CENTURION, South Africa (AFP) — South Africa's ruling party leader Jacob Zuma Thursday urged Afrikaners and Afrikaans-speaking people to pitch in and help build a non-racial, egalitarian nation.
"The Afrikaans-speaking South Africans have a role to play in building the country. We belong together and must work together to build a prosperous, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa," he said.
Speaking at a dinner in his honour hosted by the Solidarity trade union, which has a large white membership, Zuma said: I know that you are concerned about the crime levels in our country.
"We have got to take drastic measures to deal with the crime and eradicate it," he said referring to one of the main scourges of the so-called Rainbow Nation, where white minority rule spearheaded by Afrikaaners ended in 1994.
A wide segment of South African society speaks Afrikaans, based on old Dutch and words from Malay, Indonesian and African languages, including the so-called coloureds or people of mixed race.
"I believe personally that we need to do something extraordinary to deal with crimes. Let us clean out crimes so that South Africa will be free of criminals," Zuma said.
Other concerns raised by Solidarity included the issue of discrimination against white South Africans, the current energy crisis, unemployment, the alleged marginalisation of the Afrikaans language and political interference in sports, especially rugby, a sport dominated by white South Africans.
He assured the Afrikaners that that under his leadership of the ANC, "you will not be discriminated against because you are white...We fought against discrimination. Government must work with Solidarity to address this issue."
He also said that politics should "create an enabling environment for sports to thrive."
The meeting of the president of the African National Congress (ANC) with Solidarity, one the nation's largest labour unions, is part of Zuma's ongoing engagements with key social and economic players.
Zuma toppled South African President Thabo Mbeki from the helm of the ruling African National Congress party in December, and should be the party's candidate at general elections next year.
The 65-year-old Zuma is to go on trial in August on 16 charges of fraud, corruption, racketeering and money-laundering after being formally charged on December 28.
He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, saying in a BBC television interview broadcast: "I'm not a crook, I have never been a crook, I will never be a crook."
Mbeki fired Zuma as deputy state president in 2005 after his financial adviser Schabir Shaik was handed a 15-year prison sentence for canvassing bribes for Zuma, in return for which Zuma was to exercise his political clout in business dealings.
Zuma has said he would stand down from the ANC were he to be ultimately convicted by a court.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
