Date: 24/11/2003
Source: Ministry of Communications
Title: Matsepe-Casaburri: Launch of language portal
ADDRESS BY THE MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS, DR IVY MATSEPE-CASABURRI, AT THE LAUNCH OF THE LANGUAGE PORTAL, Johannesburg, 24 November 2003
Master of Ceremonies
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is the time of the year when we as South Africans together with the international community participate in the United Nations recognised campaign of 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children. Before I begin my address, I would like to ask everyone present at today's launch to participate in this campaign by creating an awareness of women and children's rights, by helping to inculcate a human rights culture and contributing in the building of a people-centred society and caring communities.
I am pleased to be here to launch the language portal of the Department of Communications.
This portal, consisting of twelve websites, will contain information about the language, heritage, forms of cultural expression, literature, folklore and histories of our people in the medium of all their languages and in the Khoi-San language as well.
The great champion of African languages, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, in September this year, when he gave the Fourth Annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture at the University of Cape Town, made the following insightful observations:
'Writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, workers in ideas are the keepers of memory of a community. What fate awaits a community when its keepers of memory have been subjected to the West's linguistic means of production and storage of memory - English, French and Portuguese - so that those who should have been keepers of the sacred word can now only see themselves and the different possibilities for the community within the linguistic boundaries of memory incorporated? We have languages but our keepers of memory feel that they cannot store knowledge, emotions, and intellect in African languages. It is like having a granary but at harvest you store your produce in somebody else's granary. The result is that 90 percent of intellectual production in Africa is stored in European languages, a continuation of the colonial project where not even a single treaty between Europe and Africa exists in any African language. We do not exist in these languages!"
Today we remember these words. We wish to say to Ngugi that this language portal takes us some way in meeting his concerns, the concerns of our African intelligentsia as well as the ordinary citizens of our land whose democratic demand it is to be able to communicate among our selves, with their neighbours and their brothers and sisters dispersed throughout the world in the languages of Africa.
This is a historic event, since for the first time in our history as a South Africa people this portal will enable our people to read and to access the information contained in them in their own languages. The language portal will enable our separate and shared memories to be stored electronically, to be accessed at will by individuals and communities.
This is part of our efforts to use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to bridge the digital and knowledge divide and to ensure that our people can access information that can shape their lives in the languages of their choice. In this way, we are trying to encourage greater use of ICTs by the majority of South Africans. We are bringing our people closer to the language of ICTs by presenting information in the languages of our people. We are also creating virtual histories of the South African people to complement the printed and oral histories that we have in our possession. We are firm that that the knowledge, experiences and memories contained in one language should be preserved for present and future generations of South Africans to come.
Indeed, in our country, "those who should have been keepers of the sacred word" will now be able to see themselves and the different possibilities for their community within their own languages. Through this portal, our keepers of South African memory will begin to feel at home on the web through the touch of a button, since we have already embarked on this journey to "store knowledge, emotions, intellect, in African languages". We are busy building our granaries, our own storehouses, our own libraries and access points where knowledge will be deposited, stored, renewed, and remain alive, to convey the living and the dynamic realities about all our languages and all our cultures.
This is democracy in action. The consciousness of our people, their thoughts and resultant actions, should find expression in their own languages. This is an extension of the freedom of our people, because linguistic freedom is part and parcel of our people's rights as citizens of this new country.
There have been changes in this country. This is the African renaissance in the process of re-shaping our people's lives. These are the processes of African renewal. This is the implementation of the transformation agenda.
This is also about making economic progress through the use of African languages, since these languages are the least represented in ICTs and thus many African people have remained up until now alienated from these technological advances and the benefits they can bring to improving the quality of their lives.
Thus the language portal that we are launching here tonight should otherwise be called the people's portal, since its primary target is ordinary people. But this opens the possibility for ordinary people to do extra ordinary things and we South Africans are capable of doing extra ordinary things.
This project aims to:
* Promote and preserve the heritage and culture of South Africans in an electronic format
* Promote the use of South African languages
* Promote the sharing of indigenous knowledge and cultural exchange
* Establish an online archive in all official South African languages
* Encourage further research on the history, tradition and culture of different South African languages.
