10 February 2004
There are many South Africans, including members of the African National Congress and the Tripartite Alliance, who fully understood, Cde President, the reason you quoted so extensively from former president, Nelson Mandela's speech in this House almost ten years ago. You were talking to the unbroken thread that has characterized the struggle by the masses of our people, under the leadership of the ANC, for the liberation of our country. This unbroken thread predates the establishment of the ANC 92 years ago.
It was characterized by the wars of resistance led by amakhosi in many parts of our motherland to protect our land and our nationhood, starting with the battle in 1659 when Chief Autshumao, to whom white historians in the past attached the pejorative name Harry the Hottentot, led his Khoi-Khoi army against Jan van Riebeeck, who had forcefully seized the tribe's best grazing lands.
The hope that the resilience of our people had been completely destroyed with the defeat of Nkosi Bhambatha, was shattered when the ANC was formed to take forward the struggle of our people finally to arrive at the point where Madiba addressed this Assembly as the first South African president to be elected through a truly democratic process.
We understood you, Cde President, to be asking us to strengthen that thread when you recalled Madiba's observation that "the purpose that will drive this government shall be the expansion of the frontiers of human fulfillment, the continuous extension of the frontiers of freedom." What Madiba said then and your reiteration of the fact, Cde President, reminded the great majority of our people that the struggle continues. Aluta continua.
No-one can gainsay that the movement forward is littered with many challenges. You indicated some of these in your speech last Friday. You made it clear at the imbizos in KwaZulu-Natal recently that the outstanding challenges will requite more time and more resources to overcome. Anyone saying anything to the contrary would be stretching the truth. The time-lines for this will not be short.
Madam Speaker, I was part of the President's Delegation to the Democratic Republic of the Congo last month. I could not but marvel at the sight that greeted us every time our convoy travelled from one point to the next. Thousands of that country's people lined the streets in appreciation of our presence in their country. They waved and ululated as the convoy drove past, many raising clenched fists to recognize the significance of the visit. They saw it as a clear sign of solidarity with them in the effort to build a new nation; a new country and new opportunities.
They carried placards and banners that proclaimed their hopes and their dreams of a better future for themselves and the generations to come. One of the banners screamed: "President Thabo Mbeki is bringing us peace and development!"
These words carried both hope and a strong sense of confidence that South Africa would be able to help create the conditions that must lead to peace and stability. That an ANC government would indeed be ready to help is a mandate that springs directly from the Freedom Charter.
There are millions of people at home and abroad, Cde President, who have internalized our political programme. They have unshaken faith in its great sense of purpose and ideological morality.
The Congolese in the DRC and other nations on the African Continent expect the African National Congress and its government to follow to the letter the stipulation in the Freedom Charter that "There shall be peace and Friendship." They have fully appreciated our exposition of the clause that:
"South Africa shall strive to maintain world peace and the settlement of all international disputes by negotiation, not war. The right of all the peoples of Africa to independence and self-government shall be recognized and shall be the basis of close cooperation."
We are bound by those injunctions of our political programme. That is why we respond positively when the governments of the Continent and elsewhere in the world call upon us to assist to consolidate their effort to build peace and development in their countries. That is why we are helping the Barundi; that is why we are helping the Congolese, that is why we are helping the Mozambicans to find and destroy the weapons that killed some many of their own in the civil war in their country, and that is why we are helping Zimbabwe. All these nations and the great majority of our people know that our vision of peace and stability is the only vehicle that will give them thoroughgoing freedom and democracy; equal opportunity and prosperity.
Allow me at this point, Madam Speaker, to pay homage to our people who listened to the President's appeal to our nation peacefully to celebrate last year's festive season. The people's cooperation resulted in the lowest incidents of crime in a very, very long while. And there was less death on our roads.
The South Africans who listened to your call, Cde President, are the millions of our people who want to be part of the people's contract to create work and fight poverty. They live in Hillbrow in Gauteng, in KwaMashu in KZN, in Khayelitsha and Mitchell's Plein in the Western Cape and in other areas of our country where crime levels in the past were extremely high.
There are many South Africans who come from the various people's structures that make up our country's springbok for human advancement who are participating in the programme to create an atmosphere of safety and security for all our people and the visitors who come as investors and tourists.
On New Year's Eve last year, my colleague, MEC for Safety and Liaison for Gauteng, Mrs Nomvula Mokonyane, and I joined the police in their rounds in some parts of Johannesburg. We were joined by a high-powered delegation from the South African Council of Churches led by that organisation's General Secretary, Dr Molefe Tsele.
We went to the crime hotspots of Hillbrow, Berea and Alexandra, helping to spread your message, Cde President, of a peaceful festive season.
Prior to this we had a number of meetings with the SACC where we discussed and agreed on a programme of cooperation in the fight against crime. The agreement of a partnership against crime was meant to formalize a relationship that has existed for a long time between the law enforcement agencies of the democratic government and the clergy and members of the various parishes across the country. This relationship was a logical development given the role of religious leaders and their followers in the struggle for a free, democratic, non-racist and non-sexist South Africa.
