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30 July 2008

Your Excellencies
Chairman of the Congress Ambassador Hussein
Director-General of the Universal Postal Union (UPU), Mr Dayan
The Chief Guest
The Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
Your Excellency Mr Hamodoun Toure

It is indeed a very special privilege to have this opportunity to greet all of you and to express our congratulations on your election to office in the UPU. We meet at a very special time when events in the world come together to set the threshold for a new conjuncture in history.

In this context the decisions taken at this Congress will also set the platform for ushering in a new era of unprecedented growth and innovative change in the World Postal System as we implement the Nairobi Postal Strategy and take our postal administrations into the ubiquitous information age.

Allow me, Mr Chairman, to congratulate you, the Director–General, Mr Dayan and the various executives and eminent persons who have participated and presided at this Congress for having demonstrated outstanding leadership in service of the International community.

Allow me also to express our appreciation to that outstanding son of Africa, Mr Hamodoun Toure, for his magnificent work as Secretary-General of the ITU and the very exciting Connect Africa project initiative. It is therefore my special pleasure, Mr Chairman to announce at this UPU Congress the special partnership entered into between the South African Government, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the Universal Postal Union (UPU).

This co-operation agreement that was signed at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis focuses on the implementation of a special project in Rural Telecommunications, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Services and Entrepreneurship Development in rural areas in selected developing countries.

A core objective of the project is to stimulate the emergence of rural telecommunications operators in under-serviced rural areas, to foster public-private partnerships in the provision of information and communication technology (ICT) services and to support the modernisation of the postal and communication information networks to accelerate growth in trade, commerce and communications.

Our experience in Africa and the developing world highlights the centrality of the eradication of Poverty as the fundamental and most strategic task in our efforts to bring a better life for all our peoples. It is for this reason that the many excellent decisions taken at this Congress emphasise the inextricable link between the need to modernise our Postal infrastructure, develop our Human Resources and to continually increase our capacity to absorb and make more accessible the tools of modern technology with the equally formidable challenge to grow and make our economies more efficient.

This congress has reaffirmed and solidified our own resolve as we implement in South Africa our strategy to convert the postal service outlets into digital hubs, called Thusong Centres, as key drivers of economic and social development for our people. In addition to postal services, these Centres will provide government information services, ICT services and financial and banking services for the poor.

We take this opportunity to also pay a special tribute to Kenya who together with the Pan African Postal Union (PAPU) and the UPU has ensured that this Congress remained an African hosted Congress. We also welcome Geneva as our newly adopted African city. My country has considered it a special privilege to have chaired the African Support Committee and with the support of our African sister countries to have strengthened Kenya’s role as host of this successful 24th UPU Congress.

If you will allow me, Mr Chairman, in conclusion to digress briefly and share with our colleagues here a special reason why this UPU Congress is also a very extraordinary moment for South Africa and Africa. You see just the other day the South African Post Office (SAPO) issued a special set of commemorative stamps for World distribution. These stamps, which are indeed collectors’ items, are a special limited issue in celebration of the 90th birthday of our former President His Excellency Mr Nelson Mandela. Tata Mandela is so special to us and indeed to the whole World. He epitomises for us and the whole World a future of hope.

The stamps and this legacy of Nelson Mandela will forever remind us that we indeed deserve a future that is filled with Peace, Reconciliation and Tolerance. A constant reminder that someday tomorrow will be a better World. In 2010 South Africa on behalf of the African continent will host the 2010 FIFA World Cup. This is an event that will be an extraordinary extravaganza unparalleled in the history of the world. It is an event that none of you who are here can afford to miss. On behalf of South Africa and the African peoples as a whole we extend to all of you here to visit South Africa and the African continent in 2010 so that together we may celebrate humanity on the occasion of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Lastly, let me thank the Government of the Switzerland Federation and the people of Switzerland for their warm welcome of all of us and the kind hospitality shown during this Congress. As we reflect back on this Congress many years from now, we will record this as a watershed moment in the historical development of the Global Postal services of our respective countries, and we will indeed be proud of our achievements.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Communications
30 July 2008
Source: Department of Communications (http://www.doc.gov.za/)