Former South African president and first living person to be made an honourary Canadian citizen, Nelson Mandela, smiles during an interview with the media at his house in Qunu, rural southeastern South Africa, Friday, July 18, 2008. (AP / Themba Hadebe)
A child stands in front of a cake made in honour of former South African President Nelson Mandela during his 90th birthday celebration on Robben Island, South Africa, Friday, July 18, 2008. (AP / Schalk van Zuydam)
18 July 2008
Kgalema Motlanthe
Cape Town
South Africa
Allow me to join the millions of our people and the people of the world who proclaim their respect and admiration for our leader and former President of South Africa, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.
His birthday is on 18 July and that is a special day in his life. And we wish him many happier returns as well as bountiful good health. But to us, every day of his life is very precious. Therefore we celebrate today, we will celebrate tomorrow, we will celebrate on 18 July, we will celebrate on 2 August, when the ANC hosts a rally in his honour, and of course, generations to come will celebrate his centenary and for ever thereafter.
Throughout his life, Mandela, has been in harness of the struggle for liberation from colonialism and national oppression. From his predecessors he learned about discipline, dedication, humility and sacrifice. He learned never to demand of others what he himself would not be prepared to do.
As a student he involved himself in the struggles of students and that resulted in his expulsion from Fort Hare University. He played an active part in the formation of the ANC youth league in 1944. He was instrumental in crafting and canvassing support for the adoption of the Programme of Action at the 35th National Conference of the ANC in 1949.
He became the volunteer in chief during the 1952 Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. He was among those charged for sedition. He was banned and debarred from participating in meetings and conferences of the ANC. He was one of 157 treason trialists in 1956. I say 157 because the Guardian newspaper was also an accused in that trial.
When time for armed struggle came he led from the front and was among the first of our militants to receive military training in Algeria. He became the commander in chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). He was the first accused in the Rivonia Trial and was sentenced to life imprisonment which he served on Robben Island and Pollsmoor prison.
For all of the 27 years that he spent behind bars, his family was subjected to unrelenting persecution and harassment at the hands of the state security branch.
The movement waged the struggle under four pillars; the first being the international mobilisation and isolation of the apartheid regime and the second being the legal mass work, and the third being the underground organisation, and the fourth being the armed struggle.
It was once the regime banned the ANC that 48 years of peaceful forms of struggle came to an end. As Nelson Mandela put it, the leadership took the view that "there comes a time in the life of every nation when the choice is to surrender or to continue the struggle", and the choice they made was to continue the struggle.
Mandela participated in all those four pillars. That is why he is so special in our hearts, because he was the first to be sent by the movement to prepare the ground for those who would end up in exile. And he taught most of the African states that were on the eve of attaining their independence from colonisation about our struggle. He addressed the first meeting of PAFMECSA, which preceded the formation of the Organisation of African Unity.
His comrade, friend, brother and partner at law, Oliver Tambo, led the campaign for the isolation of the apartheid regime. Not once did Oliver Tambo accept an award in his own right and his own name because he understood the power and the symbolism of those who were behind bars. Everywhere he went all the awards were received in the name of Nelson Mandela.
It is those efforts by Oliver Tambo which made Nelson Mandela an international icon, a world-renowned struggle leader and revolutionary.
Nelson Mandela waded through his years in prison with fortitude and remained an inspiration to those of us who were young; remained an inspiration to our combatants in the camps; and remained an inspiration to our people, even in the remotest of villages.
It was from that same prison confinement that he initiated discussions with the regime. The first meeting was with Kobie Coetzee, who was Minister of Justice, to communicate to him the very important message that when all is said and done, the struggle of our people was surely going to triumph. That was the beginning of the talks about talks. So, Mandela, having played a leading role in the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, in the recruitment of combatants, took up arms not because he was a violent person; he took up arms because it was necessary to defeat the monster of apartheid.
Our historical obligation
In his poem, To Posterity, the world-renowned German poet Bertolt Brecht says, "To those who shall emerge from this flood into which we are sinking" remember that those who took up arms did so in order "to lay down the foundation of kindness". But they themselves could not be kind because they had to confront a brutal regime. Therefore, to the younger generations, to posterity, to those of us who have benefited from the efforts of the generation of Nelson Mandela, we have to choose very carefully our historical obligation, because we cannot take up arms when we have a democratic constitution and country.
Mandela led in efforts to attain the strategic objective of uniting our people and he bent backwards at certain times - even at the risk of being criticised by some among our own ranks. He bent backwards to reach out to the former ruling bloc, which oppressed us, which discriminated against us. He gave meaning to the preamble of the Freedom Charter when it says: South Africa belongs to all who live in it - black and white - and that no government can claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people. He gave meaning to that very, very important aspiration of our people articulated at the Congress of the People in 1955.
Every generation has to select for itself its own historical obligations. Our obligation is to build a united democratic, non-sexist, non-racist, and prosperous South Africa. If all of us put our efforts towards the attainment of this objective, our children will inherit a prosperous democratic, non-racial, non-sexist country.
Currently we are facing grinding poverty and unemployment. The continent and other parts of the world face wars and violent crimes, malnutrition and disease, HIV and AIDS, climate change and natural disasters, land hunger and homelessness, ignorance and lack of skills, inequality and discrimination, sexism and ethnic chauvinism, spiraling inflation and debts. These converge and conspire to produce an environment which is very similar to what Bertolt Brecht described in his poem when he said, "To those of you who shall emerge from this flood into which we are sinking", because it leaves many people with a sense that we are sinking into a flood of all of these negative happenings. It is the burden of leadership to wade through all of these challenges and remain positive in a way which inspires our people.
Nelson Mandela has had a very rich life. Even when he said he was retiring from government and the leadership of the movement, all he meant was that he was slowing down, because he did not retire. He continued to mobilise resources to build schools in remote villages where there are no schools; where children still learn under trees.
I cannot forget how, once, he took me with him to Zeerust where the community had only one high school and they were, therefore, compelled to resort to a platoon system of learning: two schools, in essence, with two sets of teachers, two principals who had to share one building.
Nelson Mandela showed his passion and I remember when the little aircraft that we were flying in landed on the landing strip outside of Zeerust. Because he was President of the Republic, the military was there to protect him and they had taken up positions behind the shrubs and the trees. As he emerged from the aircraft, in his own style he walked straight to one that he saw under a tree, shot out his hand and said: "How are you? How are you?" As he was shaking that hand, he saw the other one, went to him and said: "How are you? How are you?"
To the chagrin of the commanders of that platoon, he left them in complete disarray, but out of the power of love and compassion.
Kgalema Motlanthe is the Deputy President of the ANC. This is an edited extract from a speech in the National Assembly on the 90th birthday of Nelson Mandela.
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