KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY THE REVEREND FRANK CHIKANE AT THE COLLOQUIUM ON LEGACIES AND THE STATE OF THE ARCHIVES: IN HONOUR OF NELSON ROLIHLAHLA MANDELA

Transcription

1 KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY THE REVEREND FRANK CHIKANE AT THE COLLOQUIUM ON LEGACIES AND THE STATE OF THE ARCHIVES: IN HONOUR OF NELSON ROLIHLAHLA MANDELA Nelson Mandela Museum 17 July 2012 May I thank the leadership of the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and the Nelson Mandela Museum for inviting me to present a keynote address to this Colloquium on the Legacies and the State of the Archives: In Honour of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. From your programme it is expected that various experts will speak on issues related to Legacies and the State of the Archives in South Africa in honour of utata umandela. Accordingly, I have taken the liberty of rephrasing the theme for the purposes of this session and speak on The Treasure in the Legacy of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. Your choice of this historical week for the Colloquium is indeed strategic. It is a week when we celebrate the ninety fourth (94 th ) Birthday of Utata unelson Mandela and the International Mandela Day all of which are annual events. But what makes the timing of this event even more significant is that it occurs during the centenary of the African National Congress (ANC). As part of the centenary celebrations the ANC decided to focus on one of the president per month for the year and July is the month to honour Mandela as one of the twelve Presidents of the African National Congress (ANC) for the century. All these celebratory events and activities testify to the fact that utata umandela s life was no ordinary life. It is for this reason that we would like to

2 explore the treasure in his legacy from which generations to come will learn from and be inspired by it. We must start though by joining together with the family, friends and the rest of the international community to wish Ntate Mandela a Happy 94 th Birthday. We thank him for what he is, what he has done, and what he has become to us and to the global community. Re ho lakaletsa mahlohonolo a sa feleng! (We wish you endless blessings!). I must say that God has been good to us by giving us the life of utata umandela and preserving him to be there when we needed him most when we managed our delicate transition from an apartheid society to a just, nonracial, non-sexist democratic society. Our struggle for liberation had reached a stage where the apartheid regime, armed with its nuclear arsenals and biological and chemical weapons, could not continue imposing its will on the black majority on the one hand, and on the other, the masses of our people were prepared to intensify the struggle and make the country even more ungovernable. The Apartheid Government went to an extent of using chemical and biological weapons against activists opposed to the system (including myself) but without any success. As a result the regime was forced to enter into negotiations to find a political solution to the crisis. It is at this point that we needed a leader like Mandela especially because OR Tambo at that time was not well. I happen to be one of those who went to fetch utata from Victor Verster prison on his release from prison where he had spend twenty seven years of his life. When he emerged from Victor Verster on that historical February

3 month of 1990 he walked out of jail with us following him from behind. For me (and I imagine to all my colleagues who had gone to fetch him from prison) it felt as if he was leading us out of the larger prison of the racist apartheid regime. As we stepped into the street level of Victor Verster we felt like we were stepping into our freedom. From there on no one could ever oppress us or exploit us. Once outside and together with the rest of the leadership of the ANC, he assisted us to pick up enough courage to cross the precarious bridge from a potentially destructive war or conflict to a country of peace and justice. And for this we must thank him. Indeed we remain eternally indebted to him. In this act, he taught us in a practical way lessons in making peace, including banishing bitterness and fear in us; forgiving those who hurt us or caused us pain and those who robbed us of our parents and loved ones; reconciling with our enemies and treating his prison warder like his own son; and working together to build a new non-racial, non-sexist, just and democratic society. We also need to thank God for having given utata umandela a longer life so he can remain a living testimony to us about the noble ideas of peace, reconciliation and justice. He is a living testimony of how one human being can sacrifice his life for others - serving others even at the expense of oneself. In this regard he remains an inspiration to us and to the rest of the global community. He is a living sign that points us in the direction of what humanity can be and what the world could be, only if they could know the things that make for peace.

