Ubuntu Seminar, Boschendal
19 November 2007
Thank you, programme director
Former President, Kenneth Kaunda
Mr Whitey Jacobs
Advocate Macontywa
Traditional leaders here present
Honoured guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Heritage is one of the primary sources of identity, imparting to communities
a sense of belonging. That South Africa is culturally diverse is readily
recognised. Less evident is the strengths our society can derive from that
diversity.
Our South African heritage draws on three continents and that must be
readily accepted as the verdict of history. Today I wish to draw attention to
humanity that affirms the dignity and worth of all people, based on our human
capacity to reason, as the connecting thread among these traditions.
The African dimension is best expressed in the widely held value derived
from pre-colonial Africa: "Umntu, ngumntu ngabantu", you affirm your own
humanity by recognising the humanity of others.
From Europe, along with much of the muck of colonial and racial domination,
South Africa also imported the ideas and values associated with the European
Renaissance and the enlightenment. The bearers of these ideals more often than
not were Christian missionaries as well as a few persons of letters, like
Thomas Pringle, who immigrated to South Africa during the 19th century and
helped light the torch of press freedom in our country. Later immigrants
brought with them other humanist traditions from various parts of Europe.
In addition to the slaves the Dutch imported to South Africa from East Asia,
these unwilling immigrants carried in their baggage the Islamic faith and the
intellectual traditions associated with it. A second wave of immigrants from
Asia during the latter half of the 19th century were the Indian indentured
labourers and free passengers, to whom South Africa owes Mahatma Gandhi, who
arrived in our country as an eager young barrister but left it as the 20th
century's best known freedom fighter.
What we call "South African" is the outcome this dynamic interaction, over
some three centuries, among three major streams of human experience on African
shores.
The Dutch settlers who began arriving in South Africa after 1652 were the
agents of the Dutch East Indian Company (DEIC). They came from a Netherlands
that had recently thrown off the Spanish yoke and was emerging as one of
Western Europe's leading trading nations and as a maritime power. The spice
trade with South East Asia was the primary business of the DEIC and the
settlement at the Cape was originally conceived to facilitate that trade. Like
virtually all of the European colonial powers, the DEIC used its colonies to
address a number of social and political problems in its home country. The more
motivated among its poorer classes, the non-assailable immigrants from other
parts of Europe, the criminal elements, as well as adventurers of all stripes
were the people exported to the colonies. Most of these persons and their
families were from the non-propertied classes in the Netherlands. Others were
fugitives from religious persecution like the French Huguenots, others had been
mercenaries in the employ of the DEIC, yet others were bold spirits who felt
they could carve out a future for themselves in the colonies.
The contradictory impact of colonialism on pre-colonial societies can be
discerned even during those first two centuries of Dutch over lordship in South
Africa. The Netherlands that spawned the first European settlers in South
Africa was a Protestant country. Consequently it had become the home of many
others from Europe whose religious beliefs were suspect or who were the victims
of persecution. Baruch Spinoza, the sage of Amsterdam, was originally a Spanish
Jew. In Spain where the inquisition was very active, someone of his faith could
not have survived, except by conversion to Christianity. The Spinoza family
tried every sort of artifice to escape the unwelcome attentions of the
inquisitors, but the best assurance was settling in Amsterdam, after the
Spanish had been driven out. There Spinoza was allowed to practice his religion
freely.
After the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685), the Protestants of France were once
again subjected to renewed persecution as non-Catholics. They too found refuge
in the Protestant Netherlands from whence they fanned out, some going to the
British colonies in the Americas, some to South Africa. They settled in these
valleys of the Cape and have left their imprint on them, wine, place names and
the cuisine.
But this very enlightened attitude of religious tolerance had its obverse
face. The Dutch Protestants found it unacceptable to enslave fellow Christians,
but the enslavement of Muslims and the adherents of other religions were
common. Thus, in the Cape, the Dutch settlers undertook no missionary work
among the indigenous people, let alone try to convert their slaves drawn from
South East Asia, the Indian Ocean Islands, India and Sri Lanka. Islam
consequently became an attractive option for many slaves in the Cape.
The first mission work among the indigenous Khoikhoi was undertaken by
missionaries from the Moravian church, who established a mission station, whose
tri-centennial we are marking this year, at Genadendal. Being the direct
off-spring of the Taborite movement led by John Huss in the country then known
as Bohemia, the Moravians preached an egalitarian doctrine. Genadendal thus
became not only an early outpost of Christianity, but also a safe haven for
runaway slaves, for the marginalised, like the impoverished among the
Khoi-khoi, within the emergent Dutch colony. Genadendal was also the
well-spring of progressive ideas in South Africa.
