Programme director, Ashifa Shabba
Honourable Comrade Premier
The mayor
The HOD and senior management of the department
The cream of the day, award winners and
Youth
Ladies and gentlemen,
Tonight is not a night of many speeches, but of celebrations. We have just emerged from a very successful FIFA World Cup, which many skeptics had decided we would not be able to handle. We had been written off before we even arrived. Many had said we won’t be able to build stadiums, we won’t have road infrastructure, visitors would be mugged and robbed, our accommodation would be found wanting, and many other feeble things in their heads. Thanks very much for that, because we did even better than that. Today we can beat our drum and say, we are good!
Programme director, we are celebrating achievement tonight. We celebrate the youth who say, being a farmer does not mean sitting in an office in Sandton and administrating a farm somewhere in GaSeleka or Musina. These young people say, we will wake up with the farm workers at 04h00 and work till dawn, making sure that there is food for all in the country.
These are the youth who say, we are not going to wait for the aged to die, but will take the baton now and continue farming for our nation. They are all saying farming is ‘cool’, it is as cool as Facebook, Mxit, twitter and all those modern age games and gadgets. For this reason, we as a department have put up systems to empower those who say, we are taking up farming as a career. We have set up bursaries, internship programs and placements as part of our commitment to this cause. The monies that we are giving you tonight, is not for buying BMWs and expensive clothes, but money to be invested back into the projects.
Programme director, I wish to congratulate those who have made it to the top tonight. The hard work, sweat and ecstasy they put themselves through is now bearing fruit. I know that there are hundreds in our different districts and municipalities who entered the competitions and won in their respective way. To those who did not make it to the top five or top 10 and some not even to the top 20, I say, keep on entering again and again. In these awards, you will have heard testimonies of youth who since 2006 entered but did not make it at first, but today are reaping the fruit of their labour. In some instances, you may not need to win in order to be recognised. The fact that you participated, makes you a very important person and a cog in our economic development.
Programme director, the youth gathered here and elsewhere need to be challenged to stand up against tribalism, racism and xenophobia. We cannot afford in the 16th year of our democracy, youth who look at each other through goggles of Sothoism, Shanganism, vendaism and kwerkwere’s. You are human before your Pedi, Tsonga or Venda full stop. Let us therefore challenge those who believe our brothers and sisters from the diaspora should be sent back home. Those who believe South Africa belongs only to them and no other person are living in a dream world. Some of us, who grew up in foreign lands of Zambia, Tanzania, Cuba and Great Britain would caution you to go slow on this one. We have been accommodated, fed and given work in foreign lands for many years and not once have we been given names or chased and got beaten up for being foreigners. I therefore challenge you, seated here, to go back home and fight against this evil and diabolic spirit. Let us accommodate and help build a South Africa that will be a model country for the world, just as we succeeded in the FIFA World Cup.
In conclusion, I want to urge all of us that we participate in the "67 minutes with Nelson Mandela” campaign this Sunday, 18 June 2010. The former President, and father of our democracy, Utata Nelson Mandela celebrates 92 years on the day. All of us, from wherever we come from, can stand up and do well for the nation. Those schools who have won tonight can go back and encourage more schools to plant vegetable gardens. We can encourage our communities to go green. Let’s continue to do well, not only for 67 minutes, but forever in our lives.
Former President Nelson Mandela in his inaugural speech in 1994 quoted the famous writer and poet, Marrianne Wilson and said,
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented andfabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.”
Good night, I thank you.
Source: Department of Agriculture, Limpopo Provincial Government
