Hon Speaker, I have chosen to speak on the regeneration of Africa for sustainable development. My starting point is that people who do not know where they come from will not know where they are going to, and any road will lead them anywhere. Such a people will be like a rudderless ship.
Africa Day celebrations cannot be just an event. They must be an opportunity to remind our people, especially the youth and children, of the history and revolutionary morality which informed the Pan-African struggles which produced the freedom that we enjoy today. Africa Day celebrations must serve to remind us of the challenges that we still face in our quest to deepen and entrench democracy, the human and people's rights culture on the continent, and the impediments to the right to development of African peoples and nations. Last, but not least, we must remember that we have not yet achieved the total liberation of the African continent, because the people of the Sahwari still live under colonial rule.
We need to use this opportunity to remind ourselves that the Sahwari people and the people of the newly formed Southern Sudan need moral and material support to realise their right to self-determination, and human and people's rights. South Africans should consider establishing solidarity groups to support the Sahwarian and Southern Sudanese people.
As South Africans, it is an important opportunity to reflect on the road we have travelled since 1994 to create a nonracial, nonsexist, united, democratic and prosperous society in which the value of every citizen is measured by our common humanity. It is the time to reflect on our South African and African identity and the revolutionary values that we must forge to achieve social cohesion and nation-building.
Knowledge of the history of Pan-African struggles and the revolutionary morality that informed them is a prerequisite for understanding our South African and African identity and for achieving social cohesion and nation- building.
The challenges and tasks facing us take us back to the days of the transatlantic slave trade and the partition of Africa by Western powers in Berlin in 1885.
We must pause here and remember the role played by the Prince Hall Masonic lodges and Ethiopianism in the Caribbean and North America in enlightening the slaves and inspiring them to fight for civil and political rights. This enlightenment was brought about by a recollection of the past glories of Africa and its contribution to human civilisation and, in particular, the prophesy of African redemption in Psalm 68:31, which says that:
Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands into God.
The Ethiopia of the Bible referred to Africa south of the Sahara. The slaves and colonised Africans interpreted Psalm 68:31 to mean that Africa had been killed and buried by the transatlantic slave trade and colonial imperialism, but that it would be reborn, renewed and develop again.
In pursuit of this Ethiopian-African liberation theology, the Prince Hall Masonic lodges and Ethiopian churches, notably the Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal churches, built schools and universities for children of ex-slaves. These institutions produced civil rights and Pan-African leaders, including Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, W E B du Bois, Henry Sylvester Williams, George Padmore and Marcus Garvey.
The Ethiopian church and the Pan-African leaders, on the continent were profoundly influenced by the Ethiopian and Pan-African ideals coming from the Caribbean and North America. These leaders include John Langalibalele Dube and Charlotte Makgomo Maxeke, the founding presidents of the ANC and the ANC Women's League respectively. The founder of the Ethiopian Church of Africa, the Rev Mangena Maake Mokone, was also profoundly influenced by Pan- Africanism. In 2010 President Jacob Zuma posthumously awarded a National Order to Rev Mangena Maake Mokone as a founder of the Ethiopian Church and liberation theology in South Africa.
Our icon, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, taught us that Ethiopianism had spiritual and political dimensions. As a spiritual or religious movement, it rejected the negative interpretation of the Bible which sought to reduce Africans to a subhuman race and asserted the potential of African redemption. In its political dimension, Ethiopianism preached the culture of self-help and self-reliance and the historic mission of African people to free themselves from slavery and colonial imperialism.
Under the influence of Booker T Washington, the self-confessed Ethiopian Christian John Langalibalele Dube revealed his vision of a free, spiritual, caring and prosperous Africa in his public lecture titled "Upon my Native Land". In the same year, the Rev Mangena Maake Mokone broke away from the Wesleyan Methodist Church and founded the Ethiopian Church of Africa in Marabastad, Pretoria. On the continent of Africa and throughout her diaspora African Christians broke away from missionary churches to form Ethiopian - that is, indigenous - African churches because of racism and racially discriminatory practices in church and state institutions.
