ADDRESS BY PREMIER
To the Religious Desk in the Department of Sports Recreation and Culture, to the Department of Health and Lastly to the Independent Electoral Commission. I stand before you today as a humble man.
You are not looking at the Premier of the province but an ordinary man who is overwhelmed by your gesture of goodwill.
When I first heard of your alliance in this all-important project, the first thing that struck me was the unlikely stakeholders that have come together for a common purpose, that of healing our bleeding Province. I have no words to adequately describe what I am feeling right now.
Ladies and gentlemen I have been invited both in my capacity as a leader of the province and as well as in my capacity as a member of the society to a plethora of mink and manure high-caliber functions but never till today, till this gathering, have I felt so much part of a function.
I confess, I am at a loss words, however, I will have to soldier on in the most humblest way and to give you a message to take with on your exciting expedition. This I will do on behalf of the people of the province.
Shall we pray:
Father, your people believe strongly that you are ruling the world from the continent, Africa since the beginning of the 21 st century. If that is a fact we welcome you to this, our and your continent with smiling faces, warm hearts and open hands.
For many centuries, oh father, our continent has been on the periphery of global mainstream development.
We are not complaining father but we are just acknowledging that our wisdom, as perishable people of this world, cannot give us total emancipation from the manacles and bondages that we have foolishly created ourselves.
We therefore, beseech you, oh father, to come to our rescue. We are no different to the children of Israel who started doubting your mighty presence during the hard times of the long and winding road from the bondages of Egypt to the Promised Land.
We know father that your patience is seamless and knows no boundaries.
We beseech you, Lord to give strength to the people of this province to be able to do the right things the right way. It is through following your scriptures that our people will be able to transcend all the world entrapments and be able to emerge outright victors over all social ills.
Before you, all people are equal. The problem with us is that we have not yet embraced your teachings.
We call our country the Rainbow Nation and a rainbow catches the eye, precisely because of its bright colours. Imagine if a few of those seven colours would fade.
Would we continue to call a rainbow a rainbow? Certainly not. The same applies to our people. If a certain race, class, sex, ethnic group were to be totally inhilated would we continue to call ourselves a rainbow nation.
Father help us to understand that in diversity there is strength and that no language among our eleven official languages in inferior to any.
Recently our province has been awash with floods of such magnitudes we could be forgiven to think of Noah's floods but we are not complaining, oh father, we believe everything happen for a reason.
We saw miracles happening, what? With babies born on branches of trees like they were birds.
However, we remember that Jesus Christ was not born in a five-star hospital with highly qualified mid-wives helping Mary to deliver:
Oh no, he was born in a cattle kraal, which could have been infested with tics and an array of other blood-sucking insects. We can imagine the stench of the cow dung surrounding them.
This thought gives us strength and stoicism. We know, oh Lord, that if we have you on our side, we have a shied that will protect us not only from externally perpetrated perils but it will protect us from ourselves.
The most dangerous animal to man nowadays is man himself. Father, we have become the architects of our own downfall. The reason is that we have taken our lives onto our mortal hands.
We are devoid of the metaphysical and supra-logical power that we should derive only from you.
We have become masters of our own fate, short-sightedly though that may be.
We know very well, God, that you help only those that help themselves.
It is with this knowledge that the people of Mpulamanga have entrusted their well being to the government, whose job (with the help of God) is to level the playing field and provide basic services that seek to improve the Human Development Index of our people.
As government, we invite you today, oh father, to be the light that guides us to total social, political, economic and spiritual immortality.
Our help will not come from Europe or any other continent but from this very continent.
We have to dig deep into ourselves and find solutions to all our problems. It is therefore all the more important that you, oh father, preside in our thought processes and make rich, wise and strong our cognitive structures.
God is ruling from Africa in the 21 st century. No longer will this continent plays second fiddle to any, however, this is easier said than done. A classical example, Father is the 2006 soccer bid. It would appear that some European countries have not yet realized that Africa has come of age in the world stage.
They have been eluded by the idea that you God have chosen this continent as your Headquarters to rule the world. We are not bitter Father. We promise You and the world that we will work harder and the world will have no choice but to stop and notice.
In the same vein, oh God, we beg you to rain blessings on our syllabus of the African Renaissance. We see this campaign as a key that should unlock the potential that we know our continent to have. Father help us to help ourselves. We yearn to be independent from our overseas counterparts.
We promise to work even harder. It is only through hardwork, sweat and self-sacrifice that we will be able to deal with the Western world on equal terms.
So Father, on behalf of our people, we pledge absolute compliance with Your scriptures and in the same breath we beseech You to grant us strength to do the right things in the right way while in pursuance of our mundane and celestial goals.
In the name of our Lord, the Son and the Holy sprit may all those who will be going on Pilgrimage to place our Lords prayer, written in our own South African indigenous languages, in Israel next to the sacred original Lord's prayer, have a pleasant expedition and put our province on the map of the world.
God bless you.
Amen.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I will humbly ask you to observe a moment of silence for thirty seconds in honour of the heroes that will be making the trip to Israel. During these thirty seconds I strongly urge you to say a silent prayer.
Amen.
The theme of this prayer day has been aptly dubbed “Heal our Nation” it is therefore, imperative for me to talk briefly about the scouge that is hell-bent on wiping our nation out.
This scouge has reached genocidal proportion that equal the mass killings that we saw happening in the German's concentration camps, in Ruanda, Burundi, Uganda and many other places of hell.
