Honourable MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Mlibo Qoboshiyane,
MEC Phumulo Masualle,
Mayor of the King Sabatha Dalindyebo Municipality,
Mayor N Ngqongwa,
Chief Mandla Mandela (A!),
Traditional leaders present here today,
Councillors,
Leadership of the African National Congress in the province,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen.
Happy 93rd Birthday Madiba, a product of the African National Congress.
"I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." 1964.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is most fitting and appropriate for us start this part of the programme with a reflection on this quotation. These words are as relevant today, 47 years later, as they were in 1964 when the great Madiba said them from the dock. This noble vision, contained in these words, gave birth to the transition from apartheid to democracy which many in the world saluted as a miracle. It informed the things Madiba and his comrades did to build our new democracy, all focused on achieving the goal of creating a new South Africa that belongs to all, a South Africa that is governed by the people, a country that is at peace with itself and its neighbours.
To have a person of Nelson Mandela’s standing is not an accident of history, nor manufactured in the press, but a deliberate and consistent effort undertaken by his organisation to produce leaders of such character. Perhaps it is important to remind ourselves and the nation for that matter, about the road taken by Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Anton Lembede, Govan Mbeki and Oliver Tambo to mention but a few.
It was during the years of the Second World War that a small group of young Africans, members of the ANC, banded together under the leadership of Anton Lembede. Among them were William Nkomo, Walter Sisulu, Oliver R Tambo, Ashby P Mda and Nelson Mandela. Starting out with 60 members, concentrated around the Witwatersrand, these young people set themselves the formidable task of transforming the ANC into a mass movement, deriving its strength and motivation from the unlettered millions of black workers in the towns and countryside, the peasants in the rural areas and the radical intelligentsia.
Their chief contention was that the `old guard` leadership of the ANC, reared in the tradition of constitutional struggle and polite petitioning of the government of the day, was proving inadequate to the tasks of national emancipation. Their strategy, these young revolutionaries contended, rested on a misconception of the actual power relations in South African society, consequently the tactics they had evolved failed to galvanise the masses of the black oppressed. In opposition to the 'old guard', Lembede and his colleagues espoused a revolutionary African Nationalism grounded in the principle of national self-determination.
In September 1944 they came together and founded the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL or CYL). Mandela impressed his peers by his disciplined work and consistent effort. He was elected as Secretary of the Youth League in 1947. By painstaking work campaigning at the grassroots and through its mouthpiece, Inyaniso (Truth), the CYL was able to win support for its policies amongst the broad ANC membership.
At the 1945 annual conference of the ANC, two of the Youth League leaders, Anton Lembede and Ashby Mda, were elected on to the National Executive Committee. Two years later another CYL leader, OR Tambo, became a member of the NEC. At the 1949 annual conference, the Programme of Action, inspired by the Youth League, was adopted.
It was this set of youthful leaders and the thousands of members who supported them who prepared the ANC for the decade that followed, the 'Fighting Fifties', during which the ANC led massive non-violent campaigns and became the acknowledged leader of the movement for liberation. It was the struggles of that decade that tempered Nelson Mandela into a national leader.
Almost 60 years later, and in keeping with the spirit of those gallant fighters and the values they lived for, the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) joins millions around the country, around the world, bringing one of the key pillars of the Local Government Turn Around Strategy to the hometown of Madiba. Under the banner of Clean Cities and Towns campaign, we are here to make our contribution to making Mthatha a cleaner and safer town. In collaboration with another CoGTA programme, the Community Works Programme (CWP), the Clean Cities & Towns Campaign has created at least 40 sustainable jobs in Mbhashe Local Municipality (Elliotdale). At the Ingquza Hill Local Municipality, which comprises of Flagstaff and Lusikisiki towns, the communities benefited from 100 sustainable jobs that were created during the roll-out of this programme.
The CWP provides access to a minimum level of regular work on an ongoing and predictable basis for those unable to access other opportunities. In practice, it offers 2 days of work per week at R60 per day; providing 100 days of work per person spread throughout the year, at sites of 1,000 people. The work is prioritised at local level, and must contribute to improving the quality of life in communities. This programme is even more relevant for this region where the Economically Active Population (15-64 years) comprises 54% of the municipal population of which 64% are within the ages of 15-34. The youth of ages 15-24 make up 42% of the Economically Active Population. The fact that the half of the KSD population is below 15 years of age makes the picture even grimmer, and the need to accelerate poverty reduction more urgent. A staggering 127 566, or some 55% of the labour force was classified as not economically active. The CWP and Clean Cities & Towns campaign are the kind of interventions that keep the vision of Mandela and his comrades from the 50’s alive today.
