The FW de Klerk Foundation is sad to announce that Adv Johan Kruger, the Director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, will be leaving the Centre at the end of February. Adv Kruger will be taking up a senior position with the United Nations in Nairobi.
We would like to wish Adv Kruger every success with his future career and are sure that he will make a very positive contribution in his new position.
International Mother Language Day is held worldwide on 21 February to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. Observed since 2008, the date of 21 February corresponds to the day in 1952 when students in what is today Bangladesh who were demonstrating for the recognition of Bangla as one of the two national languages of East Pakistan, were shot dead by police.
It is a great honour for me to be able to address you today here in Bogotá.
We live in a troubled world – and many of those troubles have their roots in the inability of countries to find peaceful solutions to the conflicts that continue to divide their societies.
At its meeting of 1 February 2016, the Board of Trustees of the FW de Klerk Foundation decided to appoint the present Chairman, Dr Theuns Eloff, as Executive Director of the Foundation with effect from 1 July 2016. At the same meeting it elected the present Executive Director, Dave Steward, as the new Chairman of the Board of Trustees, with effect from the same date – after he had announced his intention of stepping down as Executive Director after 17 years in the post.
The FW de Klerk Foundation decided to dedicate its annual conference this year to the consideration of the future of multiculturalism in South Africa.
We did so because of the strains that have been developing in relations between our communities and because of the central importance of reaching agreement on how communities in our complex multicultural society should relate to one another in the future. These are questions that will play a key role in determining the long-term success of our society and the security and happiness of all our peoples.
The issue of the language of education at schools and universities is obviously a very timely and topical one given the increasing shift towards the use of English not only as the main medium of education, but even the exclusive official language used in instruction and administration in an increasing number of South African schools and universities.
Firstly, let me start by thanking former President de Klerk for the role he played in bringing about real change to our country. When all the noise has died down future historians will judge positively the role you played in the liberations of all South Africans, black and white. Real leaders make difficult and selfless choices and become statesman, and you did just that. You and President Mandela crossed the dangerous Rubicon when you were called upon to do so.
So many academic papers and treatises have been written about coloured identity that I am not going to revisit the usual arguments set forth when this topic is addressed. Not least because it was the label that determined my entire life under apartheid, but also because it still follows me wherever I go. 1994 did nothing to save me from this classification and today I feel quite ambivalent talking about colouredness.
If we did a paternity or maternity test on the South African Constitution, whose DNA do you think would come up? It’s no one in this room, although there are people here who made a major contribution. Nor is it Nelson Mandela. The answer is: Oliver Tambo.
