KWAMATHUNSI, MANDENI   : OCTOBER 25, 1998

The Rev Erlo Stegen and other Church leaders present at this prayer meeting; Inkosi of the Mathunsi Clan; members of his Council and his Indunas; members of the Royal House present; other amaKhosi present; the Honourable Ministers of KwaZulu Natal; members of both the national and provincial Parliaments; Chairpersons of Regional Councils; the Mayor and other visiting Mayors, Councillors, Indunas, government officials and all our Christian brothers and sisters attending this prayer day.

I must thank Inkosi Mathunsi, his Council, Indunas and Church leaders for having organised this prayer day and for having brought together this community for a day on which we may all turn our hearts to the Almighty Lord and to re-dedicate ourselves to His Divine Will. It is always good for us as sinners who are saved by Christ's precious blood to gather in this way to praise the Lord for so many Blessings that He has showered on us.

It is good to turn to the Lord also for inspiration and direction. It is good that we should whenever possible remind each other of our dependence on Him. In times of crisis it is only right that we carry our burdens. Our Lord invites us all the time: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." [St Matthew, Ch. 11, v. 28].

It is important that we always take some time off from our daily activities to pause and pray to the Almighty. Prayer gives us inspiration and direction. We are confronted with many difficult problems and at times people may fall prey to confusion. Prayer dissipates the confusion and gives us the strength to overcome the many challenges which we are encountering both as individuals and as members of our communities.

Now more than ever, our individual lives are filled with uncertainties and our communities are faced with great social evils. It is up to us to find the right direction. One of the greatest gifts that God gave to us is that of free will, which enables us to make the right choices but also to take a bad turn in the wrong direction. The Almighty Lord also gave us another gift, which is the gift of prayer. Prayer is a moment of reflection in which we connect with the Holy Spirit and find within ourselves through the inspiration of God the right direction to be taken and the right choice to be adopted. It has often been said that God is the beginning and the end. God gives us inspiration and other signs at the beginning of our activities and if we follow them we may find God, once again, at the end of our endeavours. God has set a divine plan which enables us to become His instrument in performing His work on earth, if we wish to do so. A moment of prayer is when we allow God to take charge of our souls and direct us towards the completion of His work in our families, in our communities, work-places and within the rest of society. Often the sign from God comes at the commencement of our endeavours as the inspiration of an initial intuition which is up to us to carry forward through all difficulties and obstacles to its intended end.

For this reason I have always promoted moments of prayers. For instance, I insisted that each session of the erstwhile KwaZulu Legislative Assembly began with a prayer breakfast to underscore our dependence on God, and I think that it is important that we open all our main meetings with a prayer. In this area there are many problems for which we need to seek the assistance of God to inspire our actions to solve them. In this area there are also many successful initiatives which carry great hope for our communities. They also require the continuing spirit of goodwill of people who act under the inspiration of the Lord so that His projects can be carried forward to their completion.

We are blessed in this area with one of the most successful industrial parks, the Isithebe spatial development. Great resources have been poured into this project to make it successful. I have supported this project with all my energies because it is an important investment in our future. However, all the goodwill that we have put into a project such as this one and the many efforts of the hundreds and hundreds of people who worked together to make it possible, can be destroyed by the evil of only a few members of our community.

The battle of good against evil is always an unequal one, for one action of evil can undermine a countless number of good actions. It takes one single mistake or criminal deed to turn an otherwise good person into somebody whom the community must isolate and punish. Similarly, the killing of a Taiwanese industrialist in this area has undermined the many efforts made to attract foreign investment and promote economic growth in our communities. After this incident, other industrialists are no longer keen to continue operating at Isithebe which they consider to be no longer safe. Last Wednesday, our Cabinet considered an extraordinary package of economic incentives to attract foreign fixed capital investment. This package includes a six year tax holiday, which means that those who make massive and world-class investments in South Africa may receive very significant cuts in their tax bills for six years.

The package also includes the possibility of accelerating the depreciation of capital investments for ten years. This means that those who spend large amounts of money in setting up industrial structures for their business can recover their costs over a shorter period of time by claiming them as a deduction against their corporate profits. However, we as a government can do nothing to bring foreign industrialists to our country if their lives are not safe. No matter how much government may help foreigners to make money in our country, they will not come to help our economic growth if they see the price of their profit being that of their own lives. This is very concerning in view of the fact that the world is facing a real threat of recession which will affect South Africa very strongly. After the crash of the Russian and Japanese stock markets, the world economy relies exclusively on the strength and productive capacity of the United States of America and unless there is a fast recovery in the Far East and throughout Europe the world recession may end up penalising more severely the weaker economies in developing countries such as ours. We must turn our hearts to the Lord and pray to Him to inspire us to find the necessary strength to invest in our future and stabilise the economic situation which is perceived as rapidly deteriorating. The strength of our economy is at the basis of our individual and collective welfare. Only a rapidly growing economy can provide additional jobs to redress the plight of unemployment. I regard unemployment as the prime evil in a developing society such as ours.

