Mr Speaker, hon President and hon members, recently an important debate has emerged amongst the people of South Africa not only in the media, but also, without doubt, in taverns, around braais and dinner- tables and within a vast number of homes, schools, campuses, churches and other places of congregation and discussion all over our country.
The hon President failed to deal with this burning issue in his speech on the state of our nation. This is possibly because of the way in which some of the traditional customs associated with his culture and my culture, and the culture of all those South Africans who self-identify as amaZulu, have recently been pushed into the spotlight in this national debate on whether cultural identity and practice should ever be allowed to supersede our humanity and the human rights to equality and dignity, which are enshrined in our Constitution.
In particular, the practices of lobola and polygamy are some of the customs practised by amaZulu that have recently been singled out for censure, sparking a long-overdue debate on the meaning of culture in contemporary South Africa. Within the context of this debate the words "It's my culture" have increasingly come to be accepted as legitimate responses to questions probing the necessity or, indeed, acceptability of such customs.
For example, to the question, "Can we claim that women have equal rights in a democratic South Africa, if at the same time we legitimise their exchange between families for cattle and money?" one will often hear the response: "It's an important part of our culture", and so the debate is closed.
No discussion of where we are as a nation today and where we are going can be complete without engaging robustly with the subject of culture. Yet, while some analysts, commentators and members of the public continue to grapple with this subject, politicians have mostly been conspicuous by their silence.
Given our racially divided past, the tendency towards knee-jerk reactions on both sides of this debate is understandable. But we cannot allow inflated sensitivities about the possible motives of those who question our cultural practices to justify keeping in place some customs which violate gender equality, put young people - especially girls - at risk, and deny our humanity as a people. [Interjections.]