Honoured guests
Ladies and gentlemen
The struggle against colonial domination and racial oppression is an
important dimension of our South African heritage, which has its roots in the
triple heritage of our country. In the two great ethical and moral traditions
we have been bequeathed from the Middle East and Europe, the
Judeo-Christain-Muslim and the Greek, are the two mythical figures of Adam and
Prometheus. There is no need to recount the stories about these two as I am
certain we are all familiar with them. In the respective traditions from which
they derive, both Adam and Prometheus are cast as sinners, or as
disobedient.
By eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam commits the gravest act
of hubris, and is judged as aspiring to be like God. That ends the age of
innocence for himself and Eve, and they are both cast out from the Garden of
Eden and have to earn their living by the sweat of their brows. By being forced
to work to earn a living Adam, Eve and their off-spring commence the process of
adapting the world around them to themselves, rather than they, like other
animals, adapting to their environment.
Prometheus too is guilty of this heinous crime. He steals the secret of how
to tame fire from the Gods, and hands it to humankind, thus emancipating the
human race from darkness. Once tamed, fire ceases to be a threat, but becomes
one of humankind's most effective instruments. With fire humanity could fend
off the cold of night and winter. Fire enabled humanity to smelt metals. And,
like Adam and his off-spring is better able to change the world to suit
himself. For his hubris, Prometheus is chained to the rock where the vulture
pecks at his liver!
Both these traditions sanction an act of disobedience as deliverance from
human pre-history, thus planting the seed of a key humanist value, the
imperative to test the validity of any idea, institution or practice through
our power to reason rather than on the basis of faith.
One of the dreadful ironies of this first decade of the 21st century is the
extent to which the very existence of the humanity today is threatened by the
countervailing power of blind faith which might well culminate in an act of
obedience, some poor misguided soul, who will plead, "I was merely following
orders" and press a button that could destroy us all.
The vision of a new South Africa derived from the struggle for freedom had
evolved over the second half of the 19th century. The African, Indian and
Coloured political movements that pioneered the democratic struggle in South
Africa were initially led by an educated elite who had embraced modernism as
universal.
"Modernism" has been used in two senses, one technological, the other
socio-political. Its technological dimension assumed humanity would
incrementally attain mastery over nature by the application of science and
technology. This is a view rooted in the belief that, provided it is not
circumscribed by either secular or clerical authority, human endeavour has
unlimited possibilities.
Modernism is also rationalist, asserting that reasoned debate, inquiry and
investigation are the only reliable basis of human knowledge. Modernism in
South Africa had two loci. One was the urban areas, where modern technology was
visibly opening new frontiers and drawing millions of blacks into a vast
economic system that spans the world. The other was the school room, where the
elite itself had acquired the knowledge and skills, as well as the self
confidence to challenge the white rulers on their own terms.
The black political elites advocated a society in which the ability and
worth of a person would be judged on the basis of their performance rather than
ascribed from some alleged racial characteristics. Such a society, they
believed, would encourage progress by rewarding talent, black or white.
The political leadership of the black working class has also been
unabashedly modernist. The working class, like the productive forces it mans,
is the object of a continuing process of renewal, improvement and refinement.
The demands and rhythms of the economy require that the working class
constantly change and adapt itself to technological progress. Thus while not
denying the brutalising impact of industrialisation on pre-capitalist African
societies; the working class leadership have preferred to focus on
industrialisation's transformative and progressive aspects.
But progress is not a comfortable journey. It disrupted the lives of entire
communities and continuous, often rapid change produced profound uncertainties.
Because people tend to prefer the predictability of the known present to the
maelstrom of change, large sections of society have recourse to tradition and
its symbols for warmth and comfort. The rationalist bias of modernism includes
the interrogation of traditional belief systems, customs and accepted
mores.
Such questioning inevitably also undermined the colonial order by subjecting
authority to the scrutiny of reason. South Africa's Asian heritage introduced
and pioneered radically new ways of engaging with illegitimate power. The
methods of conducting political struggle that have been employed by the
oppressed people of South Africa have a very interesting pedigree. What is
more, it is important to underline that these tactics were actually conceived
and first tested on South African soil!
"Satyagraha", the quest for truth and right by bearing witness, was
conceived by Mohandas Gandhi, a young Indian lawyer, when the authorities in
the Transvaal colony, as it was then called, imposed Pass Laws on the Indian
people. That was 100 years ago. Satyagraha, as a concept and as a means of
waging struggle, would have withered on the vine had it not been for the
response Gandhi received from the Indian population of South Africa.
