JOHANNESBURG -- The Confucius Institute in South Africa's Stellenbosch University is organizing a "China Month," which is scheduled to be held from October 4 to 27, to celebrate Chinese culture.

Lucy Corkin, projects director of Center for Chinese Studies ( CCS) under the university, said in an interview with Xinhua that during the activity, there will be lectures on China's cultural history and China-Africa relations, a food festival as well as a photographic exhibition featuring pictures taken by South African students on their trips to China.

Confucius Institute status was confered on the CCS by Chinese Education Minister Zhou Ji during his visit to South Africa in June, 2004 when intention between the South African and the Chinese governments to establish such a center was expressed. The center officially opened its doors in June, 2005.

"We are currently negotiating an agreement with Peking University as our Chinese university partner to consolidate the Confucius Institute at CCS, Stellenbosch University," the director said.

Peking University has seconded a teacher with extensive experience in teaching Chinese as a foreign language to assist with Mandarin teaching here, he said.

"Zhang Yuan, who is currently teaching at the Stellenbosch University's Department for Modern Foreign Languages, recently organized and presented a teachers' workshop, training advanced Mandarin students to be tutors in the Mandarin language."

In the university there are over 80 Mandarin learning students, who are very motivated to learn Chinese language, either because of their interest in China's rich culture, or because of China's rising influence in the global economy.

The Chinese government has been committed to supporting and encouraging Chinese language learning in South Africa. It has given financial support for the establishment of CCS and language lab, dispatching Chinese teachers to the center, which will initially concentrate on study of the Chinese language and incrementally introduce other fields of study, including Chinese culture, politics and history, as well as carrying out research into a number of spheres of Chinese life and its relationships with Africa and in particular South Africa.

Currently two universities and twenty schools in South Africa offer Mandarin course.