CITY HALL
REMARKS BY BUFFALO CITY
EXECUTIVE MAYOR ZINTLE PETER

Thank you, Programme Director.

• Honourable Mayor of the Lusaka City Council
• Chairpersons of Lusaka City Council Committees
• Members of the Sol Plaatje Municipal Council
• Management Officials from Lusaka and Sol Plaatje
• Community representatives
• Buffalo City Mayoral Committee members and management officials
• Sida consultants

A very good evening to you all.

It is indeed a great pleasure and privilege for me as the Executive Mayor of Buffalo City and the host municipality, to welcome all of you to our municipality and to this reception. We are very honoured to have you all.

In his absence, I also want to offer my courtesies to my colleague the Mayor of Sol Plaatje Municipality who would be with us here today if it were not for the fact that he has recently suffered a family bereavement. Our thoughts are therefore with him during this difficult time.

We have heard it often said that the world is becoming a global village, and that we are all more connected and interdependent than we were in previous generations.

We talk of the phenomenon of globalization in this regard, where we are able to sell our fresh fruit and vegetables on a different continent, where we can instantly communicate by e-mail with friends and partners on the other side of the world.

Of course, in many respects this has made the world a better place, and it has increased the pace of economic growth and development.

Information flows much more freely than it did even twenty years ago, so that if you are fighting a war in the Middle East, your citizens can be watching the action "live" on CNN. This is surely a good thing, because transparency is the lifeblood of democracy.

More and more people are considering themselves to be citizens of the world, rather than citizens of one country, because they can pursue their education and their careers in many different places internationally.

But of course not every consequence of globalization is positive. Countries and cultures that are not part of the mainstream of the international political or economic order feel under threat, and sometimes their sense of vulnerability and alienation leads to destructive actions.

We know as we analyze the challenges of our world, and try to understand what science is telling us, that what happens in Europe and the United States and China affects us in Africa. As global warming begins to affect our climate more seriously each year, we face the challenge of large parts of Africa experiencing increasingly severe droughts, making it increasingly difficult for our continent to enjoy food security.

The fact that we are all interdependent, ladies and gentlemen, means that we need to recognize the urgency of working together to face the challenges of our world.

It also means that we cannot succeed in making a meaningful difference unless we build partnerships with like-minded people, and set out with determination to persuade those who have not yet been persuaded, in order to face the challenges of our global village head-on.

I know that I am preaching to the converted in addressing these sentiments to our counterparts and comrades from the Lusaka City Council. It was thirty years ago that the government of Zambia under President Kenneth Kaunda, and the community of Lusaka as the capital, said to the ANC leadership in exile: "Comrades, we are offering our city to you to be used as a base from which to conduct the noble struggle against apartheid in South Africa."

(Incidentally, we were very honoured quite recently to host ex-President Kaunda in Buffalo City as well. He was here as a guest of a local university).

And for more than twenty years the ANC conducted its campaigns in Southern Africa from Lusaka, at great cost to the citizens of the city during those times. These costs were not only financial but also at times, measured in human suffering and blood.

We know that a large number of people from this region either passed through or ended up in Lusaka to serve the ANC in exile.

Our colleagues and comrades from Sol Plaatje will also be mindful of the fact that members of the liberation movement from their own region worked in Lusaka before the unbanning of the ANC, and were supported by the community of Lusaka.

So comrades, allow me to express my heartfelt thanks to you on behalf of the people of this region for the sacrifices that you made, and the support that you gave to us during the sometimes dark and difficult years of the struggle against the apartheid regime.

In South Africa our democratic Constitution now requires us to advance the principle of co-operative governance - we are enjoined to foster friendly relations, and to assist and support each other. We can never say that we have all the answers, no matter what sphere or province or municipality we come from.

Our experience of inter-municipal relations is that Buffalo City has gained a lot, and learnt a lot from interacting both with South African and foreign municipalities.

We are fortunate to be a member of the South African Cities Network which is an association of the nine biggest municipalities in South Africa, which helps us a lot in improving our strategic planning and adopting best practices in the management of our own municipality.

We face many challenges relating to the legacy of our past that would sit far more heavily on our shoulders if it were not for the fact that we have been supported by our friends in Sweden, in the Netherlands and locally to come up with creative and innovative solutions with a view to hastening our vision of building a better life for all of our people.

And this is why we are very happy to be able to engage with our friends in Lusaka and Sol Plaatje so that together we have an opportunity to ask, and also to try to answer, the pressing developmental questions of Southern Africa.

These questions are not unique to Buffalo City, and we must admit that we have not yet found all the answers. This is why you are all very welcome in Buffalo City - we know that we will learn from each other, and that our successes can become your successes, and our failures can become your lessons.

Ladies and gentlemen, I trust that you will enjoy the evening and that the few days that you are spending in Buffalo City will be enjoyable, fruitful and productive, and that you will be encouraged enough to return with new energy to make a difference in your own local authority.

Thank you very much.

N.C. Peter

EXECUTIVE MAYOR

Email this article to a friend