MEC Dan Kgothule will, at the request of the Minister of Arts and Culture, Mr Paul Mashatile, lead a Department of Arts and Culture delegation to the Kingdom of Lesotho from 7th to the 9th December 2012.
In an ongoing effort to strengthen relations between the Republic of South Africa and the Kingdom of Lesotho, the Minister, has initiated the working visit to the Kingdom.
This visit is the result of a meeting the Minister held with his Lesotho counterpart on the periphery of the meeting of the 4th AU Conference of the Ministers of Culture held in the Democratic Republic of Congo in November 2012. The visit will entail:
- Discussions on the content of the Programme of Cooperation
- Visiting the graves of South Africans killed during raids in Lesotho during the apartheid era and
- Attending the memorial lecture.
This visit will also serve as a platform to discuss cooperation between the two countries guided by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Culture, Information and Sports.
The following key issues will also form part of the discussions:
- Training and exchange of expertise
- Management of arts and crafts
- Development of projects for donor’s conference
- Policy development on craft, music, film and television
- Performing Arts
- Archives and Libraries.
The visit to Lesotho follows on the footsteps of the initiative that Mr Kgothule made to establish cooperation between the Free State and the Kingdom of Lesotho on Sport and Recreation matters.
The minister for Gender and Youth, Sport and Recreation of the Kingdom of Lesotho, honourable Chief Thesele ‘Maseribane visited the Free State from the 25th to the 27 th November 2012 to advance this cooperation.
