UNDRIP Summit 1652 will be held from 06- 09 April 2021 at the CTICC in Cape Town. It will be the culmination of the process that commenced on 18 October 2020 and that we are currently involved in. We made provision for 500 delegates to attend, which includes International and Governmental Guests. Attendance by Representatives of the United Nations, Indigenous Bodies, and other important International Bodies, that will ensure we entrench the integrity of the process, and guarantee the legitimacy and due recognition of the end result by all concerned.

The primary goal of the Summit is to ensure that we create an Agreement, Constitutional Framework, or Governance Structure that will result in the following , ie.

• Creation of a Sovereign Overarching Body that will be acknowledged by our own people, local and international governments and all our leaders, leadership structures as the legitimate representative body of the First Nation Aboriginal People of South Africa. Such Body or Structure to receive a formal Mandate and Locus Standi to act on behalf of the collective on matters that have been agreed upon.
• Such a body or structure can commence as an interim Transitional Executive Council to manage an interim transition period whilst the permanent structures are established.
• Lay the Foundation for the Implementation of UNDRIP in South Africa
• Bring an end to the period of Interregnum that we currently find ourselves in and bring about a “ Grundnorm” or “ Social Contract “ between the FNA People of South Africa that will facilitate peaceful multilateral cooperation on matters of mutual interest
• Creating an Overarching Common Identity

Like all other similar seminal events ( Codesa in SA, DRC, & Irish Peace Process), the Summit will mark the foundation for us of a new beginning. The passage of a traumatic and multi-generational nightmare that commenced on 06 April 1652, to a new dawn where we will begin to write and rewrite our own history from 06 April 2022, (370 years later).

We are indeed at a confluence of many events that preceded our shared history where we can bring forth many years of planning, trying, pushing, fighting and sacrifice to fruition. Doing it however better, smarter, and with the benefit of hindsight of past failures and the weight of the daily, years, decades, centuries of pain and suffering on the part of our people bearing on us, calling for mature, responsible collective, visionary leadership.

For too long we accommodated others to the detriment of ourselves. It is time that we take the wheel of destiny into our own hands and turn the Arch of our own History to our best interest, as nobody else will do it. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said, “This is no time … to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism”. We owe it to our Children that they and their Children not endure what we and prior generations have endured.

Unique & Historic Opportunity

UNDRIP Summit 1652 accordingly provide us with a unique and historic opportunity to address the inequities generated by centuries of our shared history of marginalization and discrimination. It however requires that we acknowledge the falsehoods and ignorance that imprisoned us to date, and to change the persistence of patterns of privilege and poverty which are its legacy in the present.