Speech by Premier TSP Makwetla at the National Children's day Celebrations Rugby Stadium Nelspruit at 06 November 2004
Programme Director
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Allow me to welcome everyone to this National Children's day celebrations. A special welcome to the children in whose honour we meet here today. You, our children, are our main asset and our future.
I believe that I am speaking on behalf of all parents today when I say all of us today promise that we will display more love and affection to you and give more time to you. We also promise to listen and talk to you more often and we will praise you more regularly and encourage you to grow up to become good citizens and leaders of tomorrow.
Indeed we will continue do all these things and more because in our country, and in many parts of the world, children have rights.
You have the right to love and affection and to warmth and care. You have the right to a home and the right to respect, so that people will listen to you. All of you have the right to your opinions and the right to a more caring form of education that promotes your skills and talents. As children you have the right to attend and achieve in school, and be protected from injury, with time and space to play, to explore, and to learn.
As future adults you have the right to be taught respect for others as well as respect for who you are. You have the right to be taught respect for people who are different from you.
When you are abused, ill-treated or exploited, you have the right to complain and to lodge complaints without suffering reprisals.
The question that we all need to answer today is how can we, as adults and as parents, ensure that children exercise these and other rights enshrined in the United Nation's Convention of the Right of the Child which was adopted on 2 September 1990 and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child which came into force on 29 November 1999.
Each and every South African has a role to play and a specific responsibility to become part of the revolution for children. The main responsibility and obligation for children, lies with the parents who should do everything in their power to take care of their offsprings. But sometimes that responsibility is not accepted.
We are a part of every child's family. And so in any way that we can, we should try to accept that responsibility and give the love and attention that every child who was born deserves to have. That is what our communities used to do not so many decades ago. We hope that as we leave this place today, more and more of us will accept responsibility for all our children.
Programme Director, I believe it is important for us to resuscitate and strengthen indigenous best practices to support the development of the child. There are things that we used to do in the past that actually assisted us in developing our children.
As a way of inculcating good behavioural deportment in children as they grow up, our parents relied on the Thakaneng concept. Children of a particular age group would play together and adults would use these gatherings to impart knowledge on how to behave in adulthood.
Ladies and gentlemen, today's festivities take place as we celebrate 10 years of freedom, democracy, peace and progress in a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it. The rights of women, children and differently-abled persons are recognised and are increasingly finding expression in real life.
Young people have benefited from the environment and programmes of freedom.
They have also gained from the improvements in the education system, from the
outlawing of discrimination in access to professions, from the opening up of
opportunities in sport and culture and from the provision of electricity, water
and other services to millions of households.
As we celebrate Children's Day today, there is no better time to commit ourselves - individually and collectively - to the task of building a better future for our children. Working with you in a people's contract to create work and fight poverty, we are confident of success.
I thank you.