JOHANNESBURG 25 APRIL 2000
"The need to restore the moral fibre of our nation"
Programme Director
Vice Chancellor
Chairperson of the Council
Academic Staff
Leaders from the Business Community
Distinguished Guests
Much has been said and written in recent years about an African Renaissance, a renewal of the values and cultures of our continent that were once held so dear by us. The very notion of an African Renaissance implies that something has died or has been lost. The concept of a "rebirth" implies somehow a painful process and the labour pains of a new life coming into being.
We need to pose the question, what went wrong in our history that necessitates a rebirth of our society and why? Complex though the question is it would suggest the following answer. Apartheid left us a legacy of social injustice, dehumanisation, and public immorality.
It also left us a legacy of twisted and distorted values based on a wrong interpretation of religion.
This was rooted in the injustices of colonialism that left many African people dispossessed, not only of their land but also of their basic human dignity and self-respect.
This inhuman and immoral system left the family lives of millions of South Africans, which is the very basis of human society, damaged or destroyed. Our society today bears the scars of this deliberate destruction. The merciless story unravelled by testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings has horrified the world, not merely at the viciousness of the suffering which apartheid caused, but at the commitment to an immoral cause which prompted it.
During that dark period in our history, fatalistic and unethical behaviour seeped into every sector of our society. Our entire lives as South Africans were based on deceit and our society steadily became fundamentally corrupt. Even those who were charged with upholding the law were the ones who committed the most brutal crimes against their countrymen.
The unfortunate reality of the new South Africa is that today those very same people have to uphold the principles of our young democracy. They are charged with the responsibility of transforming our country whilst they themselves are in need of transformation.
The new South Africa is a country that is being born out of a broken and battered society, disfigured by the evil and corrupt systems of the past. It is a country that is "crying out for its soul", for the "spiritual power and the resources to heal, to reconcile, to rebuild and to restore its humanity", as our President said in 1997.
Ladies and gentlemen, the need to restore the moral fibre of our nation has become an urgent necessity and priority now more than at any time in our history.
I need not spell out to you the daily reports of the brutality of criminal gangs and individuals, of hijacking, rape and murder, of white-collar crime and fraud, corruption and nepotism. Many of us have perhaps been victims and have first-hand experience of this. The degeneration of the moral fibre of our society, driven by malice and greed and the lust for material things has resulted in a total disregard for the dignity of the human person and for human life.
Many of our young people who, being victims of their circumstances and involved in many of these crimes, are at sea. Many of them have never known the warmth of a family life, having been separated from their families and communities by the various calamities that have befallen our people, from forced removals and migrant labour, to faction fights and political upheaval.
The principles of "ubuntu" that held our moral centre in the past are a foreign concept tody. The dmands that are posed on them by modern society often make these principles irrelevant to the life that they face in their daily struggle for survival. It is an indictment against our society that very little seems to be done to lift them out of this spiral of misery.
These problems pose a spiritual challenge for the educational and religious leaders and communities of our country. The moral decay that is so prevalent in our society calls for educators, religious and social leaders with vision. We need values-based educational institutions that will assist government in bringing about transformation, not only of social institutions, but of the moral systems of our society.
Education is the activity through which human nature sustains and develops itself, so that the success or failure of a society to realise its common good is largely dependent on the nature of its educational endeavours. In this regard educational institutions therefore provide a good starting point for the regeneration of our society. They more than any other institution have the possibility to mould a new moral fabric in our society by teaching our young people who are the future of our country.
A faith-based educational institution with a holistic approach, is an ideal place to nurture the human values and moral tenets that are so necessary to build a caring society and a caring world. To reinforce the idea of the interdependence of persons in communities and work for a renewed commitment to our moral interdependence - that something which we call "ubuntu".
In this context it is important that as religious institutions, we address issues around the influence of the electronic media, i.e. radio and television on our youth with regard to the renewal of our society.
In our attempt to restore the moral fibre of our country we are at the same time creating something new. We have to create something that makes the lives of our young people worthwhile; something that gives them pride; that they will want to strive towards.
As the new order takes over from the old, we need to look at how we can bring together the values of the old African, Eastern and Western societies and synthesise them with the new order. I believe that the basic values of the major religions of the world and of African indigenous religion show many similarities. They all profess to strive for the same goodness, the same humanity. We are so fortunate that in South Africa 90% of the population profess to follow a religion of some kind.
There is therefore an enormous reservoir of spiritual and moral resources to be tapped, because by far the majority of the population believes in these basic values.
St Augustine College, it seems to me, is a small institution with big ideas! It is, like the rest of South Africa, wrestling with the changes that face all of us but is prepared to take on these challenges in an intellectual way. I challenge you therefore, to live up to your mission statement, to provide ethical and spiritual leadership, and to make a substantial contribution towards the moral renaissance of our country.
Thank you.