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Who said itpassages as delivered, the word marked
ZA
No. 1
South Africa09/24 · first at about 15 min1 mention
South Africa leaves this podium with an important refrain: The South African nation is the creation and heritage of the international community. South Africa today stands tall in the family of nations because the United Nations delivered on the promise of its charter. We are living example and legacy of the charter of the United Nations. As Member States, we must continue to support this organization, our organization, because, as former President Nelson Mandela said in his inaugural address to the United Nations General Assembly on the 3rd of October, 1994, and I quote the millions across our globe who stand expectant at the gates of hope look to this organization to bring them peace, to bring them life, to bring them a life worth living. Close quote.
And so on the 18th of September 1973, the Bahamas took its seat in this assembly. Then in 1985, Commonwealth leaders met in my own capital and agreed the Nassau Accord against apartheid. We were told pressure would never work. Less than five years later, Nelson Mandela walked free.
And those words give my compatriots and I courage to uphold the Pan-African and anti-colonial heritage that was bequeathed to us by our forebears. Another line in our anthem petitions God to fill our hearts with true humility and make us cherish fearless honesty. That prayer inspires me today to follow in the footsteps of Doctor Kwame Nkrumah, Haile Selassie, Nelson Mandela and other global icons who have stood at this very podium before me and have spoken boldly and fearlessly about the state of affairs in our world. The world may not transform overnight because of the speeches that we deliver here in this August assembly, but history would faithfully record the truths we choose to speak and the silences that we choose to keep When we are granted the privilege of addressing this global town hall. Allow me, therefore, to begin by reintroducing myself to the General Assembly. I stand before you as president of the Republic of Ghana. Yet we too often ascend these heights draped only in the robes of our titles, forgetting that alongside each of us stands a history, a people, and a legacy. I was born in a little town, Damongo, which was then a modest community in northern Ghana, and it's now the capital of the Savannah region of my country. I was born to Mr. Emmanuel Adama Mahama of Bole and Madam Abiba Nnaba Suluwu of Busunu, both of blessed memory. I belong to them and I belong to the foremothers and the forefathers who gave birth to them, who named them, who nurtured them, and who passed down the enduring values by which I live today. I grew up at the crossroads of several Ghanaian cultures. I speak Gonja, which is a Guan language. I speak Twi and Ga. I am fluent in Hausa, spoken across the West African savanna and the Sahel. I understand some Ewe. And I speak English as my official language. In a very real sense, I belong to all these people because their tongues, including English, have become my tongue. Language creates a kinship, regardless of the historical complexities through which kinship was forged. Mr. President, everybody in this chamber today and every global citizen listening to my words, possesses an origin.