4 Most South Africans may not be aware of the privileged position they are in to have a global icon amongst them who is honoured by the whole of the international community. I do not know of any leader who has been honoured the way in which Utata has been honoured. In the calendar of the United Nations there are Days, Weeks, Months, Years, Decades, and so forth, that are dedicated to one issue or another or about one cause or another, but there is no Day about an individual (at least as far as I could ascertain) other than that of Mandela. Mandela International Day is thus a unique occurrence and represents the contribution of one individual to humanity which is larger than life. Uma sicula ingoma ye struggle sithi: Nelson Mandela (x2), Akekho of fana naye (Ha hona ya tshwanang le ena: there is no one like him), it is not just a song like it is for others - but it is a reality and we really mean it. No other country has ever produced a Mandela except South Africa! And here in the country he epitomises a particular special breed of leaders who are products of a particular moment in history. This moment of history ; this unique experience emptied them of themselves and made of them more than extraordinary leaders. I would like to characterise this mad moment of history in South Africa (which produced such leaders like Mandela) as a moment of a blatantly immoral racist system which was declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations. It was so immoral that it made it even difficult for relatively privileged people like Mandela (at the time) to resist giving their lives for a cause. He abandoned his legal practice and the comfort of his home and went underground to fight this immoral and brutal system. Above all he was forced to live apart from his

5 family and was never able to bring up his own children in a normal way. Part of the challenge of that moment is that even when you were privileged it targeted you on the basis of the shade of your colour. I must say that it is very difficult to describe this moment of madness in the history of South Africa to the younger generation as it makes no sense. Many cannot believe that such stupidity happened during our life time. I have just returned from Douglas, in the Northern Cape, about a hundred kilometres south-west of Kimberley in the direction of Prieska. There I was made to relive this period of madness anew. When I was told that there were three black residential areas I correctly assumed that they must be historically racially divided communities and I requested that we be taken to all of them to see for ourselves. Indeed these were divided into Koisans or the Griquas, Coloured or Brown (Bruin) and Black African. Oom Koopie, the Councillor from Breipaal (Coloured area) who took us around stopped at a shop of a Black African in Bongani Township. The few minutes we spent there, exposed us to some of the horror stories of the madness of apartheid era. The Koisans, the Coloured and Black African all lived together for a long time until apartheid decided to forcefully move them and settled them in Breipaal and Bongani on the basis of their colour. Imagine a community which had lived together for a long time and inter-married being separated on the basis of the shade of their colour. Families were separated and alienated from each other. In this particular case this Black African man was married to a Coloured woman. When they were forcefully removed they used a pen to run through their hair to determine whether or not they were coloured or white. On that basis the man was separated from his children

6 who went to stay with their Coloured grandmother and the mother decided to join his husband in the Black African area now called Bongani. The old man told this story as if it happened yesterday with pain written in his face. His children had to change their identity and be called by another name to survive this brutality. Given the brutality of this system any rational thinking black person would revolt against this system whatever it took. This included the readiness to sacrifice everything not for just self interest but for the interests of the whole of the community that is the people. In fact as one was sucked into this struggle, detained, tortured, imprisoned or forced into underground or exile, one got emptied of self and self interest. One ceased completely to think about self and focused on the freedom of the people. The ultimate and highest state of this generation of leaders was their readiness to die for the people. Once one reaches this saintly state one does not anymore think about the benefits of a free society for one s self. In anyway one worked on the basis that one would not be alive by then as one s life would have given birth to that society. This is the context (praxis) that made and shaped leaders like Mandela and his generation of leaders like Albert Luthuli, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, and many others. During this centenary year of the people s organisation (the African National Congress (ANC)) when we are called upon to critically reflect on the last hundred years of its existence and determine a way forward to preserve the

