Seboledi, Mopresidente le Motlat?a Mopresidente, ke a le dumedi?a. Ke re Thobela! [Hon Speaker, hon President and hon Deputy President, I greet you all.]
I rise to declare that the ANC is irrevocably and unashamedly married to the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. [Applause.] Not only are we determined to uphold it, but we are also indeed ready to defend it with our very own lives if need be.
We make bold these assertions sustained by the indomitable fighting spirit of Makana, so eloquently captured in the words of Nelson Mandela at the Rivonia Trial, during the time when our leadership was faced with the real prospect of the hangman's noose.
In our language we call this spirit the spirit of no surrender - the same spirit that sustained Vuyisile Mini, as he faced the hangman's noose; the very spirit that sustained Solomon Mahlangu as he faced the gallows.
We make bold to say we can defend the Constitution with our lives, sustained again by the spirit, by the knowledge that we speak also on behalf of those who fell on the battlefield, pursuing the quest of the realisation of this Constitution.
We shall defend this Constitution because it is the product of our own struggle. It embodies the lofty ideas of Pixley ka Isaka Seme in 1912 when he called for the unity of black people in our country. It reflects, in many ways, the spirit of our Freedom Charter of 1955, which declared that: "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white."
In case we forget, this was the time when white supremacy was reigning supreme. It could not have been easy for our forebears, some of whom are amongst us here today, to recognise the rights of the oppressors at the same time that they themselves were at the receiving end of the iron heel of the same white supremacy. We were bold then as the oppressed, as we are bold now as a free people to assert the citizenship of all South Africans.
Our belief in the humanity of us all remains unassailable because it is not discriminatory, and it is not time or circumstance bound. It is for this reason that our time-tested belief in our collective humanity has illuminated our passage through the valley of death, and it shall continue to carry us onwards as a necessary burden on its timeless winds of wisdom to the end of time. This is made possible by the rare and priceless gift bequeathed to us by the noble spirit of ubuntu, which asserts: Motho ke motho ka batho ba bangwe. [A person is a person because of other people.]
We claim our own humanity by recognising the humanity of others. This is a true and lasting hallmark of our people, and indeed is the intrinsic nature of our great movement for those who know it as well as the uninitiated.
Those who today accuse the black majority and white democrats, as represented by our movement, of being a threat to the Constitution, deliberately choose to overlook the history of this country. They are the ones who are, in fact, posing a serious threat to the Constitution by opportunistically and hysterically waving the flag of fear and uncertainty amongst the population, not only here, but also abroad.
In this regard, it is disingenuous and unpatriotic to attempt to build any party's political fortunes aboard a wagon propelled on wheels of falsehood and on the road to a nonexistent but promised utopia, a state which exists only in the minds of its prophets and their disciples.
Speaking for ourselves, we have defied the odds with remarkable resilience by consistently refusing to be defined by the centuries-old dehumanisation of black people. Whenever we have had the occasion to look into the mirror of time, we have always come out proud of being ourselves, proud of our value systems. We have survived the ideological onslaughts of successive white regimes which sought to convince us that we were children of a lesser God, and, therefore, poor imitations of real human beings. We have also witnessed oppressors suffering under the weight of the chains they sought to shackle their victims with.
To oppress others can be a thankless and, indeed, energy-sapping full-time job, my friends. It would be foolish in the extreme, therefore, for us to swop the free mantle of the liberator for the debilitating straitjacket of the oppressor. Therefore, reproducing ourselves in the image of the oppressor has never been an attractive option at all. [Applause.] We are not about to change now, and change the Constitution because we are ruling. This Constitution is safe with us. It is safe with the ANC. [Applause.]
HON MEMBERS: Yeah!