Miller Honours Sir Ketumile Masire
Pini Bothoko | Monday July 10, 2017 15:23
Miller further praised the relationship between Botswana and his country stating that the ties between the two continue to grow.
“This celebration also honours the life and legacy of the great man, the former President of the Republic of Botswana, His Excellency Sir Ketumile Quett Joni Masire. The principles he stood for and lived for as a founding father of Botswana is what we celebrate today,” Miller said.
He stated that last year USA joined the world in cheering Botswana’s celebration of 50 years of Independence.
He revealed that the former US President George W. Bush and Laura Bush saw firsthand the lifesaving legacy of the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the pink ribbon red ribbon campaign that fights cervical cancer, the leading cause of death among women in Botswana.
“Our military relationship has never been stronger and our armed forces continue to train and learn from each other. We just sent our largest ever Batswana contingent of Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Fellows to the US.
And our 145 Peace Corps Volunteers across the country continue to be our very best American ambassadors.” Miller added: “And, over the past year, in our grand noisy exercise in democracy, and keeping with today’s theme, a New Yorker has moved into the White House.
Dorothy Parker was born in New Jersey but lived most of her life in New York, which she described as ‘always hopeful. Always, it believes that something good is about to come off and it must hurry to meet it’.”
“At Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty with its famous inscription: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’ and since then, New York and America opened its door to the strangers, from all lands on earth, to “a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”.
Miller went on to reveal that two weeks ago he held an iftar with Muslim friends here and they spoke of the tragic events and terror attacks that offend the two states’ common humanity.
“How it is more important than ever to reach across the gap of suspicion and misunderstanding. To win the battle against our own prejudice, moral apathy, what the great New York author and civil rights activist James Baldwin called ‘the death of the heart’,” Miller said.
Miller said what makes the USA great is not their power or wealth, but their values and ideals as well as the idea of a land of liberty and opportunity for all.