As a patriotic opposition, Cope fully supports the need to build the most caring society in the world by deeply and continuously entrenching human rights for all. Cope believes that, as a society, we should be debating a report on our failure of the past year with regard to the above. We need corrective action, not rhetoric. Our intervention must ensure that there are incremental gains each year. After each year of assessment, without finger-pointing, we should honestly confront the deficit in achieving our goal of an entrenchment of human rights for all in our country.
Today we agree with the Deputy Chairperson of the SA Human Rights Commission, Pregs Govender, who asserted that poverty is the greatest human rights violation.
Most distressing of all is the fact that one-third of our fellow citizens do not have access to proper sanitation. Just as the late Kader Asmal made the provision of water a human rights issue, the installation of proper sanitation should also be a human rights issue.
When we meet again next year, we should assess whether these human rights were entrenched for all who live in South Africa. We can no longer differ on this matter. A lack of proper sanitation offends and it is offensive. Let us, in a show of total solidarity with the poor people, the people of South Africa, make our intention and commitment in this regard noticeable.
Our fellow citizens must value our Constitution and must believe in the merits of democracy. They must choose to assert their constitutional rights rather than protesting violently and destructively in the streets.
Cope urges government to create a legal desk to support aggrieved communities. Let the people use our Constitution and the law without inhibition and constraint to secure their human rights.
Today, let us also remember the tragedies at Sharpeville and Langa. In doing so, we must measure the distance we have come from and project the distance we still have to go in order to reach our destination, as enshrined in the Constitution.
That is how we can honour the sacrifices of those who died on 21 March 1960. On Freedom Day in 2012, Mosiuoa Lekota, Leader of the Congress of the People, stressed that Human Rights Day was for all South Africans and not for a particular area or group. We must, through what we say and do here, encourage our fellow South Africans to celebrate Human Rights Day together, as a united nation.
On that occasion, Mr Lekota lamented the absence of other political parties at an event and said that it is a national event and that on that day, we must all forget about our differences. Political parties must educate South Africans on the fact that the human rights issues were not only about the Sharpeville and Langa massacres but about a whole wide range of human rights that affect each and every one of us.
Let us, in a show of unity, entrench human rights for all in our country. Thank you.