The Minister’s address resonated around the crucial role that the youth is bound to play in the development of Africa.
The ever-green Mbalula called upon the world to pause and take stock on the road we traversed from the first day Africa was robbed of its dignity and humanity by foreign forces and the ability of these forces to influence Africans to adopt foreign values of greed, violence and destruction.
“We must together as peoples of the world led by Africans accept, explain and evaluate the position that the struggle for self assertion in Africa is a struggle against any form of foreign invasion and domination as well as aggression; and this is a theme that is recurrent in the argument for total self-determination economically, politically and socially”, he said.
The day was themed “Youth and Development” whose ideology was to urge the youth of Diaspora to work together with other youth’s of Africa to continue the struggle for a better life for all Africans.
Mbalula further said that:” As Africa Day is celebrated, we must also collectively condemn the illegitimate military actions against countries of the South, especially Africa and its governments. “We must collectively disapprove the notion of so-called regime-change agenda purported by the strong and powerful nations against the weak and powerless ones.”
He referred, to the birth of the African Union(AU) and the crafting of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) as a corner stone of such a vision.
He lifted a quote from Oliver Reginald Tambo, one of the ANC’s stalwarts that “a country, a people and a nation that does not value its youth does not deserve its future”.
“The lives of our youth are so full of change that it is critical to develop programmes with them, which are aimed towards the development of their continent in general and the lives of young people in particular”, says Mbalula.