It is important to note that the contents of this portal are not portrayed as the ultimate truth, particularly on our history, but that it presents information and events as objectively as possible. In putting together the information for the portal, we went out to communities and interviewed people, attended traditional ceremonies and also referred to written texts. The language portal is also an exercise in democracy, since it is an open platform whereby people can comment and contribute to this venture.
One of the biggest challenges of a task like this is the accuracy of the information provided. We went out to look for individuals who have distinguished themselves as scholars and activists in preserving and promoting South African indigenous languages.
But everyone sitting here has contributions to make. I, therefore, would like to take this opportunity to thank the editors who gave time to work on this project. I would want to acknowledge the following hard-working individuals:
* Prof Vic Webb from the University of Pretoria - he was responsible for the Afrikaans site
* Chief Joseph Little from Cape Town - he was responsible for the Khoi and the San sites
* Mr Wonderboy Peters from Nemisa who was responsible for the isiZulu site
* Prof Buyiswa Mini from the University of Fort Hare - she was responsible for the isiXhosa site
* Dr Mafika Lubisi from the University of Zululand - he was responsible for the isiSwati site
* Dr V Ralushai, a retired Professor of Anthropology from the University of Venda - he was responsible for the TshiVenda site
* Mr O Chauke from the University of the North has been responsible for the XiTsonga site
* Mr S Mnguni from the University of Pretoria has been responsible for the isiNdebele site
* Rev W Tsiu from University of South Africa was responsible for the SeSotho site
* Mr S Lemekwana from SABC news has been responsible for the SePedi site
* Mr S Kemisho who is self employed at Translation World has been responsible for the SeTswana site
* Ms Kathy Kavanagh from the dictionary unit at Rhodes University who has been responsible for the English site.
This is a variety of people from a variety of languages. I would like to thank all of you for all the hard work and the energy you put into this project, not simply because it was a job that had to be done, but because you also believe in the importance of languages in our daily lives.
The Department of Communications (DoC) also took a decision of establishing an incubator programme that sought to assist the graduates from the DoC's training initiative to gain work experience and work towards self-employment. The product we are launching today is the output of this initiative. Former National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa (Nemisa) graduates, who had studied and completed web development, built this portal. We congratulate this techno boys and girls for contributing their talents to this project.
I would also like to highlight the role of the National Language Services, a directorate of the Department of Arts and Culture, for its role in checking the authenticity of the language used. The collaboration between the two departments on this project and other projects is an important step towards interdepartmental cooperation and an integrated approach to governance that the President say we must strive toward.
Given also that topics on history and heritage are usually politically charged, I have also invited my colleagues in Cabinet to act as a reference committee for this project. In this regard, they will give strategic direction to the project and make sure that it is within the political framework of the country.
This language portal is but only a beginning. Our granaries and storerooms will keep on growing. We are in the process of developing an information and knowledge resource, hence the name of this portal sediba/fountain. This portal will be like a fountain from which the ordinary people will tap knowledge and information on a variety of topics. This portal will be tailor-made for ordinary people and focus on topics relevant to them. These will include health literacy, small, micro and medium enterprise (SMME) development, youth issues, adult basic education, and other important topics that can make a difference in lives of ordinary people. These topics will be developed jointly with the government departments concerned. This portal will be an enabler for government and the people in general.
Our aim is to get all communities to have their own websites. These would be tools that would afford these communities a tool to communicate with themselves. It would focus on contemporary issues and act as a tool through which the communities can preserve their changing identities.
In attempting to redress the colonial and apartheid neglect of African languages, the DoC in addition has embarked on a number of projects. We are meeting here on the eve of one of these projects and that is the National Language and Broadcast Content Summit, which looks into the representation of indigenous languages in the broadcasting media, to what extent does the existing South African broadcasting system respond to the unique national needs and what should be done to improve the current situation. This also conforms to the National Language Policy Framework of government.