7 legacy of this gallant movement of the people, we must confess that the greatest mistake our movement ever made was to assume that the cadre of the movement which is a product of this moment of history was not capable of being changed by the new context where comrades are now in power with all the resources at their disposal. Our experience now is that this moment is characterised by the pursuit of self interest in the form of material gain for self rather than for the people. This challenge notwithstanding, we actually believed, as we still do today, that the cadre of the movement which was produced by that moment of madness of the apartheid system was not corruptible nor was this cadre capable of being compromised. In fact I am one of those who defended the movement during the early part of our democracy, especially against critique from our international partners, civil society, and the international community. I argued strongly that the cadre of the movement (as I perceived it then) was not corruptible and that it was not possible to put such cadres on sale. There was no way they could allow themselves to be bought to serve other interests than the interests of the people. This view was based on experience: that at the height of the struggle elaborate efforts were made nationally and internationally through all possible channels, including intelligence entities, to use money to lure comrades to abandon the struggle and settle with the immoral apartheid design of our country. Even in their poverty they steadfastly refused to be bought or compromised. I argued that we were not on sale!

8 The classical cadre of the liberation movement could not be sold or agree to be put on sale, but now they are on sale and ready to be bought or bribed to serve their own interests or the interests of other agents (criminal) and foreign governments. This they do at the expense of the poor we fought for and many died for. Some easily claim that this was a problem of the post 1994 new cadre of the movement who needs to be put through a political school to make them real cadres of the movement to emulate Mandela, Sisulu, and others. Although political education (Umrabulo) is of absolute necessary to keep the integrity of the movement, the reality on the ground does not support the thesis that the new cadre of the movement is the major cause of the challenges we face in the ANC. The reality is that it is the old cadres of the movement who use the new cadres to pursue their own ( old cadre s) self interests not only at the expense of the people but also at the expense of the new cadre who can be used and then damped when they are no more useful. In the corruption stakes only a few can benefit and not the majority. The rest (majority) has to be sacrificed on the altar of power struggles and corruption. The fear I have is that this trend can quickly turn violent and that we could soon begin to lose comrades who are killed by their own comrades. The struggle today is not a struggle for the liberation of our people or a struggle for people s power to pursue the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). It is a struggle for control of power to secure self interests or to make sure that people commit crimes with impunity. A reading of the stories published in the newspapers or those heard and seen on the electronic media leaves one with the cold feeling that whatever the story (true of false) there is

9 a strategy to neutralise anyone who is a threat to those who have committed crimes or have engaged in corrupt activities. The slogan power to the people or the plural expression Amandla gawethu is turned to Amandla gawame (the power is mine) - power to self. This power which people struggled for at all costs is used against others in pursuit of self interest of for self protection. Here, lies are in order, even if it sacrifices the innocent! Some try to attribute the malice of today as being a result of the sin of incumbency. I agree that there is an element of the sin of incumbency which bedevils the character of the movement. But this does not fully explain the behaviour of comrades who are ready to be corrupt, corrupted and thereby compromised. We underestimate the reality that comrades are human beings (like all human beings) and are capable of doing things they know very well that they should not do, even things that are alien to the movement and its culture or things that are contrary to the policies of the organisation. Whenever I see the reports about corruption, comrades who enrich themselves immorally and unethically, even at the expense of the poor, especially those who voted for them, my heart sinks and makes me to think particularly about all those who sacrificed their lives. My greatest worry is about those who are still alive like Mandela, Cathrada, Mlangeni, Madikizela- Mandela, Shope, Mompati, and many others. If my heart sinks the way it does when I hear about, and see the trends that are bedevilling our movement, what more is it for those who sacrificed so much for the struggle. I am sure that even those who are in their graves turn because of the behaviour of some of our comrades. I imagine that those who are still alive do ask fundamental questions as some of us do from time to time. One of these is Was the

