Programme Director;
The leadership of the Tamil Federation
Veterans of our struggle
Members of the Gauteng Executive Council
The leadership of the ANC here present
Business leaders
Members of the diplomatic corps
Our honoured guests
Ladies and gentlemen.
Allow me firstly to express my gratitude to the Gauteng Tamil Federation for inviting me to this dinner with a cross section of leaders from the Tamil community in our province.
This is an important occasion for me as it is the first time that I am meeting with you as a religious and cultural community.
In the first six months of our administration, we have been interacting with various sectors of society.
When I met with the leadership of the Tamil Federation, I asked that I meet with the Tamil community. It is important that we meet with the entire Tamil community.
I am here therefore to listen to you. I am also here to support your fundraising efforts aimed at improving and supporting those who are less fortunate to go further with their education.
This year there are 32 students that needs to be supported.
I have come to appreciate the fact that the Indian community respects education. As you know education is one critical factor in moving our people out of poverty.
Raising money for education is an act of solidarity, especially because it will take those students to greater heights.
The second point is that I am here to listen to you; to hear more from you.
Significantly, this occasion coincides with the sacred Kavady celebration that is held so dear by the Tamil community.
The Kavady prayer and penance, which I am told begins on Sunday, is to be observed over 10 days by Tamil devotees throughout our province and country.
The Kavady procession is an outward and public demonstration of mass devotion to the revered Lord Muruga. This festival marks one of the biggest festivals on the South African Indian calendar.
It is our view that the Kavady festival must be transformative to all of us both spiritually and socially.
It must bring light where there is darkness; peace where there is discord and discontent; and upliftment where there is degradation.
Particularly in South Africa we must ensure that the Kavady festival brings light and hope to the poor and the helpless in our communities.
It must inspire us to believe that a better tomorrow beckons for all of us and that the shadow of crisis and despondency will soon pass.
Programme Director, on this important day we are reminded that Tamil South Africans who are descendants of Indian immigrants who came from India to the then Natal from 1860 onwards, are an important fibre of our South African society.
After the expiry of their contracts as indentured labourers most of your forebears moved to cities, particularly in the old Transvaal.
Over 150 years, they, like the wider Indian community, had integrated themselves into the broader body politic of our country.
Today we wish to reaffirm that you, like your forebears, are as South African as all of us!
You are part of our rainbow nation; a nation united in its diversity.
Your history and your heritage is part of our nation’s rich cultural heritage and collective memory. It is part of what defines us as a South African people; it is who we are, without you we are incomplete.
Informed by this reality we will continue to preserve and promote the history and heritage of the Tamil South Africans.
We indeed have an obligation to tell the story of the Tamil people in South Africa in full, for the benefit of current and future generations.
This we must do as part of our overall commitment towards building a South African society that is truly united in its diversity.
Inspired by the motto in our coat of arms written in the language of the Khoisan people, which says “!ke e: Ixara IIke” and means “diverse people unite”, we will continue to make the point that despite our diverse histories and heritage, as South Africans what unites us far outweighs that which divides us.
We are one people and we have a shared destiny, we have a shared history.
As we meet here today we have, in the recent past and in particular yesterday, seen sporadic attacks on foreign nationals and in particular the Somalis, Ethiopians, Bangladeshi, the Pakistanis and other people who are seen as the other, in Soweto and other parts of the province.
Working together we have an obligation to bring about order, peace and stability in our communities.
Today we met with those businesses people who are affected to offer our comfort and ensure that those who come to our country to make a living and a contribution do so without hindrance.
Gauteng province is a cosmopolitan province. We want a province where there is peace and tolerance for one another.
We also have an obligation to spread the message of tolerance and a sense that our diversity as humanity is a source of strength rather than a weakness.
We take this opportunity once more to condemn in the strongest possible terms the recent acts of violence, intolerance and criminality in some parts of our province.
Indeed we must continue to make the point that; our survival and prosperity as members of the human race is dependent on one another.
Programme Director, we note that today, many Tamil South Africans continue to play an important role in our country in the areas of business, sports, science and technology, religion, arts, and broadly in the ongoing development and the reconstruction and development of our country. I would like to thank you for your contribution in the development of our province.
Your meaningful participation in all aspects of the South African life has brought a valuable sense of identity and solidarity, especially in the light of your marginalization and discrimination experienced under the apartheid system.
