Deputy Speaker, the ANC remembers the sad history of the Queenstown Massacre. The ANC sadly remembers 17 November 1985 as the date to commemorate the Queenstown Massacre, which took place then.
At that time the police surrounded the Nonzwakazi Methodist Church in Casspir vehicles. They lobbed teargas into the church and fired through the windows. Eleven people were brutally killed.
The Mlungisi community had mobilised in 1985 to oppose the community councils initiated by President P W Botha. They were particularly angry concerning household evictions and the derelict Mlungisi infrastructure, designed to force Mlungisi people to move to Ezibeleni. A consumer boycott had been launched on 12 August, leading to negotiations with the white business community. The white minority in the apartheid epoch, who governed the country at the time through dictatorship, arrived, with no sympathy for the poor, to disrupt this and they brutally killed innocent people who had met merely to find a solution to their social needs.
As we commemorate this great occasion, we solemnly remember that our freedom was not free. The Constitution directs us to heal the divisions of the past and to establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights. That is what we stand for as a nation, and that is what unites us. All South Africans need to know and work meticulously at recording our rich history. Such heroes who died fighting for their rights must be symbols of unity amongst us. Thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]