Investing in Culture; Moral Regeneration Programme: briefing by Department of Arts and Culture

Meeting report

Moral Regeneration Movement  
Father Simangaliso Mkhatshwa, Chairperson, Moral Regeneration Movement (MRM), said South Africa faced great challenges of moral degeneration and pointed to the national crime levels; violence towards women and children and the self-enrichment of public officials as examples of this. Gross forms of misconduct were unacceptable and these were just a few of the reasons why ancient powerful societies were brought to their knees.

Mr Mkhatshwa said the greatest challenge remains to be holding people accountable and ensuring that everyone had an appropriate idea of ethics and abided by those ideals that were adopted. In 1998 in Johannesburg, a meeting was held by the political leadership and leaders of religious organisations to discuss issues of ethics for politicians. That meeting led to a code of conduct being formed for people in public office. This meeting led to the launch of the MRM in 2002 in Tswane.

Ms Zandile Mdladla, Chief Executive Officer, MRM, continued the presentation, stating that the hardest and first challenge for the organisation was working in communities and educating people in their home languages. The objectives for the organisation were to promote positive values for moral communities through the Charter of Positive Values, to disseminate information and collating and keeping audit of moral regeneration of programmes, to build congruency between ethical values and behaviour and by being at the centre for the collective activism on moral issues. She emphasised that there was a variety of organisations that MRM worked with on a provincial level such as the Commission on Gender Equality.

She was concerned about working with NGOs, as some of them were not well resourced. She said that great results were achieved on the National MRM Month held in July 2010 and the celebration was a moment to remember as it was held in Limpompo and many communities and groups of various ages were involved. She promised to provide the members of the Committee with a tape of the occasion. The MRM had been holding social dialogues with members of youth in townships in the Western Cape and Gauteng, and wanted to conduct more of these dialogues within the Western Cape but in different communities and with a bigger variety of topics and subjects.

Ms Mdladla said the key challenge facing the movement was the role of other stakeholders, she emphasised that there seemed to be more of a fight over territories amongst similar organisations, rather than working together for the cause. There was also a need for ambassadors to represent the organisation around South African provinces and resources were always scarce. Resources did not necessarily come in the form of monetary value, but there was a great need for extra hands, so, for example school children volunteering, would be a great idea.

For further details please refer to Moral Regeneration Movement presentation attached.

Discussion
The Chairperson said that she was pleased with Ms Mdladla’s enthusiasm and passion and that her greatest concern was that there were very few leaders who took such jobs seriously.

Ms D Rantho (Eastern Cape, ANC) was concerned on the prominence of the organisation stating that the last time she heard of the organisation was in 2006.She asked how was MRM funded and whether the funds came from the government or from the private sector. Ms Rantho queried whether or not religious organisations were consistently being consulted on activities of the organisation.

Ms R Rasmeni (North West, ANC) questioned the MRM’s objectives or aims for the year 2010 going forward. She also queried the use of ambassadors by asking what would be done should the ambassador do something that was inappropriate on the organisation’s ideals and values. Why was the MRM not active in other provinces when there was a Department of Arts and Culture in all provinces? Did the organisation lack support from the department? The very absence of the members of the Department of Arts and Culture was a clear indication of their lack of support for the organisation.

Mr Mkhatshwa said just because MRM was not prominent within the media did not mean that they were not actively working. The presentation demonstrated that much work was being done; however, he said that that the organisation needed to be more prominent. He said that media was usually expensive and MRM was doing the best it could with the R4 000 000 it had at its disposal. Religious leaders were consulted in the early stages of the formation of the organisation and they were still being consulted. Every Deputy President of the country from the early stages was always designated with the task to form a relationship with the MRM and this was a cabinet decision from the founding stages of the organization. MRM was a movement that cuts right across government and civil society.

Mr Mdladla said that a report of the rest of the activities for 2010 was yet to be compiled and the Committee would be provided with it as soon it is available. The MRM budget came from the Department of Arts and Culture, local municipalities and sometimes a sponsor, which requested the organisation to hold a certain activity. The Department of Arts and Culture sometimes held its own activities, which could be related to MRM activities; however, the MRM was only accountable to activities that it had been requested to hold.

