As you celebrate the centenary of this glorious movement, please go back to the founding principles and foundation of the founding fathers of this movement.
Colonial and apartheid regimes provided for themselves and their people at the expense of the population at large. People clearly understood this and began their fight for liberation. Today the people of South Africa are slowly beginning to realise that they are being offered crumbs while others in the country are enjoying the cream. People are seeing this; the people of Africa are also seeing this.
A new liberation struggle is now emerging, and it is the young people of Africa who are leading the struggle. These young people are university graduates and they therefore understand that governments which are repressive are, by their very nature, secretive, defensive, self-serving, corrupt and inefficient. Such governments are very energetic in seeking to preserve power, but they are slow and uninterested in bringing development to the people or using resources to benefit their people.
At the July 2008 African Union Summit, the ministers of justice formally adopted a single legal instrument to create an African Court of Justice and Human Rights. The "Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights", the single protocol, resulted from the decision by African states to merge the two courts to find a single effective court.
The establishment of this human rights court in Africa, which considers violations of human rights and abuses and renders binding judgments, is long overdue. While individuals cannot approach the court directly and this is a great pity state parties, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, African intergovernmental organisations and African national human rights institutions will be able to do so. As I understand it, South Africa has yet to ratify the protocol and, if that is the case, one must ask why this is so.
South Africa should not only be ratifying the protocol but should be campaigning vigorously for individual petitions to be received by the court. I thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]