His Excellency, President of the Republic of Tanzania, Mr Kikwete,
Welcome to the Republic of South Africa. It is a great honour and privilege for the people of the Republic of South Africa to welcome you and have you as their guest of honour in their land this year. Your visit to South Africa takes place exactly in July. July 18 have been declared by the United Nations as a Nelson Mandela International Day. This day have been recognized by the UN as to pay homage to Dr Nelson Rholihlahla Mandela for his utmost contribution in to the fight for Human Rights. It is a call to all nations and people to do good for humanity. It is a call to international community work to do good for another human being.
South Africa as a country has declared the month of July as a Nelson Mandela month. During this month, all South Africans are called upon to take sixteen seven (67) minutes of each day to lay a helping hand to a fellow South African. Since the beginning of this month all South Africans from all walks of life and from the length and breadth of our land have been engaged in different activities to honour the work of the great man, an internationalist, a man of integrity and a man of honour, President Nelson Mandela by contributing time for the help of others.
President, we are really honoured to have you in our country on this important month in the calendar of the nations of the world. Welcome again to South Africa.
President, on the 29th October 1964, the United Republic of Tanzania was born through the merger of Zanzibar with Tanganyika as a new nation. The vision for the ‘African Socialism’ emerged under the capable leadership of President Julius Kambarage Nyerere. It was his take on an ‘egalitarian socialist society’ based on cooperative agriculture, which became a corner-stone of your country’s political and economic policy that became deeply influential throughout the continent of Africa.
Indeed, this was a ‘programme of independent self-help’ based on ‘community and family hood’ which was aimed at keeping Tanzania and Africa away from becoming too much dependent on foreign aid especially based on ‘dependency theories’. This ‘economic renaissance’ emphasized the economic cooperation, racial and tribal, and moralistic self-sacrifice and self-reliance and became the formal revolutionary ideology of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) revolutionary state party.
Mr President, it is Tanzania and her people under the leadership of wise Africans like President Nyerere that introduced Africa into the modern Pan-African Movement. A movement that saw the birth of the Organisation of African Unity, hereinafter referred to as OAU which is now known as the African Union (AU).
The genesis of the African Renaissance theories as lead by former President of the Republic of South Africa, Mr Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki, found itself from the theories espoused by President Nyerere and your country.
You and your country, Mr President, committed to supporting the Liberation Movements throughout Africa and you became a forceful critic of Apartheid regime of South Africa. You did this during a period when it was not fashionable to be aligned with the African National Congress (ANC), the oldest liberation movement in Africa that is turning hundred years (100) in 2012.
During its Centenary in 2012, the African National Congress and the democratic state of the Republic of South Africa will be hosting national celebration marking the 100 years of the fighting spirit of the African National Congress and marking the Century of Africa Struggles to end colonialism and white minority rule.
In these celebrations marking the century of Africa onslaught against imperialism and state capitalism; we would be making an injustice if we do not recognize your contribution into the life and times of the African National Congress; especially when you chaired a group of ‘five frontline Presidents’ who advocated the overthrow of the white supremacists in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbambwe.
You hoboured us and became home to thousands of ANC cadres, especially its youth who swelled the ranks of uMkhonto Wesizwe after the 1976 youth uprisings. You became a favoured venue for liberation army training camps; you gave us equipment and trained our guerrillas and combatants. You gave us space for Political Office and Head Quarters.
You gave us and our people sanctuary including Zanu-PF of Zimbabwe, Frelimo of Mozambique, MPLA of Angola and even NRA/UPDF of Uganda. You did not ask us money for this. Instead, it was you who engineered the expulsion of Apartheid South Africa from the Commonwealth of Nations on the basis of its Apartheid Colonial policies.
Mr President, it is you who gave us space and resources to build the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College (SOMAFCO) and you supported us from 1978 to 1992 especially our young people who fled South Africa to join Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and receive education and vocational training and became part of a unique, self-reliant community at the ANC settlements of Mazimbu and Dakawa, near Morogoro in Tanzania.
You taught these young people struggle, you made them to understand suffering and pain. You made them freedom fighters, dedicated to preparing themselves for service to the struggle and for reconstruction and development in a free nation. You made them to see a bright future; a democratic future and South Africa. At SOMAFCO were gathered young people and their teachers, who had been obliged to flee a country whose regime had attempted to miseducate its youth and then turned viciously on them when they resisted.
You have given the South Africa youth hope under the difficult conditions of exile. SOMAFCO sustained and developed an education based on principles of equal opportunity, non-discrimination and the dignity and unity of mental and manual labour. You became a beacon of hope; and you showed us what a new and alternative educational system might be and what new ways of thinking about teaching and learning could achieve. We thank you for that.
Mr President, it is believed that your greatness is founded from the belief that ‘modern humans’ originate from the rift valley region of East Africa, and as well as fossilized hominid remains, which were uncovered and declared as ‘Africa oldest human settlement’ right in your country, Tanzania, tracking back to the ‘First Millennium’ (CE).
I recall that it was just in April 2011, that the developmental state of the Republic of South Africa and the government of the Republic of Tanzania signed a bilateral agreement on cooperation in Science and Technology and strengthening Regional Integration in the science and technology sector.
Mr President, I am pleased to announce that Sport and Recreation South Africa (SRSA) would like to take seize this opportunity provided to us by the cooperation on science and technology to advance sport and recreation relations with your country. We also like to cooperate with your country on matters of sport and sport science in particular as an area of focus between the two nations.
We know that through the ‘network of Africa Science Academies’, we witnessed the solidarity amongst African Intelligentsia when in 2007 the network submitted a ‘Joint Statement on Sustainability, Energy Efficiency, and Climate Change’ to the leadership meeting of the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, on a ‘A Consensus, based on current evidence that human activities are the main source of climate change and that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for driving this change; and to acknowledge the public understanding of the nexus that exists between energy, climate and sustainability’.
Mr President, I want to say again welcome to the Republic of South Africa. May your stay be so pleasant? Enjoy the hospitality of South Africans. Welcome! Feel at home.
Thank you!
