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Date
: 06/12/2006
Source: The Presidency
Title:Mbeki: Toast at State banquet for Governor-General of Canada
M Jean
Toast remarks of the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, in
honour of the Governor-General of Canada, the right honourable,
Michaelle Jean, on the occasion of the State banquet: Presidential
Guesthouse, Tshwane
The Right Honourable, Michaelle Jean, Governor-General of Canada
and Mr Jean-Daniel Lafond,
Honourable Ministers and Deputy Ministers,
Your Excellencies, Ambassadors and High Commissioners and other
members of the Diplomatic Corps,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen:
Honourable Governor-General, my wife and I are truly delighted that
together with your delegation you found time to visit our country
and continent. On behalf of the government and people of South
Africa, I extend the warmest welcome to you and your entire
delegation.
Through you, we also wish to convey our warmest greetings to the
government and people of Canada, who welcomed us with the kindest
hospitality during our state visit in 2003.
Honourable Governor-General, we salute and recognise in the
Canadian people a kindred spirit that inspires a like-minded,
multicultural nation with whom we share the same beliefs in
democracy, human dignity, equality, peace, justice and development
for all of humanity.
We feel a strong sense of joy in the knowledge that in a sense your
life has come full circle, in that as a child of the African
Diaspora and having experienced the harsh burdens of autocracy in
your other home, Haiti, you triumphed in a situation in which to be
a black woman in many countries means to be shunted to the margins
of society.
We are indeed inspired by what you said during your inauguration as
the Governor-General of Canada last year. Among other things you
said:
“My own story begins as a child in another country, one
“draped in barbed wire from head to toe,” in the
powerful words of the Haitian poet in exile, Ren
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