Members of the Golden Key International Honour Society,
Honoured guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good evening, goeienaand, molweni.
It is a great privilege to be here this evening.
I am honoured by this award of honorary membership.
It is truly a humbling experience to join the ranks of the great men and women who have been honoured with this award in the past.
But there is something more affecting, on a deeper and more personal level, to be recognised by the leaders of tomorrow in this country.
For that is the way that I see the Golden Key International Honour Society in South Africa: An assembly of the best minds to take us forward to the place of promise we have long dreamed of.
In fact, the Director of Policy and Strategy in my office, Mr Craig Kesson, received an academic leadership scholarship from Golden Key when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal.
Using that award as a foundation, he later got a Rhodes Scholarship, considered the most prestigious academic scholarship in the world, to complete his post-graduate studies at the University of Oxford in the
United Kingdom.
I know that many of you sitting in the audience today have ambitions beyond our shores.
No doubt many of you see opportunity in the great international cities of finance and industry.
Perhaps some of you see the rapidly growing economies of the developing world as the awaiting frontiers of your personal growth.

Given the level of your achievement, no one can hold your life decisions against you.
What you have done, the work you have put in, and the results you have achieved: this is the justification you need for the rewards that could await you in life.
I know these thoughts and I understand them.
But I would like to make a special appeal to you here today.
This country needs you.
South Africa needs its brightest minds to deliver the place we dreamed of in 1994.
I remember those days, days of negotiation and compromise.
We aimed to build a country on a diverse set of principles that were informed by a range of differing ideologies.
But through disagreement and strife, we had one aim in common: to forge a country where the individual could live with dignity in a human rights-based society.
We knew that the constitutional framework was but one in a long sequence of challenges.
But we could not anticipate the reality of what it would take for a culture of human rights and dignity to take hold.
The battles of theory, the law, and constitutionalism are battles of the mind.
Their victories are all the more meaningful because of that.
But the effects of those victories for everyday life are intangible; as such, they are not as plainly felt.
For those whom we fought those battles, for the people we claimed to represent, we cannot easily point to the spoils of our victories.
What comfort does a sophisticated, human rights-based constitutional order bring to the man or woman who can never hope to own a home?

What hope has legal freedom bought to the child still attending a substandard school with little prospect of acquiring the skills the economy needs?
These may seem like simple questions when applied to the complex web of socio-economic forces that govern our country and its history.
But do not be deceived.
The struggle for human decency and rights, though seemingly complicated, is the most basic and age-old struggle for our humanity.
All of our commentaries, all of our economic formulas, all of our historical and social analysis – all of these things – are asking one basic question: are we better now than we were?
The question is simple.
It is the answers which are hard.
If we are still trying to answer that question, if we are still disagreeing on our definitions and our methodologies, we have largely reached consensus on what is needed to help build the country.
It is the consensus of countries around the world, historically and in the present, trying to make themselves into something better.
What we need to help us answer the simple question in the affirmative is a group of people willing to lead and to build.
They are the academic leaders who have the skills and knowledge to add to our economy and to our society.
They are the innovators and the professionals who help us expand and increase the scope for opportunity.
They are you.
I make a special appeal to all of you here today to use your gifts to help us build South Africa.
That does not mean you have to enter politics or the public service if you do not wish to.
The public sector is not the key to our success.

What we need is for you to stay and work in the private sector, to apply the energies of your industry and personal growth to our nation.
A country is not built by constitutions alone.
It is not only built by the sacrifice of some leaders.
It is built by its leading members working to create something for themselves and, in the process, something for others.
In conclusion, let me say again that I am humbled by this award.
I have only ever felt a deep sense of honour in serving my country.
That is the privilege that comes with the bittersweet sacrifice of leadership.
But political leaders can only go so far in their service.
We need other leaders, in business, the professions, the arts, in industry, to build this country we aim to serve.
We need leaders like you.
Thank you, baie dankie, enkosi.