Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi and members of the royal family of the
Bafokeng,
Distinguished guests:
Last month, September 2010, and as we have done during many
years of our liberation, we celebrated our national Heritage Day and Heritage
Month.
Today's gathering here at Phokeng affords me the possibility
to ask the simple question - when we celebrate Heritage Day and Heritage Month,
exactly what are we celebrating?
Eighty years ago, in 1930, the esteemed African American
poet, Countee Cullen, wrote a poem which he entitled "Heritage". Its
opening stanza says:
What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?...
What is Africa to me?
Countee Cullen asked the question - What is Africa to me? -
because the America of his day sought to deny him and his fellow African
Americans their identity and therefore their ability to insist on their
humanity.
Many years later, reporting on the deadly effect of the
assault in that identity, the outstanding African American writer, James
Baldwin, made the statement which surely brings intolerable pain to every
African soul - Nobody knows my name!
I have listened to the painful words spoken by the
inimitable African American singer, Bessie Smith, as she sang the song - Young
Woman's Blues - which includes the lyric:
Some people call me a hobo,
some call me a bum
Nobody knows my name, nobody knows what I've done
I'm as good as any woman in your town
I ain't no high yeller,
I'm a deep killer of brown
Once more the statement was made - Nobody knows my name - by
her who said in colour conscious America, that she was no high yellow, but a
deep colour of brown.
Many years before James Baldwin and Bessie Smith
communicated their heart-rending message that nobody even knew their names, the
eminent African American intellectual, liberation fighter and Pan Africanist,
W.E.B. du Bois, had asked a poignant question, relating to his people and mine
- How does it feel to be a problem? He wrote:
"Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine
own house? ...
"After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman,
the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil,
and gifted with second-sight in this American world - a world which yields him
no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the
revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this
double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the
eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in
amused contempt and pity."
In 1970 the outstanding African American liberation fighter,
Angela Davis, was on trial in the American courts, facing the possibility of a
death sentence.
In that year James Baldwin wrote - An Open Letter to My
Sister, Angela Y. Davis - to convey his solidarity, and said:
"The American triumph - in which the American tragedy
has always been implicit - was to make Black people despise themselves. When I
was little I despised myself; I did not know any better...Black people were
killing each other every Saturday night out on Lenox Avenue (in Harlem), when I
was growing up; and no one explained to them, or to me, that it was intended
that they should; that they were penned where they were, like animals, in order
that they should consider themselves no better than animals. Everything
supported this sense of reality, nothing denied it: and so one was ready, when
it came time to go to work, to be treated as a slave. So one was ready, when human
terrors came, to bow before a white God and beg Jesus for salvation - this same
white God who was unable to raise a finger to do so little as to help you pay
your rent, unable to be awakened in time to help you save your child!...
"The enormous revolution in black consciousness which
has occurred in your generation, my dear sister, means the beginning or the end
of America. Some of us, white and Black, know how great a price has already
been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an
unprecedented nation. If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the
murderers hired in our name.
"If we know, then we must fight for your life as though
it were our own - which it is - and render impassable with our bodies the
corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be
coming for us that night."
Thus, in the end, the Africans in the Diaspora had, through
struggle, brought about a new reality of "a new consciousness, a new
people, an unprecedented nation".
The young in our country have grown up during a new age in
which the old work-spans can no longer be seen toiling hard to construct the
roads and other economic infrastructure, that gave the possibility for our
country to stake its claim to being modern and civilised.
Powerful machines have displaced the serried ranks of
muscular black arms whose rhythmic ascent and descent fractured the earth we
walk, and whose powerful swings, backwards and forward, made mighty mounds of
the soil we call our land.
Thus did the machines thereby banish for ever the curse of
the regime of hard labour, which compelled those to be migrant workers to bow
to the dictates of a merciless master.
The monotonous rhyme of the diesel engine which drives the
mechanical monsters has silenced the human voice which ensured that the picks,
as they rose and fell, and the spades, as they swung to and fro, described a
harmonic movement, black skins at one end and burnished steel at the other.
The voice that has died is the lament at the dust-laden
worksite of the working men which posed a challenge which had to be addressed.
Lead crier and the chorus chanted in counter-point to give
rhythm to the tools of hard labour:
Abelungu...
Ngoodamn...
Basibiza...
