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Minister's speech - independent record companies |
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STATEMENT BY THE MINISTER OF ARTS AND CULTURE, PAUL MASHATILE,
AT THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE SABC/AIRCO AGREEMENT.
2 February 2012
Programme Director
The Minister of Communications, Minister Dinah Pule
The CEO of the SABC, Ms Lulama Mokhobo
Senior management from the SABC, here present
The Chairperson of the Association of Independent Record Companies and the entire leadership of AIRCO
Our Artists
Members of the media
Ladies and Gentlemen:
We meet here today to mark a historic milestone in our ongoing efforts to promote the growth and development of our local music industry, to increase local content on our public broadcaster, the SABC, and most importantly to give an opportunity to our artists to build for themselves sustainable livelihoods using their artistic talent.
The agreement between the SABC and AIRCO is a major breakthrough for local independent record companies, many of whom continue to produce quality work but have so far not had much exposure.
This agreement is also important because it gives independent record companies an opportunity to play a meaningful role in the local music industry which according to research at our disposal was worth around R1.7 billion in sales and ranked 17th in the world in 2007.
In addition and as we said in our Mzansi Golden Economy Strategy, the local music industry has a huge growth potential as a result of its growing popularity in our country, in other parts of the our Continent and indeed in the world.
Equally as pointed out in the Mzansi Golden Economy Strategy; music is an ideal export product that is not constrained by the high transport costs associated with the export of physical products.
Collectively these developments indicate the importance of the music industry as a key component of the cultural and creative industries.
We take this opportunity to congratulate the SABC and AIRCO for entering into this important agreement which in our view gives practical meaning to the Mzansi Golden Economy Strategy.
As the Department of Arts and Culture we are proud to be associated with this ground breaking initiative.
Pragramme Director, as many of you may know, last year we launched the Mzansi Golden Economy Strategy.
The Mzansi Golden Economy Strategy outlines a set of interventions by all stakeholders in the arts, culture and heritage sector to unleash the potential of our sector, to contribute to job creation as well as economic growth and development.
At the heart of these interventions is an acknowledgement that the cultural and creative industries are our “new gold”.
As many of you may recall that the mining of gold was at one point in our country’s economic history, the bedrock of our national economy from where massive job and economic opportunities were generated.
It is our view that the cultural and creative industries can today play the role that gold mining used to play those many years ago in our national economy.
Programme Director, as we were developing this strategy the SABC, as one of our stakeholders, made a commitment that they will support the strategy by playing a much bigger role in promoting local content.
On this important day, we are reaping some of the fruits of the commitment made by the SABC.
We look forward to initiating more partnerships with the SABC, so that together we can raise the profile of the arts, culture and heritage sector and most importantly ensure that our artists earn a decent living from using their artistic talent.
Going forward we must work hard to support our local artists and ensure that they produce quality products that we can all be proud of.
In this regard we have committed ourselves towards building the required infrastructure that will promote and ensure the development of the local artists.
As part of implementing the Mzansi Golden Economy Strategy, plans are underway to establish a National Skills Academy for the Arts.
As we said before, the Academy will not replace existing training initiatives in our sector. It will become a center of excellence which will coordinate and strengthen existing training initiatives.
Programme Director, we are aware of the challenges of lack of transformation within our sector in particularly in the technical services industry.
We will work together with our stakeholders to ensure that the sector is transformed and more importantly becomes developmental.
Minister of Communication, the management of our public broadcaster and the leadership of AIRCO, today marks the beginning of greater things to come.
We must use the opportunity provided by the public broadcaster to tell our own stories through music, dance, poetry and many other art forms.
Indeed we must use our public broadcaster to preserve and promote our rich and diverse cultural heritage as well as to promote the abundant local artistic talent.
This we must do fully aware that; culture is the soul and heartbeat of the nation.
I wish all those involved in this agreement success in their endeavors.
Thank you.
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