Civil disobedience, that is deliberately breaking a law in order to make it
unworkable and unenforceable, was first tested by the thousands who responded
to Gandhi's call in 1907.
The power of Satyagraha lay in the willingness of the practitioner to endure
physical, psychological and emotional pain, even humiliation. It taught the
practitioner how to conquer fear and to transcend self pity. It is the
expression of a different type of courage that does not require bravado, but
relies on a profound sense of self-confidence, not only in one's self, but also
in the justice of one's cause!
Those first volunteers, whose numbers were swelled by others when they were
carted off to jail, had no way of knowing that they had set in train a movement
that was to sweep the world. From them sprang the millions who followed Gandhi
when he returned to India; the thousands who followed Nelson Mandela, when as
Volunteer-in-Chief, he led the Defiance Campaign in 1952; the millions who
followed Martin Luther King, first in the Montgomery Bus Boycott then in
thousands of other campaigns, big and small, that we refer to as the Civil
Rights Movement in the United States of America; the millions who year after
year marched from Aldermaston to London until the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
was signed; the thousands who clog the streets in our day during meetings of
the G8 and the World Trade Organisation to protest the inequitable terms of
trade imposed on the developing countries.
Civil disobedience is a proudly South African product and South Africa owes
it to its citizens of Indian descent! As Gandhi explained: "The doctrine came
to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent",
but it is important to underscore, that in virtually every struggle for
freedom, apart from the structural violence of oppression, the main source of
violence has invariably been the oppressor and not the oppressed.
Humanism, reason and modernism per se, might well be sound, but their social
and political relevance arises only in a context where illegitimate authority
can be persuaded to submit to them. The post-enlightenment political ideals of
popular sovereignty, government by the consent of the governed, and equality
before the law collided directly with the institutions of colonialism. To
modernists, the corollary of the notion that some people are born to rule
(either by virtue of their race or familial descent), is that others are born
to be ruled. Equality of all humans, the foundational principle of every
struggle against imperial power, let us recall, was first pronounced in the
American War of Independence.
These principles interrogated the moral basis of both colonial domination
and the legitimacy of traditional rulers. Satyagraha, viewed from this
perspective, is as subversive as the actions of Adam and Prometheus. But its
purpose is to compel the illegitimate ruler or government to recognise the
humanity of those they had subjugated.
South Africa's triple heritage has imparted to our country many of its
distinctive features. It is visible in the architecture of the South African
landscape, that bears the features of the three continents; we find it in our
South Africa cuisine where the textures, aromas and tastes of Africa, Asia and
Europe have been melded into something new or co-exist comfortably side by
side; it is best expressed in the Afrikaans language, a language that evolved
in the mouths of Asian slaves, indigenous Khoikhoi and the Africans as they
adapted the lingua franca of the slave quarters, Dutch, to their own uses. But
its finest fruit is the struggle for freedom and democracy which drew on the
best in all three these traditions to bring an end to apartheid.
Humanism proceeds from the premise that all human life is of equal value and
esteem. Hence the emphasis we continuously lay on the pre-colonial African
ethos that holds, "Umntu, ngumntu, ngabantu", you affirm your own humanity by
recognising the humanity of others). We find the same conception of humanity
underscored in the writings of a 19th century social and political philosopher
who was voted the most influential thinker of the second millennium after the
.Death of Christ by the audiences of the BBC World Services: "To be radical is
to grasp the root of the matter. But for humanity the root is humanity itself
hence the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in whom humans are
debased, enslaved forsaken, despicable beings".
It was such transcendent values that motivated a party like the United
Independence Party (UNIP) of Zambia to throw open the doors to wave after wave
of African freedom fighters from all over Southern Africa.
In this region, every liberation movement worth its salt found a home on the
soil of Zambia, under the leadership of that illustrious son of Africa, Dr
Kenneth David Kaunda. For its contribution to the African liberation struggle,
Zambia suffered every form of overt and covert aggression. Those of us who
personally were beneficiaries of Zambian hospitality, will be eternally
grateful to the Zambian people for the sacrifices they made on our behalf.
Ubuntu, that is humanism, in the South Africa of today, necessarily has to
incorporate and embrace all the healthy elements of humanism, conscious of the
reality that its roots lie in many different parts of the globe.
Issued by: Department of Arts and Culture
19 November 2007
Source: Department of Arts and Culture (http://www.dac.gov.za)
