Programme Director;
The South African High Commissioner to London, Mr Obed Mlaba;
Representatives of the United Kingdom Government;
Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps;
Friends of South Africa;
Distinguished guests;
Ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for putting together this historic ceremony to mark the Twenty Years of South African Democracy.
My gut reaction to this celebration is that we deserve it; we have earned it in many remarkable ways.
We have earned this historic moment through the epochal struggles we have launched to free the South African population from the clutches of a backward and indeed inhuman ideology.
Today, twenty years later, our nation is by all accounts, a different country from all levels. We are a shining example of what humanity can do to bring about a better world.
Today South Africa is consolidating social cohesion and a national identity that is representative of our rich and diverse culture.
In this task we are galvanized by the strategic vision to consolidate unity, democracy, non-racialism, non-sexism and prosperity.
The recent passing on of South Africa’s symbol of humanity’s triumph over division and ethnic particularism, Nelson Mandela, left us the legacy that is constitutive of the foundation of our inclusive nationhood.
It is a legacy that resonates with the preamble of our constitution: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and White.
This is no facile slogan; South Africa is a microcosm of the world, having attracted the people from all corners of the world over time. Similarly our anti-apartheid struggle was a broad front comprising members of all sections of our society.
Currently, our biggest task is to ensure a growing and prosperous economy that draws in and benefits all our people. We need a prosperous economy to ensure a better life for all South Africans, especially those that come from the background of historical exclusion.
Without a growing economy to extricate South Africans from the abyss of poverty, unemployment and inequality democracy holds out no meaning. In fact, no democracy can survive under conditions of want, penury and social bleakness.
I am confident that, working together with our friends across the globe, we will not fail in this historically critical task.
In point of fact, there is a universal awareness in our country that while our people fought gallant struggles to reclaim their own freedom from the chains of oppression, the international community became not only a good friend of the struggle but a moral force which located our struggle in the global historical context of racial equality and the need to re-imagine a better human society.
I am therefore happy that the United Kingdom has joined us to celebrate South Africa's twenty years of democracy.
For our part this celebration does not represent the end of the journey but the beginning; the building block towards addressing the triple challenge of unemployment, poverty and inequality.
All South Africans have a good reason to celebrate the benefits attained through freedom, and so do the people of the world as a whole.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in the toast to the political stability of south Africa.
Long live the spirit of Nelson Mandela
Long live the spirit of Oliver Tambo
Long live the spirit of Chief Albert Luthuli
Long live the spirit of Helen Joseph
I thank you for your attention.
