Pretoria – President Jacob Zuma, who has declared this year’s Human Rights Day the “national day against racism and as a foundation to lay a long-term programme on building a non-racial society”, will address South Africans on Human Rights Day from Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban.
South Africans commemorate Human Rights Day next week Monday, March 21.
Acknowledging the “upsurge in racist incidents that manifested themselves on various platforms including especially on social media,” Zuma said in a statement on Wednesday that this year’s Human Rights Day would be held under the theme “South Africa United Against Racism”.
Human Rights Day, he said, was a day that sought to remind all South Africans about the sacrifices that were made in the struggle for liberation and to celebrate the achievement of freedom and democracy in 1994.
It also commemorated the day that apartheid police shot and killed 69 protesters in Sharpeville during what became known as the Sharpeville Massacre.
People had been protesting the injustice of the pass laws which strictly controlled the movements of non-white people when people opened fire.
The Sharpeville Massacre, said Zuma, “exposed the apartheid government’s deliberate violation of human rights to the world. These events mobilised the international community into action against the apartheid government”.
This day is also known as the United Nations’ International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which was declared after the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.
The Durban declaration included a mandate for providing specific “recommendations to combat discrimination against Africans and persons of African descent, Asians and persons of Asian descent, indigenous peoples, migrants, refugees, minorities, the Roma and other groups”.
Furthermore, Zuma remarked that “this year’s Human Rights commemoration coincides with the 20th anniversary of the signing of the final draft of the Constitution into law and the 60th anniversary of the 1956 Women’s March to the Union Buildings”.
Zuma said Human Rights Day enabled South Africans to celebrate the country’s “transition to a democratic system that honours and respects human rights”.
“We use this National Day each year, not only to remind our people of the tragic past, but also more importantly, to highlight the need to ensure that we promote and consolidate our human rights culture and democracy as entrenched in our Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” said Zuma.
Zuma called on all South Africans to unite and “fight racism at all levels” and work towards building a democratic, non-racial society.
African News Agency