STATEMENT: THE NATIONAL ANTHEM
2014-04-30
The FW de Klerk Foundation strongly rejects the view expressed by Mondli Makhanya in City Press on 27 April that we should abandon our beautiful national anthem.
It is a great pity that he chose Freedom Day – a day on which all South Africans should be celebrating the establishment of our new non-racial constitutional democracy – to air views that are so destructive of the national unity that we have been trying to achieve for the past 20 years.
The FW de Klerk Foundation welcomes President Zuma’s recent remarks in which he gave recognition to the important role that FW de Klerk played in South Africa’s transition to democracy.
A selection of significant quotes from speeches by former President FW de Klerk
We are about to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the foundation of our non-racial constitutional democracy.
A core policy directive in the Department of Sport and Recreation’s 2013 White Paper on Sport and Recreation stated that “The racial composition of national teams should not be advocated, nor should National Federations be prescribed to on how they should select their teams. National teams should be selected on merit but transformation should be implemented at school/youth levels to prepare a broad basis of athletes for participation at higher levels in future”.
The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) has just published its final policy proposals on land reform titled “Strengthening the Relative Rights of People Working the Land“.
Sunday, 6 April will be the 362nd anniversary of the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in the Cape – and of the founding of our mother city – Cape Town.