This scouge unlike the few genocidal rendervour I have mentioned, is a silent one. It stalks its prey under the cloud of invisibility. Shortly before it strikes, the victim is so filled with pleasure and feel he or she is on top. It comes in the form of ecstasy and erotism.
It camouflages itself in everything that embodies love and affection but ladies and gentlemen, that is just an illusion, a mere façade. A serial killer is out on the loose, preying not only on victims who have loose or no morals at all but also on people armed with strong moral fibre.
It appeals to feelings of lust and sexual fulfillment. It is disheartening to see a young person being led to the gallows, to his or her immense death in such a careless and unrewarding manner.
Many a person have traded their lives for a thirty minutes pleasure. When your libido gets the better of your thoughts that's when you are welcoming death with your eyes open and arms embracing it like a priceless object.
Is it worth it? I am talking here, ladies and gentlemen, as you might have guessed already, about the epidemic HIV/AIDS. The nation is on its sick bed; we are all dying by lottery. We don't know the time and place where this draconian disease will strike.
Our government has abolished the death penalty because it clashes with our democratic beliefs but it would seem the devil has unleashed an even worse lethal force of death tool in the form of AIDS.
We are now facing two scenarios: it is either we accept the status quo as prescribed by the devil himself and continue to succumb to our physiological sexual needs willy nilly and I do not have to tell you the consequences of this option.
OR
We avoid risking our precious lives by abstaining from promiscuity. Let us stay away from sexual activities that will only send us to our early deaths. We really deserve better than this. Even in the olden days in our different cultures, sex was consummated only by married couples, except, of course, by a few hot-headed scoundrels who would undermine the culture.
I am standing here today preaching that young or old unmarried individuals should abstain from sexual activities. To the married couples, I say, stay with your one partner and stop cheating because the consequences of that little act can be grossly painful.
You will not only bring slow and painful death to yourself but also to your innocent and unsuspecting partner. Surely when the vicar says “till death do us part” he does not intend that one or both of the partners getting married should decisively hasten the chances of death by infidelity, cheating and promiscuity.
You wrong the church, you wrong your partner, and you wrong the community if you go hunting for your death and that of others who are innocent. According to statistics (whether accurate or not), one our of five people in South Africa is HIV/AIDS positive.
If we were to start counting from one to five and we immediately bury the persons who called out the numerical digit “five” how would you feel ladies and gentlemen?
This might look like just another exercise but the sad truth is that it is happening. Amongst us here there are people, and many of them (knowing and unknowing) who are on their last stretch of life.
Ask for them tomorrow and they will be in their graves. The question is, is it you, me or the person next? We are surely living on borrowed times. The last thing in summarising the chapter on the HIV/AIDS theme I have the following to say:
DO NOT TRADE YOUR LIFE FOR AN HOUR'S PLEASURE SEX IS NOT THE BEGIN-ALL AND END-ALL OF LIFE SIPHELILE ISIZWE.
On a concluding note, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to remind you of your responsibility as well-meaning members of our society. The Local Government elections have come. In the past 4 years or so we had our first historic Local Government elections.
You voted into office candidates of you choice. I must admit, it was not smooth sailing for them. Most of the councilors we ordinary people who were not equipped with even the basic skills and competencies to run such demanding offices.
This perceptible lack of capacity has undermined to a greater or lesser extent the agenda of transformation however, as would be expected, it was a learning curve. Through our policies, Local Government will now assume a more significant and potent role in service delivery.
They are the sphere of government that has its roots firmly entrenched on the ground. They are relatively easier to access. Therefore, it was thought wise to have them driving directly delivery of services at your doorstep.
This round of elections, in my view, is even more important to the welfare of our communities than the National and Provincial one. It is with this understanding I urge you to come in your numbers and cast your votes.
The people that you will put in office will be directly accountable to you in your communities. The eight principles of Batho Pele will be seen in action. The Local Government sphere will give the masses of people within their communities a voice.
No longer will projects and programmes be designed by remote control from some National or Provincial offices but it will be you, ladies and gentlemen, through your local government representatives who will craft your own destiny and development.
If you stay away from the voting pools you are depriving yourself a golden opportunity to contribute towards the establishment of a layer of government that will serve you as your direct servant.
You owe it to yourself and your community to cast your vote for the person who has the competency, temperament and character to do the right job. This will be your way of putting candidates that are beyond reproach to these offices.
The power of citizens lie with their vote. If you choose not to exercise your rights to make a choice you are no better than a hungry person who is lazy to start fire and make food. “Everybody is complaining about the weather but nobody is doing anything about it.” These words were said by Mark Twain many decades ago.
The elections are affording you as an electorate to do something about the things that are not going right in your community. Before you can vote, ladies and gentlemen, you have to register as a voter in South Africa.
You have to have a standard-issue, bar-coded legal document. Once the venues for registration have been announced please go to one nearest one to your home, produce your ID and a few minutes later you will be in the list.
Come the day of the elections, you will have no hassle in casting your vote for your selected candidate. That is the power of democracy, ladies and gentlemen. It gives you the power to choose what you want. Use your discretion but use it wisely and responsible.
To the delegation that is going to Israel, Fare thee well. Learn all you can while you are out there and bring back with you the wisdom that only globetrotting can arm you with. You will never be the same person that you have been before this expedition when you come back to these shores.
You are my personal heroes and I am sure our society perceives you as such. I thank you. God and the nation are with you every step of the way.
Adios.