Miracle of South Africa revealed by Mandela
at school was exactly the same as the environment at home, because you have parents with a high level of academic qualification and a child, when he or she comes back home, is able to get professional assistance from their parents in an environment of relaxation. They ate well, had ample accommodation, where the child had a room and facilities for studying and concentration.
“But what is the position with the blacks in this country, with Africans, coloureds and Indians? In most cases they were excluded from schools, even less so in tertiary education and because you did not have the facilities, you could not go to the best schools in the country and the environment between the school and the home was totally different.
“You come to parents, some of whom have never seen the inside of a school – housing facilities where about five children share one room, sleeping on the floor, where children have to study on the floor by candle light.
“Notwithstanding that difference, nevertheless, the media, analysts, judge us more severely than they judged the apartheid regime.
“Our people went into exile in order to mobilise the international community to isolate South Africa to make it a polecat of the world… Suddenly, you found on the 27th of April 1994 that we were now entrusted with the task of running an advanced country with modern ports and harbours, with a sophisticated banking and insurance system, with improved communication – either by road or by air and so on.
“We were taken literally from the bush in order to run this country, and yet we have delivered services which no government in the country has done. We ought to be complimented for that.
“Naturally, we have made many mistakes, some of them fundamental. Then, we have shown weaknesses, because we came to government determined to clean it of corruption and yet we found that our own members, some of them who held leading positions in the liberation movement themselves, became corrupt and in some cases even more corrupt than the civil service of the apartheid regime. That was a great disappointment, and still is to us, because we believe in a clean government.
“But the difference between the apartheid regime and ourselves is that we have set up a commission under a senior judge to investigate corruption in the government and we have arrested a lot of people – some of them highly placed – and exposed them, because we had given instructions that anybody who is corrupt must be arrested and if there is evidence, he must be convicted.
“Even if he belongs to the ANC. We must compliment Judge Heath for having investigated no less than 9 000 cases and for having recovered more than R10 billion, which were embezzled by state employees. That is our position, transparency, even about weaknesses among ourselves.
“But what I want to say to you is that, nevertheless, South Africa occupies a special place in the hearts of the international community – what you have done collectively has been hailed as the miracle of the world.
“We have brought about this miracle… When you go to the world you need just to say: ‘I am a South African!’ whether you are black or white, and the doors of this world become wide open to you…
“I want you to keep that in mind, to respond to the call for unity and for reconciliation and not to behave in a way which lets down those who trust us, inside and outside the country.
“You have become an example: a shining beacon to the entire world.”