About the website

Objectives and purpose of the website

The purpose of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) website is to promote access to information of the department to the general public, profile the department in terms of department's mandate and its guiding legislations, showcase the departmental current and planned activities by means of publishing the annual reports, medium term strategic plan, previous and upcoming events, news and speeches.

To ensure fulfilment of this, the guiding objectives of the department are:

ensure that information on the website is easily found accessible
contribute towards public engagement through information provision
provide access to online departmental information
provide information about the department and its services.
provide access to DFFE provincial department websites
provide access to the department’s public entities websites

Target audience:

Sectors of the public engaged in and those that have growing interest in environmental issues. These comprise of:

national and international environmental organisations (private and NGO sector)
national, provincial and local government authorities
the media
miscellaneous members of the national and international community

Scope of information on the website

The information available on this website includes the follow:

the structure, branches and their functions, and senior management and their biographies,
programmes and projects of the department,
access to information on tenders, vacancies, bursaries and internship opportunities,
access to audio visual material (video), image galleries, speeches and media statements and releases,
access to legislation such as green papers, white papers and acts and regulations,
access to strategic documents and the annual reports and medium term strategic plans,
access to documents open for public comments such as gazetted notices,
access to information on international agreements and obligations,
access to contacts information such as physical address and call centre numbers, minister and deputy minister offices as well as the department’s head of communication and media contacts.

Frequency of updating

The website is updated on a daily basis. Our policy is to provide information as and when it becomes available. However, the managers of the departmental website cannot guarantee the currency of information that is published on other websites and statutory bodies that are linked to.

Help for accessing information on this website

Additional functionality

The enhanced access to the website is as follows:

Search functionality is available on all pages of the website, this functionality only searches information that is available on this website. It is not linked with Google search or any other external search engine.
A site map that provides an overview of the website in a hierarchical format. The site’s information is broken down into specific subject areas to enable easy orientation of the website.
The home page provides quick links to information available on deeper levels of the website. The selection of these links is based on the frequent need by users.
Links to external websites are indicated by the wording “Outside link - opens in new window” which will appear in a box when your cursor is moved over the link. The website will open in a new browser window.

Need help with problems experienced on the website?

Please contact us (nmakama@dffe.gov.za), (mtladi@dffe.gov.za) and / or ( kmyeza@dffe.gov.za) if you encounter problems with the website.

Recommended browsers and screen resolution

Recommended browsers for viewing the site are Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and other browsers.

The website is reponsive to mobile gadgets. It will resise according to your gadget's screen resolution settings..

Document formats

The main format for information on this website is HTML. However, PDF versions of documents (e.g. Acts, Bills, tender bulletins, gazettes, reports, etc.) are provided to preserve the original layout thereof and/or to assist users in the downloading thereof.
To open PDF documents, you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. It will open documents directly in your browser.
Sometimes it takes long to open PDF documents. In this case, we recommend that you download it to your computer and open it from there.

Tips to download documents to your computer:

When using Internet Explorer as your browser:

With your mouse, right-click on the link to the document you want to download.
In the drop-down menu, choose 'Save Target as'.
In the 'Save As' window choose the location on your hard drive where you want to save the document and click on the 'Save' button. The file will be downloaded to the location you have specified.
Open your Acrobat Reader application and open the documents that you have downloaded.

When using Netscape as your browser:

With your mouse, shift and click (left mouse click) on the link to the document you want to save.
In the 'Save As' window choose the location on your hard drive where you want to save the document and click on the 'Save' button. The file will be downloaded to the location you have specified.
Open your Acrobat Reader application and open the documents that you have downloaded.