I thought I should re-post this epic speech by former president Thabo Mbeki at the
adoption of the The Republic of South Africa Constitution Bill titled I am an African...Enjoy
8 May
1996, Cape Town
I am an
African.
I owe my
being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers,
the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons
that define the face of our native land.
My body
has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the
warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and
the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have been a
cause both of trembling and of hope.
The
fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the wild
blooms of the citizens of the veld.
The
dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the soil-coloured waters of the Lekoa,
iGqili noThukela, and the sands of the Kgalagadi, have all been panels of the
set on the natural stage on which we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre
of our day.
At times,
and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal citizenship of our
country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena,
the black mamba and the pestilential mosquito.
A human
presence among all these, a feature on the face of our native land thus
defined, I know that none dare challenge me when I say - I am an African!
I owe my
being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of
the beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our
native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the
struggle to defend our freedom and dependence and they who, as a people,
perished in the result.
Today, as
a country, we keep an audible silence about these ancestors of the generations
that live, fearful to admit the horror of a former deed, seeking to obliterate
from our memories a cruel occurrence which, in its remembering, should teach us
not and never to be inhuman again.
I am
formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land.
Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me.
In my
veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud
dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The stripes
they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminder
embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.
I am the
grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led, the
patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe and
Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom.
My mind
and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in
our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as
Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert.
I am the
grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena and the
Bahamas, who sees in the mind`s eye and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant
folk, death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins.
I am the
child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in the world markets
in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which my stomach yearns.
I come of
those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided in the
fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught me
that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me that human
existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human
existence.
Being
part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that
assertion, I shall claim that - I am an African.
I have
seen our country torn asunder as these, all of whom are my people, engaged one
another in a titanic battle, the one redress a wrong that had been caused by
one to another and the other, to defend the indefensible.
I have
seen what happens when one person has superiority of force over another, when
the stronger appropriate to themselves the prerogative even to annul the
injunction that God created all men and women in His image.
I know
what if signifies when race and colour are used to determine who is human and
who, sub-human.
I have
seen the destruction of all sense of self-esteem, the consequent striving to be
what one is not, simply to acquire some of the benefits which those who had
improved themselves as masters had ensured that they enjoy.
I have
experience of the situation in which race and colour is used to enrich some and
impoverish the rest.
I have
seen the corruption of minds and souls as (word not readable) of the pursuit of
an ignoble effort to perpetrate a veritable crime against humanity.
I have
seen concrete expression of the denial of the dignity of a human being
emanating from the conscious, systemic and systematic oppressive and repressive
activities of other human beings.
There the
victims parade with no mask to hide the brutish reality - the beggars, the
prostitutes, the street children, those who seek solace in substance abuse,
those who have to steal to assuage hunger, those who have to lose their sanity
because to be sane is to invite pain.
Perhaps
the worst among these, who are my people, are those who have learnt to kill for
a wage. To these the extent of death is directly proportional to their personal
welfare.
And so,
like pawns in the service of demented souls, they kill in furtherance of the
political violence in KwaZulu-Natal. They murder the innocent in the taxi wars.
They kill
slowly or quickly in order to make profits from the illegal trade in narcotics.
They are available for hire when husband wants to murder wife and wife,
husband.
Among us
prowl the products of our immoral and amoral past - killers who have no sense
of the worth of human life, rapists who have absolute disdain for the women of
our country, animals who would seek to benefit from the vulnerability of the
children, the disabled and the old, the rapacious who brook no obstacle in
their quest for self-enrichment.
All this
I know and know to be true because I am an African!
Because
of that, I am also able to state this fundamental truth that I am born of a
people who are heroes and heroines.
I am born
of a people who would not tolerate oppression.
I am of a
nation that would not allow that fear of death, torture, imprisonment, exile or
persecution should result in the perpetuation of injustice.
The great
masses who are our mother and father will not permit that the behaviour of the
few results in the description of our country and people as barbaric.
Patient
because history is on their side, these masses do not despair because today the
weather is bad. Nor do they turn triumphalist when, tomorrow, the sun shines.
Whatever
the circumstances they have lived through and because of that experience, they
are determined to define for themselves who they are and who they should be.
We are
assembled here today to mark their victory in acquiring and exercising their
right to formulate their own definition of what it means to be African.
The
constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutes and unequivocal statement
that we refuse to accept that our Africanness shall be defined by our race,
colour, gender of historical origins.
It is a
firm assertion made by ourselves that South Africa belongs to all who live in
it, black and white.
It gives
concrete expression to the sentiment we share as Africans, and will defend to
the death, that the people shall govern.
It
recognises the fact that the dignity of the individual is both an objective
which society must pursue, and is a goal which cannot be separated from the
material well-being of that individual.
It seeks
to create the situation in which all our people shall be free from fear,
including the fear of the oppression of one national group by another, the fear
of the disempowerment of one social echelon by another, the fear of the use of
state power to deny anybody their fundamental human rights and the fear of
tyranny.
It aims
to open the doors so that those who were disadvantaged can assume their place
in society as equals with their fellow human beings without regard to colour,
race, gender, age or geographic dispersal.
It
provides the opportunity to enable each one and all to state their views,
promote them, strive for their implementation in the process of governance
without fear that a contrary view will be met with repression.
It
creates a law-governed society which shall be inimical to arbitrary rule.
It
enables the resolution of conflicts by peaceful means rather than resort to
force.
It
rejoices in the diversity of our people and creates the space for all of us
voluntarily to define ourselves as one people.
As an
African, this is an achievement of which I am proud, proud without reservation
and proud without any feeling of conceit.
Our sense
of elevation at this moment also derives from the fact that this magnificent
product is the unique creation of African hands and African minds.
Bit it is
also constitutes a tribute to our loss of vanity that we could, despite the
temptation to treat ourselves as an exceptional fragment of humanity, draw on
the accumulated experience and wisdom of all humankind, to define for ourselves
what we want to be.
Together
with the best in the world, we too are prone to pettiness, petulance,
selfishness and short-sightedness.
But it
seems to have happened that we looked at ourselves and said the time had come
that we make a super-human effort to be other than human, to respond to the
call to create for ourselves a glorious future, to remind ourselves of the
Latin saying: Gloria est consequenda - Glory must be sought after!
Today it
feels good to be an African.
It feels
good that I can stand here as a South African and as a foot soldier of a
titanic African army, the African National Congress, to say to all the parties
represented here, to the millions who made an input into the processes we are
concluding, to our outstanding compatriots who have presided over the birth of
our founding document, to the negotiators who pitted their wits one against the
other, to the unseen stars who shone unseen as the management and
administration of the Constitutional Assembly, the advisers, experts and
publicists, to the mass communication media, to our friends across the globe -
congratulations and well done!
I am an
African.
I am born
of the peoples of the continent of Africa.
The pain
of the violent conflict that the peoples of Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan,
Burundi and Algeria is a pain I also bear.
The
dismal shame of poverty, suffering and human degradation of my continent is a
blight that we share.
The
blight on our happiness that derives from this and from our drift to the
periphery of the ordering of human affairs leaves us in a persistent shadow of
despair.
This is a
savage road to which nobody should be condemned.
This
thing that we have done today, in this small corner of a great continent that
has contributed so decisively to the evolution of humanity says that Africa
reaffirms that she is continuing her rise from the ashes.
Whatever
the setbacks of the moment, nothing can stop us now!
Whatever the difficulties, Africa shall be at peace!
However improbable it may sound to the sceptics, Africa will prosper!
Whoever
we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry baggage from
our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss
of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today and say - nothing can
stop us now!
Thank
you.
