Pixabay
Political leaders used Freedom Day to call on South Africans to use the power of the vote in this year’s Local Government Elections.
While delivering wide-ranging messages, honouring fallen heroes of the freedom struggle, and lamenting the scourge of fraud and corruption, the message steered back to the polls scheduled for 27 October.
President Cyril Ramaphosa called on South Africans to use the power of their vote to demonstrate their intolerance for corruption, theft, and mismanagement.
Delivering his Freedom Day message in the Free State, he said exercising one’s right to vote was the “most powerful form of protest.”
The President delivered a wide-ranging speech, acknowledging the role played by those who made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom, including late stalwart, Charlotte Maxeke, to whom this year’s celebrations are dedicated.
“We salute all the men and women of this great land whose sacrifices have made it possible for us to be free today,” he said.
Ramaphosa said “despite the great progress made towards realising the rights of our people to a better life”, there are many parts of South Africa where “the promise of 1994 has not yet been fulfilled.”
He said the country would hold Local Government elections in six months, adding that it was “an opportunity to be part of the change you want.”
“I call on you to determine the future of your family and your community by putting your confidence in those parties that have the best policies and the will and the means to implement them,” Ramaphosa said.
DA leader, John Steenhuisen, meanwhile, delivered his Freedom Day message in Nelson Mandela Bay, telling South Africans that their future and freedom was not entirely in the hands of a corrupt government.
“There may be many things wrong with our country right now, but our democracy still works fine. And this means you have all the power you need to determine your own future,” he told supporters at the Donkin Reserve.
Steenhuisen said South Africans should diarise the election date on 27 October, saying they should also “write it in big letters and stick it on your fridge because that is the day you get to take back control of your future.”