OoJim...
Here they stood in their serried ranks, with picks and
shovels in their hands, bare-chested black men who had lost their country to
colonisers who had imposed wars on a people armed with the indigenous spear and
shield and native courage, who, because the spear and the shield could not
vanquish the modern firearms from afar, had lost their land and their freedom.
They proclaimed their wrath that the damned conquerors who
had stolen their country, their land and their freedom sought also to add grave
insult to grave injury by robbing them of their identity as human beings and as
Africans, giving them names which had no meaning and purpose except to summon
them to hard labour.
Both conqueror and conquered knew that the matter of the
unfinished war between them would not end until the vanquished had succumbed
during the second phase, the war of the mind rather than that of the clash of
arms, and thus turned their backs on their identity and accepted to live
forever as creatures with no history, no culture, and no identity except as
imposed on them by the conqueror.
As they chanted - abelungu ngoodamn, basibiza ooJim - our
people made the affirmation that they refused to surrender to the sustained
assault of the military victor during the second phase of the unfinished war,
and therefore that they would forever insist on their own names, with their
unique meanings, Nthabiseng, Thanduxolo, Pandelani, Ntsikayezwe, never and
never Jim.
Thus did they make the statement that, even as they knew
that they had lost their country, their land and their freedom, they refused
that they should lose their identity as Africans.
Well beyond the hearing of the baas and the madam, and as
part of the national refusal to accept domination, the children too recited the
disrespectful nursery rhyme of the black urban streets:
Cheesekop tamatie,
Magundagunda-ntloko,
Lerago laMissis,
Kwasal' inyama yodwa!
The supervisors who presided over the black working men as
they sounded their battle cry - abelungu ngoodamn..., heard and understood what
was said and conveyed their alarm to those who were superior even to them.
Refusing to give up their offensive to transform the
vanquished into the submissive animals they sought to mould in their own
interest, the conquerors made one last and desperate attempt to impose on us an
identity they hoped we would accept, and which would serve their interests, by
separating us into malleable fragments of different ethnic groups, each awarded
a false identity in a Bantustan, seductively described as a homeland.
The cunning experiment failed because the conqueror would
not abandon the practice of labelling each one of us Jim and Jane, regardless
of the new Bantustan identity he wanted us to assume.
I am happy that today I have the possibility once again to
pay tribute to the late Kgosi Edward Patrick Lebone Molotlegi for what he did
to oppose the divisive manoeuvres of the conqueror, to assert our unity as
Africans and a people, to repudiate the balkanisation of our country to
perpetuate our oppression, who thus contributed to the victory of 1994, which
made it possible for all of us proudly to say that South Africa is now a united
and democratic country.
Thus have I arrived at the moment today when I revel in my
authentic names - Nthabiseng, Thanduxolo, Pandelani, Ntsikayezwe, son of
Thlothlalemajwe - with no fear that another will challenge my identity, hoping
that I too would repudiate that identity, agreeing that all I am is simply -
Jim!
To illustrate what I am trying to say, I would like to quote
an evocative text in the Holy Bible which you know, and which relates an
incident in the ancient past which raised sharply the issue of national
identity and the role of heritage in the making of that identity.
I refer her to Psalm 137, which says:
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we
wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a
song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the
songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof
of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of
Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof."
This speaks of a captive people who had been forcibly
transported from their ancestral and spiritual home, Jerusalem and Zion, dumped
in hostile Babylon, and required to repudiate their identity.
The response of the captives, who refused to carry out the
commands of their captors, conveys to us the important message that memory,
heritage and identity assume their real meaning when they belong to the
collective, as unique features of a community, signifying a social memory, a
social heritage and a social identity which even a captive people must fight to
defend and sustain.
The question I would like to pose is - when we celebrate the
public holiday, Heritage Day, and September as our Heritage Month, exactly what
are we celebrating?
Very often we have used Heritage Day to organise events
where we would perform traditional dances and display our varied traditional
forms of dress, convinced that thereby we are responding to what we sought to
achieve when we proclaimed September 24 as a public Heritage Day holiday.
Others among us use this normally pleasant Spring day,
before the summer heat and the thunders and the lightening and the rains drive
us indoors, to entertain ourselves in picnics during which we would favour
ourselves by holding braai's, to serve palates that crave for meat roasted over
an open fire.
