Program director
Minister for Social Development, Mme Molewa
Premier of the Province, Me Jenkins
Portfolio Committee Chairperson on Social Development, Honourable Botha
Portfolio Committee Chairperson on Higher Education, Honourable Fransman
Fellow Members of the Northern Cape Executive Council, MEC Mmoeiemang, MEC Cjiekella, MEC Lucas, MEC Shushu, and MEC Sokatsha
The Speaker of the Provincial Legislature, Honourable van Wyk and fellow members of the Provincial Legislature
Executive Mayors Honourable Visser, Honourable Lolwana and Honourable Mjila
Mayors and councillors
The Director-General of the Department of Social Development, Mr Mbongwa
Acting Head of Department, Mr Mooketsi
CEOs from the different SETAs
Leadership from the ANC-led alliance, including the leagues of our organisation
Ladies and gentlemen
Volunteers for social change
The Northern Cape is essentially a rural province, as 72 percent of households are located within rural areas and as a consequence we bear greater responsibility to give credence to our fourth manifesto priority of advancing to the frontiers of rural development.
Our provincial Department of Social Development piloted the building healthy family’s project; fondly refer to as the 500 family’s project, during 2008/09, where poor families were targeted to receive a basket of services. Due to the nature of integration of service delivery which was experience, the Northern Cape Executive Council requested the department to broaden its approach.
With the resultant mandate of a Cabinet decision which direct door-to-door profiling of all the households (±280,000 households) within the Northern Cape province.
The purpose of this request was to develop a comprehensive database of information at household level. This would enable the Northern Cape Provincial Government to have at its disposal a database with information at household level, which in turn will make it more easily to identify the service delivery gaps and challenges.
We are making good today on our pledge as a people’s government to never forget the good work done by our community volunteers, who have over many years participated in the construction of our democratic government.
The large majority of volunteers are young people, as at a general level the Northern Cape is indeed a youthful province, as youth constitute more than 71 percent of the entire Northern Cape populace. It therefore goes with requiring much complex reasoning, that the thrust of our people-cantered and people-driven programs should be biased posture towards the development of our young people. How best than to allow the youth themselves to be the pioneers of their own advancement, given credence to the roll-call, that nothing for us, without us!
Our volunteers has many years of experience of working in and for our communities; but these work has never been regarded as part of the so-called job experience, with the result that all of them with matric, were rendered unemployed.
As a government we have therefore decided to utilize the skills of our volunteers, to speed up effective service delivery, but to also convert their knowledge-based in a proper accreditation, and we have partner with the identified Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) in that regard.
Many of you, in your various other capacities, has worked on similar projects, albeit those community projects were known as “Know-your-neighbourhood-campaign”, or the “Imvusulelo Campaign”. This particular project will be known as the Balelapa household profiling-with Balelapa the Setswana translation for my family.
This Balelapa household profiling is in fact an extension of the “War on poverty” program and we will ensure that poor and vulnerable households are provided with an integrated, basket of services and development support. This includes access to education, nutrition, basic services, and economic empowerment opportunities.
Our tasks as volunteers for social change are simple and common. You will be task to visit every household in the province and collate the people’s conditions and grievances, al 300 thousand households, thereby establishing contact with our 1.2 million populace. This task will enable government to know exactly our people’s living conditions and not to be dependent on surveys and desk-top studies to ascertain what else we can do and how better we can do things to realise a better life for all our people.
Allow me to remind our volunteers today that because of the objective reality that “every revolution produces its own heroes,” the struggle for a more better life for our people; for a more effective experience of government’s service delivery; affords a thousand young people of the Northern Cape an opportunity to be the foot-soldiers of our government in responding speedily to our people’s many grievances.
Heroes of the South African national democratic revolution have been produce of our own communities. Like Nelson Mandela who coordinated the 26 June 1952 Defiance Campaign against Unjust Laws and mobilised eight thousand five hundred volunteers behind a common vision of undermining the system of white supremacy, as it existed in its then form of brute apartheid.
Nelson Mandela convened a ‘Day of the Volunteers’ on 22 June 1952, four days before the launch of the Defiance Campaign and all volunteers signed the following pledge, and I quote “I, the undersigned, Volunteer of the National Volunteer Corps, do hereby solemnly pledge and bind myself to serve my country and my people in accordance with the directives of the National Volunteers Corps and to participate fully and without reservations to the best of my ability in the campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws.
I shall obey the orders of my leader under whom I shall be placed and strictly abide by the rules and regulations of the National Volunteer Corps framed from time to time. It shall be my duty to keep myself physically, mentally and morally fit.”
Further to this, Madiba, in his capacity as ANC President, in a first ever televised address to the entire South African nation on 13 April, 1993 had the following to say on the assassination of Chris Hani, and I quote “Chris Hani was a soldier. He believed in iron discipline. {and} He carried out instructions to the letter. {But above all} He practiced what he preached.”
We expect no less from you.
We are proud of our past, and confident of the future.
Let us arm ourselves with the willpower and fearlessness of Ulysis Modise; the endurance and vision of George Mogoro; the resourcefulness of Marcus Mbetha; the courage of Khotso Flatela; the farsightedness and dedication of Mieta Seperepere, Joe Morolong, Arthur Letele and John Toalo Gaetsewe, to build a caring society-together. In all this, we dare not fail.
Working together, we can make poverty history.
I thank you.
