Riyaz Patel
President Cyril Ramaphosa says reconciliation is about acknowledging that even though we are diverse, with different histories and experiences, languages and cultures, we can be united.
Speaking at the national Reconciliation Day celebrations in Bergville, KZN, Ramaphosa said reconciliation is also about honouring those who suffered for justice and freedom.
“We should recall how, enduring dispossession, racism and poverty, African people actively resisted attempts to turn them into aliens in the land of their birth, keeping up sustained, active and organised resistance.
“We should recall how African, coloured and Indian South Africans, together with white democrats, fought a brave and protracted struggle for freedom.”
To mark Reconciliation Day, the President approved the release of 14,647 offenders on pardons and remissions.
The President granted special sentence remissions to specific categories of sentenced offenders, those on probation and parolees.
“We recognise that incarceration has followed a judicial process and that sentences have been duly imposed after conviction,” Ramaphosa said.
Justice Minister Ronald Lamola said the process would start immediately and may take up to nine months.
The pardons will not include offenders sentenced for sexual offences, murder and attempted murder, armed robbery, mentally-ill sedition, high treason, sabotage and terrorism.
There have been previous remissions of this nature granted to coincide with important national days.
These include former president Nelson Mandela’s inauguration on 10 May 1994, the first anniversary of freedom on 27 April 1995, Madiba’s 80th birthday on 18 July 1998, the first year of former president Mbeki’s second term of office on 30 May 2005 and in celebration of 18 years of freedom on 27 April 2012.
Ramaphosa said reconciliation cannot be based on just “pious words.”
It must be based, he said, on all “South Africans reaching out to one another to support one another as we rebuild a nation free of racism, exploitation and oppression.”
“This day, that once symbolised the domination of one group over another, is now an occasion to celebrate the pact we made to start on a clean slate – to strive towards realising a society founded on reconciliation, non-racialism, non-sexism, equality, peace, justice and democracy,” President Ramaphosa said.
“It is therefore significant that this day of the year also marks the day in 1961 on which Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the ANC, was formed to resist the savagery of apartheid dispossession and oppression.”
