The founders of our democracy understood their spirituality and its relationship with the land and therefore waged protracted struggles to defend both. Even today we still have sacred spaces which require protection, for example the Motoulong and Makhakha caves in the Free State.
Our icon, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, traces the relationship between the ANC and the church back to the 1870s, when the Ethiopian Church Movement was formed as a response to the rapid land dispossession from the 1800s. The African clergy sought to free themselves from the fetters of the missionaries by establishing African independent churches that came to be known as Ethiopian churches.
The role that the missionaries played in the accelerated African land dispossession of the late 19th century called for a response from the African people in general and from African spiritual and religious leaders in particular. The response took a political form, on the one hand, and a spiritual form, on the other.
On the spiritual side, the response was sparked by racially discriminatory practices and the suppression of the African cultural heritage in the missionary churches. This led to the secession of the African clergy from missionary churches and the founding of the Ethiopian churches. The first breakaways were that of Nehemiah Tile, who founded the Thembu National Church in 1884. The most notable breakaway was that of Mangena Mokone, called the Ethiopian Church of Africa, which was founded in Marabastad, Pretoria, in 1892.
The Ethiopian movement was both a spiritual and a political movement. Though its fundamental basis was the African interpretation of the scriptures, it went well beyond the churches it had helped produce.
The fundamental tenets of the Ethiopian movement were self-worth, self- reliance and freedom. African people were forcibly deprived of these values by colonialism and cultural imperialism. Thus, the wars of resistance and later the struggles for freedom included the struggle for the recovery of the African humanity and its inherent values of self-worth, self-reliance, self-help and a sense of development and progress.
These tenets therefore drew the Ethiopian Christians like a magnet to the growing Pan-African nationalism of the early 20th century. This Pan-African movement was to produce provincial native congresses, which culminated in the formation of the South African Native National Congress in 1912, renamed the African National Congress in 1923. It is in this sense that our icon, Nelson Mandela, traces the seeds of the formation of the ANC to the Ethiopian movement of the 1890s.
The Ethiopian Christians fought alongside traditional communities during the Bambatha Rebellion, which marked the end of the wars of resistance and the birth of liberation politics.
In his speech to the Free Ethiopian Church of Southern Africa in Potchefstroom on 14 December 1992, the honourable Nelson Mandela had this to say on heritage:
The centenary of the Ethiopian Church should have been celebrated throughout the length and breadth of our country, because it touches all the African people irrespective of their denomination or political outlook.
He went on to say that:
The Ethiopian Church is the only surviving institution that is in the hands of the African people. This is a remarkable feature for which we have to give credit to the leaders of this church throughout the difficult years of final dispossession of the people. Indeed, our people were not dispossessed only of their land and cattle, but also of their pride, their dignity and their institutions.
The honourable Nelson Mandela also appreciated the positive role that our religious heritage can play to advance social cohesion and nation-building.
In his lecture titled "Renewal and Renaissance: Towards a New World Order", delivered at the Oxford Centre for Islamic studies on 11 July 1997, Mandela pointed out that religion could provide spiritual leadership in bringing about the social renewal of our continent and the world. He observed, quite correctly, that African history had also been profoundly shaped by the interplay between these three great religious traditions: Islam, Christianity and African religion. He went on to say that the way in which these great religions of Africa interacted and co-operated with one another, could have a profound bearing on the social space we create for the rebirth of our continent.
Last, but not least, Mandela observed that the relationship of Islam and Christianity to one another and of these two to African religion may be pertinent aspects of the African rebirth and renewal. He called on Muslims to harness the more inclusive strands in their own theological heritage in order to contribute to a more humane Africa, acknowledging the humanity of those traditions that are unique to the continent.
In this regard, Nelson Mandela observed:
As with other aspects of its heritage, African traditional religion is increasingly recognised for its contribution to the world. No longer seen as despised superstition which had to be superseded by superior forms of belief, today its enrichment of humanity's spiritual heritage is acknowledged. The spirit of ubuntu, that profound African sense that we are human only through the humanity of other human beings, has added globally to our common search for a better world.
In conclusion, Mandela observed the strength of interfaith solidarity in action against apartheid, which enabled each religion to bring its best forward and place it at the service of all. He then challenged all the religions of the continent to walk a similar path in the reconstruction and renewal of our continent.
In the struggle for preservation and development of our natural heritage, African people were not only degraded and dehumanised, but were also forcibly deprived of their land and its resources, which formed the basis of their natural heritage. The convener of the founding conference of the ANC and an advocate of unity and co-operation, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, responded by buying farms in the Eastern Transvaal, now Mpumalanga, to promote agriculture and ensure food security.
Seme's initiative was so successful that the white farmers called on the union government to take away land from African people and prohibit them from buying farms.
This was achieved through the enactment of the Land Act of 1913, which only allocated 7% of the total land surface of South Africa to African people. This percentage was increased to 13% in 1936. African people were then forced into native reserves, which were too small and barren for agriculture and livestock.
The loss of land and its natural resources deprived Africans of skills in farming and indigenous knowledge systems and their underlying intangible heritage. This denied Africans the means for self-help, self-reliance and survival. Thus, Africans were forced to become mine, farm and domestic workers and to live in shacks and single-sex hostels.
The resulting inhumane situation sparked off popular struggles for the recovery of African humanity, national pride, identity, self-determination, human and people's rights. Thus, the Ethiopian and Pan-African struggles of our forebears were intertwined.
No wonder that the founders of our democracy were both religious and political leaders. The founding president of the ANC, John Langalibalele Dube for instance, called for a spiritual, humane and prosperous Africa as early as 1892. In 1905, Seme not only echoed these values, but also called for a unique civilization for Africa and Africans. The third president of the ANC, Z R Mahabane, articulated what became the ANC moral vision in his 1921 speech titled: "We are not political children".
