Deputy Speaker, thank you very much. Hon Mazibuko, patriotism by definition means that one loves the piece of ground on which one lives, and therefore, to instil a particular conduct, among other things, would mean that you keep it as hygienically clean as possible.
The ANC government understands that there are uneven levels of consciousness and understands that generally speaking, there are many people who are conservative in the sense that they cling to the truths of yesterday and do not want to move with the times. The responsibility of all of us, regardless of political party affiliation, who commit ourselves to the noble goal of uniting all of our people into a nonracial society, carry the responsibility at all times to raise issues in a manner which points society in the direction of the creation of a nonracial society and, through our pronouncements and our actions, always strive to break down the barriers of division, so that we unite our people.
Of course, if we are prophets of doom, we will accept that aberrations in society represent all of us. Those of us who are committed to the principle of nonracialism carry the responsibility, at all times, to ensure that this is what we promote in our actions, in practice and by word of mouth. If anyone among us speaks out of turn, we also bear the responsibility to take them by the ear, pull them into line and through debate and by dint of superior arguments persuade them that the route to go is a nonracial one.
There are also other factors to be taken into account, because government as government has to accept that there is freedom of speech and that in the exercise of this freedom of speech, many people will say things that we do not agree with, but it is also a measure of our own political consciousness and maturity to defend their right to say what they say, otherwise if the ideas are simply embedded in their heads, we will never get to know who we are or where we are in this journey towards a nonracial society.
That is why rather than shooting down those who speak out of turn, be they to the left or to the right, it is our responsibility at all times to engage them and ensure that we present to society the efficacy and the nobility of nonracialism. A saint by definition is a sinner who continues to mend his ways. [Applause.]
We bear the responsibility to correct. That is why even the institutions in which known convicts, those who have been tried and convicted in courts of law, are kept are no longer called jails or prisons. They are now called correctional services, because we believe we have an abiding ability to correct each other and hopefully we can only abandon the most incorrigible.
We can only give up on those who when a piece of stone is cooked in one pot and they are cooked in the other the stone gets ripe first. We abandon those ones, but otherwise it is our responsibility; it is our burden to continue trying all the time, because if we do give up then there is no hope. I thank you.