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"I am an African" - Thabo Mbeki ... 8 May
1996
On 8 May 1996, Thabo Mbeki made a speech to the people of Africa and the world. Mr
Mbeki is now the President of South Africa. The speech tells of Mr Mbeki’s belief in the capacity of all people
from Africa.
"Friends, on an occasion such as this, we should, perhaps, start from
the beginning. So, let me begin.
I am an African!
I owe by being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades,
the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the
ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land. My body has
frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth
of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the
rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have been a
cause both of trembling and of hope… The dramatic shapes of the
[landscape] have… been panels of the set on the natural stage on which
we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of our day.
At times, and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal
citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the
springbok, the hyena, the black mamba and the pestilential mosquito. A human
presence among all these, a feature on the face of our native land thus
defined, I know that none dare challenge me when I say - I am an African!
…
Today, as a country, we keep an audible silence about these ancestors of the
generations that live, fearful to admit the horror of a former deed, seeking
to obliterate from our memories a cruel occurrence which, in its remembering,
should teach us not and never to be inhuman again. I am formed of the
migrants who left Europe to find a new home
on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of
me. In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East.
Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence.
The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a
reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done… My
mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the
jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana
to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the
desert….
I have seen our country torn asunder as … my people, engaged one
another in a titanic battle, the one redress a wrong that had been caused by
one to another and the other, to defend the indefensible. I have seen what
happens when one person has superiority of force over another, when the
stronger appropriate to themselves the prerogative even to annul the
injunction that God created all men and women in His image.
I know what it signifies when race and colour are
used to determine who is human and who, sub-human. I have seen the
destruction of all sense of self-esteem, the consequent striving to be what
one is not, simply to acquire some of the benefits which those who had
improved themselves as masters had ensured that they enjoy. I have experience
of the situation in which race and colour is used
to enrich some and impoverish the rest.
I have seen the corruption of minds and souls [in] the pursuit of an ignoble
effort to perpetrate a veritable crime against humanity. I have seen concrete
expression of the denial of the dignity of a human being emanating from the
conscious, systemic and systematic oppressive and repressive activities of
other human beings. There the victims parade with no mask to hide the brutish
reality - the beggars, the prostitutes, the street children, those who seek
solace in substance abuse, those who have to steal to assuage hunger, those
who have to lose their sanity because to be sane is to invite pain. Perhaps
the worst among these, who are my people, are those who have learnt to kill
for a wage. To these the extent of death is directly proportional to their
personal welfare…
All this I know and know to be true because I am an African!
Because of that, I am also able to state this fundamental truth that I am born
of a people who are heroes and heroines. I am born of a people who would not
tolerate oppression. I am of a nation that would not allow that fear of
death, torture, imprisonment, exile or persecution should result in the
perpetuation of injustice. The great masses who are our mother and father
will not permit that the behaviour of the few
results in the description of our country and people as barbaric. Patient
because history is on their side, these masses do not despair because today
the weather is bad. Nor do they turn triumphalist
when, tomorrow, the sun shines.
Whatever the circumstances they have lived through and because of that
experience, they are determined to define for themselves who they are and who
they should be… As an African, this is an achievement of which I am
proud, proud without reservation and proud without any feeling of
conceit…
But it seems to have happened that we looked at ourselves and said the time
had come that we make a super-human effort to be other than human, to respond
to the call to create for ourselves a glorious future, to remind ourselves of
the Latin saying: Gloria est consequenda
- Glory must be sought after!
Today it feels good to be an African…
I am born of the peoples of the continent of Africa.
The pain of the violent conflict that the peoples of Liberia, Somalia,
the Sudan, Burundi and Algeria is a pain I also
bear. The dismal shame of poverty, suffering and human degradation of my
continent is a blight that we share. The blight on our happiness that derives
from this and from our drift to the periphery of the ordering of human
affairs leaves us in a persistent shadow of despair. This is a savage road to
which nobody should be condemned. This thing that we have done today, in this
small corner of a great continent that has contributed so decisively to the
evolution of humanity says that Africa reaffirms that she is continuing her
rise from the ashes…
Whatever the difficulties, Africa shall be at peace!
However improbable it may sound to the sceptics, Africa will prosper!
Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry
baggage from our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of
cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today
and say - nothing can stop us now! "
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