Chairperson, today we celebrate the heroes and heroines of our nation, not of our individual parties. [Applause.] We celebrate the heroes and heroines of our long and diverse historical journey.
As we do so, it is relevant that we take a bird's eye view of the road we have travelled. We started not as the nation state that we are today. Rather, we forged ourselves into one nation state over centuries, since earlier than 1652. Today, South Africa in all its beauty and ugliness, with all the virtues and vices of its people, is a heritage of all of us collectively.
None amongst us are more entitled than others. We collectively claim South Africa, as well as jointly accept the responsibility of making it better as we go forward.
Interestingly, as a nation, our roots lie in various areas, even outside of the confines of Africa. They lie in Africa and Asia, in Europe and the Malay Peninsula. We boast kings like Moshoeshoe I, Shaka, Hintsa, Sekhukhune, Awutshumayo and others. We were led to the shores of this country by Jan van Riebeeck, Van der Stel and their successors from Europe.
We arrived on the east coast of our country, South Africa, as indentured labourers and without leaders from those parts of the world from which we came, but we were brave and creative enough to cultivate our own Mahatma Gandhi.
We arrived here with King Abdurahman Mortula from the Malay Peninsula as slaves; yet we loved freedom enough to organise a slave rebellion that caused us to follow Awutshumayo to Robben Island, where he lies buried to this day.
We discovered the diamonds, the gold and other mineral resources of our vast country. We fought over these on different sides: first as British colonies and then as Afrikaner republics. In the process, we even cut Kimberley out of its natural province, the Free State. Finally, we forged this country into the Union of South Africa, independent of our erstwhile colonial masters, Great Britain, but then we excluded the majority darker skinned citizens of our country from full participation in government.
In this way, we perpetuated the political struggle over equality of rights and democracy for all. That struggle went through the constitutional phase, 1912 to 1949, the extraconstitutional phase, 1949 to 1960, and finally the armed phase to the convention for a democratic South Africa in the 1990s.
Interestingly, in the course of all this drama, our African forebears produced a document called The Africans' Claims of 1943. By the way, it is this document that contributed to making Gen Jan Smuts one of the main authors of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Listen to history. [Interjections.] I say - and this is not smuggled - that The Africans' Claims of 1943 was a document, principally, that educated Gen Jan Smuts and made it possible for him to be the main author of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That is the heritage of South Africa, and, by the way, South Africa is not just some sectors. It is the people. In its turn, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights became a vital instrument for the mobilisation of the international community to support the anti-apartheid movement and contribute to the victory of the people of South Africa.
What then of the tribute to the heroes and heroines of this history now that we have achieved a democratic dispensation? In the spirit of these leaders who went before us, we must strive for, and deepen, peace amongst the people of South Africa.