Hon Acting Chairperson, hon Minister, hon Members of the NCOP, distinguished guests, comrades and colleagues, let me bring your minds back to the fact that the debate today is about heritage, but there are people who are not wearing their cultural attire, and who have forgotten that this is a heritage debate. Our Heritage Day debate provides the opportunity to outline how colonialism and apartheid neglected, distorted and suppressed the culture of the majority of South Africans. It provides us with the opportunity to reflect on how the freedom of expression, cultural rights and linguistic rights of black South Africans were destroyed, their creativity stifled and their dignity attacked.
It provides us with the opportunity to reflect on how the ANC, after the demise of the apartheid regime, strategically positioned itself to use the arts and culture to advance its commitment to building social cohesion and respect for human dignity.
This strategic positioning has ensured the allocation of resources and facilities to develop an inclusive cultural heritage of the African value of ubuntu as the embodiment of our national objective to build a united, nonsexist, democratic South Africa.
The ANC's Arts and Culture policy deals with custom and tradition, belief, religion, language, identity, popular history and crafts, as well as all the art forms, including music, theatre, dance, creative writing and visual art.
Let me mention some of the integral components. Culture is an integral component of the process of human development and also plays a facilitative role by seeking to inform and contribute to nation-building efforts. Colonialism neglected, distorted and suppressed the culture of the majority of South Africans. Freedom of expression was destroyed, and systematic efforts were made to stifle creativity. Communities were denied resources and facilities to develop their own cultural expression, unless they coincided with the aims of the colonial masters.
The absence of an effective education system, high rates of illiteracy, and extreme poverty compounded the cultural deprivation of the majority. In response to this, and to the suppression, the culture of the majority of South Africans became one of resistance to colonialism and apartheid. The resistance became a major instrument in the achievement of political democracy and social transformation in our country.
A flourishing cultural life is vital to the wellbeing of South Africa. The ANC strives to facilitate and celebrate cultural productions that capture the diversity, complexity and vibrancy of all South Africans. The ANC upholds, promotes and protects the rights of all South Africans to practise their religion and their culture and speak the languages of their choice.
ANC policies and guidelines recognise that through arts and culture a sense of national identity and pride can be cultivated. Arts and culture are thus a potential unifying force in our diverse country.
Thriving and thought-provoking artistic and cultural practices do contribute to a democratic and tolerant sociopolitical environment. Arts and culture are not the property of any one political party or group.
Apartheid policies have resulted in an alarmingly high rate of illiteracy amongst the black population. This is especially true of Africans, but blacks in particular. ANC policies strive to raise the national level of literacy, particularly as literacy is a precondition for many forms of creative and artistic expression.
ANC policies promote artistic and writers' associations, which explore and encompass the diverse cultural values in South African society.
As the ANC, we strongly believe that arts and culture should assist in transforming customs and practices that oppress or discriminate against women and girl-children.
ANC policies, through various programmes in diversity, strive to increase the participation of black people and women in particular in all spheres of the arts and culture, including participation in the direction of management of state-funded cultural institutions.
Access to heritage and art centres is one of the fundamental principles of freedom of expression and heritage practices. Arts and culture centres with appropriate facilities should be established in disadvantaged communities and promote all art forms. The ANC recognises that a broad spectrum of South Africans should have the opportunity to pursue and appreciate the arts, including the visual, performing, and traditional art forms. In this regard, access to training and facilities should be promoted and created.
Policies of the ANC recognise that well-resourced libraries should be established throughout the country, in both rural and urban centres, in order to encourage a reading culture among all our people. This should give recognition to the fact that arts and culture should be preserved, promoted and exhibited as part of our national heritage, and the production of arts and crafts should be supported and encouraged in our communities. This should also include the creation of a comprehensive and accessible archive of South African photographic and digital material, both past and present.
The ANC recognises and appreciates programmes that have been implemented by government through the Department of Arts and Culture in promoting and making arts, heritage and culture accessible to everyone in the country.
However, it believes that more effort should be made to allocate greater resources, and to ensure that the available funds for arts and culture are widely distributed in order to reach poor and rural communities. Currently, this is biased towards urban areas.
The xenophobic attacks that gripped our country in 2008 and 2010 were partly a manifestation of the lack of community identity and diversity, between South Africans and foreign nationals. An HSRC study noted that:
On a much broader scale, the xenophobic violence which has occurred in the country invokes the imperative to go beyond institutional safeguards that can best manage diversity but to take into consideration the issues of subjectivity, history and lived meaning in our communities. The latter infers the need to look into a long-term strategy in order to create a new and appropriate national identity framework and consciousness. There is now an imperative to invest in ideological resources that will foster the inculcation of a tolerant and inclusive "we feeling" in our communities.
It is against this background that the ANC encourages cultural exchange between the people of South Africa and those of the rest of the world, especially those on the continent of Africa. Immigrants and foreign nationals from African countries bore the greatest brunt of xenophobic attacks. In the arts and heritage sector, this exchange must take into account the views of cultural workers and associations, and promote local development programmes and international understanding, without undermining the ethos and values of arts and cultural communities.
I would like to conclude my speech by quoting from a declaration of the recently held national conference on ubuntu values.
Recognition was made that ubuntu values include integrity and honesty, respect and acceptance, self-worthiness and self-reliance, compassion and care. There need to be tangible partnerships and investment by government and the private sector towards the development of ubuntu, and the establishment of centres for its promotion through culture, education and recreation. The conference declared that a just and caring society cannot be achieved without collective and cohesive ownership by all institutions and individuals and declared that ubuntu is the key to bringing about social justice and is an inseparable part of social development and the RDP of the soul.
I thank you! [Applause.]