Hon Deputy Speaker, I am exceptionally honoured to recognise the leader of our people, Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa, who chaired the Constitutional Assembly, which gave birth to our Constitution. He is still vigilant. He was the first to observe a textual mistake on our Order Paper. As a result of that, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a slight textual correction to the motion I moved. Mr Walter Sisulu was never a Member of Parliament. Therefore paragraph 7 should be corrected by the removal of this reference.
Mama Sisulu was born in 1918 and immediately lost both her parents, making it impossible for her to follow a career of her choice, also making her the earliest known child head of a family. She didn't enjoy her youth.
In the 1940s, when she met Walter Sisulu, he was already involved in discussions for the founding of the ANC Youth League. She immediately became politically active. In 1944 she married Walter. Hardly four years into her marriage the National Party came into power on the platform of apartheid. A year thereafter, in 1948, she became active in the ANC Women's League. In 1949, Walter was elected secretary-general of the ANC, which was a full-time position, which denied the family his income. She became the sole breadwinner. She helped found the nonracial Federation of South African Women, a federation which was the first to produce a charter of rights in 1954. In 1956, she became one of the leaders of the march to Pretoria.
During the treason trial, again, she was on her own, looking after the family. In the 60s she was detained many times, and ultimately her husband was sentenced and sent to Robben Island. She was left alone to look after the family, and also appreciated at that point in time that family and children meant South Africa and the children of South Africa. It is for that reason that she mentored generations of the youth that brought our freedom.
Born in 1918 to become a great mother and leader of the nation, Mama Sisulu left a great legacy of values to all South Africans, black and white, young and old. Mama was a phenomenal woman of vision and action. She was an embodiment of the moral vision of the National Liberation Movement expounded by O R Tambo and Rev Trevor Huddleston, the roots of her moral vision.
On 24 September 1987 the Rt Rev Archbishop Trevor Huddleston convened the International Conference on Children, Repression and the Law in Apartheid South Africa. In the words of the late President Reginald Oliver Tambo, the conference was convened, and I quote:
We meet because there is something that is happening to the hapless and the innocent that should not be allowed to happen. We meet because we recognize that our own lives have meaning only to the extent that they are used to create a social condition which will make the lives of the children happy, full and meaningful. We have gathered ourselves in Harare and on this particular occasion because we know that a grievous injustice is being done to all humanity.
Recalling the atrocities perpetrated on children by the inhuman apartheid system and the plight of children under this system, O R Tambo said, and I quote:
This terrible desolation defines for us what our struggle must be about. We cannot be true liberators unless the liberation we will achieve guarantees all children the rights to life, health, happiness and free development, respecting the individuality, inclinations and capacities of each child. Our liberation would be untrue to itself if it did not, among its first tasks, attend to the welfare of the millions of children whose lives have been stunted and turned into a terrible misery by the violence of the apartheid system.
In his call for national and international defence for children under the apartheid system, Tambo said, and I quote:
... our concern for the children, the inheritors of our future, cannot be postponed until the day we achieve our emancipation. That is why this conference ...
Referring to the Harare Conference -
... is being held. It should result in the greatest possible international mobilisation around the issue of the plight of the children of South Africa ...
He continued:
Inside our country, we, as well, have a responsibility to act now in defence of the children. There, too, we must rip off the cloak of silence which the Pretoria regime tries to drape around its horrendous misdeeds. The democratic movement must, in its entirety, join the campaign to force the racist regime to take its blood-stained hands off our people!
In his call to the Interfaith Movement, O R Tambo said, and I quote:
Other men and women of conscience must themselves join in this struggle because none can reckon themselves human and be unconcerned about what is happening to the young. We would expect that people of all faiths would feel moved by their own beliefs to say we too must be counted amongst those who stood up in defence of the children.
As a delegate to the 1987 Harare Conference and a co-worker of Mama Sisulu on women's and children's rights, I stand before this House to attest that Mama Sisulu became the volunteer-in-chief in defence of children under apartheid repression.
She led us in the mobilisation of all progressive forces, including women's and civic associations, NGOs, CBOs and faith-based organisations, for the defence of fundamental children's rights. This mobilisation culminated in the establishment of the National Children's Rights Committee, which established provincial structures rooted among the people.
