Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes we shall redeems our pledges in the Republic of South Sudan not wholly or in full measure but very substantially.
At the stoke of the midnight hour when the world sleeps South Sudanese will awake to life and freedom, a moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance, it is fitting that my people at this solemn moment we take the pledge.
The pledges are dedication to the services of South Sudan and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity. At dawn the history of South Sudan started on her unending quest and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and failures.
Through good and ill fortune South Sudanese during the bush times has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave them strength and abundant aspirations to overcome the shortcoming that always peak up in any revolutionary period.
We end today a period of ill fortune and South Sudan discovers herself again, the achievement celebrated today is but a step an opening of opportunity to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us if we have strong political union.
Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future? Freedom and power bring responsibility that responsibility rest upon this Assembly a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of South Sudan.
Compatriots before the births of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavily with the memory of the sorrow, some of those pains continue even now nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfill the pledges we have so often taken and the one w shall take today in the Republic of South Sudan.
The services of South Sudanese means the services of the million who suffer, it means the ending of poverty, ignorance, disease and inequality of opportunity.
The ambition of greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye that may beyond us but as long as there are tears and suffering, so longer our work will not be over.
