Hon Chairperson, Ministers and Deputy Ministers, distinguished guests, hon members of the House, and ladies and gentlemen, ndi matsheloni [good morning]. In his state of the nation address, President Zuma called on each and every one of us to help in building a more cohesive society. The arts, culture and heritage sector makes a significant contribution to social regeneration, unity and reconciliation. As we transform our country, we need to ensure that we inculcate the spirit of solidarity and a caring society.
The Department of Arts and Culture is tasked with leading and co-ordinating efforts to promote national identity and social cohesion. We have identified the popularisation of national symbols, national days and the standardisation of geographical names in South Africa as pillars of our strategy to foster national identity.
Our Bureau of Heraldry is also involved through its campaigns on the popularisation of national symbols and the Flag in Every School project to promote a shared value system and engender a greater sense of nationhood. In this regard, we will produce publications which include pictorial posters, information charts, booklets and brochures that will be distributed in all our provinces.
We also intend to do the following as we intensify our campaign: conduct 28 workshops on national symbols in collaboration with the Department of Education, and install flags in all schools across the country. As we do so, we will also take the opportunity to make sure that our youth understand and are taught to sing our national anthem properly. [Applause.]
We will also ensure, as the hon Bikani was saying, that even Fifa gets the message very clearly to ensure that the anthem is sung properly at all events. [Applause.] We would also like to declare April flag month and intensify our activities with effect from next year, because it is in April that we celebrate our Freedom Day.
Our department continues to promote oral history as part of our efforts to ensure that our heritage landscape is, indeed, reflective of our national memory and contributes to nation-building and identity. We will promote oral history, especially among marginalised communities whose heritage and history have been ignored for many years. Later this year we will host the Annual Oral History Conference in Cape Town to ensure that we preserve the rich heritage of our nation for posterity.
The ANC-led government is committed to the principle of universal access to the arts, as stated in our Constitution. We have created community arts centres to improve participation in the arts. This year we will establish cultural centres of excellence, one in each province, which will then serve as flagships for the rest of that province.
The centres will ensure the implementation of quality arts programmes. We will support the promotion of people's arts in community arts centres through encouraging local theatre groups, music groups, local cultural forms of expression and other creative work. Training in the management of arts centres will be provided to ensure effective programming within the arts centres. The department is mindful of the fact that we will not achieve our objective of access to the arts if we turn a blind eye to the plight of marginalised members of our society. One of our associate institutions, the SA Library for the Blind, has partnered with Braille SA to host a national Braille essay-writing competition. All entries will be published in a Braille book to raise awareness about Braille and to stimulate an interest in writing South African stories in Braille.
We believe that this is an important step in our collective effort to ensure that the doors of learning and culture are opened to all. We will continue to support the Library for the Blind in its planning for the launch of tactile picture books for preschool blind children later this year. [Applause.]
This initiative will help to develop skills and also create jobs for unemployed women. In this financial year we will introduce a mobile unit, which will be used to identify talent amongst people with disabilities and empower disabled artists and community productions. [Applause.] This is a partnership between our department and the Southern African Disabled Musicians Association.
Throughout the centuries of the struggle against colonialism and apartheid, choral music played an important role in the lives of our people. To date, choral music continues to be one of our main forms of cultural expression. Every community has some form of a choir, and we regard this art form as very participatory in nature because it is practised by both the youngest and the oldest of our societies. It can thus be used to promote social values and contribute to the promotion of ubuntu in South Africa.
Our department intends to develop the choral music sector through a focused policy to support and govern its growth. This policy will be underpinned by a strategy and an implementation plan to ensure delivery. We will conduct nationwide consultations with the sector to ensure that the policy framework represents the aspirations of our people, the practitioners and the practitioners of choral music. This process will culminate in a national conference to finalise and adopt a policy framework. I'm happy to announce that we will establish national youth and adult choirs that will be truly representative of our people and will thus enjoy government support. Full details of the implementation plan will be released in due course.
The department has introduced an internship programme to ensure that we increase capacity in the administration and management of our sector. We recognise that the management of our sector requires special skills, and we therefore use the internship programme to attract young people to undertake tertiary studies related to our work.
The department has created 110 job opportunities for unemployed arts practitioners in five provinces, namely Gauteng, the Free State, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, through the Artists in Schools project. A further 33 jobs were created through the support of the Jazz for Juniors project, chronicling the history of the struggle for liberation in South Africa through jazz music.
Part of the Department of Arts and Culture's mandate is to develop and promote our official languages. Through language planning and carefully designed language programmes we seek to influence the outcome of present- day social processes in practical ways. For example, as part of our strategy to strengthen and promote social cohesion through multilingualism, we have embarked on the development of human language technology applications that will ensure redress for the previously marginalised indigenous languages. Projects such as this will connect South Africans, equipped with nothing but a normal telephone, to government information and services regardless of their level of literacy and location.
Our Constitution provides for the principle of linguistic self- determination, albeit within limits. This choice is not only viable but also desirable for language planning decision-making because it promotes social equity, a crucial element for nation-building and social cohesion.
Creative industries make significant contributions to job creation and economic development. South Africa, notwithstanding its rich history of beading, does not produce beads but imports them from countries like India, Taiwan and the Czech Republic. The department is currently working with our embassy in the Czech Republic and factories in that country towards identifying possible partnerships for accessing both the technology and the skills to enhance South Africa's capacity to ensure that we also produce beads. [Applause.]
The department has identified the crafts industry as a strategic sector that will make key interventions in the economic upliftment of our people. The crafts industry has the potential to create meaningful jobs, and the department has begun to consolidate the marketing and the distribution of South African products to international markets such as Art Mundi in Brazil.
This year the department established the annual National Craft Awards at which no fewer than 60 crafters across the nine provinces were awarded prizes and recognition for their contribution to craft development.
The music industry is a key growth sector for the development of small to medium enterprises. The department has bought the Downtown Studios from Avusa Media. The vision is to develop the studios into a music heritage centre for local content. The hub will be central towards supporting independent music creators and producers. We will continue to host the annual Moshito Conference and Exhibition, which has become the key music exhibition and marketing point for the African continent.
South Africa will continue to participate in the March International du Disque et de l'Edition Musicale - Midem - the most prestigious music trade show in the world. Midem is held annually in France and attracts in excess of 10 000 music business practitioners who showcase their products. The aim of our participation is to market and promote South African music abroad and learn from our peers so that we can be globally competitive.
South Africa has been given the status of Country of Honour at Midem next year. This means that we will be given the opportunity to do full marketing and promoting of South African music through live events, publicity and exclusive branding, thus receiving undivided attention from top executives in the music business across the world.
On 3 July, the Minister and I will meet representatives from the music sector to discuss how we can work together to improve the viability of the industry. Our musicians do a lot, but every year we hear about musicians who die destitute, some even being buried as paupers. We want to make sure that that does not continue to happen. [Applause.]
Our department has identified the technical services and events industry as an important element of economic empowerment and job creation. The 2010 Fifa World Cup is an event which will create huge job opportunities for technicians and creative producers. The department has just completed a major investigation into and consultation with the sector to reposition and transform this key industry, especially in terms of creating job opportunities and BBBEE for youth and women.