In this context I would make bold to say that during the
sixteen years of our liberation, emerging as we did out of a deeply divided and
fractious past, we have not, as yet, formed a common sense of identity which
would inform the social and national cohesion which our country needs.
We have therefore not fully utilised the opportunity
afforded by our National Heritage Days and Months to discover the heritage
which would bring us together to form a new nation bound together by healing
and bridging the divisions of a cruel past.
As South Africans we live together in one country, governed
by one government we combine to elect, represented by National Members of
Parliament who are delegated by all of us, subject to laws overseen by a common
magistracy and judiciary, protected by united national security services,
saluting the same flag and singing the same national anthem.
All this makes the statement that we are one people, one nation,
sharing a common patriotism, inspired by a shared identity and driven by the
realisation that we share a common destiny, and therefore owe one another the
obligation to act together informed by the principle and practice of human
solidarity.
And yet the reality that stares all of us in the face
everyday is that much of what constitutes present day South Africa is still
defined by the long history of conflict which constructed divisive barriers
separating us one from another, rather than bridges linking us together across
the divides of race, colour, ethnicity, gender, belief, age, geographic
dispersal and others.
Recognising and seeking to change this reality, our
Constitution states that:
"We, the people of South Africa, recognise the
injustices of our past, believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in
it, united in our diversity...(and that we are committed to) build a united and
democratic South Africa...(that upholds, among others, the value of)
non-racialism and non-sexism."
Informed by this perspective, we must ask ourselves the
questions and answer them honestly - does South Africa truly belong to all who
live in it? Are we truly united on our diversity? Are we a non-racial and
non-sexist democracy?
The other particular and related questions I would like to
pose today are - are we aware of and act in a manner consistent with a common
and shared identity, informed by a heritage which we recognise as a common and
shared heritage which unites rather than divides us?
I ask these questions because I am convinced that it is not
possible for us to act together in unity to create the social reality of true
unity in diversity and a non-racial and non-sexist society, if we do not share
the binding or uniting sense of national identity which is itself a
non-material or spiritual construct based on a commonly-owned heritage, and
therefore the social memory which serves as the conveyor belt of that heritage.
I know of no nation which acts as such a united and cohesive
entity if it does not share a sense of common identity, a sense of itself as
one nation.
I am certain that, for instance, many of us present here
have experienced the sense of national cohesion shared by the citizens of the
United States, who easily and honestly find it possible to say in their various
ways that they are - proudly American!
This makes it possible for the American public to act
together as one nation to defend the United States whenever they are convinced
that something or somebody poses a threat to what they value as the American
way of life or a threat to the so-called American dream.
I would not hesitate to say that regardless of the divisions
that continue to characterise US society, nevertheless the collective memory of
the American people has communicated to them a powerful message of a shared and
unifying heritage, which has succeeded to give the American nation a binding
national identity.
Yet I know this too, that until America creates the physical
circumstance such that nobody is obliged to ask the painful question - How does
it feel to be a problem! - or state that - Nobody knows my name! - so long will
the process of the complete unification of the American nation not be complete.
I know also that you would find a similar sense of national
identity, pride and self-worth among the Nigerians, who, even as they are venomously
critical of their admitted country's failings, remain - Proudly Nigerian!
To the contrary, during the recent past, which makes the
point about the absence of the uniting sense of national identity of which we
have spoken, we have seen the disintegration of such important states as the
Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Somalia.
These experiences have informed us of the reality that
despite what had seemed to be, underneath the appearance of unity lurked
explosive impulses which contained powerful tendencies towards the separation
of peoples we had assumed had defined themselves as fellow nationals, within
set national borders, rather than distinct human species with mutually
exclusive national identities.
The Khoi people, among the very first in the formation of
the human species, share the belief, which is profound in its meaning, that the
dream of an individual is not truly a dream until or unless it is dreamt by the
whole community. This is because they believe that true dreams are a sacred
message from the Gods.
Thus do dreams become part of the a shared heritage, and
therefore a material force in galvanising and uniting the community to act
together to realise what was promised by the dream, which then becomes both a
prediction and a call to action - in other words, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Therefore, in the context of what I am trying to say, I
would dare say that as a people, during our years of freedom, we have not, as
yet, shared a common dream, as our Khoi ancestors understood and understand
what it means to dream.
