the Europe Day Reception, Pretoria
8 May 2007
Thank you very much programme director
European Commission, Ambassador Lodewijk Briët
Excellencies
Local and international representatives of different institutions and
organisations
Colleagues
Honoured guests
Ladies and gentlemen
I am glad that today you are here to celebrate this day. I want to
congratulate you for recognising the achievements of the European Union (EU)
and South African Strategic Partnerships and of course everybody who has made
this day possible.
I want to join you in celebrating your people, the 450 million or so people
who belong to the European Union and of course, the achievements that you have
made while also acknowledging the challenges you would have faced plus the
lessons you have learned; more than anything else the future ahead.
A spirit of optimism marks what has been a significant partnership between
yourselves and my country, and our work together in the main has been about
building mutually beneficial relationships.
I would want to add the fact that there is definitely a room for us to do
more, and to add the fact that it should be possible to use the experience and
the benefit of hindsight that we have to make even a greater leap forward into
a shared and a brighter future.
I do want to also remind you of the meaning of your own EU anthem, it quotes
that: "Whoever succeeds in the great attempt to be a friend of a friend / yes,
whoever calls even one soul his own on the earth's globe".
Looking at these words, I thought that they resonate with a message behind
our own national anthem. It is about people being there for people. We as a
South African government also pays special homage to EU-South Africa
partnership, as it recognises the value of supporting initiatives; be it in the
economic sphere, in the human resource development, in the Security and Peace
initiatives, all of it is about the consolidation of these important and
strategic partnerships.
Thirteen years into a functional democracy, South Africa is a country with
mechanisms for accountability, for building solid and reliable partnerships for
promoting transparency and indeed a political system that you are all able to
identify with.
Ladies and gentlemen, be that as it may we certainly have many challenges.
We need to face these challenges and address them so that we may create a
better life for all. It means that we can create a secure future for all our
citizens. We face a challenge of a growing economy without adequate sharing,
and therefore not taking us to a future that we can share with all our people
equitably enough. The challenges and the many initiatives that we undertake
together with you, are meant to assist us to cover these gaps and to get to
this shared future quicker.
We take lessons from some of your own experiences ,in particular for me in
my work, the initiative that you are undertaking in Europe in order for you to
transfer resources to the poorer European states in order for them to be able
to develop as the other more developed states.
We have looked with admiration, for instance, at the development of Ireland,
and Portugal in the context of the support received from the EU, and for us we
therefore face the same challenge to ensure that we remove pockets of extreme
poverty in our own society.
It is of great significance to us that we still have millions of our people
predominantly young, predominantly women, who have less than 12 years of
schooling, able bodied and willing to work that we are unable to pull into a
brighter future. Nothing is more urgent than addressing that particular
constituency in our society.
Those people will be trapped in poverty, not unless we are able to intervene
and to take them out of poverty because on their own they will not be able to
achieve what they can achieve.
It is those generations of our people who will create the next generation
that is not functional in the economy, and therefore reproduce
intergenerational poverty not unless we cut the heredity of poverty, and many
of us believe education is probably one of the most decisive intervention that
we can bring about in order to make sure that we have a significantly smaller
number of poor people in the next generation.
The challenge that we face within a growing economy, is addressing the issue
of feminisation of poverty, the burden of diseases that limits the capacity of
many to be productive because we have chronic disease, be it HIV and AIDS and
many other diseases that limit peoples' ability to be as productive as they can
be.
We want to address the issue of our young and able-bodied persons who are
potential workers who will reach the age of 35 to 40 without having ever
worked, not unless there is a dramatic intervention to force them into the
labour market and to have a labour market that can receive them and assist them
to then stand on their own going forward.
And of course the challenge of bridging the skills gap for those who have
relatively few skills is important so that they can acquire experience in a
relatively shorter space of time and therefore be in a position to be
productive and those who need a longer period to access quality education so
that in the medium to long term they will be able to take their rightful place
in society.
I want to thank you for the contribution that you have made in relation to
some of these activities. I want to thank those of you who are collaborating
with us in the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA). I will
not mention all the countries just in case I leave some, but I would just like
to assure you, I know you by your first names.
I also want to encourage those countries who can assist and guide us to
collaborate in this regard to feel free to work with us so that indeed not just
South Africa but many other countries can address what I think is a challenge
that we must just not give into, of saying that Africa will not meet the
Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
For me it is unacceptable that already in 2007 we can give up on a goal that
has to be met in 2015. We need to use the time that we still have to do the
best that we can to address the challenges which in the main will benefit the
African countries more than anybody else if we deliver accordingly.
We are pleased that many of you here were with us before 1994, and that in
2007 we are able to see we have gained more friends and more countries that are
operating in South Africa.
In the last 13 years, we have not had to close an embassy because you could
not tolerate leaving in South Africa. I mean there are challenges here and
there but all in all this is a country you can live in and be party to making
it a better place and making South Africa to play an even more significant role
in making the world a better place.
I thank you
Issued by: The Presidency
8 May 2007
Source: The Presidency (http://www.thepresidency.gov.za)
