T Manuel: David Wynne Lecture

18 August 2006

I know that none dare challenge me when I say, I am an African. I owe my
being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of
the beautiful Cape, they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our
native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the
struggle to defend our freedom and dependence and they who, as a people,
perished in the result.

I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native
land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me.

In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East.
Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The
stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a
reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.

I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune
led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers
Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom.

I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena
and the Bahamas, who sees in the mind’s eye and suffers the suffering of a
simple peasant folk, death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream
in ruins.

Being part of all of these people, and in the knowledge that none dare
contest that assertion, I shall claim that, I am an African.

In many respects this powerful statement clarified the fact that we, as
South Africans, are a nation forged by people from all over the world but we
are, and must claim ourselves as Africans. So, each one of should declare, I am
an African.*

This historical fact is defining for us. Our South African-ness is something
we must claim and an identity that we must respect. It is a respect that we
must all demonstrate by the active claiming of that distinct identity and by
participating in the shaping of this nation.

Many countries have an oath of allegiance. The United States of America, for
example, requires its citizens to recite, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of
the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one
Nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” In fact there
is a further pledge in the United States of America (USA) that requires a
promise to bear arms on behalf of the United States, to perform non-combatant
service in the armed forces, and a series of similar commitments. The shorter
version is recited in schools across the country very frequently.

In Australia, there is a Pledge of Commitment that requires its citizens to
recite, “From this time forward, under God, I pledge my loyalty to Australia
and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I
respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.”

As South Africans, our pledge is to our Constitution, its values and its
principles. It is used when people acquire South African citizenship and it
reads, “I, do hereby solemnly declare that I will be loyal to the Republic of
South Africa, promote all that will advance it and oppose all that may harm it,
uphold and respect its Constitution and commit myself to furtherance of the
ideals and principles contained therein.”

It is only recited by new citizens. The rest of us are meant to be good
citizens, well aware of our responsibilities. As President John F Kennedy once
said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your
country.” We have to ask, what I can do to make this country truly great.

The commitments we make are much softer than that of many other countries,
but we should not ignore the value of this softer approach. It is a conscious
effort to ensure that we all take ownership together to create this sense of
space, place and respect.

Our Constitution starts with the words:

We, the people of South Africa
recognise the injustices of our past
honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land
respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and
believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our
diversity.

You will all be aware that the motto on our Coat of Arms reads, “!Ke
E:/Xarra //Ke”. These words, drawn from one of the ancient Khoi-San languages,
called /Xam says ,”Diverse people unite”.

Our task, as young South Africans, is to give form and substance those very
important messages and symbols. In doing so, there are some aspects that appear
confusing. On the one hand, the Constitution accords political rights to form
parties, to contest elections and to vote, to all its citizens, over the age of
18. So, in the political sense, we all have total equality.

The big challenge arises when we try and implement measures to give effect
to those words from our Constitution that read, “We recognise the injustices of
the past.” The difficulty is that under apartheid, the rights to ownership and
control of every aspect of the economy vested almost exclusively in the hands
of white men. We must therefore work to ensure that we can, as part of building
this democracy, de-racialise the ownership of the economy.

12 years after the establishment of democracy, the picture is still not very
pretty. If we look at the statistics for directors of the Top 100 companies in
South Africa, there are 2 489 directors, of whom 202 are women (105 White women
and 97 Black women) and of remaining 2 287 directors, 351 are Black men. In
other words, 1 936 of the 2 489 Directors are White men. And, of all the 384
companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, only one percent have
women as Chief Executive Officers. The same holds true for certain professions,
such as Chartered Accountants, of whom there were 25 346, at last count. Of the
total, only 5 827 (23%) are women, and of this number, 4 826, or 83% are White
Women. Of the 19 519 male Chartered Accountants, 17 600, or 90% are White
men.

I am sure that you will all share with me in recognising that from your own
experiences in class, it would be quite incorrect to infer that either Blacks
or women are less capable of excelling at particular subjects. I would even
guess that in most instances the top students in Mathematics or Science are
girls. If this is correct, then the poor representation of Blacks and women in
key positions in the economy can surely not be as a result of nature, it would
then have to be a consequence of what our Constitution refers to as “the
injustices of the past”.

If we recognise this fact, as the Constitution requires that we do, we have
to act to correct it. This presents us with a difficult but necessary task. As
a government, we have debated this issue at great length and concluded that,
since it will not self-correct, the process must be assisted. This process is
called “Employment Equity”.

There is an Act of Parliament called the Employment Equity Act that sets as
its purpose “To achieve equity in the workplace by

* Ppromoting equal opportunity and fair treatment in employment through the
elimination of unfair discrimination
* implementing affirmative action measures to redress the disadvantages in
employment experience by designated groups, in order to ensure their equitable
representation in all occupational categories and levels in the workforce.”

The Employment Equity Act says that:

“Designated groups means black people, women and people with disabilities”
and also says that “black people is a generic term which means Africans,
Coloureds and Indians”. So, it is clear that this Act is a measure to deal with
the injustices of our past, by focusing on better opportunities.

There are a further set of measures contained in another Act of Parliament
entitled the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) Act that seeks “to
facilitate broad-based black economic empowerment by a promoting economic
transformation in order to enable meaningful participation of black people in
the economy: and b) achieving a substantial change in the racial composition of
ownership and management structures and the skilled occupations of existing and
new enterprises”

These are very difficult issues, yet they are necessary to ensure that we
can build a South Africa whose fortunes and future we all share, regardless of
our own personal history of advantage or disadvantage.

Similar issues arise in the context of sport, where we really must work to
ensure that we have greater respresentativity of race in our national teams to
ensure that we can all support the teams, raise our flags in respect of the
teams and together share in the glory of victory or the pain of defeat. Again,
this is a very difficult task, there may be players who consider themselves
good enough to make the team, but feel overlooked in the interests of
representativity. This is exceedingly difficult but it will get much better as
we ensure an equalisation of opportunities from early in the lives and
development of the talents and skills of all of our people.

I want to assure all of you that contrary to what you may hear occasionally
this is not apartheid in reverse. It is a painful but necessary set of actions
that we must live through to ensure that we build a durable democracy in South
Africa where our nationhood will be shared by our children and grandchildren.
It is perhaps best described in Afrikaans where the words for what we seek to
achieve are “regstellende aksie”, literally translated as “corrective
action”.

I raise these matters with yourselves you are a generation of teenagers,
most of you are from distinctly privileged backgrounds and none of you would
have been responsible for, or even grown up with formal apartheid. Many of you
will feel hard done by some of you may even be of the view that you are being
overlooked. But I raise these matters with you, difficult as they are, because
I fervently believe that if you understand the challenges before us, if you
accept yourselves as South Africans, if you commit to a better future for all
citizens of our country, you will assist us in addressing these very difficult
matters. We have no room for failure. Former President Nelson Mandela said at
his Inauguration as President on 10 May 1994 remember that he was the first
President of a democratic South Africa “Out of the experience of an
extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of
which all humanity will be proud. Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans
must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s
belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul
and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

Let us build such a reality, together as proud South Africans, and as
Africans all.

Thank you
*(Deputy President Thabo Mbeki in Parliament on the occasion of the adoption of
the “Republic of South Africa Constitution Bill, 1996”, delivered on 8 May
1996.

Issued by: National Treasury
18 August 2006