Surely this means that we do not, as yet, share a common and
uniting memory and therefore acceptance of a common and uniting heritage.
Tragically this means that we have not as yet arrived at the point when we can
say that as the South African nation, we share a common and uniting identity as
a people.
Therefore I return to the question - what is the heritage we
celebrate when we mark our National Heritage Day and our Heritage Month?
Following on what I have said, I would like to suggest that
perhaps we have used our days of Spring, the September month, subconsciously to
avoid the difficult challenge to draw on the national memory to identify the
common and uniting heritage we need, to help us form our common identity.
Precisely because of our tormented history, it is indeed
very difficult to find this common and uniting memory and therefore the common
and uniting heritage, and consequently achieve the objective of developing a
shared and uniting national identity.
That tormented history has given us different heroes and
heroines, different historical memories to celebrate, different shrines we
would respect as repositories of our soul, different customs we believe
constitute the essence of our being, all of which demonstrates the challenge to
which we must respond, to find the common dream which is dreamt by the whole
nation.
However, and because of this, the question must be posed -
does all this mean that as a nation and a people we are destined never to
discover the common and uniting memory and therefore the uniting heritage,
which would enable us to develop a shared identity?
My own answer to this question is a resounding No!
I am convinced that it is both possible and necessary to
answer the question - what do we mean when we say we are South African, beyond
the fact that we carry a common South African Identity Document?
Over the years I have heard many claims made that, for
instance:
• South Africa
is the rape capital of the world!
• South Africa
has one of the highest rates of the abuse of women and children!
• South Africa
is the crime capital of the world!
• South Africa
is the murder capital of the world!
• South Africa
has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world!
• South Africa
has one of the highest levels of income and wealth inequality in the world!
• South Africa
has the largest number of people infected by HIV and living with AIDS!
• Contrary to the
promise it made at its liberation, South Africa has only recorded rising levels
of poverty for the majority of the population!
I doubt that any of this would make us - Proudly South
African!
All of us know this, that our country faces many challenges,
including those of gross inequality in the distribution of wealth, endemic
poverty, race and gender inequality, violent crime and a serious burden of the
diseases of poverty.
I am also convinced that I, among others, have failed to
communicate to our people and the world the truth that cannot be avoided, that
it will take a considerable period of time, and sustained effort, to eradicate
the centuries-long legacy of colonialism and apartheid, which continues to play
a decisive role in defining the challenges I have just mentioned.
But this I know also, that we have made important progress
in our continuing national struggle to address these challenges.
Unhappy as I am that we have not as yet eradicated the
legacy to which I have referred, which means that millions of our people remain
mired in poverty and intolerable suffering, I am nevertheless proud of the
effort that has been and is being made to confront this legacy, and of the
progress we have achieved, which constitutes part of what makes it possible for
me genuinely to say - I am Proudly South African!
However, that sense of pride in my identity as a South
African cannot be defined merely by the material improvements to the lives of
our people we have made, including the sterling contributions made by the
Bafokeng of Phokeng who have served as pathfinders in terms of the use of our
resources to benefit the many, and restore to them their sense of human
dignity.
Surely there is something else, apart from what might
constitute the achievement of a small distance, the creation of a small space,
away from the poverty which millions inherited, which would entitle us loudly
to proclaim that we are - Proudly South African!
In his poem, An African Elegy, the outstanding Nigerian
novelist, poet and thinker, Ben Okri, said:
We are the miracles that God made
To taste the bitter fruits of Time.
We are precious.
And one day our suffering
Will turn into the wonders of the earth.
We, miraculous creations, precious, suffering, Africans,
have indeed tasted and continue to taste the bitter fruits of Time. And yet we
must bestow on ourselves the gift of hope that what and who we shall be in
future, will cause all humanity to marvel at the wonder of our renaissance.
However that wonder will not be, until and unless we achieve
the condition blessed by our Khoi ancestors, of dreaming a dream that is dreamt
by all.
To get there, we must set ourselves the task to rediscover
our common and uniting memory, which will convey to us our common and uniting
heritage, which will serve as the fount and foundation of our identity.
You may ask, what then are that memory and heritage we must
discover to enable us to define for ourselves our identity as - Proudly South
African!
