PREMIER'S KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Master of ceremonies Mr Sambo
Health Minister Manto Shabalala-Msimang
Social Services and Populations Development MEC Busi Coleman
Sports, Recreation Arts and Culture MEC Siphosezwe Masango
Members of the Mpumalanga Executive Council present here today
His worship Mayor Sibeko
Honuorable guests
Ladies and gentlemen.
We are gathered here today on this truly historic occasion to pay fitting tribute to the young heroes, heroines and martyrs, including eight-year-olds, who fell in that titanic battle against the forces of apartheid repression.
On this day 24 years ago, the children of Soweto, Mamelodi, Gugulethu and other areas rose united in response to a massacre unprecedented in its nature and scale.
Their heroic efforts continued into the 80s joined by the fighting youth in Witbank, Nelspruit, Bethal, Evander, Standerton and other parts of the province and the country.
Through that vital push we are today able to stand here today. In the full knowledge that not a single shot, not a single teargas canister shall be fired at us.
Indeed the sacrifices of those martyrs were not in vain,
We celebrate today as South Africa Youth Day. We are mindful that the journey to celebrate in complete freedom from intimidation, has not been an easy one. But all of us persevered because we know that what we had set out on was the right road.
As the late President of the ANC Comrade Oliver Reginald Tambo said soon after the declaration of a State of Emergency in 1986:
"The declaration of yet another state of emergency, this time across the length and breadth of the country, means that the entire people of South Africa, black and white, the oppressed and the oppressor, friend and foe alike, are focussing on the tenth anniversary of the Soweto Uprising, the South Africa Youth Day.
"This means that the Botha regime has wittingly or unwittingly defined Monday June 16, 1986, as the biggest national occasion since Soweto. It deserves to be and we shall make sure that it is."
How prophetic.
So when the youth took to the streets they did so because they could no longer resist the call to rise up from slavery.
And a people determined to challenge the South African regime in all its strength, with all its states of emergency, is a people that could only be rewarded with victory. Indeed victory was our reward in 1994 when we stood in long queues to vote into power a democratic government.
But having realised that long years of struggle had taken its toll on the lives of our young people, government and the people of South Africa knew they had to something for a sector of our population dubbed: "The lost generation". Some of our youth came from conditions of abject poverty, inadequate and domesticating education and other social ills.
There was a marked revolt against accepting authority at home and at school. We had to do something. We acknowledged the problems but refused to allow the tag of LOST generation to be applied to our youth.
People who never knew or enjoyed their youth.
There were some suggestions on what to do. Some suggested that the youth participate in Parliamentary structures by having a Youth Ministry. But all of us were agreed that even if it was not through a fully-fledged Youth Ministry the youth had to have a voice in parliament.
That's how the National and Provincial Youth Commissions were born. That's how the Acts came into being. They may not be perfect. The incoming commissioners have a duty to take the process forward.
What, you may ask, was the vision and the mission of the Youth Commission?
Their vision was, and still is, the creation of an enabling society where developed and empowered young people are valued assets of the Province. With a mission to work towards the development of all young people's full potential through an integrated process involving all stakeholders.
The Mpumalanga Youth Commission was appointed on June 16, 1997 and was inaugurated into office on July 16, 1997. The Youth Commission was established in terms of Act no. 5 of 1996 to be the most effective and viable vehicle that would accelerate Youth development and ensure that government spending and programmes take into account youth development and empowerment.
The process of appointing the Provincial Youth Commission was characterised by public participation and was youth driven. But the question about its represantivity and geographic spread would forever remain.
The Commission was established as part of the Provincial Government plan to develop a comprehensive strategy to address problems and challenges confronting young men and women. Its placement in the office of the Premier was to ensure that it has the required political clout to intervene on policy development from the Strategic Centre.
The establishment of the Commission was an important achievement for the youth in general.
As required by the Act, the Provincial Youth Policy was developed, presented to, and approved by the Cabinet and circulated to all Departments. In spite of that, no effective mechanism is in place to ensure implementation by Departments. The establishment of the Inter Departmental Committee on Youth will ensure that the Youth Policy is implemented and properly monitored.
When the Youth Commission was appointed in 1997 it inherited the problem of supernumerary staff from the so-called homeland areas.
I am glad that some of these problems are being looked into.
The Commission in our province has taken great developmental strides in the past couple of years. Development, as the Commission's document so aptly points out, refers to a process whereby young women and men are able to improve their skills, talents and abilities, as well as extend their intellectual, physical and emotional capacities.
This includes the opportunity for young women and men to express themselves and to live full lives in all social, cultural, economic and spiritual spheres. Youth development also refers to engaging young women and men in development activities as participants in the decision-making processes and as beneficiaries.