The history of Africa would not be complete without the role played by the Ethiopian movement in the development of the revolutionary moral vision and formation of early welfare associations and congresses which conducted the civil rights and national liberation struggles which produced the freedom we enjoy today.
Charlotte Makgomo Mannya-Maxeke facilitated the affiliation of the Ethiopian Church of Africa to the AME Church of the United States in 1896. In the same year, the Ethiopian armed forces defeated the fascist Italian army at Adowa. This victory aroused the spirit of Afro-Asian solidarity and reinforced the desire of African peoples for freedom and equality.
In 1898 Bishop Turner of the AME Church in America visited the city of Cape Town where he ordained 65 pastors and dispatched them into the interior of South Africa to spread Ethiopianism and the spirit of Africa for Africans. By this time African kingdoms had just been conquered and peasants had lost their livestock, and their land and its natural resources. Thus, Ethiopianism and Pan-Africanism appealed to peasants, and traditional and religious leaders.
When the Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1899, African people fought on both sides hoping that in the event of victory they would regain their civil and political rights. During the war Henry Sylvester Williams, a Trinidadian lawyer, convened the first Pan-African Congress in London. The Congress condemned the atrocities which were perpetrated on Africans on both sides of the war.
In his opening address to the Congress, W E B du Bois opined that the problem of the 20th century would be the problem of the colour line, and rejected colour as a legitimate basis for denying millions of people of African descent equal opportunities for development. He went on to state that both ancient and modern history could not produce evidence of African inferiority to Europeans or any other race. His observation about the problem of the colour line was confirmed at the end of the Anglo-Boer War in 1902 when the Boers and Britons concluded the Treaty of Vereeniging which institutionalised the colour line.
After the Pan-African Congresses, Henry Sylvester Williams, convener of the conference, and the Ghananian delegate to the Congress, Peregrino, joined Bishop Coppin and AME officials in Cape Town and together they spread the Ethiopian and Pan-African ideals to the whole of South Africa. This led to the formation of the African People's Organisation, the Apo Abdullah Abdularahm, who used the words ``African'' and ``coloured'' interchangeably. Thus today's unfortunate distinction between coloured and African did not exist. The formation of the APO was followed by welfare associations and Native Congresses which brought together peasants, and traditional and religious leaders to fight for African civil and political rights.
In 1905 Pixley ka Isaka Seme, a student at Columbia University in the United States, spelt out his vision for a post-colonial Africa in his oration titled "The Regeneration of Africa". In this oration, Seme endorsed the values of a caring society espoused by John Dube in 1892 and called for the creation of a unique civilisation for Africa and Africans.
By this time, Ethiopianism and Pan-Africanism had become the black peril - die "swartgevaar" - which forced the Dutch and British settlers to move towards greater unity which led to the formation of the Union of South Africa, which excluded African people. The formation of the Union was followed by statutory measures which enforced racial segregation in church and state, in the labour market and territorial separation.
In 1912 Pixley ka Isaka Seme and three other lawyers convened the founding conference of the ANC, which brought peasants, and religious and traditional leaders together to form a national organisation for the defence of African civil and political rights. The organisation was anchored in the unity and co-operation of African people.
However, in 1919, Sefako Mapogo Makgatho, the second president of the ANC, spelt out the nonracial character of the ANC struggle. In its 1919 constitution, the ANC also described itself as a Pan-African organisation.
From its inception the ANC was driven by a moral vision that was spelt out by the Rev Z R Mahabane in 1921 in a speech titled "We are not political children". Mahabane observed that African people had been forcibly deprived of their land, degraded and dehumanised, and rendered voteless, hopeless and homeless. Thus in 1923 he told the national conference of the ANC, which elected him the third president, that, given this African condition, the ANC must strive for the recovery of the African humanity, ubuntu, as a prerequisite for the recovery of the humanity of all South Africans, both black and white. Thus the opening paragraph of the Bill of Rights, adopted by the ANC in 1923, asserted African humanity and the right of African people to participate in the economic life of the country.
