Five years into democracy, Nelson Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki continued from where his predecessor had left off, focusing his inaugural speech on people.
Some of the Mbeki’s comments about people were: “We surely must be haunted by the humiliating suffering which continues to afflict millions of our people … Our nights cannot but be nights of nightmares while millions of our people live in conditions of degrading poverty … Our days and our nights will remain forever blemished as long as our people are torn apart and fractured into contending factions by reason of the racial and gender inequalities, which continue to characterise our society.”
The trend continued as his delivered his second inaugural speech for his second term in 2004.
– By Sipho Kekana
