Speaking at the closing ceremony of the Moral Regeneration Month on Sunday, Bapela said the fight for poverty eradication was doomed to fail if South Africa failed to address moral decay and declining value system.
The event was organised by the Moral Regeneration Movement (MRM), a body tasked with promoting good values among South Africans. MRM marks July as the Moral Regeneration Month after the month in which the Charter of Positive Values was adopted. It is also the birthday month of former President Nelson Mandela who first initiated the movement.
"The revival of the spirit of Ubuntu and the actual appreciation of the values and ideals enshrined in our constitution become crucial. It is the responsibility of our government to build a prosperous nation free of the ugly apartheid past by facilitating the eradication of poverty, inequality and unemployment and to restore the dignity of our people," Bapela said.
Bapela said the role of the MRM was to "remind us" of the old African tradition that says an entire village raises a child and that social agents like teachers needed to abide by that tradition in dealing with children.
"Our teachers are entrusted with a critical responsibility nurturing our young to lead by example in future and this can only be achieved if only teachers are willing to be at school in class, on time, motivated and teaching at least seven hours a day," he said.
Earlier, Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane said the idea of the MRM was one of the "building blocks" towards a non-racial and no-sexist society.
"The Moral Regeneration Movement is supposed to be a calabash that brings all of us together and say what is that we can define as a moral standing of a South African in the new dispensation. How do we characterise a South African in 2012," Mokonyane said.
South Africans needed to appreciate the role that they have travelled since the birth of democracy by analysing what the country had been able to achieve in promoting good morals.