Mahabane observed that African people were landless, voteless, homeless, hopeless, degraded and dehumanised by colonialism and cultural imperialism. He maintained that in such circumstances the ANC had to strive to restore the humanity of the African people as a prerequisite for the restoration of the humanity of the people of South Africa as a whole. Thus, the 1923 ANC national conference adopted the first bill of rights on the African continent, which reclaimed the African humanity and the participation of African people in the economy. This Bill was amplified by the 1943 Africans' Claims and the 1955 Freedom Charter, which laid the foundation of a value-centred postapartheid society.
The Freedom Charter was adopted under the stewardship of Inkosi Albert Luthuli, a worker, a lay priest in the Congregational Church, and a cultural and traditional leader. Luthuli also reaffirmed the need for the unique African civilisation propounded by Seme.
The African national liberation struggles were informed by spiritual, cultural and material conditions, including land dispossession. Thus, the struggle for land started long before the founding of the Union of South Africa in 1910.
Ubuntu values and principles found their way into both the 1993 and the 1996 Constitutions. This prompted President Zuma to say that we wanted to build a society based on ubuntu values and principles. The strategy and tactics document, adopted at the Polokwane conference, mainstreamed the spiritual philosophy of ubuntu and its inherent values of human solidarity, equality, freedom and justice for all. It calls for the creation of a truly united, democratic and prosperous South Africa in which the value of all citizens is measured by their common humanity without regard to race, gender and social status.
On 23 September 2008, President Zuma delivered the Gert Sibande Memorial Lecture in Secunda where he asked the gathering to honour the memory of Gert Sibande, a revolutionary leader, by remembering that he was a rural activist who stood for the distribution of land to many rural people who were exploited by farmers.
Gert Sibande's life, therefore, was about the fundamental changing of the socioeconomic relations between farmers and farmworkers. He stood for the redistribution of land to those who worked it.
In conclusion, the President stated that September, our Heritage Month, "... marks the beginning of Ramadan for the Muslim communities, the beginning of the New Year for Jewish and African communities. Many African indigenous churches, for example the Zion Christian Church in Moria, also celebrate their New Year in September."
The President used his memorial lecture to congratulate all cultural and religious communities, which had been celebrating their festivals, and invited all South Africans, both black and white, to take part in Heritage Month celebrations. At the Presidential Religious Summit, held on 27 November 2008, President Zuma told the delegates that, I quote:
Nation-building and achieving social cohesion are some of the most important responsibilities of the ruling party. Central to the two tasks is the need to reaffirm and recommit to the moral vision and the value system of our nation, as outlined in various historical documents and the Constitution of the land. The ANC has always valued the interaction with faith communities because its history and moral vision are rooted in the religious sector.
We, therefore, would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Mcebisi Xundu on his election as President of the National Interfaith Leaders Council.
September marks the beginning of a new year rooted in the spirituality of many ancient nations, including those of Africans, which transcend race, class and gender. The African New Year, in particular, provides a home- grown framework for cultural and agricultural festivals which are necessary for inculcating moral, social and economic values in our children. The adoption and mainstreaming of the African and related calendars would realign our spiritual and material existence and make us a truly value- centred society.
We need new ways of celebrating our national holidays and of using them as instruments for imparting moral and social values to our youth. A short exposition of the African calendar will illustrate the desired realignment of our spiritual and material existence.
The African calendar embodies the intangible heritage of African people that cannot and will not be understood without African history and languages. Sir Seretse Khama, the first president of Botswana and the paramount chief of Bamangwato, emphasised the importance of reclaiming our cultural heritage in emphatic terms:
We were taught sometimes in a very positive way to despise ourselves and our ways of life. We were made to believe that we had no past to speak of, no history to boast of. It seemed we were in for a definite period of foreign tutelage without any hope of our ever again becoming our own masters. The end result of all this was that our self-pride and our self- confidence were badly undermined.
Sir Seretse Khama challenged us to:
... try to retrieve what we can of our past. We should write our own history books to prove that we did have a past that was just as worth writing and learning about as any other. We must do this for the simple reason that a nation without a past is a lost nation, and a people without a past is a people without a soul. [Applause.]
The African soul is embedded in its intangible heritage that calls for our attention today.
Western philosophers and scholars succeeded in convincing us and the world that we have no history and heritage by cutting us off from the ancient Ethiopian and Egyptian past and by attributing the achievements of Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe, and Mero and Aksum in Ethiopia to foreigners. It is for this reason that Cheikh Anta Diop said that the history of Africa would not be complete until it was connected to that of Egypt. Pixley ka Isaka Seme connected it in his public lecture titled, "The Regeneration of Africa in 1905". To these ancient monuments, Nelson Mandela added Carthage, Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe. Near home, we have Lwandali in Tshiendeulu and Thulamela.
The most decisive affinity between the ancient Egyptian, tangible and intangible heritage and our own can be found in the languages, religions, astral sciences and indigenous knowledge systems.
There is "ntu" in ubuntu, punt(u) and bunntu or BNNT. In Africa, south of the Sahara, there are about 400 languages and 2 000 dialects - belonging to the Bantu family of languages from which the ancient Egyptian language was derived. By neglecting our indigenous languages, we lose our soul, our past and our intangible heritage. Language and religion are also motive forces for nation-building and social cohesion. We can preserve indigenous African languages by making it compulsory that every person studying for a degree and every person who wants to enter the public service has to learn one indigenous African language. [Time expired.] [Applause.]