Hon House Chairperson, as we celebrate Africa Day, let us reflect on the roots of racism, the slave trade and colonialism, which led to anti-colonial struggles, the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, OAU, and the African Union, AU, and the passage of the Charter for African Cultural Renaissance.
The slave trade and colonialism did not completely deprive the people of African descent of their identity and African national consciousness. Their Christianisation and the accompanying racism in church and state institutions during the 17th and 18th centuries catalysed the reawakening of African national consciousness. This led to the secession of the African clergy from white churches, missionary churches and the formation of African independent churches, which came to be known as Ethiopian churches. These churches were so called because they based their religious philosophy on African redemption or liberation, as contained in Psalm 68:31.
The revival or reawakening of the African national consciousness started in the United States and spread to Africa during the 18th century. This religious revival of the reawakening of the 18th century produced many African preachers, such as Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, AME, and Rev Manyena Maake Mokone, the founder of the Ethiopian Church of South Africa. Rev Manyena Maake Mokone was recently honoured by President Jacob Zuma as the founder of the Ethiopian African Liberation Theology. The African clergy and traditional leaders worked together to build independent churches and schools.
The totality of the experiences of slavery, racism and colonialism produced the slogan "Africa for Africans" and the "Back to Africa" campaign within the Ethiopian movement in the United States of America and the Caribbean. Thus Ethiopianism catalysed the birth of Pan-African nationalism. The founders of the ANC were profoundly influenced by both Ethiopianism and Pan- Africanism.
The Pan-African movement formally came into being at the first Pan-African Congress held in London, in 1900. The congress was convened by the Rev Sylvester Henry Williams and Bishop Walters, who were self-confessed Ethiopian Christians.
In his keynote address to the congress, W E du Bois opined that racism would be the greatest challenge of the 20th century. The congress, which took place during the Anglo-Boer War, condemned British attempts to recolonise South Africa and the atrocities committed on the African people on both sides of the war.
After the war, some delegates to the Pan-African Congress, including the Rev Henry Sylvester Williams and Peregrino, a Ghanaian journalist, settled here in Cape Town. They joined with officials of the AME Church and Ethiopian Church clergy that had been ordained by Henry McNeal Turner, a pioneer Pan-African nationalist who popularised the slogan "Africa for Africans" within the Ethiopian movement. Thus the Ethiopian Christians and the Pan-African nationalists worked together to propagate the Pan-African identity and African national consciousness.
Sylvester Williams assisted Dr A Abdularahm and Sol Plaatje to establish the African People's Organisation, APO, in 1902. It was the first African political organisation, which was preceded by the Natal Indian Congress formed in 1892.
Meanwhile, the African youth, who were studying in Europe and in black church colleges in the USA, returned to South Africa and swelled the ranks of the native congresses, which were formed during the first decade of the 20th century. They came together in 1912 to form the ANC.
With regard to the birth of the Pan-African national vision, Rev John Langalibalele Dube, a teacher and pastor in the Congregational Church, gave a public lecture in 1892 in which, after his return from the US, he foretold the birth of a free Africa, which would be a spiritual, humane, caring and prosperous continent.
Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Dube's cousin, delivered a public lecture at Columbia University in 1905, titled The Regeneration of Africa. Seme said, and I quote:
The African already recognises his anomalous position and desires a change. 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! By this term, regeneration, I wish to be understood to mean the entrance into a new life, embracing the diverse phases of a higher, complex existence. The basic factor which assures their regeneration resides in the awakened African race consciousness. This gives them a clear perception of their elemental needs and of their undeveloped powers. It therefore must lead them to the attainment of that higher and advanced standard of life.
Seme recalled the great achievements of the indigenous African empires of ancient Egypt and Ethiopia to highlight the potential of Africa to create yet new civilisations. Seme was the first African leader to use the phrase "I am an African."
In his public lecture, he demonstrated that Africa would be reborn from the ashes of slavery and colonialism and create a new African civilisation.
He further said, and I quote:
The regeneration of Africa means that a new and unique civilisation is soon to be added to the world. The African is not a proletarian in the world of science and art. He has precious creations of his own - of ivory; of copper and of gold; of fine, plaited willow ware; and weapons of superior workmanship.
Civilisation resembles an organic being in its development - it is born, it perishes, and it can propagate itself. More particularly it resembles a plant; it takes root in the teeming earth, and when the seeds fall in other soils, new varieties sprout up. The most essential departure of this new civilisation is that it shall be thoroughly spiritual and humanistic - indeed a regeneration moral and eternal.
Here Seme embraced the values espoused by Dube and, more specifically, called for a moral regeneration movement. Seme and three other ...[Interjections.]