26 June 2008

DEPUTY Minister for Provincial and Local Government Nomatyala Hangana recently launched two historic documents to help empower municipalities and citizens.

After three days of discussions at the Intergovernmental Conference on Multilingualism and Capacity Building in Cape Town early in June, the Deputy Minister launched the National Capacity Building Framework (NCBF) as well as the Multilingualism in Local Government Guidelines.

The Conference was attended by mayors and municipal managers from most of the country’s municipalities, language experts, academics, members of the civil society and international speakers from among other countries, Belgium and Germany.

Hangana called on ward committees to ensure that the efforts of the conference to implement multilingualism do not fail.

“As we come to the end of this conference, and moving towards the roll-out and implementation phase, we must make every effort to be inclusive in our approach. We must always remember that all our programmes as government can only succeed if we work together with our communities.”

She said that municipalities would return to their communities to seek inputs in formulating their language policies and develop implementation plans.

This will all be in support of the five year Local Government Strategic Agenda.

The conference ended on Friday, 6 June with delegates taking back the National Capacity Building Framework and the Multilingualism in Local Government Guidelines in which they had inputs in developing.

Hangana called on the mayors and municipal managers to start with the implementation immediately.

She also called on all stakeholders both in the private sector and the civil society to support the initiative to ensure the total empowerment of communities.

Organisations involved in the conference include, the DPLG, the Department of Arts and Culture, Department of Education, Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB), National Heritage Council, the SABC, Media Diversity and Development Agency (MDDA), National Community Radio Forum (NCRF), Municipalities and a number of private sector and academic organizations.

Source: dlg.gov.za