10 sacrifice I made, made in vain? Is this society worth the price I paid and some paid for with their lives? Do these comrades who corrupt the system understand the price we paid for it? The best way to save the veterans of the movement from this pain which could even cause them a heart attack is to turn around the movement now before Mangaung by making radical decisions to clean up our own house and make sure that by the time we reached Mangaung we are able to elect leaders who will save the movement from the trajectory it is following. In the last few months I have had an opportunity to travel the length and breadth of this country because of my two books, No Life of My Own: An Autobiography and Eight Days in September: The Removal of Thabo Mbeki, and I have heard the heartbeat of the nation. Although people may differ about many other things there is a consensus on one thing that we are not where we would want to be or we are not where we should be and that the direction we are pursuing is likely to lead us to self destruction. In the name of utata umandela, and on this centenary year of the ANC, I want to plead with the leadership and members of the ANC that we cannot go to Mangaung as factions of the movement rather than the united organisation we know. We must never repeat Polokwane by electing a faction of leaders within the movement which can only make us poorer. We must ban factional lists and promote open discussions about the best leaders of the movement we can elect in Mangaung. Like Bloemfontein in 1912 let Mangaung be a sign of hope for our people that their organisation has been saved and is ready to serve the people.

11 This is where the legacy of Utata umandela comes in. He has shown us the way and we must follow on his footsteps. If we want to know about the DNA of the ANC we just need to look at the legacy of utata umandela and his generation of leaders, including the departed. The DNA of the ANC will show that the ANC can only be about the people and not about itself and its members only. That the DNA of the ANC is not about the interests of those in power but about those of the poor, including the unemployed and marginalised. An ANC that is not pro-poor cannot be ANC. The DNA of the ANC does not allow for corruption or misuse of public funds and resources. One comrade who was in exile and dealt with money told me that the ANC was a tolerant organisation that is ready to pardon its members, even the most deviant, but there was no pardon for misuse of funds! The greatest challenge though is how the new generation of cadres will know about this legacy without access to this information. How can we preserve the DNA of the ANC if the younger generation struggles to even understand the roles played by veteran leaders like Mandela. How do we make information accessible to them? What is the state of our archives? There are experts who have been tasked to deal with these themes during this Colloquium but I would like to make the following which should be a basis of our discussions for the next day or so. The first challenge is for us to collect all historical documents, statements, speeches, comments, articles, records, recordings, tapes, CDs, VDVs, etc., to be able to complete our story. This will require us to reach out to the whole

12 worlds as the history of the liberation movement and that of our veterans like utata umadiba reached the utter most parts of the world. I am often stopped and made to listen to some of the recorded speeches I made during the struggle in foreign countries. Having listened one only realised how historically important these texts are. In my revised and updated premature autobiography entitled, No Life of My Own, I chose to include a letter from utata unelson Mandela which he wrote from prison expressing concerns about my poisoning by the apartheid security police. Although its relevance in the book is of no doubt another reason I had for publishing it was to preserve it in a way that my filing would not be able to do. The starting point is to have every one of us who were involved in the struggle to collect all the information we have in all its forms and preserve it in the nearest archives we can find. The second dimension involves families and friends who have access to information about a deceased member or members of the family. They should take the trouble to pass over the information to the nearest archives. One of the most urgent tasks is that of interviewing all the veterans to make sure that we preserve the unwritten word. The other place where there is a wealth of information is in funerals of comrades, particularly veterans. I submit that we failed to recognise funerals as collection points of historical material. We must not allow our veterans to go to the grave with the history. The second challenge is that of preserving this information or documents which unfortunately fade away with time unless preserved in a particular specialised form. Four years ago I had an opportunity to unpack my boxes and

13 files with old historical documents and material and I was shocked to find some of them already fading out or damaged. My challenge to all of you today is for us to start writing our own stories rather than wait for someone to write it for us or interview us and then become the primary source for the information. I make this point strongly in my second recently published book entitled, Eight Days in September: the Removal of Thabo Mbeki. We need to learn from our history to ensure that we do not lose the DNA of our liberation movement. The one thing we must promise utata Mandela is that we will not leave your organisation to die or lose its DNA. We will do everything within our power to ensure that corrupt elements amongst us do not lead us astray.