Thokosa: Saturday 18th April 2009

I am delighted to be here in Thokoza today. We gather only four days away from our country's fourth democratic election. I wanted to come to Thokoza for the IFP's penultimate rally because of the special relationship I have long enjoyed with this community.  We have travelled far together over the years and I am grateful for the support that you have given to me personally and to the Inkatha Freedom Party. Today we close the IFP's election campaign to open a new hope for South Africa.

During this election campaign, all the parties have talked about change and hope. In the final analysis, this election campaign has been about the hope for change.

My entire generation grew up in hope and we have seen many of our hopes being realised beyond what anyone could dare to dream. I grew up with what then seemed to be an unrealistic hope, namely that of our liberation within our time. We saw that hope being realised when liberation came. Hope grew into new, ever broader horizons. We dared to conceive and believe in the even greater hope that South Africa could soon become an equally prosperous, fair and just society. We continued to ride high on the wave of hope which our generation has created.

But soon our hopes were crushed on the anvil of the harsh realities we found ourselves operating in, as well as the harsh realities that some unscrupulous members of the ruling Party and erroneous policies imposed on us all as self-inflicted injuries. The season of hope soon transformed itself into the season of disappointment, discontent and disillusionment. Unless we again muster the hope which moved all South Africans of goodwill during the struggle through the dark days of the past into the hope which sprang out of our liberation, our country is bound to follow an irreversible process of degeneration.

Everyone realises this. And for this reason each political party has embraced and advocated in these elections the agenda of change. But the greatest change must not come from the leaders. It can only be brought about by the voters themselves. In a few days from now, the people of South Africa must take over the reins of this horse which has gone astray and is galloping madly towards a precipice, and must pull with all their strength to hold it back and redirect it onto a new course; for a new galloping ride of hope.

The mad horse gone astray must now be held back and forced to change its course. Only by casting your vote in a manner which screams out the hope for change, will our electorate be able to bring about the change which our country demands.

The next elections are also going to be a referendum on the future of the Inkatha Freedom Party. I will listen very carefully to the message the South African people will send me and my Party through their votes at the next elections. I have never made false promises. I have never talked nonsense and I am not a man who speaks lightly about matters of importance. On this day, as we close the election campaign, from this venue I wish to tell the whole of South Africa that if I have learned a single thing in my sixty years of political career, it is that now more than ever, South Africa must rely on the IFP and on my own personal contribution to bring about the change which is needed.

I am strong, I am motivated, I am in good health and I am optimistic.

But I am no longer a spring-chicken. I would not be imposing on myself the enormous effort of leading a party if I did not know with all my heart and soul that I bear a responsibilities before man, history and God to do something in the next five years that only the IFP under my leadership can contribute to South Africa.

Change is not an empty word. We all know what needs to be changed. We need to get rid of corruption. We need people of integrity, solidity and experience within the formula of government. We need people with broad shoulders, iron strong principles and steel in their backbones, to bring a contribution which can hold back the mad horse running towards the precipice and help South Africa to regain the hope that it has now lost.

We need a force which has the strength, capability, experience and integrity to speak truth to power, not for its own petty political sake, but in the paramount interests of the future of South Africa.

Time and again, over sixty years of unwavering political commitment and principled stands and actions, we have proven to be that force. We have never weaved in one direction and then another and then another, to go with the flow of convenience, to follow the winds of political correctness or to bend to the pressures of the changing times. We stood firm on a course of principle. We are no newcomers who first embrace a policy, a party and a course of action and, when met with political disfavour and adversity, change them all to sing a new song to the tired and now disillusioned audience. For far too long, South Africans have endured the insult of false promises.

The IFP has always taken the hard and difficult decisions which we knew to be the right ones. Behind me lies a track record of sixty years of political battles and action which history has proven right, ranging from my initial call for an all-inclusive, peaceful and negotiated settlement as the door through which we had to walk to achieve our liberation, to the latest instance in which we spoke truth to power by taking the Government to the Constitutional Court to challenge its refusal to allow the Dalai Lama to come to South Africa.

Between the time when I was first rusticated from the University of Fort Hare for my political activities to the moment when I signed the last affidavit in support of the Dalai Lama's visit, stands a long legacy of correct, strong and inspired actions which I undertook not in my personal interest, and not even in the interests of my Party, but in the paramount interests of South Africa.

Before me lies a path which I know I must now walk together with my Party, not in my personal interest, but to serve South Africa. We are the tried and tested alternative which South Africa now needs to insert in the formula of its future government to bring about the changes it so desperately needs. This can only be brought about if, at the next elections, the IFP receives a strong and unconditional mandate from the South African people to take the reins of the mad horse gone astray and hold it back.

An electoral victory for the IFP will be a victory for the cause of reason, integrity and national interest over the madness of corruption, incompetence and the actions of those who have placed their own personal interests over our collective interests. For this reason, I can hear victory calling to us today to make this last effort to change South Africa. Victory calls on the people of South Africa to rise and reignite the torch of hope by making the IFP stronger, so that we may become the tried and tested alternative that changes the course of politics in our country.

