Your Majesty, Isilo Samabandla
Members of the royal houses present
Your Excellencies, Ambassadors and members of the Diplomatic Corps
Honoured guests
Fellow citizens
I am honoured to welcome all the people of KwaZulu-Natal and all our special guests from different provinces a special word of welcome to those from outside the Republic of South Africa.
All of us are gathered here to witness the inauguration of the fifth Premier of the province of KwaZulu-Natal and the second Premier from the African National Congress (ANC) since the dawn of our new democracy in the past 15 years.
To all of us gathered here today, this day represents the conclusion of the electoral process that was started when we cast our votes on 22 April 2009 a mere two weeks ago.
As a newly elected Premier, I wish to thank members of the legislature who elected me, for the confidence and support they have demonstrated. I thank my party the African National Congress for offering me the opportunity to serve the people of my province and my country. To be given an opportunity to serve one’s country is a special honour I accept with humility.
May I take this opportunity to congratulate our President Jacob Zuma on his inauguration and express my loyalty and unstinting support to him as the leader of all our people and first citizen of our country. I am sure I am talking on behalf of all of KwaZulu-Natal if I say that we are fully behind him and his recently announced team of ministers. We wish our president and his team well!
May I also pay tribute to my colleagues the pioneers of our provincial government, the former premiers who occupied this office ahead of me and MEC’s who served with me in the past decade and a half. I thank them for their contribution in my development and for the contribution they made to make KwaZulu-Natal a better place.
I wish to thank the people of South Africa and particularly the people of KwaZulu-Natal for delivering peaceful, free and fair elections despite the earlier hiccups and tension that the period of election campaigning inevitably fuels.
I wish to thank leaders of different parties that played a role by prevailing upon their members to exercise political tolerance and restraint as they participated in the electoral contests.
We thank all the individuals, local and international agencies that participated as observers in the monitoring of elections as they contributed to the creation of a peaceful culture and conveyed their observations in support of our democracy. We however regret that there were lives lost in our province in circumstances indicative of political intolerance in the build up to these elections.
While we celebrate the successes of democracy we should remain cognisant of the blood of many of our compatriots that was lost in the fight for the right to vote. We all need to make a commitment that never again shall our province ever be plagued by political intolerance resulting in the loss of lives.
The recent election generated a huge degree of enthusiasm amongst the electorate, reminiscent of the first ever elections in 1994. We thank all our people for coming out in large numbers to register and for standing patiently in long queues waiting for the opportunity to cast their vote. Close to 80% of the people in the province who were registered to vote actually cast their votes.
This huge voter turnout is a vote of confidence in our democracy and indicates that our democracy is secure in the hands of the people of South Africa, for which you must be congratulated.
This has been most encouraging because as a nation we are a product of a divided and traumatic past. This shows in our sense of pessimism, being too critical of faults which are miniscule compared with the huge advances of our new dispensation. Hence a degree of hopelessness had crept into all our people, eating away at our inner fibre despite the original hype and bubbling optimism that was associated with the euphoria we experienced in the first few years of our democracy. This time the mood of our people was unmistakable.
It was most inspiring as we walked up and down the streets and crossed rivers and valleys to ask you to exercise your right to vote for a party of your choice. We realised that as different communities we have common concerns and aspirations about the future of our country and our province. We all share a passion for the creation of an integrated non-racial society enjoying freedom, living in a safe and prosperous country.
This passion is shared by all the members from our diverse communities: African, Indian, Coloured and White communities wherever we met them: in the streets, churches, mosques, temples, as professionals, business, labour and different sectors of our civil society. It is important now for us to stop seeing ourselves in the eyes of yesterday, but instead embrace one another as we build the rainbow nation of which the Father of our Nation, Nelson Mandela spoke. From all our people, we gathered that there was a call for government to get closer to the people. They all indicated willingness to get involved wherever government wanted them to participate in an effort to build our country together.
From all of our people the message has been unmistakable in the recent elections: i.e., there is a new hope for a better future. This hope for a better future has rung out loud from the address of our newly elected Fifth President of the democratic Republic of South Africa, His Excellency JG Zuma when he referred to the legacy of our revered Madiba and the spirit of renewal during his inaugural address in the Union Building last weekend:
“Madiba healed our wounds and established the rainbow nation very firmly. He set us on the path of nation building and prosperity and made us a respected member of the world community of nations. He taught us that all South Africans have equal claim to this country, and that there can be no lasting peace unless all of us, black and white, learned to live together in harmony and peace. He made reconciliation the central theme of his term of office. We will not deviate from that nation building task. Thank you Madiba, for showing us the way.”
Many in the media referred to this spirit as a dawn of a new era. It is not common for any people to be given a second opportunity to look back and identify the lessons from the past and use them to make a fresh new start.
It seems to me that for us as South Africa and KwaZulu-Natal, we are called upon to hold each others hands and make a fresh start, building on what we have already achieved a South Africa of our dreams.
