Good day, and my greetings to all of you:

I'm very pleased to be able to speak to you virtually today – one of the spin-offs of the terrible time of illness and death we are going through has been the rapid growth in the use of electronic communications. Although its use on occasions such as this is a consequence of tragedy, at times like ours we need to look for even small signs of hope – and the way in which technology has improved our capacity to respond to crisis is one of those signs.

The 16th of August 2012 was a day that changed South Africa. The shocking events that took place at the koppie at Marikana lifted a mirror to the country. It challenged us to ask: Who were we as a country? How did we allow ourselves to get to that point? How could we have allowed conditions to arise which set off such wanton killing?