Programme director
Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Mr Jeff Radebe
Minister of Home Affairs Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma
Minister in the Presidency Mr Collins Chabane
Premier of KwaZulu-Natal Dr Zweli Mkhize
MEC for Arts and Culture Ms Weziwe Thusi
Vice Chairman of the African Renaissance Trust Prof Sihawu Ngubane
Distinguished guests
Members of the media
Ladies And gentlemen
"Take charge Africa - The Future of Africa is in your hands"
Happy Afrika Day!
On 15 April 2004 when FIFA President Sepp Blatter announced that the 2010 World Cup would be held in South Africa, it was time for Africa to take charge. In just over 10 days South Africa will play centre stage to the world when we host the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Africa has taken charge.
The 2010 World Cup will forever demonstrate Africa's capacity to deliver world-class events. It will also serve as a lever for our own project of nation-building and social cohesion. The World Cup is indeed an opportunity for Africa to take charge.
An African World Cup in 2010 is also an opportunity for Africans to re-examine where we are in the project of moving Africa from where it is to where it should be. The tournament is being held on the centenary of the Union of South Africa and calls on us to look back 100 years to see what we should change regarding the course of Africa's development.
At the turn of the 20th century apartheid and colonialism had not yet perfected themselves. The system had not yet destroyed our worth, first in our own eyes and then in the eyes of the rest of the world. At the turn of the century, we still had clear memories of ourselves as a free people. We had both individual and social pride.
Yet how was it possible for people such as WEB du Bois and African National Congress (ANC) President Pixley ka Isaka Seme to predict with such clarity the challenges facing Africa in the century that was unfolding.
Writing in The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, WEB du Bois said and I quote: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line - the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men (and women) in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea".
As du Bois identified the problem, a solution was being proposed about the same time. The African renaissance was foretold by one of the founders of the African National Congress, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, in "The Regeneration of Africa" Article in The African Abroad, 5 April 1906 and I quote:
"I am an African, and I set my pride in my race over against a hostile public opinion. I would ask you not to compare Africa to Europe or to any other continent. I make this request not from any fear that such comparison might bring humiliation upon Africa. The reason I have stated - a common standard is impossible! Come with me to the ancient capital of Egypt, Thebes, the city of one hundred gates.
"The grandeur of its venerable ruins and the gigantic proportions of its architecture reduce to insignificance the boasted monuments of other nations. The pyramids of Egypt are structures to which the world presents nothing comparable.
"The mighty monuments seem to look with disdain on every other work of human art and to vie with nature herself. All the glory of Egypt belongs to Africa and her people.
"These monuments are the indestructible memorials of their great and original genius. It is not through Egypt alone that Africa claims such unrivalled historic achievements.
"The giant is awakening! From the four corners of the earth, Africa's sons, who have been proved through fire and sword, are marching to the future's golden door bearing the records of deeds of valour done.
"The brighter day is rising upon Africa. Already I seem to see her chains dissolved her desert plains red with harvest, her Abyssinia and her Zululand the seats of science and religion, reflecting the glory of the rising sun from the spires of their churches and universities.
"Her Congo and her Gambia whitened with commerce, her crowded cities sending forth the hum of business, and all her sons employed in advancing the victories of peace - greater and more abiding than the spoils of war. Yes, the regeneration of Africa belongs to this new and powerful period. It therefore must lead them to the attainment of that higher and advanced standard of life".
At the time when these two men wrote, colonialism constituted a few administrators and many people had not come into any contact with the settlers.
Fascism as theory and practice had not been created. Racism had not been systematised or perfected. In South Africa there was no union of the whites which was only forged in 1910 with the Union of South Africa. Even white women were not voting. There was parentage of various parts of the country to different countries in Europe. The English-speaking territories consulted with London, the Afrikaners consulted with the Netherlands. Disunity became a source of wars.
As Seme spoke these words in the first decade of the 20th century, a dark future yet awaited the peoples of the African continent. The darkest night of colonial oppression and exploitation had just started all over Africa. But now a century later, the African Renaissance must dawn.
It is against this background that the likes of Seme and Du Bois called for the regeneration of Africa. Regeneration is about overcoming one's inferiority complex. Renaissance means Africa starts to see itself through its own eyes. A renaissance means Africa must play sport against itself at youth and intervarsity level. Africa must increase intra-Africa trade. That trade must not be skewed in favour of one particular nation.