I wish to thank the outgoing Commissioners for a good job done. It was never easy during their term. Administration could not understand their existence, in one way or the other this may have led to misunderstandings which created wrong perceptions.
However, I am happy that has been settled. I wish to commit our Government to maximum utilisation of the capacity Government has invested in the outgoing commissioners for youth Development even outside the Youth Commission itself.They also promised me that they would use these skills both in public and in private sector, for that I wish to thank them.
Master of ceremonies on the advent of the democratic government we all pledged ourselves to a better life for all.
This means we must speed up the programme to improve the quality of life of the people. The fight against poverty requires a co-ordinated strategy that cuts across all sectors and pays particular attention to rural and disadvantaged areas.
We must ensure that all government programmes are co-ordinated towards this objective especially in areas such as housing, social security, transport, health care, education, water and electricity, rural and youth development and rolling out telecommunications infrastructure and postal services.
We should ensure that these programmes reach the most disadvantaged sections of our population, including women, the youth, workers, rural people, the unemployed, children, the aged, and the disabled, in the process mobilising these and other social strata such as the communities of faith, traditional leaders and professionals.
We must enable the people to become their own governors.
Ladies and gentlemen, the centrepiece of our government's programme for the economy is the pursuit of growth and development.
We need to increase the wealth base of the country by producing more goods and services in the same measure as we improve the quality of life of especially the poor, and effect, in a variety of ways, the redistribution of wealth and income in favour of those previously excluded from the economic mainstream.
As government we have to assert again that the central task of the democratic state is to address the interests of that section of our population, who were the oppressed and super exploited during the epoch of colonialism and apartheid. Labour, like capital, stands at the centre of the creation of wealth or the material conditions which make it possible to improve the conditions of life of the people as a whole.
This means that the working class, the democratic state and capital constitute the proverbial triangle necessary for the development and transformation of our society.
Government must focus on changing the conditions of this section of our working people, for the better, including abolishing racial and gender disparities as a necessary condition for the building of a non-racial and non-sexist society and a logical expression of the character of the democratic state as a state of the people as a whole.
We should also pursue the objective of black economic empowerment. This should be done in pursuit of the objective of the deracialisation of our society, while also impacting on the growth of capital in general, the multiplication of the forces loyal to national democracy and in the context of the developmental role of capital in general.
For its part, and as a fundamental condition of its developmental and transformative role, government has an objective interest in ensuring that a 'black bourgeoisie' does not grow because of:-
- Theft of public resources, emerging as a 'bureaucratic bourgeoisie;
- A similar process carried out by domestic white capital, resulting in the formation of a 'rented bourgeoisie' also known as 'fronts'.
South African capitalism gave birth to a collective of black workers, whose class position and social existence meant that it bore the brunt of apartheid oppression and super-exploitation and placed it at the head of the struggle for freedom. The super-exploitation of South Africa's working class has been reinforced over the decades by influx controls, which regulate cheap labour and relied on a large army of unemployed.
As a result of this policy and the stagnation in the apartheid economy towards the end of the 70's, the democratic government inherited the problem of large scale and increasingly structural unemployment. We therefore have a responsibility to mobilise the unemployed behind its programmes to accelerate transformation that will result in economic and job growth.
The legacy of apartheid has left skewed land ownership and usage, land hunger, lack of infrastructure and deliberate underdevelopment of our rural areas.
We need, all of us, to ensure a programme of integrated rural development, land and agrarian reform, that address these issues, including land redistribution and infrastructural development that facilitate the creation of sustainable rural and farming communities and economies.
Master of ceremonies, we have led efforts aimed at eradicating oppressive gender relations by: entrenching the constitutional guarantee of the equality of women, abolishing legislation and policies that discriminate against women; the establishment of a national gender machinery in government and the introduction of policies and programmes targeting women and aimed at empowerment and poverty alleviation.
The youth is an important and special component of any society. As a group, they do not form a class, but they are a social stratum (sector). As such, young women and men mirror the stratification of the society within which they live; they shares class and group loyalties and engage in struggles for the realisation of concrete social ideals and interests.
Sectors of the youth therefore include the working youth, unemployed, students, middle class, etc. Generally, the political outlook of each category of the youth mirrors its social position.
However, what makes the youth as a strata special apart from its age and numerical strength are the social characteristics which are peculiar to it.
These characteristics and qualities include: that the young represent the future and that youth is a stage of learning.
As a sector they are therefore the shock troops of every class and social strata and all of these wage a fierce battle for their hearts and minds. Black youth has and continues to bore the brunt of the apartheid legacy denied access to quality education and training, swelling the ranks of the unemployed, faced by social ills such as crime, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, etc.
They have made an immeasurable contribution to the struggle for national liberation.
