SPEECH: SOME THOUGHTS ON THE EVE OF MY 80TH BIRTHDAY
2016-03-17
It is perhaps appropriate to reminisce on the eve of one’s 80th birthday – and at this age I can assure you that there is great deal about which I can reminisce!
I spent my childhood on a smallholding near Krugersdorp. I remember our garden, the rockeries that my mother lovingly tended and our little orchard of peach trees. I used to help harvest the peaches that we would sell in the nearby town. I remember growing up, more or less an only child because my brother Willem was eight years older than me. My father was already busy with his political career and was often away.
The constitutional democracy that we South Africans established 22 years ago after so many years of division and conflict is experiencing a serious crisis.
South Africans are shocked by scenes playing out of late, particularly on historically Afrikaans campuses. These incidents are part of a process that began at the end of 2015 with #Rhodesmustfall. Shortly afterwards it was #Feesmustfall, with similar origins. Then Open Stellenbosch followed, where racial and anti-Afrikaans sentiments were more visible, and then ReformPuk. At the start of 2016, all of this deteriorated into undisguised racism and xenophobia, with slogans of “F … whites” and even “Kill all the whites” appearing on walls and T-shirts. When art was burned at UCT, students shouted: “It is whiteness burning!”. And last week it culminated at UP with #Afrikaansmustfall and violence and physical attacks and counter-attacks.
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.
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.
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.