I believe that we must embed this firmly in our minds that
we are Africans and therefore that we must repossess the universal memory that
we are in fact the cradle of humanity, the ancestral home of all human beings,
and fully understand the import of this reality.
I also believe that we must repossess the memory and
heritage represented by the ancient African civilisations such as those of
Nubia, Egypt, Aksum, Mali, Ghana, Songhay, Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe, which make
a vitally important statement about our African contribution to our own and to
human civilisation.
So too should we reclaim the memory and heritage which tell
of how the Africans of North Africa, including those led by Hannibal, sustained
our independence against the then mightiest of the empires human society had
ever seen, the Roman empire, until the historic African city of Carthage was
destroyed.
We must, as well, re-own the historic victories we won in
Haiti in the African Diaspora in 1804, at Isandlhwana in South Africa in 1879,
in Khartoum in Sudan in 1885, at Adwa in Ethiopia 1896, during the sustained
resistance of the Ashanti of Ghana, and the heroic feats of the Afrikaner
people as they fought British imperialism during the South African or
Anglo-Boer War, all of which evoke the memory of other heroic African military
leaders such as Hannibal, and therefore constitute an important part of our
memory and heritage.
So too should we take ownership, as part of our heritage, of
the immense contribution made by African labour here at home, elsewhere on our
Continent and in the African Diaspora - they who chanted abelungu ngoodamn,
basibiza ooJim - on whose backs was built what became the modern world in
Africa, Europe and the Americas, and continue to this day to add to the wealth
of nations.
Similarly we should highlight this as part of our heritage,
that through struggle we helped to end the era of imperialism and colonialism,
which had dehumanised billons of people in the countries of the South and
elsewhere in the North, such as Ireland.
Similarly we must take ownership of the heroic struggles for
liberty waged by our brothers and sisters in the African Diaspora, including
the sustained struggles of the African Americans which have bequeathed to us
heroes and heroines such as Ned Turner, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass,
W.E.B. du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, as well as the struggles
of the people of Haiti which have enriched us by giving us the gift of such
titans as Toussaint L'Ouverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Alexander Pétion, and
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Neither should we underestimate the importance of the
heritage of Africa's historic contribution in the fields of knowledge in all
disciplines, as well as the creative arts, taking into account the fact of
ancient scholarship in Alexandria and the later universities of Timbuktu; the
African sculptures, such as the Benin Bronzes from Nigeria, which helped to
inform the creative imagination of such modern artists as Picasso; the music
which has inspired jazz and other musical streams; and the writers who have won
Nobel Prizes for Literature, as well as others, as great, who have not, such as
Chinua Achebe, Ousmane Sembene, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Mazisi Kunene, Ingrid
Jonker, Olive Schreiner, N.P. van Wyk Louw, Ayi Kwei Armah and Ben Okri.
Thus when anybody asks us the questions, who and what are
you as Africans, we should take pride in answering confidently that:
as the cradle of humanity, we are the ancestors of all who
are human, regardless of colour and race; we are the offspring of the ancient
civilisations of Egypt and Mapungubwe; we are part of the warrior tradition
which registered historic victories at the gates of Rome, at Port-au-Prince and
Isandlhwana; we are of those whose labour ensured the prosperity of many cities
in Europe and the Americas; for millennia we have contributed to the world new
knowledge and the spiritual fulfilment provided by the arts; and, through our
sacrifices, we brought to an end a whole era in human development which imposed
on the peoples of the world the terrible burdens of slavery, imperialism and
colonialism.
I believe that when we mark National Heritage Day and
Heritage Month, these are some of the African achievements we must celebrate,
which constitute part of the memory which gives us our identity as an important
part of the human family.
So too should we educate ourselves and consciously integrate
in our consciousness everything that constitutes our common and unifying
identity in terms of what has been done in our country since our liberation in
1994.
I refer here specifically to our national symbols, including
our National Orders.
You will bear with me as I now take you through a short
course on the matter of our national symbols, which constitute an important
part of the heritage which gives us our identity, and identify for us the role
models among our people and the peoples of the world we should celebrate and
emulate.
Both our flag and our national anthem represent bold and
creative contributions to our continuing task further to strengthen our
national reconciliation.
How often do we celebrate this reality?
When we undertook the challenging task to adopt other
national symbols, consistent with our transformation into a non-racial
democracy, we strived to achieve the related objectives of developing a common
and unifying identity and celebrating our African heritage.