Ladies and gentlemen, in heeding the global call that has been made in honour of Cde Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela today, we are rolling up our sleeves to clean up the town of Mthatha. In addition, we will plant trees at the St John’s College, Jonguhlanga, Ngangelizwe and Mkhathini high schools. With local labour sourced through the CWP, we will also paint Ngangelizwe High School. Both programmes, ladies and gentlemen, are part of government’s strategy to scale up public employment while maintaining cleaner and safer environments for our communities. For both initiatives to bear the fruit they were intended to yield, each one of us needs to find time in our lives, daily, to give of our time towards the building of a better life for all. Working together, we can indeed achieve this noble goal.
Today the whole world stands with South Africa to do all these things for just 67-minutes in honour of Mandela. Madiba and his comrades gave up so much because they wanted to create a society that the African National Congress had envisioned. For his activities, Nelson Mandela earned the ire of the apartheid government, its propagandists and its supporters for precisely the same reasons as he was loved and admired by the oppressed and exploited.
Because he was nurtured in the culture of the African National Congress, an organisation that has demonstrated throughout its history that it believes in collective leadership, Tata Madiba is uncomfortable with accolades, which credit him for all the successes of our struggle. He made this very clear in his Pretoria trial in 1962, when he said: "It has been suggested that the advances, the articulateness of our people, the successes which they are achieving here, and the recognition which they are winning both here and abroad are in some way the result of my work.
"I must place on record my belief that I have been only one in a large army of people, to all of whom the credit for any success of achievement is due. Advance and progress is not the result of my work alone, but of the collective work of my colleagues and I, both here and abroad". Madiba continues to say: "I have been fortunate throughout my political life to work together with colleagues whose abilities and contributions to the cause of my people`s freedom have been greater and better than my own, people who have been loved and respected by the African population generally, as a result of the dedicated way in which they have fought for freedom and for peace and justice in this country"
Addressing the same question, the Vietnamese revolutionary intellectual, Le Duan says, “There is dialectical interrelationship between cadres and the revolutionary movement of the masses. A cadre’s life is lived within a framework of multifaceted relationships. It is these relationships, which makes a cadre, a cadre. In this relationship, a cadre is at the same time cause and effect. Conversely a cadre is at the same time effect and cause. A cadre cannot be conceived outside of an organisation, for a cadre is an element of an organisation”.
The attempt by those who deliberately and out of sheer ignorance or arrogance refuse to accept where Madiba comes from will always grope in the dark hoping to find a better definition.
Tat' uNelson Mandela and the ANC are one. He shaped the ANC and in-turn it shaped him. His legacy continues to live in the ANC, through the ANC and society and, this relationship will forever remain as such, inseparable. No one can tell the story of one without the other.
The assertion by those that Madiba belongs to all is indeed correct. However, we should not attempt to remove him from his roots, the African National Congress.Throughout the period since its formation in 1912, the African National Congress has demonstrated an exceptional ability to produce leaders of note who go on to play prominent roles in society.
Madiba comes from a long line of great leaders in the African National Congress. Amongst others we can name, Langalibalele Dube, Sol Plaatjie, Pixley KaIsaka Seme, Sefako Makgatho, Josiah Gumede, Charlotte Maxeke, Alfred Xuma, Inkosi Albert Luthuli, Moses Kotane, Moses Mabhida, JB Marks, Yusuf Dadoo, Joe Slovo, Walter Sisulu and OR Tambo to mention just a few. This is our contribution to society, and we will continue to make this contribution.
We may, today, cushioned by the guarantees provided by the victory of the Democratic Revolution, speak of the victory of the values and vision for which Nelson Mandela and his comrades stood for, as though their realisation did not require sustained and selfless attachment to principle by those, like Nelson Mandela and his comrades, whom we celebrate as our liberators.
Today we are united as a nation to celebrate the life of a colossus, a true humanitarian and selfless leader of our people, President Nelson Mandela.
We say Happy Birthday Madiba, and commit ourselves to give meaning to this message of friendship and goodwill and hope. We commit ourselves, to work for the realisation of the goals of a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa. We will continue to work hard to eradicate the poverty that continues to afflict millions of our people.
Madiba was awarded the accolade Isithwalandwe-Seaparankoe by the decision of the National Executive Committee of the ANC for distinguished service in the liberation movement. He earned it, in the first instance, as a militant of the national liberation movement. He earned it as a founding member of the African National Congress Youth League and he earned it as a founding member and the first Commander in Chief of Umkhonto weSizwe. He earned it, as the first democratically elected President of a democratic South Africa.
Nelson Mandela personifies struggle. He is a symbol of the fight against injustice.
The lesson we must draw from the celebration of his birthday is that we must continue to work together as South Africans to build non-racism, non-sexism, unity, equality, democracy, social justice and a better life for all.
