PREMIER'S ADDRESS
Honourable Chairperson;
MayorsandDeputy mayors
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen.
Today is the 16th of December 1999. In exactly sixteen days the door into another millennium will swing open. As it does, we are called upon to celebrate life as we are guided along the road to the future.
Let me from the outset thank the Representative Council for Nkomazi East for spearheading millennial cultural activities and celebrations at this pivotal point in our history to showcase the resilience, talents and cultures of the people of our province, our country and our continent.
Ladies and gentlemen, It is really a great pleasure for me to be in these surroundings - so natural and so refreshing. Away from the rigours of officialdom.
In an age when humanity and our culture are threatened by countless hazards, it gives one hope to know that we still have time to celebrate our heritage.
As I look around I realise that not far from here, in this same plains, our forebears gave every inch of their being in defence of their dignity as a people.
Master of ceremonies, it was here in these valleys where our ancestors fought gallantly to stop the scourge of encroaching colonialism and land invasion in defence of their freedom and their country.
A few years ago we, descendants of those brave warriors, Mswati, Nyabela, Ngungunyana, Shaka, Sekhukhune met here to plan battle.
Because at that time the country was not in the hands of the people.
But today we meet in the full and fulfilling knowledge that we can now declare: `The country is in the hands of the people!!".
And so we meet, as descendants of these valiant fighters, in a different setting, in a different era, to plan for peace and not war; to promote unity and not division; to forge a common nationhood and not exclusive privilege.
That we gather at the dawn of the new millennium, is a reminder of the fact that, valiant though their resistance was, the African people were conquered; a dark interregnum of defeat and humiliation set in; and yet the resistance continued, taking many forms under many different conditions. In the end, right triumphed over might.
We meet not as victors to dance to the cries of war; we meet not to celebrate over any vanquished people. Our trophies are neither skulls nor precious booty.
We meet to assert the humanity of persons one to the other; to seek unity and reconciliation; to set shoulders to the wheel in building a better life for all.
We are mindful that the journey to where we are today has not been easy. But all of us persevered because we knew that what we had set out on was the right road.
As people we have begun to emerge as if in tandem with the new millennium, into a nation confident of itself, aware of its immense possibilities and prepared to do extra-ordinary things to attain the goal that comes from creating a better quality of life for all.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are moving into a century in which our priorities must be an end to the poverty of our people, a century in which the divisions of the past must truly cease to exist.
As we reconstruct South Africa and reclaim the whole country for all, we break down all the divisions and attitudes of the past, freeing everyone form the last vestiges of oppression. Freeing everyone from hunger, disease and want.
It is our task to make the most of our freedom, to entrench it in our new epoch as a fundamental and a permanent feature of our very existence.
Ladies and gentlemen, the challenges facing all of us are to contribute to a complete and rounded picture of this celebration and others we will hold.
Certainly that complete and rounded perspective cannot be contained only in political speeches, song, dance, poetry and in the construction of monuments.
An integral element of the celebration is that we should feel the greater need, now more than before, to educate ourselves and the world about what amalgam of historical events has given birth to our collective human experience.
It is only by understanding this that we can be forewarned and forearmed about the challenges that lie ahead in our effort to construct a better world. Only this experience can prepare us to be a nation of sages, statesman and stateswomen who can inspire others and help solve problems besetting our world.
The challenge to all of us is to ensure that we celebrate in all our languages and develop way in which our languages can, through the process, further grow and flourish so that our experience can be recorded in many different ways, many different voices, contributing to a national convention without anyone of us feeling we are not of the collective experience.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are heartened by the partnership between the business sector and the organizers of the celebrations.
We are also pleased that this initiative will help, among other things, to raise resources in order to attend to the plight of, and to empower the children and the disabled as well as to preserve our heritage promote our environment and consciously water the tree of peace in our land.
These celebrations, this cultural festival must add value to our task of forging our nationhood.
It should help us to display to other nations of the world, as well as to ourselves, our capacity to give humanity what is proudly the product of the composite effort of all our people.
A few years ago all the data of human experience was in the horizon, now it within our grasp.
Let us use it to build the high road to destiny.
As we enter the new millennium, South Africa must become a beehive of activity; a nation at work to build a better life.
Those who came before us laid the foundation for the better life we are all working for. For that we will be forever grateful.
This, however, is not an occasion for us simply to congratulate ourselves. There are also challenges we must face.
