Question NW3625 to the Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture:
19 December 2023 - NW3625
Schreiber, Dr LA to ask the Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture:
(1). Which national government departments submitted annual reports in terms of section 9(2) of the Use of Official Languages Act, Act 12 of 2012 to his department in the past two years. (2) (a) which (i) national government departments, (ii) entities reporting to him and (iii) state-owned enterprises were granted exemptions in terms of section 12(1) of the specified Act in the past two years and (b) what were the reasons for granting the exemptions?
Reply:
These annual reports are submitted to PanSALB. PanSALB took a strategic decision to move from merely monitoring the compliance reports to evaluating Language Policy Implementation in terms of the Constitution, the Use of Official Languages Act, and PanSALB Act. This ensured a more qualitative approach from merely receiving reports to ensuring the substantiveness thereof.
It commissioned Language Policy Implementation Evaluation which was affected by National Treasury Regulations on tenders above R30 000. The service provider commenced a Language Policy Implementation Evaluation in March 2023. The service provider has been on the ground conducting data collection and assisting national departments with language policy implementation reporting. They have also been analysing the received Annual Language Reports received from the national departments and the report is expected to be released by the end of February 2024. This will provide a comprehensive list of compliant and submitted reports from national government departments.
(2) (i) The Department has not granted an exemption to any national government department since the Act does not provide for that.
(ii) There are no entities reporting to the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture that were granted exemptions in the past two years. Below are four other national public entities that were granted exemptions:
- South African Weather Service
- National Gambling Board
- South African National Biodiversity and.
- iSimangaliso Wetland Park
(iii) There are no state-owned enterprises that were granted exemptions.
(b) The reasons for granting the exemption were that these entities in terms of the
size is small and they have capacity challenges. They were not able to establish fully-fledged language units as the Use of Official Languages Act requires. They indicated that they would assign a senior employee to perform the functions of a language unit. In the past two years there is no entity reporting to the Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture that was granted an exemption.