I was barely a teenager when this life-changing event turned the course of the liberation history of our country.

And we stand here today to celebrate the heroes and heroines, those brave young warriors who took to the streets to say: Enough is enough.

Millions of words have been written about this traumatic and victorious event credited with the accolades of the final push against apartheid and the attainment of the political freedom we enjoy today.

We have listened to our elders on the dynamics that surround this fateful event.

Oral evidence has made our blood curl at the cruel oppression we faced as children, oppression mirrored in the eyes our mothers, the virtual helplessness of our fathers and the militant anger of our brothers, sisters and our peers.

As we celebrate our 30-year-old victory in removing the political shackles which made us virtual slaves in the country of our, it is my view that we stand in the face of an even bigger challenge:

It is the challenge to give our people jobs, to give every breadwinner a roof to house a family; to enable our people to be mobile in safety and comfort; to ensure delivery of electricity, water, sanitation, roads and all other social amenities that constitute the bottom line of a better life for all.

And most of all, to ensure that they enjoy the political freedom won at the cost of a blood-soaked land; enjoy freedom from the thuggery and wanton violence, especially against women and children, that define life in our so called townships; freedom from disease-generating dirt and polluted air, rivers and soil.

After hundreds of years of exploitation and the savagery of dehumanization of our people, we deserve to enjoy our freedom and on this auspicious to pay tribute to those who went before us to make it happen in more than one way.

We lift our revolutionary caps to the many who paid the supreme sacrifice for our freedom, names too many name but names that will live on in our hearts forever.

We say thank you to their families, to the loved ones they left behind. They are many families, sometime too many and some may feel they do not get the attention following the sacrifice they loved ones made.

They must not despair.

Our Movement, the ANC, is a caring organization that will not forget those who laid down their lives for the cause of this country.

The struggle for our liberation did not start on June 16. Many went before but for the record, I would like to quote from one of the Father's of our revolution. uTata Oliver Tambo, in the wake of June 16 to show what it meant to the organization:

"Demonstrations and acts of resistance in Soweto and other parts of the country are therefore not riots by anti-social elements but blows for the liberation of the oppressed people…Our youth have raised this struggle to new heights. They have enriched our revolution. The struggle continues…There can be no turning back."

The essence of June 16 is that it brought together the many strands of revolution. It captured a defining moment in the armed struggle as the first intake of the 1960s Robben Island prisoners were released to add their political experience and training to bring form and structure to the militant students who took the struggle onto the township streets.

Today essentially we stand here to pay tribute to those comrades and to take the baton and the run the race to which they were intermediaries, a race that will never end until every man woman and child lives in the type of country captured in our Freedom Charter.

I stand here today as an Executive Mayor deployed by the Movement to play a role to run with that baton and to see to it that our people get those benefits which are fundamental to their freedom which has been paid for in blood.

I have inherited a massive task which is virtually defined by being two worlds: one a well resourced functioning rich First World; another poor under resourced and under developed world where hunger, joblessness and poverty exist.

I pledge that within the resources available to me I will try to run with this baton; to bring to our people everything I can and to maintain the existing standards we have with the firm pledge to ensure that we redistribute what we have without contravening any rights within our Constitutional state.

I thank you.

ENDS.

Zintle Peter
EXECUTIVE MAYOR
16 June 2006.