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Date : 17/03/2005
Source: Department of Foreign Affairs
Title: Dlamini Zuma: SA-AU Caribbean Diaspora Conference

Opening statement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of South Africa, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, at The South Africa-Africa Union-Caribbean Diaspora Conference, Kingston, Jamaica

17 March 2005


Your Excellency, Most Honourable PJ Patterson, Prime Minister of Jamaica
Your Excellency, Minister KD Knight, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Jamaica
Honourable Senator Delano Franklyn, Minister of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Jamaica
Your Excellencies Ministers and Deputy Minister from Africa and the Caribbean
Your Excellency, Mr Carrington, Secretary General of CARICOM and Commissioner of the UN
Your Excellency Mr Patrick Mazihaka, Deputy Chairperson AU
Honourable Colleagues, Ministers, Your Excellencies, Ambassadors and High Commissioners
Caribbean and African scholars and intelligentsia Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
Comrades and Friends:
We are pleased to be among comrades and friends here in Kingston at this historic Conference, which marks yet another important milestone in the history of the African and Caribbean peoples.

Accordingly, may I extend our gratitude to the people and government of Jamaica for the hospitality extended to us, and the excellent arrangements made for this conference.

We are gathered here today as friends who have taken some moments away from their busy day-to-day lives to reflect on our common origins and heritage, our shared struggles against slavery, colonialism and apartheid and also our common victories.

We are gathered here today also as a continuous quest for unity in action, a process started by our forbears many decades ago.

We have come together to affirm our identity as one people, because of our common origins. With Africa not only as our place of common origins, but also widely regarded as the Cradle of Humankind, today we can all say with conviction that African blood flows through our veins.

Some of us have come from the long African coastline from where our people were captured forcefully shipped off in chains to the Caribbean Islands. We are gathered here to pay homage to the multitudes who fought for freedom, the heroes and heroines who with determination, tenacity and unwavering courage cast this inhumane system of slavery into the dustbins of history.

We are also gathered here as combatants in the titanic struggle for peace, security and democracy and against underdevelopment and poverty.

We are also gathered here as friends who have shared challenges and a common destiny.

It was in 1994 that we gathered in Pretoria (now called Tshwane) as friends and witnessed the inauguration of the first democratically elected president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Some of us shed a tear or two on this occasion, because humanity had won against apartheid a crime against humanity and the Caribbean and the African continent had played an important role in this regard. We gathered there to share a common victory.

Accordingly, we have also gathered here in Kingston for the South African people to give thanks to you, for the victory in South Africa was as much a victory for the South African people as it was about the Caribbean people.

Vast oceans and great distances did not stop you from showing solidarity with us. The divisions that geography imposes upon people did not separate you from our cause for freedom. Instead the interconnectedness grew.

You stood shoulder to shoulder with us and formed a mammoth movement because you saw an affront to our dignity and humanity as an affront to your own dignity and humanity. The solidarity with the people of South Africa became a great global movement against black oppression and racism in the world.

Our presence in the Caribbean also gives us an opportunity to make our acquaintance with and salute such great heroes as Nanny of the Maroons, Tacky, Sam Sharpe, Paul Bogle and of course Norman Manley. Accordingly, we remember all those gallant fighters from the Caribbean, who stood up against slavery, racism and oppression, among them the great Toussaint L,

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