African people had also participated in World War I, hoping that in the event of victory they would regain their civil and political rights. After the war, W E B du Bois convened the second Pan-African Congress at Versailles, France, to plead the African cause, but that was in vain.
The conference was attended by Sol Tshekisho Plaatje, the founding secretary-general of the ANC. From Versailles Sol Plaatje travelled to the United States, where he shared platforms with Marcus Garvey who had founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Unia, in Jamaica in 1914. In 1917 he had re-established this organisation in Harlem in the US.
Unia became the largest black mass movement in the US, which forged the spirit of Pan-African unity among people of African descent, and demanded the right of African people to self-determination and human rights, and the creation of independent African states. He also preached the African humanist philosophy of "I" and "I", that is, ``I am through others''. Marcus Garvey also catalysed the development of radical Pan-African nationalism and the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s.
His radicalism was reinforced by the invasion of Ethiopia by Fascist Italian forces in 1935. This invasion also forced people of African descent the world over to rally behind Ethiopia. Even Indians and Chinese rallied behind Ethiopia and claimed that the defeat of Ethiopia would be the defeat of all people of colour the world over. This sowed the seeds of Afro-Asian solidarity.
The radical Pan-Africanism of the 1920s and early 1930s, including the Harlem Renaissance, had a profound impact on young African intellectuals, notably Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. The Harlem Renaissance witnessed a remarkable flowering of creative energies by African-American writers and artists seeking to draw inspiration from, and to celebrate, their African heritage. Nigerian leader Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe's Renascent Africa in 1937 was another important landmark in this gradual rediscovery of a history that had been forcibly denied and therefore forgotten during the colonial period when massive exploitation of the continent's human and natural resources went hand in hand with a refusal to honour and respect its cultural achievements.
Azikiwe, who was studying in the United States of America when the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing, refused to accept that Africa's future had been blighted forever by the impact of European imperialism. According to him, the wellbeing of the continent depended on reactivating a spiritual balance through respect for others, achieving social regeneration through the triumph of democracy, ensuring mental emancipation through a rejection of racism, and striving for economic prosperity through self-determination.
Nkrumah, who was also in the United States during the Harlem Renaissance, proclaimed during World War II that after the war African people would demand nothing less than their right to self-determination and human rights. This young Pan-African leader was angered by the fact that President Theodore Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter which recognised the East European excluding the African right of self-determination and human rights.
When it comes to the birth of the Organisation of African Unity, it should be noted that the idea of African unity grew in the late 19th century and during the 20th century. It is the idea that led to the development of African nationalism in Africa and the diaspora. But Pan-Africanism did not just mean nationalism. It looked forward to a time when the countries of Africa would be united and would co-operate with each other to help Africa as a whole to develop.
It was in Ghana that the first moves were made towards African unity. In 1958, Nkrumah, the prime minister of Ghana, organised the All-African People's Conference in Accra. This was followed by a meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 25 May 1963, at which it was agreed to form the Organisation of African Unity, the OAU.
East African leaders realised that political freedom without economic freedom could not create a better life for all. They also realised that at independence colonial powers imposed a constitutional order and rule of law which sought to entrench and guarantee colonial interests, especially property rights. Thus in 1961 African jurists developed their rule of law and democracy in the African context which, unfortunately, in some countries led to one-party states.
Nevertheless, the founders of African nation states did not lose sight of the fact that the colonial bills of rights kept the land and its natural resources in the hands of former colonial powers and made African freedom and independence an empty shell. The newly independent African states therefore used their membership of the United Nations and the OAU itself to demand a new economic order, which would restore the land and its natural resources to the African people. This was seen as a basic requirement for sustainable development.
African leaders also recognised and acknowledged that colonialism not only affected the land and its natural resources, but also the African mind. They then took active steps to decolonise the mind. First, they observed that international human rights charters, for instance the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, emphasised political rights, not socioeconomic rights. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child emphasised rights without responsibilities. To remedy the situation, African countries adopted the Banjul Charter, also called the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. They also adopted the Charter on the Rights of the African Child.
It is clear, therefore, that Africa has developed her own developmental paradigm, and that all that we need to do is use this opportunity to call on African governments ...