Thank you, hon Chairperson. Yes, there are young people who were plucked out of the doomed future that apartheid had set for them even before they were born. There are young people who today study in mixed-race, public and private schools. Some of them are products of these schools and come here and speak very intellectually and say that this government has failed. [Interjections.] [Applause.] Yes, there are young people who today have better health care, education, housing, security, jobs and a better life than their parents could have ever imagined.
We must contest this narrative of the dominant intellectuals. We are a product of history as much as we are a product of the present. We bear the scars that were inflicted on our parents since our continent was discovered by Jan van Riebeeck.