As a founder and patron of the National Children's Rights Committee, Mama taught us to appreciate that secular authorities and faith-based organisations have an identity of interest in defence of the inherent dignity of all children, both black and white; development of the full potential of all children; recovery of the humanity - ubuntu/botho - of all South African children; and improvement of the quality of their lives through quality education, health care, food security and job creation. She therefore mobilised all sectors of society, especially the interfaith movement, to tell the truth about the plight of children under the apartheid system and to act in their defence.
Mama also heeded O R Tambo's call for international mobilisation around the issue of the plight of the children of South Africa. Under her leadership the National Children's Rights Committee mobilised financial, administrative and humanitarian assistance from the United Nations Children's Fund, Unicef, for the defence of the children of South Africa. Through the NCRC, an umbrella organisation for civil society groups working for children's rights, Mama Sisulu became instrumental in making sure that the principles of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child were included in the country's democratic Constitution and the Bill of Rights. She also paved the way for Unicef to engage with and establish an office in the country.
Mama Sisulu also mobilised the Swedish Save the Children organisation to support public interest law organisations, notably the community law centre of the National Institute for Public Interest Law and Research, led by lawyers like J B Sibanyoni, a member of this House, and the community law centre at the University of the Western Cape, led by the late Comrade Dullah Omar. The institute published a book titled Women and Children in a Violent Society, after field work done under her leadership in the violence- torn KwaZulu-Natal province.
Unicef correctly described Mama Sisulu as a woman of great courage, conviction and passion, and a tireless advocate for South Africa's children. As the NCRC's patron and moral leader, Mama Sisulu was instrumental in ensuring that, after the country's first democratic elections, the NCRC took centre stage, being transformed into the Children's Desk in the Office of the President, as well as in all nine provincial premiers' offices. This work laid the foundation for the National Programme of Action for Children, which mapped out plans for the realisation of all South Africa's children's rights.
As part of our tribute to Mama Sisulu, the ANC calls on the Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities to table a progress report to Parliament in this regard.
President Jacob Zuma provided the framework for all sectors, including the National Interfaith Movement, to contribute to youth and child development when he invited all sectors in society to enter into a partnership with his administration for reconstruction, development and progress. The idea of a partnership between government and the National Interfaith Movement can be traced back to the 1997 National Religious Leaders Summit convened by our icon, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.
Mandela told the summit that political and faith leaders could not achieve their objectives in isolation; they needed to co-operate in a structured way through formations that were rooted among the people. He awakened politicians to the fact that social transformation could not be achieved without spiritual transformation, which he described as the reconstruction and development programme of the soul.
Given the deepening moral degeneration manifesting itself in teenage pregnancies, drug and alcohol abuse, neglect of child-headed families, abuse of women and children, illiteracy, skills shortage, and lack of psychosocial support for victims of social violence, the elders of our nation in the beyond will ask Mama Sisulu on her arrival: Where is the spiritual transformation plan of the National Interfaith Movement? Where is the memorandum of agreement between government and the National Interfaith Movement in defence of the youth and children?
Collaboration between the government and the National Interfaith Movement would not result in the co-option and domination of one by the other. The endorsement of Mandela's call for spiritual transformation by President Zuma and the entire leadership of the ruling party, the ANC, testifies eloquently to the fact that government and the National Interfaith Movement are equally impelled to safeguard the unique dignity of every human being, to promote the immeasurable value of life of everyone, and to foster the common good. No further amount of interfaith dialogue can advance human dignity and the common good. What is now required is a social plan to address the spiritual and material needs of the children, the youth and the poorest of the poor.
President Jacob Zuma has already said that human development has a spiritual and material aspect, and called for a memorandum of agreement between government and the National Interfaith Movement for holistic human development and the creation of cohesive, caring and sustainable communities. In memory of Mama Albertina Sisulu, let us form this partnership and use it as a vehicle for preserving and developing her legacy to our youth and children.
To aid this process Parliament will hold a parliamentary interfaith indaba at the end of June, which will be followed by provincial interfaith round tables. These round tables will culminate in a Presidential Interfaith Summit on 25 August 2011, which will consolidate the National Interfaith Movement and adopt a programme of action for the creation of the cohesive, caring and sustainable communities that Mama Sisulu dreamt of and worked for throughout her life.
Let her spirit rest in peace. Lala ngoxolo, Mama Wethu! [Our Mother, rest in peace.]
Thank you, hon Deputy Speaker. [Applause.]