I know that there has been a great deal of debate and some arguments at this forum. I welcome this. Without arguments, we would not be human. Indeed, this province has a time-honoured tradition for arguing.
The point is that we have achieved what we set out to achieve. An important milestone on our road to a Western Cape Sustainable Development Plan a year from now.
We have agreed on the vision for the Western Cape: A sustainable home for all - now and forever. And we have agreed on a way forward, and I quote:
For the Western Cape Province, sustainable development will be achieved through implementing integrated governance systems that promote economic growth in a manner that contributes to greater social equity and that maintains the ongoing capacity of the natural environment to provide the ecological services upon which socio-economic development depends.
As I said in my opening address, we need to work within the global environment, drawing from what is good and sensible from the accumulated wisdom of international thinking on sustainable development. We also need to be informed by the 'local'. That is, from the wisdom we derive from our situation here in the Western Cape, which requires a particular interpretation and application of general principles.
We have also, arguments aside, achieved a unique social partnership amongst those who will guide the process for the future. And I commend you all for your willingness to work together for a common vision.
This is an exciting time for us all. It is also a time for urgent progress in improving the lot of our people. However, we have resisted the adoption of short term measures to reach our goals, and have acknowledged four important things.
First, we need to continue to work together as social partners towards the goals we have now identified.
Second, we have acknowledged that our endeavours depend on sustainable economic growth in the Western Cape.
Third, we have recognised that economic growth needs to underlay and promote our goal of social equity in a deeply divided province.
And fourth, we have agreed to do so within and to the benefit of our natural environment.
This is what embedded sustainable development means. It means that it must imbue our every action, running laterally and horizontally through all our endeavours.
The people of the Western Cape are unique. We have our own history, our own set of economic and social conditions, our own demography and our own environment. This is our inheritance, much of it negative. However, we have now uncovered a spirit and a determination that will lead us out of this desert and into the land of plenty.
We are learning not to despair, or turn our heads away, from the poverty and inequity that surrounds us. And we have begun to grasp that the future is in our hands - provided we all work together and agree on a common direction.
We have a long way to go but, as I said, we have taken yet another important step on the way.
It seems to me to be doubly significant that this important breakthrough comes on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom Charter. For our guests, the Freedom Charter was the first ever commitment of the different race groups in our country to a vision of a non-racial future. It brought the four Congresses (black, coloured, Indian and white) to a field in small location in what was then the Transvaal. There, harassed and finally closed down by the police, they agreed on a Charter that enshrined the following: "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white".
More than that, it was preceded by widespread consultation, the earliest example of public participation in our country. Its organisers spent the months leading to the Congress collecting the views of ordinary women and men throughout South Africa travelling throughout urban and rural areas.
And so, colleagues and friends, fifty years later, we need to work with courage and determination, with energy and vision, to fulfill the dream of Kliptown.
We cannot throw up our hands in despair at the work ahead. We cannot afford to become weighed down by minor differences and interpretations.
We must understand what it is we need to do and we must seize that understanding and achieve the results we so urgently need. We must act in a way that embeds sustainable development in all our endeavours. And we must, above all, keep talking to one another.
Today, I would like to thank and commend you all for your efforts. And, again, I would like to welcome all those of you who have come from other parts of the world. There is a lot at stake, for our province, for our country and for the world.
I think that we have shown that we are up to the challenge.
