Nobel prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu in his New Year message told South Africans to use 2004 to make the most of the country’s hard earned freedom and to give something back to the underprivileged.
In his message published in the Sowetan, Tutu said the country had come a long way in 10 years.
Left behind were the pass laws, the detention of black leaders, bantu education and black-on-black violence — the ”awful killing fields of KwaZulu-Natal… the drive by shootings, the massacres on trains”.
He warned, however, that political violence had been replaced with criminal violence, which provided the country with a new challenge.
”Here we are, nearly 10 years down the line and we have been blessed with an extraordinary stability and calm,” he said.
”Vicious race riots have not happened in South Africa, but in Manchester, England. School children have been escorted by heavily armed soldiers, not in South Africa, but in Belfast, Northern Ireland.”
Tutu said the country had confounded critics by producing a much admired Constitution and a world renowned statesman in former president Nelson Mandela, becoming a beacon of hope for countries still struggling against ”hatred and conflict”.
The work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been adopted and copied elsewhere.
”They expected us to be overwhelmed by the most ghastly racial bloodbath,” he said. ”Instead they saw an exhibition of magnanimity, when victims forgave perpetrators of some of the most horrendous atrocities.”
Tutu said he was confident that South Africa had what it took to overcome ”the awfulness of HIV/Aids, poverty, corruption, crime and abuse against women and children”.
He also appealed to the public to assist those less fortunate than themselves by adopting a poor family in need of assistance. ‒ Sapa