As part of the Free State’s Mother Tongue Day celebrations, the province’s Department of Sports, Arts, Culture, and Recreation launched the Homebrew Festival on 20 February.
The aim of the festival was to provide opportunities to local artists from all the districts of the province to showcase their talents while earning a living as well.
Homebrew Festival featured several events between 21 and 23 February, including stage productions, lectures, visual art exhibitions, and musical performances.
“Through these programmes, we are also on a quest to contribute towards government priorities of economic development and cultural tourism while also celebrating our heritage, culture and traditions”, stated the Member of the Executive Council for Sport, Arts, Culture and Recreation, Ntombizanele Sifuba.
The National Afrikaans Literature Museum hosted the Word and Literature Festival on Friday 21 February, where the importance of preserving the Sesotho language was emphasised through several lectures, workshops, and presentations.
“We invited people from all over the province, the Free State Writers Forum, university students, writers from around the province, and learners, to unearth new talent and upcoming writers,” a Sesotho Literature Museum Human Scientist, Molale ‘Papa Princess’ Shuping, told Bloemfontein Courant. Shuping explained that seasoned writers were also invited to teach and inspire the next generation of writers in the province.
Shuping told the publication why it is important to preserve mother tongue languages in the Free State. “We need to take care of our languages and speak our languages, and write about our languages, because if we don’t, who will?”
The Sesotho Literature Museum is the only place where the Sesotho language is on display within a museum. “We are the first museum to have an indigenous language on display in a museum,” explained Shuping.
“We are calling on people from outside to come to our museum and share knowledge and preserve the knowledge, because it is so important to write with our languages,” he added.
The Sesotho and Afrikaans Literature Museum is located in Merriam Makeba Street, Bloemfontein Central.
Warren Hawkins
