I find it comforting to call him My African President and I say this with pride, admiration and respect for this incredibly intelligent liberal son of Africa. His humanitarian work throughout Africa leaves so much to desire.
The famous, probably the greatest African speech thus far was written way back on 8th May 1996 on behalf of the African National Congress (ANC). Every time I read this well written piece of work, I'm moved by the flawlessness in his words, and how passionately he delivered it but above all, it reminds me of who I am as an African. So, need I say I am an African?!
He started off with, "Friends, on an occasion, such as this, we should, perhaps start from the beginning. So, let me begin".
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…
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!
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!
This
speech gives me goose bumps! What a speech?!
