E Molewa: Handover of Community Projects

11 December 2007

Programme Director
Honourable MECs here present
Dikgosi here present
Your Worship the Mayor and honourable Councillors here present
The Executive Leadership and Management of Lonmin
Community members
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

It is always a pleasure to be with and among the people who have placed us
where we are to serve them. The privilege of serving your people is possibly
the greatest honour they can give you, and I am pleased to be here today to
witness the handover of projects which symbolise service to the people –
service to our communities.

Some of you might remember that last month I was here during an Imbizo –
Pitso – to listen, as we in government do, first hand to both your concerns and
compliments. That visit was a pleasure for me. What I found most pleasing was
the constructive spirit you showed, and I was truly inspired by the commitment
you demonstrated towards your own well-being. The issues you raised convinced
me of your determination to see this area of our province developing into a
region you can all be proud of, and in that you echo government.

You also echo Emanuel Corgo, a poet from Angola, who says in one of his
poems:

Today the people demand that we fight with weapons in hand and that we
struggle and that we struggle once twice or a thousand years, until there is
built a better world.

Yes, yours – and ours as government – is a never-ending struggle to build a
better world.

In your struggle for a better world one of your biggest strengths is your
participatory approach to your situation – a proactive cast of mind in the
proud spirit of Vuk'uzenzele and Khomanani. That spirit is evident from your
cooperation with the local municipality and Lonmin – a relationship which
brings us all here today.

We are here to officially accept gifts of life from our local government and
one of our leading corporate citizens. I speak of their work as gifts of life
because they make a direct contribution to the betterment of the quality of our
lives.

Take, for example, the clinic whose construction Lonmin has financed to the
tune of a whopping R3,4 million. Health, as is often said, is the greatest
wealth, and what better gift can anyone give you than the gift of good health
that a clinic represents? It is our privilege, as government, to be witness to
the handover of this clinic to our people – a perfect example of the
public-private partnerships that we espouse.

With the Bapo Traditional Authority selflessly donating land – and for this
we thank our local Kgosi and the members of his authority, Lonmin providing the
money for the building, and the Department of Health equipping, staffing and
operating the clinic, we see partnership in action – partnership in the service
of our people. With ten staff members currently providing primary health and
maternity care, from Monday to Friday, to at least 100 patients each day, and
with 20 children born to date at the clinic and 80 patients receiving
Antiretroviral (ARV treatment), it is already becoming obvious that this is the
right project, at the right time, for the right place. It is for that reason
that there are already plans for a 24-hour service, seven days a week.

Even as we celebrate this clinic we must also celebrate the process that led
to its construction. I refer here to the fact that it is the community itself
which conducted a needs assessment and determined that community health was a
challenge which could be met through a clinic. The community itself – not the
Municipal Council, and not Lonmin – decided that it was a clinic which had to
be constructed.

In that the people showed a spirit of unity – harambe. It is a powerful kind
of oneness, the type that the African-American poet Langston Hughes speaks
about in his poem, 'Brothers,' when he says:

We're related – you and I, you from the West Indies, I from Kentucky.
Kinsmen – you and I, you from Africa, I from the United States of America
(USA). Brothers – you and I.

It is that type of relationship, and those human bonds of brotherhood and
sisterhood, which made it possible for the community to successfully embark on
the process of determining, for themselves, what is best for them.

That same process also led to the community's identification of crime as a
continuing threat, and one of the solutions it proposed was the putting up of
high-mast lights – 'Apollo' lights to many of us. Once more, I am glad to say,
Lonmin came to the community's rescue, and for that we are grateful, especially
as the police themselves acknowledge that these lights have drastically reduced
the incidence of crime at night.

Is there, really, any better definition of corporate social responsibility
than Lonmin's support for community-determined projects? I say no. It is an
example such as Lonmin's that we have in mind when we speak of good corporate
citizenship and corporate social responsibility. In Lonmin we see private
business with a public conscience – we see the proverbial ploughing back to the
community from which you also benefit. How else can one explain this company's
generous donation of R25 million, and technical assistance, towards the
provision of water in this area? Water, as you might know, is the very essence
of life.

I am reliably informed that this water-provision project is at a point where
all the stakeholders – including, most importantly, our councillors – need to
prioritise it if it is to match the ones being handed over here today. The
councillors, then, must rise to this challenge, fulfil their public service
obligations, and provide all the support required for the project to be a
success. We cannot, as public representatives, be seen to be hampering progress
on as critical an intervention as the provision of water for our people. That,
it might do us well to remember, is the first promise we made our people in
1994 when we started our era of freedom and democracy.

The people, on their part, must demand progress on this project from their
councillors. That, after all, is what they voted them into office for, and if
the other projects which bring us here today are anything to go by, then our
councillors can, if they put their minds to something, deliver.

They have, and we thank them, too, for it, delivered houses, a cemetery, a
sewerage plant, and a community hall – four of the six projects being handed
over today. Not only do more people have better quality housing now, but all
have a hall for public meetings and gatherings too, and they have access to
proper sanitation, which some have called dignity as it does away with pit
latrines and the bucket system. Fortunately for the community, the sewerage
plant is designed in a manner which provides for its extension as the
population grows, thus firmly ensuring this community of a future without the
bucket system. Also convenient is the close proximity, now, of the cemetery,
saving our people the burden of long distances for the burial of their
families, friends and loved ones.

You are beneficiaries of projects whose ownership is really in your own
hands. What that does is to place upon you the great responsibility of
protecting and safeguarding these investments. I can think of no better
expression of gratitude than to ensure that you, your children, and the
children of your children appreciate and treasure these projects.

You are children of the Age of Hope that President Mbeki so eloquently
speaks about – you who are experiencing the fruits of freedom and democracy
after decades of deprivation. It is people like you and the rebirth you are
going through that the poet, Keorapetse Kgositsile, had in mind when he wrote
his poem, 'New Age,' where he says:

"Tell those with ears to hear tell them tell them my people are a garden
rising out of the rancid rituals of rape and ruin tell them tell them in the
dry season leaves will dry and fall to fertilise the land whose new flowers
black green and gold are a worker's song of fidelity to the land that mothered
you."

Indeed, you are steadily recovering from yesterday's suffering to today's
progress and tomorrow's prosperity.

Both on your and the province's government's behalf I thank the local
traditional leadership, the Municipal Council and Lonmin for their partnership
in making the promise of a better life a reality for you. This, I have no
doubt, is a Christmas present you will never forget. May I also thank
Archbishop Desmond Tutu for the blessings he bestowed upon some of the projects
when he visited this area.

On that celebratory note let me please conclude my speech, but not before
wishing you a Christmas filled with even more blessings than the ones signified
by these projects, and a New Year where all your wishes may come to reality
like these projects have done.

I thank you all

Issued by: Office of the Premier, North West Provincial Government
11 December 2007