Hon Speaker and hon members. While the Constitution enjoins the President to promote the unity of the nation, it is the role and the responsibility of all South Africans to build a country that belongs to all who live in it.
In undertaking my responsibility as the President of the Republic, I am guided in the main by the preamble to our Constitution. Amongst other things, it calls on all of us to heal the divisions of the past, establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights, but also ensure every citizen is equally protected by the law and free the potential of each person in our country.
The achievement of national unity depends on the advancement of equality in all spheres of public and private life.
All South Africans must have the same rights and opportunities regardless of race, gender, sex, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.
Since 1994, we have put in place policies as well as programmes to safeguard these rights and advance these opportunities. We have sought to advance the constitutional principle that everyone has the right to use the language and to participate in the cultural life of their choice.
Given the huge inequality in our society, which is mainly defined along lines of race and gender, the promotion of national unity requires that we take measures to advance those South Africans who have been disadvantaged by unfair discrimination. That is why we have directed public resources towards the poor, why we have implemented employment equity as well as broad-based black economic empowerment, that is why we
have massively expanded access to education, and why we have introduced a National Minimum Wage.
The divisions in our society are not only material; they are also social, cultural and psychological, but they are also historical.
We must, therefore, deepen dialogue to ensure that South Africans across the racial and other contours of difference establish common ground and that there is solidarity as well as mutual trust. These dialogues must address what it means to be an active and responsible citizen of the Republic of South Africa.
It is true that there are minorities that are alienated; then we need to find the reason why they feel alienated. And I would even say, I would hasten to use the word minorities; I would say, there are sort of groups of people who feel that they are alienated.
We need to establish whether it is a matter of perception or the consequence of actual experience, and we need to engage in dialogue to address any grievance or concerns that they may have.
My experience is that the overwhelming majority of South Africans, regardless of race, class or gender, support the measures we have undertaken, in line with the tenets of our Constitution to address the inequalities of the past and to affirm those who were previously disadvantaged. They are in many instances also eager and actively seeking to be part of the solution of building a united nation.
They have built a bridge and crossed over it. They understand that we will never achieve a united, peaceful society for as long as racial privilege or other forms of inequality continue to exist in our country.
Perhaps it is time for us to challenge this idea of the so- called minorities. It is indeed true that South Africa is made up of people of different races, ethnicities, language groups,
religions, but we are all part of the greater South African people. Whatever our individual backgrounds are or circumstances, we are all part of the majority.
South Africa belongs to all of us equally and we must all feel that we belong to this South Africa, regardless of the various differences that we may have, either along the lines of language, regional line, colour lines or whatever. We are all one nation and let us begin to act as one nation. Thank you very much. [Applause.]