The march on February 24, 1988, by South Africa's religious leaders to South Africa's whites-only parliament, was groundbreaking. The marchers were responding to the dictates of their lodestar, the Kairos Document. The document itself was historic. It was presented by Dr Beyers Naude, General Secretary at the time of the South African Council of Churches, to the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Centre leaders in Geneva on September 25, 1985.The Kairos Document firmly placed religious leaders in the trenches of the liberation movement.
In February last year the clergy initiated a march against crime in Khayelitsha that attracted more than 25 thousand participants.
All of this was part of the unbroken thread of our struggle you established in your State of the Nation address, Cde President. The religious leaders who were founder members of the African National Congress, some of whom went on to lead the Movement, set the standard for those who directly challenged apartheid as did Bishops Trevor Huddleston, Manas Buthelezi, David Russell, Buti Thlagale, Archbishops Desmond Tutu, Dennis Hurley, Njongonkulu Ndungane, Revs Beyers Naude, Frank Chikane, Allan Boesak, and Fr Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, just to mention a few.
The role of progressive religious leaders in the fight against crime is further clarified in the SACC statement released on December 15 last year, which said among other things:
"We must all see the fight against crime as an extension of our ongoing struggle for national liberation, social transformation and moral regeneration"
There are many other South Africans like the religious leaders who want to work with the democratic government as part of the people's contract to create work and fight poverty. They include leaders in the business sector and in various organs of civil society, from trade unions to the associations of commercial farmers and cultural workers.
The South Africans who continue to speak ill of our country and policies abroad have been reduced to a small coterie of whingers who are mainly whistling past the graveyard, as the saying goes. Some of the sympathizers they still have are barely listening.
And so, the tourists continue to pour into our country and our economy continues to strengthen. Larger numbers of people - here and abroad - are supporting us and, I believe, we are going to enjoy overwhelming support from our people for a long time to come on the basis of the progressive policies that underpin our programme of service delivery to ensure a better life for all our people.
To quote our fallen hero, a beloved leader of our people, Cde Steve Tshwete:
"Siza kuphatha isithukuthezi sento!"
Last Saturday, when others elsewhere had the luxury to grandstand and shout meaningless slogans, the Ministry of Community Safety in the Western Cape, under my colleague, Mr Leonard Ramatlakane, organized a function at the Cape Town Castle to express appreciation to 3500 volunteers who last year participated in the Safer Festive Season programme as crime fighters. Working side-by-side with the law enforcement agents they created for our people safety on the trains, on the roads, on the beaches and safety for our children wherever they were during that period. These volunteers will continue to work with the police.
The SACC committed to convene in the early part of this year a summit of church leaders to identify new ways in which churches can expand their pastoral role in the fight against crime and promote efforts to build peace and security at grassroots level.
There is a lot of goodwill all round and readiness to work with the ANC and government to obviate the many stumbling blocks that still remain in our march to thoroughgoing freedom. Your call to South Africans across the board, Cde President, at the 90th anniversary celebrations of the oldest political party on the African Continent, the African National Congress, to commit time and energy in the collective work to create conditions for a better life for all our people, remains relevant. The volunteers in Cape Town and elsewhere are responding to it. There is a strong indication that the ANC's call to all South Africans to participate in the people's contract to create work and fight poverty will get a positive response.
The ANC articulated before the 1994 democratic election a vision for a new police service for South Africa that has informed the current programme for safety and security.
For the new police service to be effective, the ANC said, it needed to be rooted firmly among the people working together as units and sections of the same army for crime prevention and combating.
The ANC recognized that a police service of that kind would enjoy the confidence of the law abiding citizens of the country, with the people, as the best repository of information, placing essential intelligence at the disposal of members of the service. As it were, there is better cooperation between the police and the people, resulting in better crime detection and prosecution.
During the Presidential Imbizos in KwaZulu-Natal and again last Friday, the President spoke about "those among us who are fond of threatening violence to promote their causes".
The people of KZN who attended the imbizos gave you, Cde President, strong support when you raised the matter of peaceful campaigning as a precursor to a free and fair election. They are tired of bloodletting and want permanent peace for KwaZulu-Natal.
The entire law enforcement sector and armed forces of South Africa fully identify with the call for non-violent political activity, be it around election campaigns or ordinary political programmes. Members of these institutional structures understand the mandate they have: To protect our democracy.
That means, among other things, the right of all parties - big and small - freely to promote their policies among all sections of the people, anywhere in South Africa. This means nobody will declare any part of our country a "no-go" area.
Consequently, the right of every citizen freely to campaign will be protected with all the resources at the disposal of the State. That this was not done going into the 1994 election should not be construed as available space for visiting political violence on our people once again. That space is simply no longer available.
That is an injunction from our Constitution.