Madam Deputy Chairperson, I want to acknowledge the Minister of Arts and Culture, hon Mashatile, the MEC from Mpumalanga, hon Manana, and all other representatives from other parts of the country. I want to welcome them to the Western Cape. I also want to acknowledge my colleague next to me, hon Witbooi, from our provincial legislature.
Madam Deputy Chair, since the birth of our democracy Heritage Day has been dedicated to the heroes and heroines of our liberation struggle, and the names are known to most of us. Allow me a moment today to dedicate this speech to the many unknown heroes - workers, students and women domestic workers - who perished during our struggle for liberation. Allow me to pay tribute to a few of them this afternoon.
I want to start off with a person called Mr Isaac Petersen from Newfields on the Cape Flats. He was a furniture factory manager at Scandia Furniture in Epping, and he contributed extensively to organising and mobilising young factory workers and students to overthrow the evil apartheid government in South Africa. He did this in co-operation with people such as Trevor Manuel, hon Zoe Kota, Cheryl Carolus, Zubeida Jaffer, Johnny Issel and Marcus Solomons, to name but a few. To the youth, women and students of the Cape Flats, and specifically in Hanover Park, he was a great intellectual, who preached that you needed to have a theoretical basis and an understanding of economics, politics and sociology in order to overthrow the apartheid government. He always used to say, "Be better intellectually than your enemy."
The next is a woman, a very ordinary factory worker, Mrs Janet Jethro - she later became Meyer - also from Hanover Park. She opened her home to many young activists, providing food and a hiding place to those on the run from the South African security police. The network of community mothers that she organised is a living legacy to this day. Many activists would not be where they are today had she not taken them under her protective wing, and we want to acknowledge these people today. The third person is better known - Mr Hassan Howa, the first President of the South African Council on Sport. He was instrumental in sports liberation. The fact is that today we can celebrate our rugby and we can all acknowledge that the Springbok team belongs to all of us. He was instrumental in that and he coined the phrase, "No normal sport in an abnormal society."
Today, I want to pay very special tribute to these unsung, these relatively unknown, heroes and heroines of the liberation struggle. Let us remember and honour them, and many others, for the remarkable contributions and sacrifices they made in the fight for freedom.
Hon Deputy Chairperson, I want to add that this history doesn't belong to one group only. It belongs to many organisations, such as the South African Students' Organisation, the Unity Movement of South Africa, and the Azanian People's Organisation. It doesn't belong to one organisation. [Interjections.] For the record, I'm so happy that my colleague acknowledges my point. My colleague knows me very well. [Interjections.] We had good times. I was always a member. Yes.