We will not be able to win our fight against crime if such large segments of our population remain unemployed and such widespread poverty still reigns in our country. The official figures released this week indicate that 34% of our population is unemployed, 20% has no education whatsoever, or below the breadline, 55% has no running water, 50% has no sanitation and 72% has no access to basic conveniences of modern times such as a telephone, while 43% of our population does not live in formal housing but in precarious conditions, including shacks. These are the official percentages produced by the census we conducted two years ago and they portray a catastrophic situation, which I fear does not even accurately reflect the intensity of our needs because the margin of error has a heavier incident when dealing with the lower segments of our population.

There is one path and one path only to provide a long-term transformation of our society which is capable of redressing these imbalances, and that is the path of economic growth and development. The transformation of our society and the eradication of such poverty cannot result from the actions of Government alone, for Government does not make money but at best it can redirect or redistribute a small portion of how the money made by the private sector should be spent. We must intensify development as a condition to eradicate poverty. I have dedicated my entire life to the cause of development and when I was the Chief Minister of the erstwhile KwaZulu Government I began creating these industrial parks. At the time I was maligned by members of certain political parties and certain trade unions who spread the lie that I made agreements with employers to pay workers low wages. This was not only untrue but was part of a rotten war of propaganda waged by those political organisations and trade unions against me. To me as a Christian these campaigns of vilification have been painful examples of the machinations of the devil in using people as his mouthpiece to destroy other people's good names.

At the time I was dumbfounded at how these lies against me could be spread in spite of my track record of activities to defend workers. I have always tried to avoid a conflict between those who are employed and those who remain unemployed. I tried to avoid that the broadening of social demands would affect the chances of economic growth and hence the possibility that those who are unemployed may finally find a job. Nonetheless, I was one of the first and most dedicated supporters of free trade unionism in this country and no one worked for the establishment of trade unions for African people more than I did. I started working for black workers in Durban when I founded the Institute for Industrial Education with Professor Schlemmer.

I participated in the 1973 strikes and even sent my Minister of Interior, Mr Barney Dladla, to Durban to support the workers during those strikes which were very successful in addressing the issue of a living wage for workers. This action caused the then Minister of Labour, Mr Marais Viljoen, who was later appointed State President, to attack me for what he called my illegitimate interference in the affairs of industrial workers, because he argued that Durban was outside the territory of the KwaZulu Territorial Authority over which I then presided. I retorted by saying that when the National Party, to which Mr Marais Viljoen belonged, created the then so-called self-governing territories, they stated that they were meant to regulate the affairs of "Zulu people wherever they are" and therefore I noted that most of the workers in Durban were Zulus and their rights were a matter for my concern. Of course in reality I was standing up not only for Zulu workers but for all black workers who at the time had no trade unions. Not only Zulu workers participated in the 1973 strikes. Coloureds and Indians also participated, although they were much better off at the time than Africans, since they had trade unions.

It was because of my work for black workers in South Africa that the largest trade union in the free world awarded me its prestigious prize, the AFL-CIO George Meany Human Rights Award. This award was presented to me jointly with the late Dr Neil Aggett who worked for black industrial workers in Johannesburg and we were the second recipients after perhaps the most famous unionist of this century, the founder of Solidarity in Poland, Lec Walesa. Throughout my track record defending the rights of workers, I have always kept in mind the needs of the unemployed which coincide with the needs of our society to promote economic growth and new jobs. I have always been a pragmatist as well as a man of principles. Human rights are a matter of principles which must be entrenched and fully protected. With our Constitution and the present labour legislation, this goal has been achieved. We must now complete what needs to be done for our society by developing a rigorous work ethic and pride in making each business succeed.

In the final analysis, South Africa is the sum of all the businesses in its territory and if the workers are committed to making each of such business succeed, the country as a whole will succeed. We must give confidence to domestic and foreign industrialists so that South Africa can succeed because its people are willing to make sacrifices and are committed to making it succeed. It was very painful for me when last week I read in the newspapers the consolidation plan between Anglo American Corporation and its offshore holding company which they created during the time of international sanctions to obviate the damage done by sanctions to our economy. This consolidation plan creates a new corporation called Anglo American plc which will no longer be a South African company but will be based and traded in the United Kingdom. This means that our largest corporate conglomerate is now a subsidiary of a foreign company and has moved its emphasis away from South Africa towards foreign countries under the pretext of globalization. It is not the first to do so, nor is it the last.

I cannot blame them because their business is that of doing business and if a business in this country is not good business, they must reorganise their business as it best fits its needs. However, it remains our responsibility to develop a new culture of discipline, enthusiasm and hard work which can make business in South Africa a good business and may attract back some of the South African companies which in one way or another are fleeing the country. I also appeal to the industrialists established in our industrial parks not to abandon our people and to keep their industries open at this crucial time.

A prayer day such as the one we are having today gives us the opportunity for introspection. Let us look right inside ourselves and try and answer the question of whether, either individually or jointly, we have contributed in any way to the threats to our jobs that we see looming, or whether we have in fact contributed towards this in any way through our conduct or attitudes.

The killings that have gone on between us as black people merely because of political differences are indefensible. Let us pray for tolerance as we move towards elections and ensure that our differences do not flare up into internecine killings which have cost us so many innocent lives. I am confident that with the help of God this country can and shall succeed in overcoming its difficulties. God can help us to inspire in each and every one of us the will to make our country succeed and the willingness to grow with the growth of the country. At this crucial time our destinies are in our hands and let us pray to the Lord that we can shape them in such a fashion that our posterity can look back with pride on our efforts under the guidance of the Lord.