Today I make an appeal; that whatever the outcome of the election on Wednesday, we as a nation will seek to renew the spirit of solidarity and hope which characterised the early years of our democracy. You will recall that, almost ten years ago, the then President of the ANC, President Thabo Mbeki, and I as President of the IFP came to Thokoza, as the guests of ANC and IFP members in Thokoza. We attended the unveiling of a monument to the Thokoza victims of the low intensity civil war of the late 1980s and early 1990s. That monument was a joint venture by both ANC and IFP members.

After the unveiling, President Mbeki and I addressed a joint ANC/IFP rally. It was meant as a gesture of reconciliation and new life for this community. Who would have imagined ten years ago that our hard won national compact would crack so fast and so far? Politics and the innate quality of our public life have become ugly. This is why I say that the divisions, the stereotypes, the scape-goating, the ease with which our plight is blamed on others - all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face: poverty, injustice and inequality.

This coming Wednesday is our chance to change all this. It is the one day when every South African citizen, rich or poor, holds equal power in South Africa. Democracy is the grand equaliser. Record numbers of voters have registered to vote in this election because they know that despite the gains we made in the early years of our democracy - when unity governments brought together politicians with a wide variety of experience and political traditions - the country is now heading in the wrong direction at an ever increasing speed. Every one of us has a simple choice next Wednesday; whether we want another five years of ANC government with more corruption, more criminality and more people without jobs or homes or hope. Or whether we want to bring hope and change to South Africa with a new IFP government.

Those who support the ANC or who stay away from the voting stations next Wednesday need to be very clear about the message that will send to the ANC. They will be telling the ANC that corruption is acceptable; that declining health, education and welfare services are not a problem; that there is no moral degeneration to worry about; that crime is not really that bad; the economy is treating us well and service delivery is not essential. Above all they will be telling the ANC to carry on as usual.

That is not what South Africa wants. Our country is crying out for change. But let us be very honest; South Africa won't get change by voting for things to stay the same. It won't get change if people stay at home complaining instead of going out and voting. Change comes when people demand it and that is what every one of us must do next Wednesday. This election could not be more important. That is why I have made no apologies for repeating at every opportunity a simple refrain.

Whatever else you do next Wednesday make sure you go and vote, make sure your friends and family and co-workers go out and vote. In fact make sure that everyone you know goes out and votes IFP so we can make the change that South Africa needs.

I know how much our communities have suffered here as a result of political intimidation and violence. It is a sad fact that political intimidation continues to this day here in Gauteng and throughout South Africa, even despite the Independent Electoral Commission's Code of Conduct which all parties signed. I have said it often enough and I repeat it today: - there is one common denominator to political violence in South Africa and it is the African National Congress.

It is shocking that they are allowed to get away with the violent intimidation of voters in this way. How can we call ourselves a real democracy as long as intimidation is as rife as it is today? Not content to use intimidation to distort the electoral process, the ANC is determined to misuse almost every resource of the state in order to secure votes.

The SABC, once the mouthpiece for the apartheid government has now become the voice of the ANC. Opposition parties are ignored, disparaged and defamed; ANC events are given slavish coverage; and the SABC's ANC appointed officials go scurrying to Luthuli House as soon as they are summoned. How can one hope to have free and fair elections in such circumstances? This is not to mention the scandalous use of taxpayers'

money to promote the ruling party. Such misuse of government funds is a disgrace and it has no part in a properly functioning democracy.

I have no illusions about what we are up against. I have no doubt that the ANC will use every trick in the book in order to stay in power so that they can continue to line their pockets. But still I have hope, because if all of us use our ballots on Wednesday to vote for change, even the shenanigans of the ANC will not be able to smother that call for change. Change is possible, and with change we can restore hope to South Africa. The more IFP MPs are elected to Parliament, the greater our voice will be in bringing that change. Together we will bring administrative order back to government; we will root out corrupt officials who get rich at your expense and we will tackle the crises in our health, education and welfare services.

Above all we will restore moral leadership to government. When the IFP was in government, South Africa could hold its head high in the world as a champion of moral values and human rights. Today both at home and abroad South Africa's image has become tattered and tarnished. The ANC government is rife with factionalism and corruption and ready to cosy up to any dictatorship willing to fill the ANC coffers with cash. This is not the democracy that we all struggled so long and so hard to secure.

Let us not miss this chance for change, because we may not have many more. Every year that the ANC remains in power they become more dismissive of the people whom they are supposed to serve, more disparaging of the views of anyone who fails to carry an ANC party card and more contemptuous of even the most basic standards of moral and ethical conduct.

The IFP is here to offer the change that South Africa needs. We have felt the frustration, the impatience and the anger of the hopes unfulfilled, ambitions stilted, and dreams never realised. I have said that so long as there is one child still in poverty in South Africa today, one pensioner in poverty, one person denied their chance in life; there is one party that will have no rest. That party is the IFP.

Today, the IFP alone offers moral leadership and integrity and has the courage to deliver the change that South Africa needs. We need you to join with us in achieving that change so that we can build the just and prosperous South Africa that we have all dreamed of.

My message to you is simple. We all have the power to change South Africa for good on April 22nd. It is our duty to use that power by going to the voting stations and casting our votes for the IFP. Go out and tell you families and friends, your neighbours and your work colleagues, that change is coming to South Africa, and tell them to make sure that they are part of that change by voting IFP on April 22nd.

Then on April 23rd we can start fixing South Africa together.

Contact:
Roman Liptak,             083 256 4902, or
Liezl van der Merwe,     083 611 7470