Programme Director, Mr Thabane Zulu
Deputy Minister Zou Kota-Fredricks
The Premier of the Eastern Cape, Ms Noxolo Kiewiet
MEC Ms Helen Sauls-August
Executive Mayor and Councillors
NGOs, members of the business community and our agencies
Members of the media present
Members of the Ludalasi community
Molweni! Good afternoon, Sanibonani.
If you want to improve the lives of people you have to improve the lives of women and girls. Women like uMama Lillian Nygoyi, Mam Helen Joseph, Man Rahima Moosa and Mam Sophie Williams de Bruyn believed this. The twenty thousand women in the march of 1956 knew this.
So it is no accident that the first home handed over today was to Mama Wezani in Ward three. At age ninety-three, Mam’ Wezani is just two years younger than our beloved Madiba. It is the first time in Mam’ Wezani’s life that she has had a decent home and it is the ANC Government who provided it and did so in Women’s Month.
To the community of Ludalasi, especially those in Ward three, please take care of Mam’ Wezani, make sure that she and her family is kept safe in their new home.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have built more houses and we are going to build even more. We are doing this as a historical debt to the women of 1956 but we are also doing so as an investment in the young women who must take forward the struggle of “working together towards sustainable women empowerment and gender equality”.
The success of Project Letsema and National Womens’ Build depends on the active participation of firstly, communities. Through community dialogues and ward meetings tell us what your vision is for the communities you live in. Then together, all of us, municipalities, the Province, business and National Government and yourselves must towards making that vision come true.
Shouting at each other, burning schools and libraries and stoning businesses will and can never help to achieve that vision.
Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to thank the Province, municipality and the various agencies and organisations for responding to the call to improve the lives of our people. I also wish to encourage the young women, especially the volunteers who assisted in building the houses to keep on improving your skills and to start your own construction companies.
You are the bright future as promised in the Freedom Charter and you are the custodians of the legacy of Ma Albertina Sisulu and the twenty thousand women who closed down the apartheid government on the 9th August 1956.
I thank you.
