SPEECH BY PREMIER
Master of ceremonies
His worship Mayor Isaiah Khoza
Dr Tibane
Pastors MVG and EM Lephoko
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen.
When I met with you last year in February, we spoke about a number of issues. Amongst others, I appealed to you to care for one another, build one another and to be people driven by a new morality.
I appealed to you to be in partnership with us and to lead the moral regeneration that would result in us as humans behaving and acting like people made in the image of God.
As the government of a young democracy, we have made considerable progress in ensuring that we strengthen and entrench democracy. We have thrown off the shackles of apartheid and colonialism.
Maybe we need to reflect a bit on what happened when colonialism visited our shores more than 300 years ago.
You will remember that in the midst of the great upheavals that the process of colonisation brought about many of our people reached out towards whatever seemed to offer them peace, stability and human fulfillment.
Of all the institutions that came with colonial rule, the Christian church seemed the only one that offered peace, stability and human fulfillment.
Our people in good numbers therefore placed their faith in the Christian church. But then from that moment onwards the history of the Christian church in South Africa became the history of a faith betrayed.
The church continuously refused to recognise the fact that the fulfillment of its black congregation lay in their liberation both from colonial domination and from what the church describes as sin.
While denouncing as sinful the coveting of their white neighbour's possessions by the black people, the church did not condemn as sinful the reduction of the black by the white into homeless and propertyless beggars.
While issuing injunctions of forbearance to the black, urging them to eschew violence, it avoided condemning colonial State violence against the black people.
To their credit, there were a few among the Christian leadership in South Africa who refused to take this path. These are men and women who read in the Scriptures a clear message that it was impermissible that he who had been made in the image of God should be debased and enslaved.
We salute them. But we need to ask ourselves: What are our responsibilities in a free and democratic South Africa?
Our task, ladies and gentlemen, must be to constantly remind ourselves of our history and of our vision for the future: to build a democratic culture in which all have the freedom and opportunities to improve our lives.
As the government of a young democracy, we have made considerable progress in bringing basic facilities within reach of all people and we are proud of that achievement. But we know it will take a long time to reverse the destructive legacy of over three hundred years.
As Christians, you are responsible for creating a better life for all. To create a climate of honesty, responsibility and discipline. As a society, we should all reject those who steal bread from the mouths of little children or from the elderly or the poor.
We count on the religious fraternity to help us restore the moral values and the respect for each other that were destroyed by the inhumanity of apartheid. Most people are moral. They are not criminals advocating unethical behaviour.
They wish to bring up their children to be honest, with the desire to build a prosperous and peaceful South Africa for all who live in it.
The cultures brought together in our nation also had high ethical standards. Traditional African cultures were modelled on morals. Afrikanerdom was prompted by strict adherence to spiritual values. Those who trace their origins to other countries also recognise high concepts of personal and social responsibility.
Many of our people are religious. Whether we follow traditional religion, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, the call to personal and communal ethical behaviour is similar.
Corruption, criminality, tax evasion, fraud, rape, the abuse of women and children, drunkenness, extortion, and family breakdown, much of it touched by violence, are the outward forms of a diseased social climate which affects all of us.
When we speak of crime, we are also referring to the corruption, which is undermining our efforts to build a better life. What is most distressing is that of those who plunder public resources for their own benefit include former fighters for freedom as well as those from the former apartheid machinery.
Overcoming crime and corruption and our other problems in the field of education, unemployment and poverty, requires every person to become part of the solution instead of simply being a spectator.
In our schools and our places of worship, people should be encouraged to share in creating the atmosphere our land needs.
The vision of a united transformed nation must be constantly before us. It is done by accepting responsibility for ourselves, not by blaming others. It requires a commitment by every sector of society to build a nation with a sound ethical base. Good people make good nations.
Cynicism, fear and frustration are driven out by rediscovering faith in our selves and nurturing the spirit of ubuntu in our nation. How can we do that together?
The challenges are there for all of us?
Now is the time to launch a sustained offensive to wipe out poverty in our province and our country. Millions of our people are still condemned to suffer from hunger, from malnutrition and its diseases.
They are prey to deprivations that result in homelessness, inadequate clothing. And lack of access to jobs and other ways and means by which they can secure an adequate standard of living.
Millions of our people are still condemned to lead miserable lives, to suffer from physical and mental ailments and to die young because of preventable diseases.
These include respiratory diseases, malaria, AIDS, cholera, tuberculosis, venereal diseases and others. We need to confront this situation with all the necessary determination, in a sustained struggle to translate the principle of the right of the people to health into reality.
Millions of our people continue to survive in conditions of illiteracy, non-innumeracy, poor education, ignorance and poor skills.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is time we create jobs and in so doing banish famine, hunger and homelessness. Criminals continue to prey on our people and society, among other things raping women and abusing children .
We have to wage an all-out struggle against these elements. We must also ensure that we make the necessary interventions at all levels of education, to encourage the culture of learning, teaching and discipline as well as interest in and study of mathematics, science, technology and engineering.
None of our plans can succeed without a partnership between government and all sectors of our community, including business or the private sector.
Government on its own cannot provide what is needed, nor should it try to do so. I trust that we will move together towards a higher, nobler, richer life for all and the birth of a South African people defined by embrace not rejection, by national unity, not exclusion.
I thank you.