Programme director
Members of the Geveza family
Relatives, friends and colleagues
Delegation from South African Maritime Safety Association (SAMSA)
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Two days ago, when addressing the provincial prayer service for road carnages at Ngcobo, Transport Minister S'bu Ndebele, took an opportunity to pay his respects to Ms Akhona Felicity Geveza following her passing away last Friday, 9 July 2010.
Ms Geveza died while serving on a United Kingdom registered vessel that was sailing in Croatian waters.
Minister Ndebele's office further requested me to address this service on behalf of the transport family and government in general.
As the people of South Africa, we have lost an ambassador, who even lost her life while represent all of us outside the country.
She was, indeed, a shining example of government's effort to promote the emancipation of women and their maximum participation in the transformation of our society.
Some of you would recall that when we came to power in 1994, it was necessary to intervene in order to redress the systematic exclusion of the majority of South Africans from the mainstream of the South African economy.
The transport sector, particularly maritime, remains one of the key sectors of our economy, which we need to transform and government, is committed to achieve that objective very soon.
It is unfortunate that today we are laying to rest one of the pioneers of that maritime transformation programme. This is a serious setback for us, but we remain committed to ensure that we create more Akhona Geveza's (young black women from our rural areas) to participate in this important sector of our economy to honour the memory of this courageous young woman. MALIBONGWE IGAMA LAMAKHOSIKAZI!
We are expected to start looking at the ways and means of repositioning the maritime sector in line with the development priorities of government, including the building of a skills and human resources base.
We are gearing up to tackle our maritime challenges head on and ensure that we complement all the initiatives that already exist within and around the maritime industry.
Maritime is a new competency for provincial government. National policy and legislation, in particular the South African Constitution Act, 1996, provides adequately for provincial interest in maritime affairs.
Our province has the longest coastline in the country of 800 kilometres, but with no major maritime related activities. In honouring the memory of Akhona Geveza, we intend to turn this situation around.
We may not be able to attract ship owners to the National register, but we certainly have the population that can man the ships.
Through our Human Resource Development Programme, we want to reach out to the communities and raise awareness amongst our youth, introducing them to the field of maritime as a carrier path.
Our goal is to have a number of the Eastern Cape youth as seafarers or even Captains in a few years to come.
Since 2008, we have been attempting to get Eastern Cape youth involved in maritime through offering bursaries for courses in maritime and shipment studies and port engineering studies.
We only became successful this year, when one of the girl children, Yonela Jikela (17), who was involved in our "Take a Girl Child to Work" programme, qualified for such a bursary and is currently studying in Cape Town.
In the last financial year, our Maritime unit conducted career awareness campaigns in 48 secondary schools in the province and the target was grade 12 learners.
This year will see these career awareness campaigns continuing to target grade 10, 11 and 12 from 60 secondary schools.
As part of honouring the memory of Akhona Geveza, I am going to instruct my department's Maritime unit together with our Human Resource Development and Communications units to host one of those campaigns in this village.
I would appreciate if Ms Geveza's colleagues from the South African Maritime Safety Authority colleagues could join forces with us in this project, preferably in October as part of our 2010 Transport Month programme.
We are further holding maritime safety awareness campaigns in various municipalities along the coast in an effort to ensure coherent approach on maritime matters. We will be targeting youth from the rural arrears and teach them how to swim in safe waters and unsupervised sea swimming during high seasons.
As we speak, we are busy with the second phase of the development of our integrated provincial maritime plan, which is expected for completion in September 2010 and will guide our maritime activities and the integration with other modes of transport that will serve to benefit the province socially and economically.
This means that the Eastern Cape province is gradually taking its rightful position in the maritime sector, as a result, we are going to host the World Maritime Day in East London on 21 September 2010, which will be attended by various maritime stakeholders throughout the country.
In conclusion, I would like to express our condolences to the family, friends, colleagues, maritime stakeholders and the community of Nxarhuni for this great loss.
May the Almighty give you strength to withstand this pain. May her soul rest in peace!
I thank you.
