20/05/2013
I am an African!
I owe by 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 dramatic shapes of the [landscape]
have… 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! …
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… 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 have seen our country torn asunder as …
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 it 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…
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… As an
African, this is an achievement of which I am
proud, proud without reservation and proud
without any feeling of conceit…
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…
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 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!
