Programme Director and Acting Deputy Regional Commissioner for the Free State/Northern Cape: Mr. Gustav Wilson,
Northern Cape MEC for Education: Honourable Ms. Grizelda Cjiekella,
Executive Mayor of Sol Plaatje Municipality: Your Worship, Cllr. Agnes Ntlhangula,
Other MECs,
Councillors and representatives of municipalities,
National Commissioner: Mr Thomas Moyane,
Chief Operating Officer: Ms Nontsikelelo Jolingana,
Regional Commissioner for the Free State/Northern Cape: Ms Subashini Moodley,
Chief Deputy Commissioners, Regional Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners,
Other Members of the Correctional Services Family,
Principals of various schools,
Representatives of religious bodies,
Community Members,
Learners,
Offenders and Participants,
Members of the Media,
Distinguished guests.
On Sunday, 16 June 2013 South Africa will commemorate Youth Day. This year marks the 37th anniversary of the 16th June Soweto uprising, and will be celebrated under the theme “Working together for youth development and a drug free South Africa”.
A highlight of Youth Month 2013 is the government National Imbizo Focus Week, from 10th to 17th June. Imbizo Week will focus on youth development, specifically on the fight against substance abuse. It will ensure heightened interaction between elected public representatives and South Africans, from all walks of life, in community meetings, door-to-door campaigns, national events, sports meetings and other direct engagements.
Ministers and Deputy Ministers will join Premiers, MECs, Mayors and Councillors in mobilising society against substance abuse. The recent visit of President Jacob Zuma, to Eldorado Park, serves as a basis for further engagements on this issue.
As we gather here today, the Tswelopele Correctional Centre, in the sparkling city of Kimberley, forces us, as humble servants of our people, to introspect, and evaluate our roles, as we recall that this is the home of our architects of freedom. The roots of the writer and first Secretary-General of the African National Congress, Sol Plaatje, the visionary behind the Freedom Charter, Professor ZK Matthews, trade unionist and Women’s League Leader, Francis Baard, lie deep in this town and province.
While we are on course, we are not oblivious to the challenges we are confronted with in rebuilding our communities that were destroyed, over many centuries, by colonialism and apartheid. The government of our country, led by President Zuma, has acknowledged that one of the biggest contributors to our social ills is substance abuse and the endemic drug challenge.
Drugs, and substance abuse, affect us all: rich and poor, Black and White, young and old, male and female, urban and rural. I remain convinced that like we all fought, and defeated, that crime against humanity, apartheid, we will, in our lifetime, defeat this scourge of drugs, and substance abuse, that is rapidly eroding the promise of our freedom. Fellow compatriots and colleagues, we have no choice but to act urgently, and decisively, against this new enemy eroding the very fibre, and nerve core, of our beloved motherland.
In the Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon reminds us that each generation, out of relative obscurity, must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it! Ponder for a second and ask yourself: what is your generation’s mission?
During this Youth Month, as we remember that freedom was actually not free, as we recall that young people paid the ultimate price with their lives for our freedom and the right to equal, decent education, take a moment and ask yourself whether your generation is fulfilling, or betraying, its mission that has come with our hard-won political emancipation?
As you define this mission for yourselves and your role in it, take counsel, and courage, in the words of our icon, former President Nelson Mandela, when he remarked that, “sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great [and that] YOU can be that generation.”
With odds that may be against us, we will not cease in our march to the Promised Land. The generation of Sol Plaatje, John Dube, Chief Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe, Anton Lembede, Francis Baard, Ruth First, Braam Fischer and many others was probably the generation of the Biblical Moses.
Moses, the scriptures remind us, emancipated the Israelites from centuries of bondage but did not reach Canaan. It was the Joshua generation that finally arrived in the Promised Land. I am using this narrative advisedly, in the hope that you will begin to see yourselves in the light of the Joshua generation and realise the urgency, and the role you can play, in your own emancipation, the emancipation of the African continent and the world. It is upon you to seize the day, and make our country proud. Our country values you, and needs all of us in its reconstruction and development.
Ladies and gentlemen, indeed, my message today is particularly to our offenders going through rehabilitation and all our young people who are our hope for the future of our beloved country. Be encouraged. Dream again. Discover the wonder in your lives. Marianne Williamson reminds us that: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
In the recently published collection of poetry by offenders, we were encouraged to discover those voices that see incarceration as an opportunity for rehabilitation. The energy, and desire, of the majority of offenders who are changing their lives through the various DCS programmes, motivates us to remain steadfast and hopeful.
We are, indeed, reminded of the words of an ancient Chinese humanist and philosopher, Confucius, who told us centuries before the birth of Christ that, “our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising each time we fall”.
I hope that, as we take time during this month and on June 16 in particular, we will reflect on the lives that were lost to ensure that we are liberated today. We cannot afford to allow alcohol, and drug, producers to have a Sunday picnic in our country, and continent, as we deal with numerous colonial and post-colonial challenges. We cannot defer, any further, the dream of an Africa re-born; an Africa at peace, and at ease, with itself.
