We Must Act As One to Restore the Meaning of Reconciliation Day
16 December 2020
In 1994, 26 years ago, we celebrated our first Reconciliation Day as a hopeful nation emerging from our painful past into democracy.
Any measure of the last 26 years would demonstrate that the project of reconciliation has been abandoned by our political establishment.
We now have parties for individual race- and interest groups, who preach divisive messages of hatred and division. They have done so to their benefit, using language to foster distrust, violence and radicalism to control their constituencies.
This is not us, South Africa. We are not the radicals who hate and sow divisions. We are not the extremists or the racists. We are the good, hard-working, law-abiding, family-oriented and freedom-loving people of our beloved country, and we are in the majority.