This is therefore my call to all the people of KwaZulu-Natal to embrace this new hope for a better future and make a fresh start together as one people. The government you have elected will work closely with all the people of our province to promote love, friendship, and good fellowship and ensure that peace becomes a permanent part of KwaZulu-Natal. Our every effort will be focused towards the elimination of any form of political tensions and intolerance, and deepening a culture of respect amongst members and leaders of different political parties. We will strive for the creation of healthy relationships and cooperative coexistence between the ruling party and opposition parties and promotion of a vibrant debate as a hallmark of our multi-party democracy.
Reconciliation amongst the people of this province remains one outstanding matter that we will spare no effort to bring to finality, especially as it relates to the members of the African National Congress and Inkatha Freedom Party.
The deep scars of violence and the trauma that was associated with it must be cleansed and healed once and for all to pave way for open political contest and co-operation, and not be based on past hostilities twenty years into our new democracy. We will therefore work hard to create an environment of open debate and healthy disagreement amongst political parties inside and outside the legislature.
All the parties in this house are a product of our democracy and are the true representation of the will of our people. As we congratulate them we need to confirm that we all, as colleagues, have the responsibility to deliver a better life for all our people from both the ranks of the ruling party and the opposition benches.
We must endeavour to create space for all parties and in particular minority parties to make the contribution that they were elected for. We make a call to minority communities to come forward and interact with government and make the contributions that will shape government policies to address issues of their concerns. You will find us to be a government that listens and take seriously all matters placed for our attention.
We accept that for the good of our province and our country, all communities must come forward and make their contribution, utilising the experience and expertise available to them to make ours a winning province.
I wish to thank you all for voting for all the parties that are represented in our legislature. I thank you for voting overwhelmingly for the ANC to lead government in our province.
We are mindful of the high expectations associated with the large voter turn-out and the support that has been given to my party the ANC. We have the honour and responsibility to form a government to ensure speedy and effective service delivery.
Drawn from the ranks of the ruling party, this new government will be made of a team of mature and capable men and women of integrity, whose focus shall be the implementation of the five priorities highlighted in the electoral manifesto of the ANC.
We undertake to create a government that will operate on the basis of efficiency, adhering to the principles of transparency, good governance and promotion of innovation and elimination of dead wood, inefficiency and corruption in the public service.
We are going to focus on the following five priorities:
* Rural development and agrarian reform to ensure food security and rehabilitation of emerging farmers who acquired land from land reform processes, providing mentorship, capacity building and relevant support. The long term goal is for the agricultural sector to be strengthened to create jobs and maximize export potential.
* Intensive campaign to fight crime, support community conflict resolution mechanisms and promotion of effective policing, utilizing the existing structures and police volunteers. This will be accompanied by the fight against corruption.
* Support the health reforms embodied in the National Health Insurance (NHI) for effective health services and promotion of health promotion programmes. The HIV and AIDS programmes will be expanded and the fight against multiple drug resistant Tuberculosis (TB) will be prioritised, whilst the conditions of employment are attended to, to eliminate the possibility of frequent industrial action by the health personnel.
* Promotion of adult literacy to improve the quality of life of many of our people. The improvement of the quality of education and embarking on grassroots mobilisation to effectively get the culture of schooling and teaching back into class, ensuring that children are at school learning and the teachers are at school, in class on time, teaching; while dealing with refurbishment of schools in need of teaching facilities such as the laboratories, libraries, etc.
* Building the economy to create decent jobs, fight unemployment and eradicate poverty, and promotion of small enterprise development and building a cooperative movement to address the issues of empowerment. We need to devise strategies to mitigate the impact of the global economic downturn and protect jobs and mitigate the negative impact of retrenchments.
In line with the proposal for the national government to house the National Planning Commission in the Presidency, there will be a Provincial Planning Commission located in the Office of the Premier.
To fulfil the task outlined above, may I present to you the team of the Members of the Executive Council who will constitute the government. They are as follows:
Agriculture, Environmental Affairs and Rural Development: MEC Johnson Lydia
Arts, Culture, Sports and Recreation: MEC Thusi Gcotyelwa Weziwe
Economic Development and Tourism: MEC Mabuyakhulu Michael
Education: MEC Mchunu Edward Senzo
Finance: MEC Cronje Catharina Magdalena
Health: MEC Dlomo Maxwell Sibongiseni
Human Settlement and Public Works: MEC Govender Magasvarie
Local Government and Traditional Affairs: MEC Mchunu Thembinkosi Willies
Social Development: MEC Radebe Bonginkosi Meshack
Transport Community Safety and Liaison: MEC Cele Bhekokwakhe Hamilton
Let us shed the prejudices of the past. We must believe in the cumulative capacity of our collective efforts to change ourselves to be better people, change our country to be a better country and contribute in making ours to be a better world. Our conviction that the future is in our hands will enable us to transform KwaZulu-Natal to become the leading province in terms of its economic development and the quality of the lives of all its citizens.
This is the time to move on and embrace the spirit of renewal.
Let us embrace the new hope for a better future for KwaZulu-Natal and the whole of South Africa. Let us make a fresh start, a start that will change our country for the better, for good.
Once again I thank you for your kind attention.
Siyabonga.
Issued by: Office of the Premier, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government
11 May 2009
Source: Office of the Premier, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government (http://www.kwazulunatal.gov.za)
