21 March 2007
South Africa's great ability to turn tragedy into celebration finds
expression yet again on a day like this. Sharpeville and the killing of those
who protested the carrying of passes, gave us this day. This day ensures that
those who survived Sharpeville will always proclaim "never again" and those who
did not have Sharpeville etched in their hearts will always enquire and
hopefully come to the realisation that this freedom we enjoy came neither
easily nor cheaply. Thus the tragedy of Sharpeville was transformed into the
celebration of our human rights.
While as a nation we bask in the accolade of what the world has described as
the South African miracle, we must avoid that description detracting from the
sacrifices of ordinary human beings. We must assert to an incredulous world
that our transition from apartheid to democracy was the result of ordinary
South Africans doing extraordinary things for freedom. We should not obscure
the contribution of ordinary people just because political commentators have
not fathomed how the human spirit could again rise above the human trait of
anger and bitterness to fashion, codify and practice reconciliation of those at
war, justice for victims, progressive realisation of benefits for the poor and
human rights for all.
On a day like this we should tell our children that what the world called a
miracle our nation learned from a bottomless well of wisdom transmitted to us
through activists and leaders, revealed to us in action and words, and always
exhorting us to act above our instincts and certainly to live already the
vision we had of our better future rather than acting in proportion to the evil
that was done unto us.
These are the people we should never stop honouring because they bequeathed
us not only the foundations of our human rights, but our own humanity as well.
Who will forget Chief Luthuli in the face of white supremacy asserting itself
most brutally still telling us that our country will still be a home for all,
including the supremacists; or Robert Sobukwe showing us a vision of a united
and better Africa when all we wanted was freedom for our country, or Steve
Biko, teaching us that, any liberation that does not start with ourselves, in
our minds will not truly have unshackled us from colonialism and apartheid; or
Helen Suzman who showed us that individuals with powerful convictions can
indeed make a difference, even when seemingly lonely and isolated.
So in the cross section of people we honour here today, we will bring to
memory how they have each shaped our country and nation, the selflessness of
Basil February as he gave up his life in the Wankie campaign, the unshakeable
vision of an equal society contained in the theory and practice of Jack Simons
and Jimmy la Guma, the firm belief by Clements Kadalie in organising the
emerging working class that led to the Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU),
the lesson taught by the assassination of Dulcie September that fascism is a
single mindset that can be escaped in South Africa but that can kill you in
Paris, the work of Nana Abrahams and Elizabeth Mofokeng who apartheid would
ordinarily have kept apart, but who crossed racial boundaries to serve all
workers in the food and canning industry and showed us then already that
African and Coloured can work together in the face of common needs and the
amazing story of Michael Lapsley tells us that the human spirit will not be
confined and that from New Zealand he came not to play rugby, but to commit
himself fully to our struggle, so fully that the apartheid government sent him
a letter bomb that destroyed both his hands.
We must also not forget two other women; one famous, Dora Tamana, for her
work on the Cape Flats and her leadership of women as women believing that this
was a power that needed to be organised and unleashed on the apartheid system,
and the other less famous and Anna Berry, from a remote rural settlement
Bloupunt, where she led the resistance to forced removals.
We must also honour today two generations of Western Cape leadership from
the coloured community but not only for the coloured community. Uncle Reg
September carried the flag in the difficult years that led to the repression in
the 1960s when the Western Cape was contested terrain between the emergent
Congress tradition and the Unity Movement. Johnny Issel came to settle that
debate in the 1970s and the 1980s as the resistance was revived and he exhorted
all of us to fight apartheid and to launch the battle that would culminate in
freedom.
In the stories of these ordinary South Africans doing extraordinary things
lie the South African miracle. These are the people worth honouring. These are
the people our children should know about lest they believe that God intervened
miraculously to remove apartheid. They should rather believe that God inspires
ordinary people to do good. We should teach our children the power of human
agency so that when they are confronted by evil, whether the big ones like
apartheid, or the daily ones, like drugs and gangs and violence, they must know
that evil does not come without choice and it is not removed without human
agency.
Today we make available these names, and other names that this province has
honoured over the last few years, to our Department of Cultural Affairs and
Sport and all municipalities so that the process to honour these people and
others can commence fully. Unless our children live in streets and towns and
visit institutions bearing these names they will not enquire about those who
sacrificed and were the wells of wisdom that shaped our freedom and democracy
today. Unless all traditions and cultures are reflected in our public spaces,
we will not fully be healing our people.
There must always be respect for branding and Cape Town must be a brand that
remains protected for all the benefits it brings to us. But there is also a
branding of dignity, inclusion, ownership and belonging that unless conferred,
will continue to challenge us through the fragmentation, polarisation and
racism that we still experience in this province.
Provincial Honours and place names by themselves are not the panaceas for
all our challenge but they may be the beginnings of understanding and
solidarity. Maybe we have made some of our values in this province too
theoretical in the pursuit of our vision of a Home for All. Maybe as
theoretical constructs, non-racism, non-sexism and equality have been blunted
and robbed of its essence of human agency and we have lost the sense of how to
achieve it amidst the murkiness and contestation of political competition and
the competition for scarce resources.
Maybe what we need is ordinariness about how to live lives of equality, free
of prejudice, appreciative of multiculturalism and the plurality of worship. I
have found a wonderful description by Richard Rorty about this journey to lives
of simple solidarity for our Home for All.
"In my utopia human solidarity would not be seen as a fact to be recognised
by clearing every prejudice or burrowing down to previously hidden depths but
rather as a goal to be achieved. It is to be achieved not only by enquiry but
also by imagination, the imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow
sufferers. Solidarity is not discovered by reflection, it has to be created. It
is created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain
and humiliation of other unfamiliar sorts of people."
It could be that we have ghettoised our won pains and humiliations that have
caused us to compete for victimhood against fellow sufferers rather than
creating solidarity with them. Our vision of a Home for All must also be a
manual of how to imagine other people and how to create solidarity. Honouring
16 people here today who were united by a single set of values but coming from
very diverse backgrounds, is a good starting point.
Issued by: Office of the Premier, Western Cape Provincial Government
21 March 2007