The discipline of heraldry dictates that any national Coat
of Arms should include a symbol which represents the defence or protection of
the nation. In our case, consistent with our identity as Africans, we chose the
Secretary Bird with its stretched wings, the best hunter of the serpents of the
wild, to symbolise the protection of the nation.
How often do we celebrate this national protector, the
Secretary Bird?
Our National Motto, !ke e: /xarra/ //ke - which means -
diverse people come together, - both pays tribute to the /Xam people among the
Khoi, whose language is now extinct, and again affirms our African identity.
Therefore I ask, when ever, as we celebrate Heritage Day, do
we pay tribute to the Khoi and the San?
To symbolise and celebrate excellence among our people in
terms of our National Orders we chose the powerful image of Mapungubwe. To
symbolise and celebrate beauty we chose the truly beautiful and indigenous
national flower, the strelitzia, known in isiXhosa as Ikhamanga. To symbolise
and celebrate selfless service to our people we chose the mighty tree, the
Baobab.
Again I ask the question - when we celebrate Heritage Day
and Heritage Month, how often do we talk about the symbols which help to define
our unifying identity, Mapungubwe, Ikhamanga and the Baobab, and speak in
praise of the outstanding South African men and women who are members of our
National Orders, and therefore our uniting and defining role models?
How often do we salute the self-explanatory National Orders
of Luthuli and the Companions of O.R. Tambo?
And so you can see that as the new South Africa sought to
determine its own identifying national symbols, from the National Flag and the
National Anthem, through the Coat of Arms, to the National Orders, it reached
deep into our heritage as part of the process of helping to form our national
identity.
I would also like to suggest that to answer the questions -
who and what are we - there is much else our country did as part of our process
of liberation which constitutes an essential element of the heritage we must
take on board as we continue to engage the effort to define our identity.
I refer here also to such post-1994 heritage as the
successful management of the transition from apartheid and white minority rule
to a non-racial democracy; the construction of a new state system on the basis
of the 1996 Constitution which, among other things, creates the possibility for
the resolution of all conflict through peaceful means; the resolution of an
historic conflict which demanded justice through the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission; the cultivation of peaceful communal relations in a diverse society
through such measures as the adoption of 11 official languages; addressing the
socio-economic upliftment of the poor by instituting processes which would use
the resources generated by the developed part of our political economy to
address the needs of the underdeveloped segment of our society; and the
building of new relations of friendship between our country and the rest of our
Continent, Africa, based on the principle of human solidarity.
This heritage is celebrated elsewhere in Africa and
throughout the world as an outcome of global significance, positioning the new
South Africa as an international ‘pilot project' in terms of the successful
management of the resolution of conflicts in diverse societies, earning the
description that it constitutes ‘a miracle'.
And yet we, the parents of this ‘miracle', seem to be
ingloriously oblivious of its meaning and significance, intent to emphasise
what has not been done, as though it could have been done, and yet is in the
process of becoming!
And thus, once again, I return to the question - when we
celebrate Heritage Day and Heritage Month, exactly what do we celebrate?
The failure to implant in the public South African mind the
elements in our heritage which would inspire a common and uniting South African
pride has led to the situation all of us must address, that we have so far not
succeeded to develop or evolve a durable, unifying and inspiring South African
identity.
I accept that each one of us as individuals are naturally
characterised by an amalgam of various identities which, on occasion, might be
in conflict with one another.
However what I seek to urge on all of us and the nation at
large is that, without repudiating our other identities, we must make a special
effort to evolve a South African identity and accept that this identity must
take precedence over all our other identities.
I would like to believe that by now all of us have come to
understand the negative impact of our sustained failure to evolve a South
African identity, which we would accept would take precedence over all our
other identities.
Our failure to achieve these objectives will be inimical to
the construction of the new South Africa which belongs to all who live in it,
united in their diversity, to which all of us claim to be committed.
This will result in the reality that we will continue to see
many South Africans who identify themselves first and foremost in terms of
their race and colour, rather than first of all, as part of a new nation; who
identify themselves first and foremost in terms of their tribal affiliation;
who identify themselves first and foremost in terms of their regional origin;
who identify themselves first and foremost in terms of their personal wealth
and their capacity for flamboyant conspicuous consumption; who identify
themselves first and foremost in terms of their patriarchal superiority over
the women of our country; and who identify themselves first and foremost as a
segment separate and apart from all other Africans on our Continent and the
African Diaspora, rather than first of all, as part of a new nation which is
proudly African.