Since 1994, a start has been made to create a better life for youth: the establishment of the National and Provincial Youth Commissions, the adoption of a National Youth Policy, the transformation of education and training and the focus of job creation programmes.
The last decade in comparison with the 70's and 80's has seen a drastic decline in political activism of youth. This has been due to objective conditions the generations of the 70's and 80's are no longer young and the new generation of youth has not been exposed to the raw manifestations of apartheid and the struggle against it.
There is also a concerted battle for the hearts and minds of youth, especially the encouragement of values of individualism and the pursuit of money and material symbols.
The above, coupled with devastating impact of unemployment on this sector, has contributed to a sense of apathy and marginalisation of youth manifested in the low levels of registration and voting amongst especially first time voters.
We must ensure that we create concrete government and national programmes that will lead to the improvement of the situation of youth and integrating youth issues into the national agenda.
Mobilising young women and men to participate in the implementation of key programmes in the National Youth Policy aimed at urgent interventions in areas such as youth unemployment and skills development; Engaging in the battle for the hearts and minds of youth, around the values of service, a non-racial and non-sexist society, patriotism, moral regeneration, excellence and solidarity, human rights through the organisational and cultural expressions of youth music, the media, sub-cultures, education system, religion, etc;
The success of our noble efforts amongst other things depends on our ability to fundamentally transform the education system in our country. It is common knowledge that the Apartheid State used education as one of the tools to entrench its political and ideological system.
The road leading towards a fully united non-racial and non-sexist South Africa is a long and difficult one due to the complexity and all-pervasiveness of apartheid colonialism and its legacy of underdevelopment and the huge social deficit.
In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you that at the opening of the Legislature early this year, I committed myself in restructuring the Youth Commission as soon as their term of office expire.
To this effect today I will announce the members of the new Youth Commission.
I, Ndaweni Johannes Mahlangu, Premier of Mpumalanga Province, also the Member of the Executive Council, hereby appoint the following Mpumalanga Youth Commissioners for the period of three (3) years, with effect from 17/06/2000 to 16/06/2003, with the express condition that they must all sign the necessary agreement for service and remuneration with seven (7) days from 17/06/2000:
A. In terms of Section 4 (b) (i): The Part-time Commissioners are:
1. Riba Bongiseni Sidwell Sonnyboy |
(Delmas) |
Highveld |
2. Ngwenya Muziwakhe Robert |
(Volksrust) |
Eastvaal |
3. Sibiya Percy Patience Sakhile |
(Barberton) |
Lowveld |
B. In terms of Section 4 (b) (ii): Full-time Commissioners
1. Dladla Mxolisi Peter |
(Secunda) |
Eastvaal |
2. Mariba Matseke Jerry |
(Moutse) |
Highveld |
3. Strijdom Janine Agnes |
(Nelspruit) |
Lowveld |
C. In terms of Section 4 (3): Designation: Chairperson
I, Ndaweni Johannes Mahlangu, Prernier and the Member of the ExecutiveCouncil in Mpumalanga Province hereby designate: -
DLADLA MXOLISI PETER as Chairperson of Mpumalanga Youth Commission with effect from 17/06/2000.
Your appointment today is about accelerating service delivery to youth as agents of change and a call for selfless contribution to the youth and development in our Province.
The outgoing commission was never in the headlines and I hope you will emulate them.
But before I sit down let me say here that our province is fast approaching the number one spot as the province with the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate.
The Ante-Natal Survey of 1998 indicates that 30% of women attending antenatal clinics in Mpumalanga have tested positive for HIV.Correspondingly, the men of these antenatal clinic women are also HIV positive.
No doubt a large percentage of these are young women and men. Out of 143 women tested in Standerton, 73 have tested positive. This represents 51%. It is by no surprise that the Youth Commission chose Standerton as the venue for this millennium Youth Day Celebration under the theme " Youth Fighting AIDS in the African Century" .
In addressing the scourge, my office, the Provincial and the National Youth Commission has deemed it necessary to put into effect mechanism of reducing to a rest minimum effects of HIV/AIDS.
This mechanism seeks to involve young people living with AIDS in an extensive peer communication programme with special forms on youth. The project will offer information on the disease, prevention, and avoidance, counseling and positive images of young people living and coping with HIV/AIDS.
An advertisement for appointment into this project result in the following being appointed. Project co-ordinator: Miss Nomvula Sylvia Basjan. Field Ambassadors:
Mr. Wonderboy Sedibe
Mr. Selby Sibaya
Mr. Johannes Mabuza
Ms. Zinhle Nkabinde
Ms Nomangwane Nkosi
The ambassadors of the hope are to be deployed to various parts of the province. We are indebted indeed to the National Association of People Living with AIDS and the AIDS Training Information Centre for support of the Young Positive Living Ambassadors Project.
I thank you.