On this day we wish to assure you that; the people of Gauteng will continue to draw inspiration and valuable lessons from your proud legacy of resilience, hard work, caring for one another and love for your country; South Africa.
The people of Gauteng identify with your legacy and they will therefore defend and deepen it.
We applaud the work done by the Tamil Federation of Gauteng of promoting and protecting the Tamil culture, language, music and dance as part of the broader rich and diverse South Africa cultural heritage.
We also applaud the work you are doing to recognize both the sung and unsung heroes and heroines of our struggle for national liberation from the Indian community.
We note with appreciation that you have honoured and made all South Africans aware of the courage and dedication to the freedom struggle of noble activists and leaders such as the young Valliama who served as a passive resister in Gandhi’s civil disobedience campaign in 1913.
Then there is Thambi Naidoo, a great lieutenant also of Gandhi, and grandfather to Lenasia ANC activists, Prema and Murthi Naidoo.
You also honoured “Mervey” Thandray (an inspiring leader and educationist from the Transvaal Indian Congress), Reggie Vandeyar (former member of the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe); Ama Naidoo, Prema’s mother, and Maniben Sita who is still with us and lives in Laudium.
These – and so many others - are all our heroes and heroines, and you have been instrumental in keeping alive their memory and making the younger generation conscious of their contribution to the liberation of our country.
You have contributed in immortalizing their memory and for that we thank you.
Going forward we will work with you to identify other activists worthy of our honour as a nation. We have to honour them as a government in the province.
I am also ware of the role that the Tamil Federation has played in highlighting the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka. This is an important matter that needs our continued attention.
I know that the ANC in Lenasia, KZN and nationally has been addressing this matter with you for some time and that the late Minister, Roy Padayachee, had been instrumental in coordinating solidarity work in this regard.
I want to assure you that my office and the team I lead in government remains open for further engagement on this issue with the Tamil Federation.
Likewise, our High Commissioner, Comrade Geoff Doidge, and Comrade Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim have both taken a keen interest in this matter, and we should keep in touch with them, so that we can work together that solidarity work is sustained.
The task of building a better caring and more humane South Africa, Africa and the world is a responsibility of each and every one of us.
All of us working together must find lasting solutions to the challenges of our time.
Programme Director, part of what we are doing as the ANC government, especially in the Gauteng province, is to do away completely with apartheid spatial planning which was about building enclaves, thus creating conditions for exclusion.
Indeed as the ANC we are about the unity of all the people of South Africa.
We appreciate that in this community, we have heroes and heroines who became an integral part of the struggle to ensure that we realise the vision of a united South Africa, as enshrined in the Freedom Charter and now in our democratic constitution.
We will never allow for anyone or anything to take us back, rather we must work together and harder in building more integrated communities.
This is particularly relevant as this year we will be celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the Freedom Charter, which boldly proclaims that South Africa belongs to all who live in it Black and White.
The Freedom Charter fundamentally represents our collective view of the kind of South Africa we seek to build.
It is a product of the people of South Africa, Black, White, Indian and Coloured.
This is an important point because it was through the leadership of the ANC, the Indian and Coloured Congresses as well as the Congress of Democrats that we come together to fight colonialism and apartheid and build a united South Africa, based on the will of the people.
We will not betray the cause of our forebears, however difficult it may be. Some of our veterans like Uncle Kathy still work very hard, up to this day, to realize this vision.
As this generation of South Africans, we remain committed to the realization of the vision of our forefathers as articulated in the Freedom Charter and subsequently our constitution.
We are aware of the fact that, as communities we are still pulling apart.
However, the commitment we have made as this fifth democratic administration is that, we will tackle all the challenges faced by communities, irrespective of where they are.
We equally ask you to engage us on all matters that are of interest to you.
We will listen, because we are a government that cares, a government that was elected by the people and you are the people! Programme Director, we know that the Indian community has a strong sense of business as well as community solidarity.
These are important attributes that we need to entrench in our society in order to move it forward.
I take this opportunity to request that you share and spread these attributes with the rest of the people of our country and our province.
Our ultimate goal is to deepen the notion of cooperatives and family networks in terms of the management of business.
We look forward to working with all of you as we build a better Gauteng, a better South Africa and a better world.
Thank you.
