[ Home ] [ Speeches & statements ]

Mr President, Mr Chairman, Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Brothers and sisters.

It is a great honour and a source of joy for me to be with you today. For us to share views with the Congressional Black Caucus is to speak not to strangers or mere supporters. We speak to you as part of us, and we as part of you: friends, collea-gues, brothers and sisters in the joint effort to create a world in which discrimina-tion on the basis of race, gender or disability is a thing of the past.

It is therefore with a shared sense of pride that we are able to say to you, on behalf of all our people: Dear Colleagues, South Africa is now in the hands of the people. We are free at last!

We wish to pay tribute to the Congressional Black Caucus and all those you repre-sent, for your unwavering support in the struggle to eradicate apartheid. The role which the Caucus played in assisting to bring about a non-racial and democratic South Africa will always be highly cherished by our people.

The bonds of solidarity and common purpose that unite us arise from the reality of history. Our common origins and our similar bitter experiences in the centuries and decades gone by have so decreed that we should endure our pains and celebrate our joy as one. The victory of democracy in South Africa is your victory; it is the common achievement of all humanity.

Many of you here today were in South Africa on April 27 to witness the elections and share with us the birth of our nation. Many of you were also present at the inauguration on May 10.

It is fitting at a moment like this, to pay tribute to the millions who sacrificed in various ways to secure a democratic, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa. The scroll of honour includes giants such as WEB du Bois, Nkwame Nkurumah, Eduardo Mondlane, Albert Luthuli, Martin Luther King, Oliver Tambo and many more. However, the most fitting tribute to these leaders who paved the way for our small South African miracle is to ensure that we build the better life for which they struggled.

We have traversed the early phases of South Africa's transition with a great mea-sure of success. The Government of National Unity has made great strides in laying the foundation for the two interrelated tasks that we face: national reconciliation and reconstruction, nation-building and development. Perhaps the greatest achie-vement of this era in our country is the ease with which various communities have found one another, building an unprecedented national consensus around these crucial tasks.

These are however only the first steps in the long journey to South Africa's national redemption. The democratic movement does have in its hand elements of democra-tic power. But a great deal needs to be don to ensure that democracy becomes a living reality for all citizens. This entails, among other challenges:

setting democratic provincial and local structures on an operational footing;

restructuring the public service, security forces and the judiciary to be representative of the population as a whole and to serve the cause of democracy; and

intensifying the process of implementing measures aimed at improving the lives especially of black people.

The Government does appreciate, as you will, that democracy would be hollow if it did not bring fundamental socio-economic changes. The success of the democratic transformation itself depend on the success we achieve in addressing the material needs of people.

The Reconstruction and Development Programme is an all-encompassing process of transforming our society in order to deal with the legacy of deprivation and poverty which apartheid has left us.

The scale of this process, and our commitment to achieving it on the basis of fiscal constraint and prudent use of national resources, has meant that we have had to spend some months in careful preparation and planning. Our people also under-stand that lasting changes and services of a decent standard cannot come overnight. But we are poised to begin the reconstruction of our country in earnest, and the first steps have already been taken.

In this regard we are grateful for the aid which we are getting from the United States. We are also keenly learning from your experiences over the centuries and recent decades. But we are mindful of the fact that, ultimately, we must rely on our own resources and on actual investment to provide what is needed for reconstruc-tion and development.

In the process, we need together to challenge the lingering scepticism in some quarters concerning the determinationand capacity of South Africa's leaders to manage the political and economic transition. More often, this pessimism draws on the history of the conflict which our country has left behind.

In this regard, we shall rely on the Congressional Black Caucus to help promote South Africa for its objective qualities: its natural beauty, its sophisticated infra-structure and financial system and its realistic policies to ensure economic growth and equity.

The achievements we have made in South Africa have opened the way, at last, for Africa as a continent to build a new all-inclusive partnership based on democracy, human rights and social justice.

South Africa is prepared to play her role in ensuring that the African renaissance becomes a reality as we step into the next century. This means promoting the cause of human rights, pro-active measures to eliminate debilitating conflict and co-operation on the economic front taking into account the need for sound sustainable policies. We intend to do this as part of the Organisation of African Unity and other continental and regional institutions of which we have become full and active members.

In conclusion, I wish again to refer to the good relations that we have developed over the years with the Congressional Black Caucus, the US Congress and the Adminisation. May this partnership grow from strength to strength in our common endeavours for justice, economic prosperity and a healthier environment for all peoples.