I am certain that all of us are aware of the pernicious
consequences which have emanated from attachment to the identities I have
mentioned, which deny or repudiate vitally important parts of our shared
heritage, making it impossible for us to develop a proud, common and unifying
South African identity, and thus achieve the objectives contained in our
Constitution.
We must therefore make a deliberate effort to cultivate the
common understanding that the commemoration of our heritage, and therefore the
national identity which this heritage gives us, is not merely a passing matter
which we formally acknowledge by celebrating the annual Public Holiday on
September 24 every year.
I began this Lecture by quoting the esteemed African
American poet, Countee Cullen, who asked himself the question, 80 years ago -
What is Africa to me?
As I come to the close, I dare suggest that we too should
pose this same question to ourselves - What is Africa to me? - and indeed -
What is South Africa to me?
The mere posing of these questions points to the imperative
that we must ensure that our celebration of Heritage Day and Heritage Month,
and our heritage throughout the year assume real meaning, positioning
themselves as part of our conscious effort to redefine our identity as truly
the great people we correctly imagine ourselves to be.
We are fortunate that in this regard we have not only Kgosi
Lebone Molotlegi I to serve as our example, but also his father, Kgosi Manotshe
Molotlegi, who took on the political and economic powers of his day to assert
the rights of the Bafokeng, whose victories have blessed the Bafokeng and our
nation with the progress we enjoy in this part of our country today.
I came here ten-and-a-half-years ago, in April 2000, sadly
to help lay to rest the mortal remains of the young Kgosi Lebone Molotlegi II.
On that occasion, to salute the departed, and to celebrate
the abiding contribution and dedication of the Royal House of the Bafokeng to
the upliftment of our people, I quoted a poem which had been found in the
pocket of an unknown soldier in El Salvador who had perished as he fought for
the freedom of his people.
In that poem the unknown soldier of El Salvador had written:
Ask not my name
Nor if you know me
If the dreams I have had
Will grow without me.
Alive no more
I will go where my dreams have shown me.
Those who carry on the fight
Will plant other roses
All will remember me.
We have gathered here today to honour the memory of the late
Kgosi Edward Patrick Lebone Molotlegi. I am certain that where he is, he too
would repeat the words of the unknown soldier of El Salvador that those who
have followed and will follow him will plant other roses.
Among those roses must surely be the building of the South
African identity of which I have spoken, an identity which would in itself
communicate the message that we must indeed be proudly South African, given
that we are indeed committed to building a humane society based on the
fundamental value of ubuntu that motho ke motho ka motho yo mongwe.
As this will not happen on its own, I can think of no better
champions to take up this mission than you the Bafokeng, who are to me
boMalome, who have for more than a century stood up for what is right, which
has sought to affirm the dignity of all Africans.
Kgosi Lebone Molotlegi I has gone where his dream has shown
him, confident that all of us will remember him.
To remember him means that we have to strive to walk in his
footsteps as one of the architects of the new South Africa which must be founded
on an elevating and unifying national identity, and therefore have a strong
sense of social and national cohesion, which would be inspired by the values of
ubuntu.
Our act of remembrance of our late and esteemed leader and
guide must find expression in a labour of love we must perform everyday, of
planting other roses, to add to the rose garden he bestowed to us as our
heritage.
Thus should the glorious colours and the fragrance of the
roses we plant everyday, in honour of Kgosi Edward Patrick Lebone Molotlegi,
answer the question which Countee Cullen posed eight decades ago - What is
Africa to me? - making it impossible that any African anywhere should say -
Nobody knows my name! - or oblige us to chant that abelungu ngoodamn!
The fragrance of the flowers we must plant must help us to
dream a dream that is dreamt by our people as a whole; bring to their end the
long years during which we hanged our harps upon the willows of Babylon,
refusing to celebrate the denial of our common identity; and cause the birth of
the moment when our suffering, both black and white, will turn into the wonders
of the earth.
Then will it no longer be necessary to ask the simple
question - when we celebrate Heritage Day and Heritage Month, exactly what are
we celebrating?
Thank you.