Freedom was not free. Mrs Matokolo, Hector’s grandmother, said the following about Hector: ”Oh, he was a naughty boy, like any boy at his age, but I knew one thing, though. He always came back straight home from school. But one day, on 16 June 1976, Hector Peterson did not come home.”
Thirty seven years ago, the first victim of the Soweto Uprisings, we now know, was Hastings Ndlovu. Martha Ndlovu, Hastings Ndlovu’s mother, told the following story during Hasting’s funeral: [W]hen this child was born my hubby Elliott said ‘this boy is going to be great in life’ and named the boy Hastings...I jokingly said that like Lord Hastings the boy will go down in history...
As a mother I searched for him until I found Hastings. How beautiful was his corpse. Here’s what a mother’s lot becomes painful. You look for a child thinking you will find him alive. You are told go to the mortuary to identify his body. Oh Lord, help me forget these things. Teach me to forgive.
How long am I going to suffer through memories of the things he used to say, how he used to read to me, how he used to talk, how he used to complain about his pet hates in life? Let it not be long because every day brings memories. Many years will pass before we mothers can forget about our loved ones whose lives were cut short by bullets.
Our people are our country’s hope. When we look at you, we refuse to accept that Hastings Ndlovu, Hector Peterson, Tsietsi Mashinini, Solomon Mahlangu are no more. In the aftermath of the Sharpeville, Langa and Nyanga massacres, the Afrikaner poet told us, in a moving poem, “Die Kind is Nie Dood Nie”.
As we open this educational facility here today, like when President Mandela opened the first sitting of Parliament in 1994, we recall that the child is not dead:
Die kind is nie dood nie
die kind lig sy vuiste teen sy moeder
wat Afrika skreeu...
Die kind is nie dood nie
nòg by Langa nòg by Nyanga
nòg by Orlando nòg by Sharpville
nòg by die polisiestasie in Philippi
waar hy lê met ‘n koeël deur sy kop
die kind wat net wou speel in die son by Nyanga is orals
die kind wat ‘n man geword het trek deur die ganse Afrika
die kind wat ‘n reus geword het reis deur die hele wêreld Sonder ‘n pas.
The child is not dead, The child lifts his fists against his mother Who shouts Afrika! The child is not dead not at Langa nor at Nyanga not at Orlando nor at Sharpeville nor at the police station at Philippi where he lies with a bullet through his brain this child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere the child grown to a man treks through all Africa the child grown into a giant journeys through the whole world Without a pass DCS has a number of exciting programmes lined up for Youth Month.
At centre and management area-level, these include youth dialogues, and debates, on drug abuse. These dialogues will be graced by role models, to motivate our youth in our care to redirect their energies towards useful, and meaningful, lives. The programme will culminate in a national dialogue session on 27th June, followed by a boxing championship on 28th June in the Eastern Cape.
Our beloved Nelson Mandela reminds us that, Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.
If the Mandela generation vowed that “Freedom in our Lifetime”, we challenge this generation to also mobilize behind the motto, “Education in Our Lifetime.” The call, “Each one teach one”, is as important today as it was yesterday. A country that does not take education seriously does so at the risk of its peril. It is doomed to fail.
All spheres of government, including DCS, are implementing this urgent task of educating, and skilling, our nation for the knowledge-based economy with the seriousness it warrants. Today, we are here witnessing the strengthening of partnerships between DCS and the Departments of Arts and Culture and Education.
The humane approach to incarceration derives from our indigenous knowledge systems and restorative justice. It is also premised on the Freedom Charter and Bill of Rights. It is for this reason that we are rolling out Victim-Offender Dialogues, which put the victim at the centre of the justice system while, simultaneously, allowing the offender an opportunity to dialogue with the victim as part of our rehabilitation endeavours.
We are forever mindful of Madiba’s counsel, who out of his own experience with inhumane conditions at a prison like Number Four, which is now the home of our constitutional court, that, “no one truly knows a nation until one has been in its prisons”. In his view, “a nation should be judged not by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones”.
Correctional Services, being a microcosm of society, is, indeed, at the heart of President Zuma’s impassioned call for the education, and training, of our population. As a department responsible for rehabilitation, and reintegration, of offenders, we are fully committed to creating a conducive, and humane, environment for offenders to participate in our educational, and training, programmes. We must impact their hearts, heads and hands.
During my Budget Vote Speech on 29th May, I indicated that, as from 1st April this year, education for our youth offenders is compulsory. Furthermore, we undertook to enhance offenders through the “Reading for Redemption” campaign. I want to encourage all stakeholders, be it individuals, the business sector, religious formations, clubs, schools and non-governmental organizations, to work with us and donate books to our Correctional Centres.
These books will be utilized by officials, and offenders, to improve the levels of literacy, and numeracy, and to ensure that offenders leave correctional centres functionally literate, employable and even start their own businesses.