That trade must seek to develop regions and the continent. Artists must collaborate to create new music and to bring back the old tunes. This is how Africa begins to deal with its abject self-abnegation. Islands of excellence are not sustainable in a sea of mediocrity.
Our task as the African Renaissance is to create out of the islands of excellence, a sea of achievement. In time our islands must grow into larger land spaces.
If a lake is where you have more land than water, an island an instance when there is more water than land, then Africa has islands of excellence in a sea of underachievement. This must be turned around.
The African Renaissance thrives to create an achiever nation made up of achiever individuals. The African Renaissance thrives to create achiever countries out of achiever individuals. The African Renaissance must create an achiever continent out of achiever nations. This is what we are achieving at political level in the continent.
Today Burundi is a peaceful country. Today the Congo is peaceful. Having achieved partly what Seme and Du Bois dreamt about, i.e. political freedom, we face the breakdown of the African man-child. The African man-child in Africa as in the United States remains a weak link.
The African man child's propensity to wanton violence and women abuse reflects the inferiority complex engendered by oppression. The question we are asking is that the struggle for a non-racial society must be accompanied by gender equality. According to the Human Sciences Research Council women medical students began to outnumber men in 2000 when they formed 51% of MBChB enrolments:
"By 2003 they had increased to nearly 55% and formed even greater proportions at some medical schools. Â Only Medunsa (the Medical University of Southern Africa, now part of the University of Limpopo) had a smaller proportion of women than men (44%). At the other end of the spectrum, the University of Cape Town (UCT) had 63% women students".
Faced with these statistics we ask how males in Africa are dealing with conditions of gender equality. Is it sustainable for women to develop alone without their men folk? Is it possible to grow Africa without the active participation of men and women? What does this development mean for the creation of stable societies in Africa?
The other pressing issue facing the African Renaissance movement is to change the image of Africa in the world. When a particular image of Africa predominates, all the good of Africa is buried with Africa.
So what is to be done?
The final declaration of the 1945 Pan African Congress held in Manchester urged colonial and subject peoples of the world to unite and assert their rights to reject those seeking to control their destinies.
Congress participants encouraged colonised Africans to elect their own governments, arguing that the gain of political power for colonial and subject peoples was a necessary prerequisite for complete social, economic, and political emancipation. The Pan-African Congresses helped to increase international awareness of racism and colonialism and laid the foundation for the political independence of African nations.
In May 1963 the influence of these congresses helped galvanise the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), an association of independent African states and nationalist groups now known as the African Union.
The Africa Renaissance in the 21st century requires students and youth formations and civil society across political formations to rise and take their place in the revival and rejuvenation of Africa in the continent and in the diaspora. A free Africa shall not come just through the interventions of those residing in the continent. Those in the Diaspora have several advantages already.
They possess the skills necessary to drive the African Renaissance together with us here in the continent. The call for an African Renaissance is therefore a call to the acquisition of skills which are necessary for the development of Africa. This will happen first at the level of individuals, then at the level of nations and then at the level of a unitary continental entity.
A new nation must be borne across Africa. This is the nation of which Inkosi Albert Luthuli dreamt in which the colour of the person's skin would be irrelevant. This is the nation of which Martin Luther King Jr dreamt in which the people are judged not by the colour of their skin but the content of their character.
This ideal state of non- racism and non-sexism will exist when we do not repeat the Songs of Solomon where it is said: I am black, but I am beautiful. Or the situation echoed in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in which one of the suitors of Portia who was from Morocco pleads with the object of his charms to "mislike me not for my complexion".
The founders of the Soviet Union grappled with the process of building a state out of many nations. They defined a nation as primarily "a community, a definite community of people. This community is not racial, nor is it tribal. What distinguishes a national community from a state community? The fact, among others, that a national community is inconceivable without a common language, while a state need not have a common language"
"A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture".
On 30 April 2010 we announced the process of launching an African Renaissance Institute based here in KwaZulu-Natal. The Institute will be based locally. Its approach and impact will be global.
Through such institutes we must turn corners in which we find ourselves into centres of excellences and drive the creation of a better Africa wherever we are.
Through these centres we will create a new and regenerated Africa.
I thank you!
Issued by: Department of Transport
25 May 2010
