Premier Lubabalo Oscar Mabuyane, has officially opened the House of Traditional Leaders in Bhisho recently. During his keynote address, Premier Mabuyane commended people of the Eastern Cape for their tremondeous cooperation during the Covid 19 Pandemic, This pandemic has been the most testing challenge to our democratic government, but we have managed it well, thanks to the cooperation of our people, and our social partners. The social partners I m referring to include you, our traditional leaders” Premier said during his keynote address at the House of Traditional Leaders.
Today we want to extend a profound word of gratitude to you for supporting our efforts to save the lives of our people. Like true descendants of warrior men and women who faced many wars before, you exercised maximum leadership and discipline during this difficult time” Premier said, exteding a word graditude to Eastern Cape Traditional Leaders at large.
He also commended the Traditional Leaders for their continuing cooperation and prompt response during Covid19 difficult times when they were asked to postpone sacred customs such as traditional initiation. We asked you to communicate to the people you lead that all traditional ceremonies and feasts must be put on hold and you did. Your act of leadership, when our province needed it the most, helped us to save lives and for that you deserve a solid round of applause. Because of your commitment to our cause, we can safely say we are defeating this pandemic” Premier alluded.
Premier also shared Government s focus of three priorities during 2021, At the top of these priorities is the task of working together with our people to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic. We are now at the stage of rolling out the vaccine which we our government bought from Johnson and Johnson. So far it has been administered to our health workers in Nelson Mandela Academic and Livingstone Hospitals. We are confident that we will vaccinate a minimum of 3.7 million people which is required for us to achieve population herd immunity” he said.
Gender Based Violence, as the major challenge government is faced with in the province was also mentioned in Premier s speech, Clearly, we have a long way to go before we can end GBV in our society. We need more action and harsh punishment to deter men from committing crimes against women. The law should do that because men are incapable of self-correcting and ending their reign of terror against women and children. We applaud the NPA for prioritizing cases of abuse in our court rolls. Convictions give women confidence that the law is on their side”.
The corrupt are few in our society and we should never allow them to destroy the future of our children. As this sixth administration we vowed to be transparent and that is what we have done by publishing the names of all companies that we contracted for Covid-19 contracts. We are the ones who called on the President to send the SIU to our province to probe all Covid-19 procurement. Some of the cases from that investigation are before the courts. We instructed HoDs to institute disciplinary proceedings with 421 officials who are doing business with the state”he also gave assurance to end corruption in the Province .
Eastern Cape Provincial Government also sees a need to fix maladministration and collapse of municipalities. During his address, Premier mentioned that him, MEC for Cogta and MEC for Finance will deal with political challenges in local government, because it is politics that are destroying municipalities, not the administration function.
Endorsement of the Khoi-San Leadership Act was also mentioned as one of Traditional Leaders priorities in hi sspeech. Mabuyane brought to attention President s announcement of the implementation date of the Khoi-San Leadreship Act as the 01 April 2021. To adapt the new legislation to our province, we are reviewing the provincial legislation by drafting the Eastern Cape Traditional Leadership and Khoi-San Bill which will be finalized in the course of the 2021/22 financial year. After it has been finalised, the Khoi-San will assume their rightful place in the institution of traditional leadership in South Africa” he mentioned.
We are also happy that the Kingdom of Amampondomise has been restored by the democratic government. We are looking forward to a cordial working relationship with King Zwelozuko Matiwane to develop the people of his community” Premier added.
