S Ndebele: Freedom Day Celebrations

27 April 2007

Since 1995 we have been celebrating 27 April, the day on which South Africa
was liberated from the shackles of apartheid. This is now the 12th year we are
commemorating this important day. This is a day on which the masses of our
people in 1994 stood in long lines to vote in a democratic government. This is
an image we must never banish from our minds.

We have adopted an advanced Constitution which includes a Bill of Rights and
represents a significant collective advance on apartheid. In tune with this
forward-looking orientation, this year's theme for Freedom Day is "Renewing our
pledge a national partnership to build a better life for all!" This is close to
our own theme as the Provincial Government which is "Building the Economy
through Partnerships".

Both these themes evoke the national partnership, which broke the back of
apartheid and brought about our freedom and democracy. It is critical to
sustain the idea of a partnership and the role of the collective because we
could not have earned the victory we did without the role of all our people,
black and white.

It is also critical every year to recall that Freedom Day was possible only
after thousands of our people had died at the hands of the ever-present
apartheid machinery in South Africa and different parts of the world. Often
those who died were our best people. They were cadres who were prepared to pay
the ultimate sacrifice and who risked the prospect of spending time in jail
without knowing when they would come out. We must therefore look back in order
to ensure that we do not ever return to that place where the rights of the
majority were ignored in favour of a minority. As former President Nelson
Mandela has reminded us, "Never and never again shall it be that this beautiful
land shall again experience the oppression of one by another."

In his State of the Nation address earlier this year, President Thabo Mbeki
urged all South Africans to take part in "building social cohesion and
promoting a sense of belonging, thereby reinforcing the glue that binds the
South African nation together". President Mbeki said, Freedom Day was no
ordinary celebration, "It is a day when all of us need to pause and reflect on
our past, to remember the heroes and heroines who brought us freedom, those
whose sacrifices made it possible for all South Africans, black and white, to
enjoy the benefits of democracy and for all of us to prosper in conditions of
peace and stability".

Freedom Day must therefore also look at what it is that government and the
people of South Africa have done to better the conditions of our people. We
must make apartheid history by ensuring we improve the socio-economic
conditions of our townships and rural areas. We must make apartheid history by
improving the standards of our people in the informal settlements which
surround our cities. That is why we have placed slum clearance and the
revitalisation of inner cities economies at the top of our agenda. We must
therefore use Freedom Day to gauge progress in the reconstruction and
development of our country and province. In particular we need to know how we
have built social cohesion and accelerated shared economic growth.

In KwaZulu-Natal we have declared 2007 the Year of Luthuli. We have done
this because we are paying tribute to one of the sons of KwaZulu-Natal, Inkosi
Albert Luthuli. Inkosi Luthuli died 40 years ago. He was President General of
the ANC and was the first African to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Chief Luthuli's
legacy remains etched in the collective memories of all who cherish the
democratic ideal. Our people remain part of our great dream today. In his
political and personal life Chief Luthuli embodied the South African dream.
This dream is the hope for freedom that kept many of us alive in times of great
personal challenges. The dream lies in the building of one united, non-racial
and non-sexist country out of racially disparate groups plagued by notions of
racial and patriarchal superiority.

The South African dream is also the dream of Africa. It is that of the
African Renaissance. The African Renaissance dusts out of the quagmire of
colonial wastage, a continent that can stand tall and assume its rightful place
in the world. Chief Luthuli gave us the best qualities we require in leadership
today. Those qualities include honesty, integrity hard work and dedication to
nation building. We have therefore taken these characteristics to our own
public service by adopting the principle of Batho Pele, people first. This is
an important principle which places all our people at the centre of our
development programmes.

It is important that we build the physical and spatial environment for our
people to live such as houses, hospitals, schools, roads, social and economic
infrastructure. But we believe that building the moral base of the community
will ensure that we have a citizenry which values itself, respects its fellow
human beings and the country and province. That is why the Citizens Charter
seeks to commit our people to the highest moral values to which Inkosi Luthuli
subscribed and lived by.

Chief Albert Luthuli was President General of the African National Congress
(ANC) from 1952 till his death in 1967. During his tenure, the 1950s witnessed
the historic process of the independence of Africans from colonialism and the
rollback of the outcomes produced by the European Scramble for Africa. The Suez
crisis of 1956 was an indication that the gunboat diplomacy of a previous era
was no longer an option for the Western powers.

