Thank you very much, House Chair. Hon members, according to the ANC's Strategy and Tactics document as adopted at the Morogoro conference in 1969, we make the following point that: "In real life ... radical changes are brought about not by imaginary forces but by those whose outlook and readiness to act is very much influenced by historically determined factors".
The ANC, as a disciplined force of the left, has always understood the world as it really is, which is broadly speaking, a material
approach - an approach which treats the world as a material force in its own right, that of course, exists independently of what we may think it is like to be.
South Africa's human rights development must be understood from the historical background of colonialism and apartheid. As Mike Nicol, a novelist reminds us, "Cape Town was founded on slavery. In the middle of Cape Town's, Spin Street - just here next to Dr Abrahams' surgery where we normally go to - is a low, round cement memorial. An inscription in English and Afrikaans reads, 'On this spot stood the old slave tree'. In front on the right is the Groote Kerk. Opposite it - just here outside Parliament - is the SA Cultural History Museum. Round the corner is Parliament" ... which tells us of the history and evolution of slavery here in Cape Town. That is a spot where human beings like Africans, the Khoi, the San, were sold like cattle from a master to a master. [Interjections.]
I invite you to go and read that plaque ... [Interjections.] ... because it will teach you how a Mr, unfortunately and very fortunately in this House ... because that is where some of our forebears participated in those human rights abuses ... and it is a slave master like the name of Smit. The name is spelt Smit ... [Interjections.] ... exactly the same way that hon Smit's surname is
written. There is a Mr Smit, a slave owner who sold our forebears to his forebears. [Interjections.] It is the same. If you go to that particular spot ... [Interjections.]