Imbizo on ubuntu and nation-building, held at Boshabelo, Mpumalanga
18 November 2006
Your Excellency, the Deputy President of the Republic, Hon. Phumzile
Mlambo-Ngcuka
The Hon. Speaker of Parliament, Ms Baleka Mbete
The Minister of Arts and Culture, Minister Pallo Jordan
The Executive Mayor of Steve Tshwete Municipality, Hon. Clr Mantlakeng
Mahlangu
The Executive District Mayor of Nkangala District, Hon. Clr Speedo
Mashilo
MEC for Culture, Sport and Recreation, MEC Nomsa Mtsweni
The chairperson and members of the board of the South African National Heritage
Council (SANHC)
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Heritage Council (NHC), Adv
Sonwabile Mancotywa
The CEO of the Freedom Park Legacy Project, Dr Wally Serote
All dignitaries present
Our revered traditional leaders from across the length and breadth of our
country
Our exalted spiritual leaders
The community of Botshabelo and its distinguished representatives "Beng
Mmabu"
The community of Steve Tshwete municipality
Fellow South Africans
Ladies and gentlemen
It is an extraordinary moment and a humbling privilege for me to welcome you
to our province at a place which happens to be my ancestral village, and the
place where I was actually born. If heaven exists, there must be a big
commotion among the spirits of those who founded this place exactly hundred and
forty years ago, that today, many years after the lights of this luminous
community-of-old were extinguished by those who believed they represented a
superior civilisation, we have returned here in search of humanity, to assert
our humanity; in search of ubuntu, to assert ubuntu bethu.
Allow me Programme Director, through you, to express our appreciation to the
NHC CEO, Mr Mancotywa, and his management, for having assembled this unique
convocation, the first of its kind in our province, in Botshabelo, to refocus
us, and to energise us as a nation, in pursuit of the ideal of a more humane
society for our country. Through their vision, the ruins of Botshabelo have
received what they have been crying for, the reassertion of the values of
'Ubuntu'-'Botho' because Botshabelo, the place of refuge, was a product of two
civilisations which believed they shared a common mission to construct a
society based on 'Ubuntu'-'Botho,' namely the white man's Christianity and the
virtues of African communalism. In that quest, like similar experiences of
missionary work elsewhere, Botshabelo could not escape the contradictions
presented by the cultural imperialism inherent in the phenomenon of
missionaries.
Secondly, Botshabelo cries out for 'Ubuntu' because more than the pain
suffered by communities which were uprooted from their lands, its history was
obliterated and a new false legend was concocted to provide a false history
within the nefarious apartheid policy of divide and rule. Understandably
therefore, the mere act of our assembling here today is a symbolic restoration
of the glory of a village which in the context of its historic time, was like
Rome, a city which easily dwarfed many other cities in South Africa, over and
above its cultural value. "Mpumalanga, Reclaiming the Past, defining the
Future," a soon-to-be published manuscript on the heritage of our province,
edited by Professor Peter Delius, says, and I quote, "Botshabelo was a major
centre of agricultural production and innovation. It came for a time to have
the largest school in the Transvaal and a fine church, certainly the finest in
the Transvaal, and in the early 1870s, the credit worthiness of the mission
station was considerably greater than that of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek
(ZAR)."
Thanks to the bigotry and obscurantism of Afrikanerdom and apartheid rule, a
centre as important in our development and evolution as a country and as a
region, has been successfully wiped off our minds and our memory.
Dear guests, over the next two days you will interrogate and exchange views
about the value system of ubuntu. I am under no doubt that in that endeavour,
you will find the story of this place fascinating, and a pertinent challenge in
bringing to the fore the many facets and complexities of the subject we are
here to deal with.
Mission stations everywhere were the first communities which had to contend
with a clash of cultures among people who were coming from very diverse
cultures; the missionaries and the early African Christian converts. Their
experience, I believe, is relevant to this dialogue. Having assessed it, and
agreeing that we are a society in perpetual motion, the question is how much of
this behavioural culture can be deployed in abetting the mission of building
nationhood among South Africans?
This heritage site is also relevant, I believe, to the theme of
nation-building, because in an interesting way, Botshabelo, the place of
refuge, later acquired a diverse community, constituted over time by some
people who came from the chiefdoms and kingdoms from within this region which
were still intact along their tribal lines, and including whites from near
commando outposts. In the setting of the Transvaal of the 1870s, this mission
station, it can be argued, logically represented a microcosm of communities
which were still to form at a much later period in time elsewhere.
Once again in welcoming you all on behalf of our province let me say that
the challenge is our willingness to apply a scientific, people-centred vision
of history to the African past, as to the past of other people of other
continents.
To quote from the teachings of the late President of Frelimo, Samora Moises
Machel, "Pride comes from the victories of the revolution, from the constant
affirmation of its popular, Mozambican character, and not from an idealised and
romanticised reconstruction of the past. On the contrary, such romanticism
creates an ideological climate favourable to what are regarded as the two main
enemies of people's power: neo-colonialism and traditional feudalism, both of
which play down the importance of class contradictions in Africa and both of
which perpetuate the mentalities of subservience and under-development. The
objective is not to negate a mystified colonial history by means of a mystified
pre-colonial history, but to de-mystify history altogether, so that the true
role of the masses as its creator can be revealed."
There can be no denying the truth that our biggest challenge in this
dialogue is to find a link and to align the 'Ubuntu value system' with what can
be referred to as the culture produced by our struggle for a unitary,
non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa. An 'Ubuntu value system'
must serve to advance this goal.
As Amilcar Cabral says, "We may consider the national liberation movement as
the organised political expression of the culture of the people who are
undertaking the struggle." Perhaps the point argued by Samora Machel is
eloquently argued by Amilcar Cabral when he says, "To develop the economic and
social progress of the people, the following objectives are important:
* development of a popular culture of all positive indigenous cultural
values
* development of a national culture based on the history and achievements of
the struggle itself
* constant promotion of political and moral awareness of the people (of all
social groups) as well as patriotism, of the spirit of sacrifice and devotion
to the cause of freedom, justice and social progress
* development of a technical, technological and scientific culture, compatible
with requirements for progress
* development, on the basis of a critical assimilation of man's achievements in
the domains of art, science, literature, etcetera of a universal culture for
perfect integration into the contemporary world, in the perspectives of its
evolution
* constant and generalised promotion of feelings of humanism, of solidarity, of
respect and disinterested devotion to human beings."
Programme Director, distinguished guests, there can be no better framework
to use as a guide in dealing with the main question of the day, the philosophy
of 'ubuntu,' than by responding to the challenges raised by Amilcar Cabral.
Indeed, this is the soul-searching that President Thabo Mbeki was enjoining all
of us to do, in his "4th Annual Nelson Mandela lecture" at the University of
Witwatersrand.
On behalf of our province we wish you seminal discussions that will
irresistibly bring back the legacy of Botshabelo to the many ailing hearts in
our province and beyond.
I thank you.
Issued by: Mpumalanga Provincial Government
18 November 2006
Source: Mpumalanga Provincial Government (http://www.mpumalanga.gov.za)
