Dear Fellow South African,
On Heritage Day last week, we celebrated the many languages, traditions and cultures of our people.
It is always heartening on this national day to see South Africans from every community celebrating their own heritage while also honouring the heritage of others.
Over the past week, social media has been filled with such images of black, white, Indian and Coloured South Africans proudly displaying the richness of their cultures and participating in the traditions of their fellow South Africans.
That we have built a country founded on equality and non-racialism, in which every citizen should feel that they belong, is something we do not take for granted. We pay tribute to the courageous decisions that made democratic South Africa possible.
In 1994, the South African people made a historic choice. We chose to acknowledge the grave injustices and immense suffering of the past while committing ourselves to live together and build a new nation.
Our constitutional order gives expression to the values of non-racialism, non-sexism, equality, democracy and human dignity.
These values are as much our heritage as the cultures we practice and the languages we speak, the traditions we observe and the cultures we celebrate. They express who we are, and who we aspire to become.
Heritage is not only what we celebrate. It is also what we defend.
We cannot allow violence against women to define who we are.
The abuse, rape and killing of women is a stain on our national conscience. We cannot claim to be a society founded on freedom, equality and human dignity while half of our population lives in fear of violence
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We refuse to be defined by xenophobia and intolerance.
The peoples of Africa provided moral and material support to our liberation struggle, and our democracy. Democratic South Africa remains committed to advancing the ideals of African unity and integration.
At the same time, migration must take place within the law. Government has a responsibility to manage our borders effectively, and everyone who lives in South Africa is required to respect our laws.
Racism will never define who we are.
We are determined never to return to the racial division and oppression of our apartheid past.
In 1994, we chose to build one nation from people of different races, cultures and backgrounds. It is a choice that we must continue to renew every day. Democratic South Africa is committed to correcting the injustices of the past.
There is no moral equivalence between redress and discrimination.
There is no equivalence between legitimate, constitutionally grounded measures of redress and the systematic racial oppression of apartheid.
There is no equivalence between measures designed to overcome racial exclusion and the apartheid laws that were designed to enforce racial exclusion, dispossession and inequality.
We must remain vigilant against those who seek to undermine our national unity and turn South Africans against one another.
We all have a responsibility to hold our social fabric together.
We must guard against words and actions that polarise communities, inflame public opinion and reopen the wounds of our past.
The Constitution guarantees freedom of expression. But with this freedom comes responsibility.
In a country where women live in fear of abuse and are killed every day, the public humiliation of women is not harmless. It reinforces the attitudes that sustain discrimination and violence.
At a time when undocumented migration is fuelling social tensions, inflammatory statements about foreign nationals are dangerous and irresponsible.
In a country with unacceptably high levels of violent crime, language that glorifies killing or encourages hostility has no place in our public life.
At a time when unemployment is high and we need to grow our economy and attract investment, travelling to foreign capitals to spread the falsehood of a “white genocide” and discourage investment in one’s own country, is neither responsible nor patriotic.
We may be a diverse nation, but we are united by the constitutional values that make us South African.
These values transcend race, gender, language, culture and geography.
Guided by these values, let us continue to work together to overcome the common challenges we face.
Every day, through our words and our deeds, we must renew the choice we made in 1994 and affirmed when we adopted our Constitution: the choice to build this country together.
That is our shared heritage. It is also our shared responsibility.