Our resolve to preserve our culture and keep our heritage sites for our children and their children remains unshakeable.
The people of this province must be involved in whatever we do here tonight. They should rightfully see this celebration, our culture, as their heritage to preserve for future generations.
Local and provincial government must also be involved. Tourism forms part of our strategy for sustained economic growth and development. Already more than a million tourists visit our province annually.
There are many beautiful and interesting places on our continent and elsewhere. We must therefore adopt a professional approach, upgrade skills of employees and market ourselves aggressively.
If approached within the framework of the Reconstruction and Development Programme, these efforts will make a significant contribution to bringing a better life for all.
Not only will tourism play its part in generating national economic growth. More directly, it will help improve the living standards of rural communities.
We need, as a nation, to take stock of what we have accomplished and what still needs to be done in preserving our heritage and rewriting our history.
Our success as a nation depends, in no small measures on the conservation of our heritage sites and the preservation of our culture similar to what we are doing today.
It demands conditions in which every sector of society can join hands to make a unique treasure accessible to our nation and its visitors, and to ensure that future generations will have the same privilege.
Let us all become part of a living monument in celebration of life.
Today we are righting a century-old wrong.
As our people were the agents of their own liberation, defying oppression and deprivation, they are now critical to the programme of reconstruction and development, both as beneficiary and driving force.
Together, government and people can together build a better life on the foundations that the nation has laid in the past five years of democracy.
When municipalities and communities form a partnership in the spirit of Masakhane; when each sector of society joins hands with the police to fight crime and violence.
When the private sector and organised labour work together to promote growth and job-opportunities, we all reap the benefits of the unity espoused by people like OR Tambo, Gert Sibanda, Portia Shabangu, Elmon Mathonsi and many others.
But we dare say that consultation, transparency and equity were the corner-stones of whatever they did.
As the people were their own liberators, so should they become active agents in changing their lives for the better.
For this, our communities need information about what resources and funds are available to them; skills to turn their needs into plans and project proposals; and an effective partnership with government.
Oppression was overcome in South Africa, and democracy is being built, by an ever widening unity across the lines of race and ethnicity.
But it would be a mistake to regard that unity as something that will preserve itself. We need constantly to encourage and promote it.
As leaders, we need to be vigilant in ensuring that the diversity which is our strength is never again used to divide us.
Fundamental to our unity is the mutual respect for the rich variety of our languages and cultures.
While the constitution recognises rights in this regard and proposes institutions to promote them, this will have little effect without the involvement of traditional leaders.
Our freedom is also giving impetus to the recovery of our history.
Recent excavations, together with earlier work, are freeing our understanding of the past from the colonial account of our country and region. They point with increasing detail to our country's place in Africa's civilisation.
Traditional leaders can promote and assist continuing research so that we know who we truly are.
The nation, with your help, also needs to come to a proper understanding of those whose history has been most grievously affected by the ravages and distortions of apartheid and colonialism.
The victory that we have scored against apartheid has laid the firm basis for all the people of South Africa to unite across colour, language, ethnic and religious barriers. It has launched us on the course of realising our true potential.
Before the darkness of the interregnum of defeat and humiliation, great visionaries such as Gonnema, Moshweshwe, Cetshwayo, Nghunghunyane, Hintsa, Montsiwa, Sekhukhuni, Ramabulana, Mzilikazi, Kok and Mswati had come to the realisation that the disunity of the African people was at the centre of their woes.
Having together resolved that South Africa belong to all who live in it, we know that the unity of our nation is our strength as we strive to build a prosperous nation.
Our tryst with these forbears is to build South Africa into a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic country; a nation of Africans across colour lines; an African democracy in the modern world.
Finally, ladies and gentlemen, in partnership with all sectors of society, we must continue to give absolute priority to HIV/AIDS programmes.
We must continue to mobilise popular awareness of the seriousness of the epidemic. All of us must realise that the epidemic is not only a health issue, but also an economic one.
It is an epidemic which we ignore at our peril.
In conclusion, let me once again express my heartfelt gratitude to the organizers of these celebrations for the invitation extended to us to share this fresh breeze with you.
We express hope that the new millennium will see accelerated efforts aimed at creating a qualitatively better life for all South Africans.
The country, dear friends, is in the hands of the people.
Let us roll up our sleeves and get down to work.
I Thank You.