This national summit is a culmination of mini-summits that have been held in all our provinces in the last few months. The contributions of our people at these events have fed into the agenda of this national summit, so that together we develop a shared vision for the development of South African broadcast content and formulate broad policy guidelines for government to support and nurture the broadcasting industry. This summit is happening against the backdrop of the introduction of regional services and thus can shape the design of things to come. The envisaged outcomes of the summit include the adoption of an action plan and a list of policy recommendation to guide operations within the broadcasting sector.
I would like to ask all who will be present at this summit to use this opportunity to put your heads together on what can to be done to improve the state of broadcasting in this country because that responsibility in not really mine, it is yours. Government is here to listen and to learn, to take cognisance of our people's concerns, ideas and inputs, so that together we can re-fashion the face of broadcasting in South Africa through your contribution.
We are also engaged in another project, namely the translation of ICT terms that we are doing jointly with the Department of Arts and Culture and also through contribution of Sentech. This project seeks to translate the ICT terms commonly used into all indigenous languages. Another project is the translation of desktop interface that we are doing jointly with Microsoft South Africa. This will enable the computer to communicate in all South African indigenous languages.
These are some of the interventions already taking place that complement tonight's launch of this language portal. Together, all these interventions constitute the coalface of change and in bringing a better quality of life to all our people and strengthening our capacity to compete with the rest of the world.
And as Ngugi again says in his book Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms:
"The wealth of a common global culture will then be expressed in the particularities of our different languages and cultures very much like a universal garden of many-coloured flowers. The 'flowerness' of the different flowers is expressed in their very diversity. But there is cross-fertilisation between them. And what is more they all contain in themselves the seeds of a new tomorrow."
This language portal contains within it the seeds of a new tomorrow already present today.
As I place this portal in the public domain, I invite all our people to participate and ultimately to take ownership of this work, as it is about who you are - the nature, form and content of your lives. I invite you to contribute to the growth and flowering of this portal, this resource, so that it enhances all our lives.
I thank you.
For further details contact Jerry Majatladi @ 012 427 8017 / 082 889 3381 or Lisa Combrinck @ 012 427 8292 / 082 821 4886
Issued by: Ministry of Communications
24 November 2003
Source: Ministry of Communications
Title: Matsepe-Casaburri: Launch of language portal
ADDRESS BY THE MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS, DR IVY MATSEPE-CASABURRI, AT THE LAUNCH OF THE LANGUAGE PORTAL, Johannesburg, 24 November 2003
Master of Ceremonies
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is the time of the year when we as South Africans together with the international community participate in the United Nations recognised campaign of 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children. Before I begin my address, I would like to ask everyone present at today's launch to participate in this campaign by creating an awareness of women and children's rights, by helping to inculcate a human rights culture and contributing in the building of a people-centred society and caring communities.
I am pleased to be here to launch the language portal of the Department of Communications.
This portal, consisting of twelve websites, will contain information about the language, heritage, forms of cultural expression, literature, folklore and histories of our people in the medium of all their languages and in the Khoi-San language as well.
The great champion of African languages, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, in September this year, when he gave the Fourth Annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture at the University of Cape Town, made the following insightful observations:
'Writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, workers in ideas are the keepers of memory of a community. What fate awaits a community when its keepers of memory have been subjected to the West's linguistic means of production and storage of memory - English, French and Portuguese - so that those who should have been keepers of the sacred word can now only see themselves and the different possibilities for the community within the linguistic boundaries of memory incorporated? We have languages but our keepers of memory feel that they cannot store knowledge, emotions, and intellect in African languages. It is like having a granary but at harvest you store your produce in somebody else's granary. The result is that 90 percent of intellectual production in Africa is stored in European languages, a continuation of the colonial project where not even a single treaty between Europe and Africa exists in any African language. We do not exist in these languages!"
Today we remember these words. We wish to say to Ngugi that this language portal takes us some way in meeting his concerns, the concerns of our African intelligentsia as well as the ordinary citizens of our land whose democratic demand it is to be able to communicate among our selves, with their neighbours and their brothers and sisters dispersed throughout the world in the languages of Africa.
