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ORLANDO STADIUM

SHORT ADDRESS BY MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI, MP MINISTER OF HOME AFFAIRS AND PRESIDENT OF THE INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY, 15/10/94.

We have come here today to enjoy and share with all of you a great privilege. Today we, all together, are offered the unique opportunity to be the protagonists of history in its making. This opportunity to make history is not offered only to us the political leaders of the South African Nation, but is primarily left in your hands, in the hands of the people of this province and in the hands of the people of South Africa.

You the people are now the protagonists of history. To each of you is now offered the opportunity to write the most important page in the history of our country, the page of peace and reconciliation after liberation. We the political leaders of the South African nation must now follow your lead. In fact, peace and reconciliation will not be achieved in our country solely through the actions of political leaders, but will succeed only if you the people embrace the cause of peace and reconciliation begins from commitments in our families and our communities and depends primarily on how people behave in their respective families and communities.

The struggle for liberation has not been completed, and in fact has merely just commenced. We are not liberated yet and the road to our final liberation is still long and harsh. The new stage of the struggle for liberation begins from our hearts and is totally in our hands. There will not bee freedom and liberation in our country if you the people are not free and liberated.

We must now liberate ourselves from the legacy of violence, intimidation and horror which has been left behind from the era of apartheid and from the first stage of the struggle for liberation. As long as the feelings of hatred, violence and brutality against our won brothers and sisters are harboured in our hearts, there will neither be freedom nor liberation for any of us.

Unfortunately, both the abhorrence of apartheid, as well as the struggle against apartheid, have left our hearts empty and destitute of those feelings which make life worth living. Too many people have come to believe that human life is not important, and that the lives of individuals, especially of the black people in our country, are expendable. No life, under any condition, is expendable because we are all brothers and sisters. We are all equally valuable children of the same God which created us to love one another and to work together for our progress, and for the enjoyment of that invaluable and fragile miracle which is life.

The East Rand has been one of the regions of our country which has paid the greatest price and suffered the greatest de-humanisation, and yet from the East Rand comes a clear indication of the roads ahead towards peace and reconciliation. The area known as Katorus, including Katlehong, Thokoza and Vosloorus, has been one of the most violent and dehumanised regions of our country. Brothers and sisters have been divided by areas, often by streets and blocks, and could not cross these lines of terror without fearing for their lives.

Often ethnicity and political affiliation have determined in Katorus whether people would live or die in a region mapped into no-go areas marked by endless blood and violence. In entire areas, such as was the case in Vosloorus, women became refugees in hostels where people would live in the most inhuman conditions, and their sufferings were often not even noticed by the rest of the country.

The blind monster of violence and intimidation perverted to such an extent the minds and the hearts of people that the anger did not stop to the taking of opponents lives, but went so far as to dig bodies out of graves to perform on them unspeakable and macabre mutilations. Death and blind violence has shown in this area its most disgusting face in the methods often used to inflict injuries and to kill. Often the sufferings of this region were isolated by a wall off indifference or lack of attention in the rest of our country which was engaged in a difficult process of transition to democracy.

Against this background a miracle took place, a miracle which was manufactured by the strength and the spirit of the people of this region who proved that their intrinsic humanity was greater than any mortification and de-humanisation cast upon them by the horrors of political confrontation. In this period, this region has enjoyed more than one hundred days of peace, the credit for which goes entirely to you the people of this region. In fact, the ANC Self-Defence Units and the IFP Self-Protection Units came together not to fight one another but to find together their humanity and to build a common future for this region. With responsibility they negotiated their problems and for the first time people spoke to people as human beings, rather than enemies to be exterminated.

The results of that process are seen here today in a tangible way, where for the firs time members of the same families who were divided by fratricidal hate, are again reunited. For the firs time in years, men and women of the same family see each other and speak to one another. During the war which took place here, the people of this region have lost a great deal; they have lost their loved ones, their houses, their jobs, their communities and most of all their humanity. They have paid a price which will forever be engraved in the memory of this land which no one should ever forger. And yet out of all this misery the people of this region are today the true leaders of the new South Africa because they had the strength to plot the route ahead for their and our own final liberation.

The people of this region realise that peace is the beginning of the process, while the final end of liberation will be achieved only by means of the reconstruction and social development of this community. They are now working together in the RDP Katorus Forum to reap together the fruits of peace. They are identifying by themselves the RDP community projects which they need, with an exemplary bottom-up approach which should become a nation-wide example. This example will find an immediate response from the Government of National Unity which shall assist the developments of these projects as a matter of priority.

We must understand that there is no such thin as "fighting crime". Crime is itself does not exist as a reality, and is not a thing which can be fought. That which does exist is the criminal behaviour of some of our brothers and sisters who have lost respect for human life, and love for their own families and neighbours. We must be firm and intransigent against any criminal conduct. Nothing would be more damaging than continuing self-indulgence and any type of forgiveness and condoning of criminal behaviour. Each of us who condones criminal behaviour is in his or her own heart not better than those who commit crimes. However, we must also go to the root of violence and we must fight criminal conduct not only by means of criminal sanctions, but also by writing the final age of our liberation, the page of community reconstruction, peace and reconciliation.

On this historical day, President Nelson Mandela and I have finally come together as the political leaders of the new South Africa to join hands and share the responsibility of leading our South African Nation on the path of its final liberation. Irrespective of our political differences, on this day, President Mandela and I stand together on this podium because we are the leaders of this Nation, and we have the duty to lead our people into the new struggle for liberation which commences with our personal commitment as leaders. To you the people of our country is left the task of winning this struggle. When you leave this place and go home to your families and communities, be aware and proud that you are going home to make history, the history of peace and progress in this troubled land of ours.

orlando (eb) 28/11