4th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture

The Fourth Annual Lecture was delivered by former South Africa president Thabo Mbeki on July 29, 2006. Quoting from poetry, the Bible and great works on economics, Mbeki urged people against the worship of personal wealth. We must "defeat the tendency in our society towards the deification of personal wealth as the distinguishing feature of the new citizen of the new South Africa," he said. "Personal pursuit of material gain, as the beginning and end of our life purpose, is already beginning to corrode our social and national cohesion," he added.