However, we had a list of more than 10 local artists of Babelegi or Themba who performed free of charge just for the purpose of exposure. We therefore hope that all the codes of arts and culture will receive similar attention and be promoted and documented in terms of the "Proudly South African" and "Local is Lekker" campaigns and that this will also include "Abomadluphuthu ekasi."
In terms of the promotion of arts centres, we hope that the arts centres will include even those marginalised women in the most rural areas and townships who are known in the communities, but have no access to arts centres.
We therefore call for the maximisation of the centres to include community- based organisations and individuals who are doing beading, and making traditional clothes, pottery and artwork so that through their products they will also enjoy a better life and build the South African economy. This reminds me that I chose to buy my Venda attire from Venda, but I cannot refer anyone there because it is not branded. We need a strategy to empower these women to market their products. We hope that the department will promote the co-ops even in the rural areas.
On promoting the arts, culture and heritage, education and training, we welcome this collaboration with the Department of Education, which will promote arts and culture as a learning area beyond Grade 9. This is because, currently, general education, which is Grades 1 to 9, is compulsory for all learners, but learners are not continuing with it in Grades 10 to 12 - secondary schools - owing to the nonavailability of teachers. Schools are not offering it beyond Grade 9 and because a career in and the importance of arts and culture are being downplayed, we are losing potential artists, drawers, painters, etc.
This will motivate educators to upgrade their skills and knowledge and enable them to teach it beyond Grade 9. We hope that educators from the rural areas and townships will be exposed to this project and that there will be more schools focused on this subject than what we have currently in Gauteng - Daveyton and Braamfontein - as most of the learners get left out.
With regard to support for the emancipation of women in South Africa through arts, culture and heritage programmes, we hope that these programmes can be extended to all emerging well-established women involved in arts, culture and heritage in order to curb women abuse, corruption and unscrupulous promoters so that the women can become skilled, empowered and independent, and not be at the mercy of someone who dumps them after making millions out of them.
An example is a person who has established committee projects, with 10 or 20 women making traditional clothes and doing beading, but being paid only R200 while the products are exported - and the profits aren't shared with the women in this project. This is rife in most of the provinces.
We welcome the National Language Service, NLS, initiative, which is aimed at promoting all South African languages in departments, as it is one way of giving us back our dignity and identity as a nation. Our Constitution allows for 11 official languages. However, English and Afrikaans are still predominantly used in almost all government departments and parastatals and also in schools. This limits the level of communication and inhibits the freedom of speech.
I am a living example of this. I facilitated a workshop on integrated quality management systems in English for department officials in Kimberley. Normally the workshop lasts from six to seven hours, but because of a lack of interpretation devices in a community of mostly Afrikaans speakers, I finished the workshop after only three hours.
When I enquired on my way back to Johannesburg about the noninteraction of the participants, I was advised that the issue was language. I felt so bad that I might not have done justice to them because of the language barrier. The documents that I had for the workshop were available only in English.
We welcome the development of provincial language policies as this is in line with the period of renewal. This objective will also go together with the Kha Ri Gude Mass Literacy Campaign and the development and promotion of our African languages from school to university level. We commend the political will of the former Limpopo MEC for Education and the former Western Cape MEC for Education on taking this process forward by extending it to the universities to ... I thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]