Ms M Boroto (Mpumalanga, ANC) suggested that the House of Traditional Healers should be involved in cultural, social and moral discussions with the MRM as the majority of citizens had a traditional background and some of those cultural values endangered health and safety for young men and women.

Ms M Moshodi (Free State, ANC) said that it seemed as though the communities were not engaged adequately in the discussions of social ills and that there needed to be greater engagement between the communities and the MRM members.

Mr Mkhatshwa said there was a member of the House of Traditional Healers on the board of the MRM. The role of the community could never be undermined and that the MRM tried daily to allow communities and the ordinary person to be heard through the activities and discussions held by the organisation.

Department of Arts and Culture: Investing in Culture
Mr Themba Wakache, Director General: Department of Arts and Culture, said that the Investing in Culture (IIC) programme was adopted in 2005. It was previously known as the Poverty Alleviation programme. The IIC programme was intended to provide empowerment opportunities for unemployed people from the second economy through training and job creation in arts, culture and heritage. Its main objective was to support the previously disadvantaged groups, ranging from urban townships to rural areas. Small community groups of women and men would be assisted to start up their own subsistence farming groups or knitting groups or anything that would inspire them to independently earn their living.

Dr Mbulelo Jokweni, Acting Deputy Director-General, Department of Arts and Culture, continued with the presentation. He said that there were nine provincial co-ordinators who were based at their respective provinces. They were expected to report back to the Department of Arts and Culture, however, these nine co-ordinators had been involved in a lengthy but necessary investigation involving gross misconduct. The administration of IIC has surprised many, as there had been issues of mismanagement of government funds, embezzlement and fraud.

The Department of Arts and Culture was given the task of conducting oversight visits over the IIC; however, due to the fact that reports were received timeously and in good order these oversight visits were not considered necessary. When the Department of Arts and Culture went for an oversight visit to one of the known groups in Gugulethu, Cape Town, the people who were once involved in the support programme said the facility had been moved to Kokstad in the Eastern Cape. However, after much research it was proven that the facility did not exist. This event unveiled more trouble and scandal for the organisation. A moratorium or suspension was placed on the IIC around August 2009 and a forensic investigation followed and then recommendations of the investigation were executed.

For further details please refer to Department of Arts and Culture presentation attached.

Discussion
The Chairperson asked whether anyone had been held accountable for this situation and if so what had been the penalties issued.

Ms Moshodi asked what were the Director General’s suggestions to ensure that this did not happen again as there was little point in getting rid of a group of opportunists only for them to be replaced by a group that repeated the exact same thing.

Dr Jokweni said that the eight provincial co-coordinators were dismissed, the ninth resigned before the problem was detected and at the moment a way to recover the funds from the perpetrators was being investigated. The best way to curb the prevalence of such situations within the public sector was for public officials to see oversight visits not just as things that happen when there was a problem, but for oversight visits to happen regularly and consistently.

Ms Rantho asked what was meant by “questionable status and others” in the presentation.

Dr Jokweni explained there were a number of accounts in which funds were transferred to for the various projects the IIC were implementing, however, the realisation of foul play meant that IIC activity and projects had to be temporarily suspended to investigate each project, therefore the status of some of the accounts was still questionable. Some projects had to be cleared due to the fact that the funds were not actually going directly to the intended cause.

Ms P Mncube (Gauteng, ANC) asked how the Department would ensure that individuals of such character were not re-hired by the government.

Mr Wakache said that public officials were elected to be the monitors on behalf of the South African citizen; hence it was important for departments to fully understand the role of oversight visits as they verified documents and reports that departments were timeously expecting from project managers.

The Chairperson said the sad thing about this situation was that reports were completed in good time, only to find that they were fake and the project had no longer or never existed, this meant that the Committee needed to take heed of the words of caution given by the Director General and to rethink the objectives that needed to be fulfilled when making oversight visits.

The meeting was adjourned.