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.
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 in 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!
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!
Today it feels good to be
an African.
~ Thabo Mbeki ~
