On the 8th of May,
1996, Deputy-President Thabo Mbeki addressed parliament.
It was on this day that he
delivered a message that would define a generation. That would stand the test
of time, like the photo we just took.
He
said: “I am an African.”
He said: “I owe my being to
the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the
flowers and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land.”
I owe my existence to the
Khoisan, the Dutch settlers, Malay immigrants, and the kingdoms of our nation’s
interior.
He was an African.
I am an African.
You are Africans as well.
Wayengum-Afrika.
Nne
ndi mu Afrikani.
Le
lona lebathu ba Afrika.
To be African is not to hold
a passport. It is not living on the continent. It is not being part of a
certain race, tribe, or faith. It
is something in us all.
We
are all African, because we have been bathed in the African spirit.
This is a spirit of suffering
and hardship. But it is also a spirit of strength and resilience. A spirit of
love. A spirit of victory in the face of impossible odds.
This spirit of unity was with
Tsietsie Mashinini when he organized the students of Orlando High, on that
fateful day of June 16th.
It was this spirit of having
our own identity that led Steve Biko to renew our African consciousness.
It was this spirit of
defiance that led our youth onto the streets in 1976. It was this spirit that
was burned into our hearts, when Hector Pieterson was shot dead.
Hector was 12 when he was
slain, and he was not even the youngest. These students rose up because they
saw the injustice of their society. Earlier, I spoke in 3 different languages,
and many of you didn’t understand a single word. This is how they felt when
they, and their teachers, could not understand their medium of instruction.
But this spirit of
self-determination led them to fight for what was theirs.
Their blood was spilled by
their fellow South Africans, but the spirit remained resolute. The struggle carried
on, and still carries on, through us.
We are now at the helm. We,
the youth, are soon going to carry the mantle of this spirit. We can choose to
let it wither away into the footnotes of history, or we can choose to carry on
the struggle: the struggle against racism, the struggle against exploitation,
income inequality, violence against women, and all the other plagues that have
infested themselves in our land.
In the prayer for Africa, we
call on God to “restore our dignity.” But this dignity was never lost
completely. This dignity is the African spirit. All we have to do is live it.
Ngiyabonga
Dankie
Kialiboga
Thank you.
By Matthew Field ©
