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