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Address by President Nelson Mandela at the launch of the Masakhane Campaign, Koeberg

25 February 1995

Here at Marconi Beam we see the Reconstruction and Development Programme at work. What is happening here is the product of the kind of partnership which is needed to transform our country.

It is a partnership of a community determined to take responsibility for its own upliftment; and a government which has assumed the responsibility of planning for the most efficient use of the country's resources in order to address the legacy of the past. The Masakhane campaign will build partnership, so that we can build one another.

This does not mean that such projects are without problems. But provided there is proper consultation, we can be confident that problems will be solved, and that all the plans will be turned into the basic things that people need. What is happening here, is happening in more and more places each day. Soon it will be happening everywhere in our country.

From Soweto to Mitchell's Plain, from Chatsworth to Khayelitsha, democracy brings to neighbourhoods and communities the power to make sure that the changes working through our country will reach them. The Masakhane campaign will help communities turn government programmes into the projects they need.

With freedom comes responsibility, the responsibility of participation.

Each brick that is used to build a wall, every drop of water from a tap, is the result of many people's work and uses our country's resources. Government is putting massive investment into programmes for housing and services. We all have the responsibility to pay for what we use, or else the investment will dry up and the projects come to an end. We must ensure that we can, as a nation, provide for the millions still without the basic needs.

The laying of this brick symbolises the building of our nation, by all of us, working togther in partnership to bring a better life for all South Africans.

Let us all build together and let us build each other.

Masakhane!

Source: Nelson Mandela Foundation

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