This is a historic event, since for the first time in our history as a South Africa people this portal will enable our people to read and to access the information contained in them in their own languages. The language portal will enable our separate and shared memories to be stored electronically, to be accessed at will by individuals and communities.
This is part of our efforts to use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to bridge the digital and knowledge divide and to ensure that our people can access information that can shape their lives in the languages of their choice. In this way, we are trying to encourage greater use of ICTs by the majority of South Africans. We are bringing our people closer to the language of ICTs by presenting information in the languages of our people. We are also creating virtual histories of the South African people to complement the printed and oral histories that we have in our possession. We are firm that that the knowledge, experiences and memories contained in one language should be preserved for present and future generations of South Africans to come.
Indeed, in our country, "those who should have been keepers of the sacred word" will now be able to see themselves and the different possibilities for their community within their own languages. Through this portal, our keepers of South African memory will begin to feel at home on the web through the touch of a button, since we have already embarked on this journey to "store knowledge, emotions, intellect, in African languages". We are busy building our granaries, our own storehouses, our own libraries and access points where knowledge will be deposited, stored, renewed, and remain alive, to convey the living and the dynamic realities about all our languages and all our cultures.
This is democracy in action. The consciousness of our people, their thoughts and resultant actions, should find expression in their own languages. This is an extension of the freedom of our people, because linguistic freedom is part and parcel of our people's rights as citizens of this new country.
There have been changes in this country. This is the African renaissance in the process of re-shaping our people's lives. These are the processes of African renewal. This is the implementation of the transformation agenda.
This is also about making economic progress through the use of African languages, since these languages are the least represented in ICTs and thus many African people have remained up until now alienated from these technological advances and the benefits they can bring to improving the quality of their lives.
Thus the language portal that we are launching here tonight should otherwise be called the people's portal, since its primary target is ordinary people. But this opens the possibility for ordinary people to do extra ordinary things and we South Africans are capable of doing extra ordinary things.
This project aims to:
* Promote and preserve the heritage and culture of South Africans in an electronic format
* Promote the use of South African languages
* Promote the sharing of indigenous knowledge and cultural exchange
* Establish an online archive in all official South African languages
* Encourage further research on the history, tradition and culture of different South African languages.
It is important to note that the contents of this portal are not portrayed as the ultimate truth, particularly on our history, but that it presents information and events as objectively as possible. In putting together the information for the portal, we went out to communities and interviewed people, attended traditional ceremonies and also referred to written texts. The language portal is also an exercise in democracy, since it is an open platform whereby people can comment and contribute to this venture.
One of the biggest challenges of a task like this is the accuracy of the information provided. We went out to look for individuals who have distinguished themselves as scholars and activists in preserving and promoting South African indigenous languages.
But everyone sitting here has contributions to make. I, therefore, would like to take this opportunity to thank the editors who gave time to work on this project. I would want to acknowledge the following hard-working individuals:
* Prof Vic Webb from the University of Pretoria - he was responsible for the Afrikaans site
* Chief Joseph Little from Cape Town - he was responsible for the Khoi and the San sites
* Mr Wonderboy Peters from Nemisa who was responsible for the isiZulu site
* Prof Buyiswa Mini from the University of Fort Hare - she was responsible for the isiXhosa site
* Dr Mafika Lubisi from the University of Zululand - he was responsible for the isiSwati site
* Dr V Ralushai, a retired Professor of Anthropology from the University of Venda - he was responsible for the TshiVenda site
* Mr O Chauke from the University of the North has been responsible for the XiTsonga site
* Mr S Mnguni from the University of Pretoria has been responsible for the isiNdebele site
* Rev W Tsiu from University of South Africa was responsible for the SeSotho site
* Mr S Lemekwana from SABC news has been responsible for the SePedi site
* Mr S Kemisho who is self employed at Translation World has been responsible for the SeTswana site
* Ms Kathy Kavanagh from the dictionary unit at Rhodes University who has been responsible for the English site.
This is a variety of people from a variety of languages. I would like to thank all of you for all the hard work and the energy you put into this project, not simply because it was a job that had to be done, but because you also believe in the importance of languages in our daily lives.
