Chairperson, Deputy Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, Ministers and Deputy Ministers here present, hon members, invited guests, ladies and gentlemen, I know now what Marcus Brutus felt when, in urging his comrades to seize a fleeting opportunity in an armed conflict, he uttered the immortal words, and I quote:
There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.
I do not only relate to this intellectually; I have been there, and I can attest that we took the tide at its height. After a number of difficult decisions, buttressed by a great deal of hard work, we can report to the soldiers and the country that we are now on such a full sea and we are now afloat.
We dedicate this year to our military veterans: men and women who have delivered us to this place in history. This year we celebrate the 50th year of the formation of the largest nonstatutory force, uMkhonto weSizwe, whose enormous sacrifice we will ensure is never removed from the minds of our people. We celebrate an even more eventful occasion, that of the 100th anniversary of the ruling party, the ANC, which, by some strange coincidence, is also the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the South African defence force, under whose banner World War I and World War II were fought, and under whose banner our men lost their lives when the SS Mendi sank, taking down with her some 616 men, who died singing; singing the selfsame song, no doubt, as Solomon Mahlangu would have sung as he ascended the gallows in Pretoria, and paraphrased it as ...