Issued by Office of the Premier, Mpumalanga
24 September 2002
Programme Director/ Your Excellencies Amakhosi/ Members of the Mpumalanga Provincial Executive Council/ Members of the Mpumalanga Legislature / Your Worships the Executive Mayor of Ehlanzeni Jerry Ngomane and the Mayor of Mbombela Isaiah Khoza/ Distinguished Guests/ Ladies and Gentlemen:
September is a beautiful month. It is a month that signifies a rebirth after the long and miserable period of autumn and winter.
All around us we see a kaleidoscope of colour as trees sprout and flowers bloom. And as nature creates something new, something beautiful, so do we as people of the province and the country continue our task of building a new nation.
Let me on behalf of the Provincial Executive Council express our gratitude that so many of you are taking the task of nation-building seriously.
You are here today because you take pride in your culture and heritage. Today is Heritage Day, the culmination of a month we set aside to celebrate our diversity in different ways.
The theme for this year's Heritage Month activities is "Celebrating our National Symbols and Institutions".
As a people we need to take pride in national symbols such as the flag, Coat of Arms and the national anthem.
We also need to pride ourselves in our National Orders and institutions such as the Legislature, the National Assembly, the Presidency and the Constitutional Court.
This places an enormous responsibility on the shoulders of each and every one of us in the province to popularise provincial and national symbols and institutions and foster an understanding of their significance in society.
We have come a long way since we finally liquidated the system of colonialism and white minority domination.
Today we can proudly say that THE PEOPLE ARE GOVERNING. We are mindful that the journey to where we are today has not been easy. But all of us persevered because we knew that what we had set out on was the right road.
We need, as a nation to take stock of what we have accomplished and what still needs to be done in preserving our heritage and rewriting our history.
Let us remember that a fundamental condition for liberation is democracy and an abiding culture of human rights.
All citizens should be guaranteed the right to elect a government of their choice, freedom of expression, and freedom from discrimination, and other rights entrenched in the constitution
They should have a government not only formally based on their will; but one that is open and transparent, and one that consults and continually involves the people in policy formulation and implementation.
The challenge of nation building is central to achieving our strategic objective of a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society. As long as our people are divided by a wide social and economic gap, which is reflected in racial, geographical and gender terms, nation building will be difficult to achieve. Therefore our efforts at creating a better life for all and addressing the legacy of our immediate past are fundamentally about creating a non-racial, and non-sexist South Africa in whose wealth all its people share.
The starting point is the reconstruction and development of our country, which will create the material base for nation building.
Nation building is the construction of the reality and the sense of common nationhood, which would result from the abolition of disparities in the quality of life among South Africans, based on the racial, gender and geographic inequalities we all inherited from the past.
It is our task to make the most of our freedom, to entrench it in our new epoch as a fundamental and a permanent feature of our very existence.
Ladies and gentlemen, the challenges facing all of us are to contribute to the building of a truly non-racial, peaceful, democratic and non-sexist province and country.
It is our duty as people of this province and as South Africans who understand the historic need to promote non-racialism to take the lead in the promotion of our national symbols such as our national flag, our Anthem, and our coat of arms.
We must vigorously promote our national symbols, particularly in our schools./ Our diversity and our heritage should never again be used to divide us. We have a responsibility to harness this diversity in the interest of building a unified South African identity.
We therefore have a duty to mobilise our resources in this regard. In this African Century - our priorities must be to bring an end to the divisions of the past. Our priorities must be to bring an end to the poverty of our people.
As we reconstruct our province and reclaim the whole country for all, we break down all the divisions and attitudes of the past. We do so while freeing everyone from the last vestiges of oppression. Freeing everyone from hunger, disease and want.
I believe that all of us who consider ourselves true patriots must leave these celebrations with a clear task when we get back to our communities.
We must as part of heritage, form local community heritage societies, whose responsibility it will be to encourage the discovery, recording and popularisation of local history and heritage sites in our communities. In addition, we also need people who must document the transition of the last decade or so.
Amongst the things we must consider is a dedicated agency, that will be responsible for consistently collating, assessing and produce in popular form our heritage and history.
A key issue in the development of indigenous languages is the issue of languages in education - including mother tongue instruction at entrance levels, encouraging multi-lingualism and languages in higher education.
The Public broadcaster, as does the publishing industry, too have important roles to play in the promotion of African languages.
On our part as the Mpumalanga Provincial Government we will continue promoting these symbols, and drawing from our diverse heritage to build a new nation.
In conclusion, let me remind you that yesterday was a PROUDLY SOUTH AFRICAN DAY.
PROUDLY SOUTH AFRICAN DAY encourages every one of us to be nation-builders. We need to find a new sense of pride in who we are and what we can achieve.
The day highlighted the positive role everyone can play in job creation and upliftment of society.
We have to, as people of Mpumalanga and as South Africans, to be loyal to the economy and should stimulate job creation, through being proudly South African and buying proudly South African.
An increase demand for locally manufactured goods and services will no doubt help to grow the economy and cultivate job creation.
Many of our social stability problems are directly related to unemployment.
Ladies and gentlemen, as we celebrate Heritage Day and take pride in our national symbols we need to remember that all of us need to contribute a complete and rounded picture of this celebration.
Certainly that complete and rounded perspective cannot be contained only in political speeches, songs, dance, and poetry and in the construction of monuments.
The challenge to all of us is to ensure that we celebrate in all our languages.
We must develop a way in which our languages can, through the process, further grow and flourish, so that our experience can be recorded in many different ways, and many different voices. Contributing to a national convention without anyone of us feeling we are not of the collective experience.
Our success as nation depends, in no small measures on the conservation of our heritage sites and the preservation of our culture similar to what we are doing today.
It demands conditions in which every sector of society can join hands to make a unique treasure accessible to our nation and its visitors, and to ensure that future generations will have the same privilege.
Let us all become part of a living monument in celebration of life.
I thank you.