PREMIER'S SPEECH
Master of ceremonies
Minister of Public Enterprises Mr Jeff Radebe
MECs DD Mabuza and Tsietsi Tolo
Honorable members of the Legislature
Their Majesties the Kings
Honorable Amakhosi
Mayors and councillors
Distinguished guests
Ladies and Gentlemen.
Allow me to express my heartfelt appreciation for the invitation to speak to you today. I stand before you filled with pride.
Proud because here is testimony of a partnership that is clearly yielding results. When we ushered in a new democracy a little more than five years ago, we inherited a legacy of skewed distribution of resources.
Those who were lighter than I am had all the resources they would ever need. All of you assembled here today, will agree with me that we come from as horrible past.
As youngsters most of us didn't have the luxury of flicking on a switch and having instant energy available for use to either cook, heat the room or provide light. We waded through our schoolwork using, if we were lucky, candlelight. In some instances we relied on home-made parraffin lamps.
Our parents would get hold of a tin with a lid, punch a hole at the top, run a cloth through the hole before filling it with parraffin. Needless to say the light was dim and smelly. Not that it was any better at our schools. There was also no electricity at our institutions of learning.
Across the road some people who were of a lighter shade than I am had state of the art science laboratories, well-stocked libraries; sparkling furniture and the latest in teaching technology and equipment.
And they could, at the flick of a switch, get immediate access to clean and convenient energy electricity that is.
In the past five years or so we have managed to improve the lives of our people. We have been able to bring clean running water to some of our people. We have been able to supply clinics, schools and houses.But above all we managed, through the help of Eskom, to let them have access to stored energy.
Allow me to remind us, ladies and gentlemen, that we still have too many backlogs. Houses, schools, clinics, crèches. We have to supply electricity, water, and sanitation.
So to the private sector out there I make this special appeal. Please help us. It is a cry from us to the private sector.
We cannot meet the challenges of our country with the resources of government alone. We must build partnerships between government and the private sector to create more jobs. Such a partnership must be based on a common commitment to building a better life for all.
This celebration results from this conception of a partnership. We all know beads. When you have a handful of beads, that's all you have a handful of beads.
Hundreds of them. Each one very distinctive and unique. But In order to bring out their beauty, you will need to string them together. For that you will need a string. Without the beads a piece of string is just that a piece of string.
Only when you string the beads together do the beads come to their right. Then they speak to you, draw your attention to the importance of each bead. This is how you create something truly magnificent, through a relationship that is beneficial to both parities.
It is now our opportunity to create such togetherness, such a string that holds everything together. Beautifully.
The Mpumalanga Provincial Government reiterates its commitment to work in close partnership with all the people, inspired by the clarion call Faranani.
To ensure that we draw on the energy and genius of the people in the Province to give birth to something that will surely 'be new, good and beautiful'.
We are gathered here today to celebrate Eskom's RDP electrification achievement. An achievement that would not have been possible without the co-operation of hundreds of people. Today we stand tall, master of ceremonies, because we have genuinely made a difference in the lives of our people. On June 2 our people spoke and we listened.
They told us that they regard the ANC as the only organisation that can bring change in their lives. They told us they appreciated the efforts of the past five years, but urged us to accelerate change- to let it happen a little faster.
Our people told us that they appreciate our efforts in bringing water, electricity, schools, health care and other amenities to them despite our limited resources.
It is that collective wisdom that flows from those poor rural women, youth and men in Msogwaba, Mathanjana, Moutse and Mkobola that brought us here today.
When they renewed our mandate they told us to be a government that listens to and learns from them. And I can proudly say that I lead a government that is committed to working in partnership with the people, listening and learning from them.
But all our efforts will come to nothing unless we tackle a number of issues that pose a serious threat to development in the province. But ladies and gentlemen, the dark sinister forces of division again reared their ugly heads in an attempt to pit brother against brother.
It was not enough to them that the dreams of many of our people lay in ruins. They accused government of not caring about the people.
They accused your government ladies of gentlemen of being sectarian and that it would have acted differently if the disaster had occurred elsewhere in the country.
Only people bent on mischief can say that. Only people who may have been intelligence projects of the former apartheid regime can say such things.
Nelson Mandela did not spend half his life in prison to neglect us after his release. OR Tambo did not spend years in exile becasuse he wanted to act in a secterian manner. Comrade Thabio Mbeki loves all the people of South Africa equally.
He cannot do otherwise. Ladies and gentlemen, In his State of the Nation Address the President announced the Integrated and Sustainable Rural Development Programme,
The strategic objective we will pursue will be to ensure that we achieve integrated and sustainable development in our rural areas outside of and in addition to the commercial farms by the Year 2010.
We chose to focus on these areas to reverse a century old legacy of white minority rule, according to which millions of our people were confined in poverty stricken areas alternatively described as native-reserves, Bantustans and homelands.
We regard this statement as a directive to the entire country, including our province.
We shall therefore endeavour, within the means and powers at our disposal, to achieve the objectives set by the President within the given time frames.
The challenge of integrated and sustainable rural development strikes a particular chord in our hearts because of the nature of demographic distribution between the rural and urban areas of our province.
It is therefore not surprising that the highest rates of unemployment are found in the rural areas.
We recognise that with the limited resources available, we will not be able to reverse the development backlogs in rural areas unless deliberate measures are taken to alleviate these problems decided to top slice budgets of departments to secure funds for infrastructure.
We remain committed to serving the public and will therefore continue with the Batho Pele Campaign through.
We remain committed to gender equality and affirmative action in our efforts to address the legacies of the past.
We are committed to the resolutions taken at the Provincial
Job Summit last year.
Do we provide shelter in a way that will ensure that there are health and
education facilities; jobs; water; electricity and other amenities right on
people's doorsteps?
Unless we do so we would be failing in executing the mandate our people gave us. We should have worked out systems through which we can truly become a nation at work for a better life.
But all our efforts will come to nothing unless we tackle a number of issues that pose a serious threat to development in the province. There is also the HIV/AIDS scourage. It is all very well comrades to talk glibly about inyama enyameni .
But the consequence could well be umlotha emlotheni,
uthuli othulini
HIV/Aids continues to pose the greatest threat to our province, this
country, SADC, our continent and to the entire project of the African
Renaissance.
The challenge therefore is to build a social movement against HIV/Aids. We must continue in partnership with medical research institutes and others to search for affordable preventative measures.