Congratulatory Message by the Greater Giyani Mayor-Ramaipadi M

CONGRATULATORY MESSAGE BY THE GREATER GIYANI MAYOR-RAMAIPADI M.A AT THE LAUNCH OF LINGUA FRANCA PUBLISHERS: 22 SEPTEMBER 2006.

Programme Director

Managing Director Liqua Franca Publishers

Liqua Franca Staff

Councillors

Department of Education officials

Black Management Forum Representative

Faith based Leaders

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Allow me on behalf of our government and in particular the Greater Giyani Municipality to greet you this morning.

My task today is easy but difficult to congratulate the man of vision, the man that brought light to our rural community, the man that overcome the myth that “ If you want to hide information for a black person you aught to put it in a book”, difficult to congratulate the man that fight illiteracy in our community.

Lingua Franca has vision and mission that inspire many of us, and that are at the core of our education, on that note we proud it as Africans.

Programme Director, as I said from the beginning that my task is to pass words of congratulations and appreciation, I beg your indulgence as I wish to point out that we are meeting here today, at this historic Launch, knowing precisely that this launch coincide perfectly with the heritage month of which we will all be celebrating on the 24th September. It is within this context that we have an opportunity to reflect on what our collective heritage actually is.

This is apt as we look back on what we have achieved in the twelve years of freedom and democracy. In a way heritage month seeks to give us an opportunity of asking ourselves of who we are and who we choose to be as a society.

Allow me programme director to point out few ways on which we can celebrate our heritage month:

Explore and discover our area that has some historical significance.

Recognize the role our past has played in shaping what South Africa has become today.

Learn, uplift and explore your richness of our languages and culture. Lingua Franca as an author of books, I strongly believe that he wanted to prove that African languages are not inferior.

Celebrate our success and share our life stories of which Lingua Franca Publishers is doing today.

Indeed Lingua Franca has a story to tell today of which they survive for over thirteen years of handwork. Indeed, businesses like this were regarded as white territories only.

Lingua Franca Publishers is one of the significant heritage centre of which we pride our selves as Greater Giyani Municipality.

We therefore wish to make a clarion call to our upcoming writes to work with zeal and enthusiasm in ensuring that more books are printed that will tell our stories and how we survive the turbulence and harsh realities our past.

We therefore wish this launch a success and our congratulations to Mr.Shabangu and your entire staff, hoping that this launch will give you strength to continue with the good work you had already started.

Thank you