The independence of Africa gathered momentum, when first Ghana became free
in 1957, then Guinea in 1958 and subsequently a number of African countries
gained their independence. Apartheid was tightening its grip eventually forcing
legitimate people organisations to have no option but to take up arms against
the state. This year, in 2007, as a member of the African Union (UN) Security
Council we have taken our place alongside the nations of the world. We have
come very far indeed.

When we had the chance, we chose a non-racial and non-sexist South Africa.
This is a legacy of Inkosi Luthuli's leadership. As early as 1962 in a joint
statement with Dr King, Chief Luthuli called for economic and arms sanctions
against South Africa in the light of Universal Declaration of Human Rights
adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 1957. The statement drew a picture of
possible outcomes in the event that a peaceful solution was not found to
apartheid. The two leaders offered a simple solution when they declared, "So
there exists another alternative and the only solution which represents sanity,
transition to a society based upon equality for all without regard to
colour."

Inkosi Luthuli used his moral authority in the world and his position as
President General of the ANC to pave the road towards the peaceful resolution
of the political impasse in apartheid South Africa. We must on Freedom Day
remember the legacy that Inkosi Luthuli left us by being true to the values
that he stood for. Former President Nelson Mandela, himself a Nobel Laureate,
described Luthuli as a "colossus" and "foot soldier of our people who chose
persecution and taught us the lesson that real leaders must be ready to
sacrifice all for the freedom of their people."

Current challenges:
As the MEC for Health Ms P Nkonyeni said in her budget speech this week we are
a province of more than 10 million people of which more than 88 percent are
uninsured and do not have access to medical aid. We are also going through an
HIV/Aids epidemic which is complicated by the advent of the deadly multi-drug
resistant (MDR) and extreme drug resistant (XDR) tuberculosis (TB).

To be able to deal effectively with these challenges it is important that we
adopt a comprehensive plan. In line with these goals, South Africa has
developed its own mandate, MEC Dr Zweli Mkhize rightly declared in the Budget
speech this year that we have the following targets:
* by 2008, all households will have access to clean water
* by 2010, all households will have decent sanitation facilities
* by 2012, every household will have access to electricity and
* by 2014, 30 percent of white-owned agricultural land will be distributed for
sustainable agricultural development.

All these strategic goals will be sustainable if we have an economy that
grows at a consistently high rate than we are currently doing. The national
target for growth is six percent, we have set ourselves a target of at least
eight percent growth from 2010 to 2014 and to halve unemployment by 2014. We
are on track to achieve these targets. We have also identified the following
sectors to drive growth in the province:
* agriculture and agri-industry (including land utilisation mapping and giving
particular attention to land reform)
* industry, including heavy and light industry and manufacturing
* tourism, including domestic and foreign tourism
* services sector, including financial, social, transport, retail and
government.

Very few economies in the world have ever moved from stagnation to overdrive
without the injection of Foreign Direct Investment. We believe as the Treasury
figures indicate, that we are also on the right track. For example:
* Transnet and the National Ports Authority will invest R15 billion in
upgrading the capacity of Durban Harbour over the next five years
* Toyota Motor Corporation - R3.4 billion during 2004/2005
* Anglo American Plc investment in Mondi - R1.4 billion
* Shell and BP in Sapref in Durban - R630 million.

We hope that through this programme we will also recall Chief Luthuli's call
that those who sacrificed, need to be rewarded by the commitment of those who
benefit from the liberation of this country. Inkosi Luthuli could have been
speaking of 27 April when he said: "It is a day of dedication because Africans,
remembering the past and bearing in mind their duty to the future, dedicate
themselves afresh to work for the objectives for which they made the supreme
sacrifice. Not for nothing did they do it, should be our watchword." Not for
nothing did millions vote for the first time in 1994, not for nothing did
Nelson Mandela spend 27 years behind bars, not for nothing did Albert Luthuli
endure banning by the apartheid government. These are things we must always
remember, because a nation that forgets its own history is a nation that will
itself soon be forgotten. Happy Freedom Day.

I thank you.

Issued by: Office of the Premier, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government
27 April 2007
Source: SAPA