The Department of Communications (DoC) also took a decision of establishing an incubator programme that sought to assist the graduates from the DoC's training initiative to gain work experience and work towards self-employment. The product we are launching today is the output of this initiative. Former National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa (Nemisa) graduates, who had studied and completed web development, built this portal. We congratulate this techno boys and girls for contributing their talents to this project.
I would also like to highlight the role of the National Language Services, a directorate of the Department of Arts and Culture, for its role in checking the authenticity of the language used. The collaboration between the two departments on this project and other projects is an important step towards interdepartmental cooperation and an integrated approach to governance that the President say we must strive toward.
Given also that topics on history and heritage are usually politically charged, I have also invited my colleagues in Cabinet to act as a reference committee for this project. In this regard, they will give strategic direction to the project and make sure that it is within the political framework of the country.
This language portal is but only a beginning. Our granaries and storerooms will keep on growing. We are in the process of developing an information and knowledge resource, hence the name of this portal sediba/fountain. This portal will be like a fountain from which the ordinary people will tap knowledge and information on a variety of topics. This portal will be tailor-made for ordinary people and focus on topics relevant to them. These will include health literacy, small, micro and medium enterprise (SMME) development, youth issues, adult basic education, and other important topics that can make a difference in lives of ordinary people. These topics will be developed jointly with the government departments concerned. This portal will be an enabler for government and the people in general.
Our aim is to get all communities to have their own websites. These would be tools that would afford these communities a tool to communicate with themselves. It would focus on contemporary issues and act as a tool through which the communities can preserve their changing identities.
In attempting to redress the colonial and apartheid neglect of African languages, the DoC in addition has embarked on a number of projects. We are meeting here on the eve of one of these projects and that is the National Language and Broadcast Content Summit, which looks into the representation of indigenous languages in the broadcasting media, to what extent does the existing South African broadcasting system respond to the unique national needs and what should be done to improve the current situation. This also conforms to the National Language Policy Framework of government.
This national summit is a culmination of mini-summits that have been held in all our provinces in the last few months. The contributions of our people at these events have fed into the agenda of this national summit, so that together we develop a shared vision for the development of South African broadcast content and formulate broad policy guidelines for government to support and nurture the broadcasting industry. This summit is happening against the backdrop of the introduction of regional services and thus can shape the design of things to come. The envisaged outcomes of the summit include the adoption of an action plan and a list of policy recommendation to guide operations within the broadcasting sector.
I would like to ask all who will be present at this summit to use this opportunity to put your heads together on what can to be done to improve the state of broadcasting in this country because that responsibility in not really mine, it is yours. Government is here to listen and to learn, to take cognisance of our people's concerns, ideas and inputs, so that together we can re-fashion the face of broadcasting in South Africa through your contribution.
We are also engaged in another project, namely the translation of ICT terms that we are doing jointly with the Department of Arts and Culture and also through contribution of Sentech. This project seeks to translate the ICT terms commonly used into all indigenous languages. Another project is the translation of desktop interface that we are doing jointly with Microsoft South Africa. This will enable the computer to communicate in all South African indigenous languages.
These are some of the interventions already taking place that complement tonight's launch of this language portal. Together, all these interventions constitute the coalface of change and in bringing a better quality of life to all our people and strengthening our capacity to compete with the rest of the world.
And as Ngugi again says in his book Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms:
"The wealth of a common global culture will then be expressed in the particularities of our different languages and cultures very much like a universal garden of many-coloured flowers. The 'flowerness' of the different flowers is expressed in their very diversity. But there is cross-fertilisation between them. And what is more they all contain in themselves the seeds of a new tomorrow."
This language portal contains within it the seeds of a new tomorrow already present today.
As I place this portal in the public domain, I invite all our people to participate and ultimately to take ownership of this work, as it is about who you are - the nature, form and content of your lives. I invite you to contribute to the growth and flowering of this portal, this resource, so that it enhances all our lives.
I thank you.
For further details contact Jerry Majatladi @ 012 427 8017 / 082 889 3381 or Lisa Combrinck @ 012 427 8292 / 082 821 4886
Issued by: Ministry of Communications
24 November 2003
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