Programme Director
Advocate Bience Gawanas, Commissioner for Social Affairs, Africa Union Commission
Her Excellency Rosa Maria M Da Cruz e Silva, Minister of Culture of the Republic of Angola
Representatives of the SADC member states
Representatives of the African Union Commission
Representatives of UNESCO
Distinguished guests
Comrades and compatriots
Ladies and gentlemen:
We meet here today, as member states of the Southern African Development Community, to find ways of working together to ensure that the Charter of the African Cultural Renaissance is ratified by all African countries and in particular by countries of the SADC region.
Out of this gathering we must emerge with a renewed determination collectively to ensure that by 2012 this important Charter of African Cultural Renaissance is ratified.
Specifically, this gathering must come up with concrete proposals on how to encourage all countries within our region and in the Continent of Africa to fully embrace the Charter.
Our ultimate goal must be to popularise this Charter, ensure its implementation by member states, internalise it among our different countries and constantly measure and report on the progress made in its implementation.
Fellow Africans, we must do all of this as part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen the rebirth of our beloved Continent at a political, social, economical and cultural level.
We must use this Charter to promote the unity of the African Continent and the unity of the peoples of Africa.
This Charter must assist us to illuminate the way towards progressive Pan Africanism.
On this important occasion we wish to reiterate the South African government’s ongoing commitment to the African Agenda, including the strengthening of the African Union and the promotion of democracy, peace and stability in Africa.
We equally remain fully supportive of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) as an integral component of efforts towards the rebirth of the African Continent.
Arts, culture and heritage have an important role to play in promoting the African agenda, in strengthening the African Union and in ensuring that the goals of NEPAD are realised.
Our common heritage, our rich and diverse cultures as well as our artistic expressions must be used to cement the bonds of friendship and solidarity that have existed among our peoples for many years.
They must be used to strengthen people to people contact, to promote tolerance and a better understanding and appreciation among our peoples.
Fellow Africans, we must ensure the ratification of the Charter because this will contribute to promoting the role of the arts, culture and heritage in the sustainable development of our Continent.
As we all know, now more than ever before Africa has the best possibility to emerge from an era of political, social and economic decline into a renaissance of hope as well as social and economic progress.
Our Continent now has an opportunity, on a massive scale, to triumph over adversity, to put its unhappy past behind it and to march confidently into the future.
Indeed a new spirit is aboard our Continent.
The peoples of Africa are determined to use their newly harnessed energies, assertiveness and pride to chart their own course of development.
Now more than ever before the peoples of Africa are determined to extricate themselves from the lowest rungs of human development.
Our responsibility is to support this wave of optimism sweeping across our Continent, by ensuring that the arts, culture and heritage are placed at the center of these efforts.
Ratifying the Charter will go a long way in assisting us achieve this important objective.
Programme Director, the South African government intends to use the collaboration within SADC and broadly within the African Union to engage the SADC Secretariat on the revival of the SADC Protocol on Culture.
We will also use our collaboration to seek a review of the strategic areas of engagement prioritised by member states in the last SADC meetings on Culture held in 2006.
We will work hard to secure buy-in from member states on the process of consolidating a regional agenda on culture so as to contribute to socio-economic development and regional integration.
We will engage fellow SADC members to revive the cultural dialogue in the region.
We will also encourage the revival of the Colloquium of Ministers of Culture and the Forum for Directors General of culture in the SADC region.
Collectively, these interventions will strengthen efforts aimed at placing the arts, culture and heritage at the center of our efforts to advance social and economic transformation in the region and in the Continent.
Excellencies, one of the immediate areas of cooperation among ourselves as SADC member states is on the implementation of the National Liberation Heritage Route.
As many of you may be aware the South African government will soon be implementing the National Liberation Heritage Route.
Through this Route we will tell the stories and document events, sites and individuals that have made a significant contribution to the South African struggle for national liberation.
These events, sites and individuals are located not only in our country but also in the SADC region, the Africa Continent and indeed in many parts of the world.
We are grateful for the support and cooperation we continue to receive from our all our neighbors on this important project.
We look forward to your continued support and cooperation as we implement this project which seeks to preserve and protect our common liberation heritage.
I take this opportunity to wish you well in your deliberations.
Let this be a step we are taking towards strengthening the unity of the African Continent, ensuring its socio-economic development and promoting peace and stability.
Indeed let this be another step that is taking us closer to our goal of building a Better Africa and a Better World.
Let the message of our campaign for the ratification of the Charter of the African Cultural Renaissance resonate across the length and breadth of our region and Continent.
Thank you.
