Tribalism, racism and sexism are some of those deviant practices that our Constitution has a clear position on and we all, as a nation, should be completely opposed to those practices. Being opposed to that should also mean that whenever we encounter racism or tribalism we must stand up and speak out against it.
When we finalised our Constitution it ended with 11 languages. Let me go back a little. When we were negotiating our Constitution, I recall an occasion when I sat down with Roelf Meyer and we were talking about the final languages of our country.
He sort of casually said that, of course, it had to be English and Afrikaans, and I asked him what about the other languages? His answer was that maybe it could be English, Afrikaans and IsiZulu.
I asked him about all the others because we speak 11 languages in this country, and in the end the languages that will be enshrined in our Constitution have to be languages that unite all our people. That is how we finally came up with 11 official languages for our country.
We have the languages that in the past were marginalised, disregarded and put in the dustbin. Today all of our 11 languages are on an equal footing and they should have equal recognition.
There will be occasions when we encounter people who prefer to be spoken to or address others only in one language or another. Our Constitution and the precedents that have been set in our various courts tell us that you are allowed to address whoever is an official or in authority in the language of your choice. So if you are listening, which you are not doing at the moment, I would say to you that whenever anyone of our people has to get a service from any government department they are entitled to speak in the language that they are most proficient in.
That should not be seen as being tribalism or anything else like that. Tribalism is something that we should banish completely from the face of South Africa and never see again in this country. Thank you.