Honourable guests, we are gathered here, on the eve of June 16th, to celebrate a milestone achievement. Earlier today, I had the privilege of officially opening the school at Tswelopele Correctional Centre. It is the first Correctional Centre School in this Region, registered, and accredited, by the Department of Education in the Northern Cape to provide the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) syllabus.
The first group, of seventy one (71) Grade 10 learners, was enrolled at the beginning of the year. The handing over of 150 school desks and 130 chairs, refurbished by our offenders, and the support provided, to have the school at Tswelopele Correctional Centre accredited and functional, by the Department of Education is amongst the tangible outcomes of these partnerships.
I am hopeful that this is the beginning of something extraordinary, and will greatly enhance our efforts to successfully rehabilitate, and reintegrate, our offenders as law-abiding, educated and skilled community members.
Ladies and gentlemen, this year (2013) has been declared as the “year of the correctional official”.
I am extremely proud to report that the majority of our officials in this department do not only ask themselves what the department can do for them, but rather what they can do for the department. This is what we expect from them, as we ask the same from offenders. In the great words of the late American President, J.F. Kennedy, we say to everyone gathered here, “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”.
I am really heartened by such efforts, and it was for this reason that I took some time, during my budget speech, to report on the many good things that offenders, and officials, are doing for our country. Your stories inspire me, and our department, to continue working hard to ensure that society begins to change the way they view, and treat, offenders.
I am aware that many of our officials in this Region, and across the country, are doing the department proud by being exemplary in their communities through their conduct, generous donations and participation in community outreach projects. It is not only offenders giving back to society, but also officials.
Please allow me to make special mention of our Excellence Ambassadors in this particular Correctional Centre. These ambassadors have taken the initiative to pay, out of their own pockets, for material to refurbish 20 school desks which will be handed over to a local school (Lucretia) here in Kimberley. Congratulations to all of you. You all deserve a round of applause!
I want to encourage you all to continue with the excellent work of being humble servants of our country. Such actions surely warm the hearts of the many women, children and men that you may not know personally.
I encourage offenders to use everything at their disposal to participate in the building of schools, making of furniture, vegetable garden projects and other such programmes. Remember, “You are, because we are”. In Africa we say, “Motho ke motho ka batho”.
We need Ubuntu, and the RDP of the soul, more than ever before. I hope, and pray, that other men, and women, in DCS uniform will emulate these colleagues. The responsibility to re-build this country, and to ensure its prosperity, lies with all of us.
Ladies and gentlemen, the department is also well aware of the grip of poverty in many of our communities. To this end, DCS is ensuring that, through its Poverty Alleviation Programme, it provides support by donating surplus items, such as vegetables and meat, to disadvantaged communities.
Let us not be discouraged in our pursuit to rehabilitate offenders. History will judge us harshly if we deterred from diligently implementing our vision, mission and values as a department. We must continue to uphold law and order, and fight corruption in our facilities. Play your part, and report any wrong-doing. Silence is not always golden, especially if such silence is a complicit act in criminal activities.
Again, I want to challenge our offenders. What sort of country do you wish to inherit if you choose to remain unchanged? What role are you going to play to discourage others from getting involved in crime? What are you, in your own sphere, doing in the fight against substance and drug abuse? As government, we have limited resources for numerous competing societal needs.
How are you using your time, and resources provided, to improve your life and to prepare yourself for the communities you come from? I can ask endless questions. In brief, I want to emphasise that YOU are finally responsible for your actions. Stop wasting your time counting the days when you will be released – rather invest in your development so you are better equipped to face societal challenges when you leave here.
Stop the finger pointing, and blaming government for your actions. I am reminded of the wise words of Mahatma Ghandi when he said, “Be the change that you want to see in the world”. Or as Michael Jackson aptly puts it in a song: if you want to change the world, start with the man in the mirror. That metaphorical man in the mirror is you. Change yourself, to change your world. Say no to drug and substance abuse.
If alcohol abuse has become fashionable, choose the road less travelled; it will make all the difference in your life. Get addicted to reading, studying and working. In literature and history, you will find new companions, heroes and heroines. You may be lost at times as you discover the wonder in education through reading, but this is the safest loss because it will expand your horizons. It will empower, and make you a better person.
I ask everyone gathered here today to inculcate a culture of reading in our children from a young age. Parents, and guardians, have a decisive role to play here. Parents, also talk to your children about drugs. The best advice you can give is that they must never even take the chance of tasting, or experimenting, with drugs. Parents must also lead exemplary lives. The National Development Plan reminds us; “Government begins in the home, grows into the community, expands towards the city, flares towards the province, and engulfs the entire land”.
Together, we can. The Child is not dead. Die kind is nie dood nie. Sol Plaatje, ZK Mathews, Francis Baard, Kgosi Kgaleshewe - they will forever be with us. Remember, you can be that great generation that Nelson Mandela knows you are capable of becoming. Be the Joshua generation. Our country loves you, and needs you.
God Bless Africa!
Thank you!
