Dr Gilbert Lawrence
Senior management services members of Community Safety
Recipients of long service certificates
Ladies and gentlemen
It is an honour and an absolute pleasure to address the 26 recipients of long service certificates here today. 30 years ago I was still a young police constable when Mr Jacobus Cupido, Isak Oosthuizen, David Koopman and Mogamat Kalam, started their careers in the government. All of the 26 recipients started their careers in a different time in our history, when government services were rendered on an unequal scale based on criteria like your skin colour, heritage and gender.
But, fifteen years ago in 1994, you experienced and witnessed the historical formation of a democratic government, change in leadership as well as transformational service delivery to the constitutional benefit of all the people of South Africa. Though the nature of your work as a government official could perhaps made you a slave to a monotonous routine, some of you have improvised and actively designed a work portfolio that creatively established yourself as an active and irreplaceable link in the government machinery.
Ladies and gentlemen, twenty and especially thirty years in your place of work are in quantitative terms, a lifetime. This will perhaps evoke gasps of sheer exhaustion from those who have only started their careers. But, qualitatively, twenty and thirty years can also be an eternity, because one's calling? And not one’s work is ever done. How would you know if you have delivered the exact amount of service expected for the 240 or 360 months of service? Or, what if you realise today that you have fallen short of delivering the expected service?
Ladies and gentlemen, in today’s ceremony the titles that you hold do not count, the statistics of how many sick days you took add to nothing and the number of paper you have saved the state over the decades does not matter. Nor so the wrinkles, grey hair or less hair, pille en brille! What counts are two fold?
Firstly, that you have executed your work with an unfaltering passion. Secondly, that the work that you have rendered and the change that you have effected in the work place and the society are valued respected and truly appreciated.
Though the number of years is inscribed on a piece of quality framed paper, the significance in the number of years as servant to the government is out there in society.
Your “certificates” are the positive contributions as seen in the good relations between the government and the community, in the regular safe journey of an elderly to the nearby shop, in the safety of a group of children playing in a park and the eventual investments of business in a neighbourhood once ridden with crime.
These positive contributions are the embossed gold on your societal certificate in the Western Cape. This is your unique and individual investments in a safer society, free of the fear of crime. Yes, your contributions have made us a proud province and your unselfish endeavours have helped raised the standards. Working harder can never generate the passion in our hearts, but passion can generate work of excellence.
Passion is energy, and energy drives our hearts and commits our endeavours to give only your best to your fellow citizens. I am reminded by the wise words of Douglas Adams: “To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity”. Many people are motivated and inspired by the wise words of famous authors, great statesmen and composers. These men and women are however long gone and it is up to us to inspire through our work and ignite motivation and inspiration through the passion by which we tackle, execute and finish our work. Our work must not become daily chores, but acts of love, kindness and relevance. If you calculate all your salaries for the past 20 or 30 years of service, it will numerically never ever amount to the value of the work you have rendered.
Ladies and gentlemen, our work must improve, change, the lives of those who must benefit through our programmes, projects, campaigns and administration. Our deliveries must give the man in the street hope, that their dreams can be realised in a society that is non discriminatory, that gives equal opportunity to all, not regarding you religion, origin, gender or political affiliation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am indeed proud of all of you today. You have helped to formulate and rewrite important policies and assisted in giving direction that benefited thousands of people. On behalf of the provincial government, the Department of Community Safety as well as the people of the Western Cape, I want to congratulate you on a job well done, on keeping the flame of hope through service in yourself alight and helping to ignite the good in others.
I thank you.
