South Africans celebrated Freedom Day on Sunday with President Thabo Mbeki saying the government would continue carrying out its programmes to fight HIV/Aids.
He told a rally near Orkney in the North West that all South Africans, for their part, should act responsibly to help curb the spread of the disease.
The government had stepped up its battle against Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, Mbeki said in an apparent response to mounting calls for a national public sector antiretroviral treatment plan.
This applied in terms of budget allocations as well as programmes adopted, he said.
”Once more, with regard to Aids, we call on all our people to act responsibly and respond to the call for abstinence, being faithful and using a condom.
”The government will continue to implement all its programmes that seek to confront this challenge,” Mbeki said.
The country’s main Freedom Day celebration at the James Motlatsi athletics stadium outside Orkney, drew thousands of people.
Deputy President Jacob Zuma said South Africa had transformed as a country and society since the first democratic elections on April 27, 1994.
He told a rally in the Nelson Mandela metropolitan in the Eastern Cape that the dignity of the previously oppressed had been restored and an open and transparent society created.
United Democratic Movement (UDM) leader Bantu Holomisa said in his Freedom Day address in Katlehong, outside Johannesburg, that the government should do more for ordinary people.
It was only the new black middle class that had benefited from freedom, he said.
”As we approach the tenth year of freedom, we see that for many people the hardship is increasing, we see that the dependency syndrome is growing due to unemployment,” he said.
”Government must do more.”
Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) deputy president Motshoko Pheko said black people were not economically and emancipated, despite achieving political liberation.
”Except for the tiny African elite and former apartheid and colonial oppressors, for the African majority for which liberation was fought there is nothing or very little to show for liberation,” Pheko said in a statement.
”They are poor, homeless, landless and decimated by the disease of HIV/Aids. Africans suffer the highest child mortality and the shortest life expectancy,” he said.
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon urged the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to conduct a full-scale voter registration process before next year’s general election.
”… at least 5,6-million eligible voters are not registered, according to the Independent Electoral Commission,” Leon told a rally in Tembisa, outside of Johannesburg.
”And many of us risk losing our vote because the system of voter registration is not working properly.”
Freedom Front (FF) Gauteng spokesperson Jaco Mulder said Freedom Day would become a farce for religious communities if the government’s education policy on religion was promulgated.
According to the new policy all children in government schools, private schools and even those undergoing home schooling would have to be taught about religions from a ”neutral” perspective from material prescribed by the state.
In Paarl in the Western Cape, St Stephen’s Anglican church which was taken from its coloured congregation under the Group Area Act, was returned on Sunday.
The church was built in 1879 to serve the coloured community, but in 1980 it was bought by the local white Anglican community for their own worship.
The occasion was marked by a service of celebration and the church was packed with the descendants of its original congregation. – Sapa