5-07-06, 8:58 am
This must indeed be a day of celebration for our nation. This is because we can truly say that for an entire decade, whatever our challenges, our people have demonstrated their loyalty to the fundamental law of our country, and the national social compact into which they entered in 1996.
We refer here not to a passive acceptance of what our Constitution prescribes. Rather, we are talking of what all of us have done to give life and meaning to the prescriptions we wrote into the Constitution.
We are therefore speaking of what we have done to exercise our right to self-determination that is enshrined in our Constitution. This is important for us, because it has always been at the very heart of the objectives of our movement for national liberation.
This reality, and therefore the tasks of our movement in the context of the 10th anniversary of our Constitution, poses particular and pointed challenges to our movement, which has a continuing responsibility to lead the struggle for the fundamental social transformation of our country.
The rare opportunity provided by the celebration of a decade of our Constitution confronts us with the challenge openly to speak of some of the challenges that face our movement in the aftermath of the victory of the national democratic revolution.
Our movement underlined its pursuit of the fundamental objective of national self-determination as early as 1943, when the annual ANC Congress adopted the historic document, 'The Africans' Claims'. This was a response to the 1941 'Atlantic Charter' elaborated by US President Franklin D Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, which later evolved into the United Nations Charter.
With regard to the critical issue of self-determination, 'The Africans' Claims' quoted one of the articles in the 'Atlantic Charter', which said: '(The signatories) respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.'
Responding to this commitment, 'The Africans' Claims' said: 'The principle of Self Determination, made famous by President Wilson in his Fourteen Points on behalf of small nations, has been reaffirmed by this article of the Charter. This principle of self determination necessarily raises not only issues relating to the independent existence of small nations besides their more powerful neighbours but those also concerning the political rights and status of minorities and of Africans now held under European tutelage...
'We believe that the acid test of this third article of the Charter is its application to the African continent. In certain parts of Africa it should be possible to accord Africans sovereign rights and to establish administrations of their own choosing. But in other parts of Africa where there are the peculiar circumstances of a politically entrenched European minority, ruling a majority African population, the demands of the Africans for full citizenship rights and direct participation in all the councils of the state should be recognised. This is most urgent in the Union of South Africa.'
What our movement described in 1943 as 'most urgent in the Union of South Africa' took 51 years to achieve, and 53 years to entrench in the final document elaborated and adopted by the elected representatives of our people as our basic law, the Constitution adopted in 1996.
Nelson Mandela captured the historic importance of the adoption of this Constitution when he addressed the Constitutional Assembly, during the same occasion, on 8 May, when the Members of the Assembly voted to adopt the Constitution. He said:
'The brief seconds when the majority of Honourable Members quietly assented to the new basic law of the land have captured, in a fleeting moment, the centuries of history that the South African people have endured in search of a better future.
'As one, you, the representatives of the overwhelming majority of South Africans, have given voice to the yearning of millions.
'And so it has come to pass, that South Africa today undergoes her rebirth, cleansed of a horrible past, matured from a tentative beginning, and reaching out to the future with confidence...
'Now it is universally acknowledged that unity and reconciliation are written in the hearts of millions of South Africans. They are an indelible principle of our founding pledge. They are the glowing fire of our New Patriotism. They shall remain the condition for reconstruction and development, in as much as reconstruction and development will depend on unity and reconciliation.
'Our consensus speaks of the maturing of our young democracy. It speaks of the trust that has grown in the blast furnace of practical work, as we, together, rolled up our sleeves to tackle the real problems. Today we celebrate that coming of age...
'We have a commitment and a mandate from the overwhelming majority of our people in this country to transform South Africa from an apartheid state to a non-racial state, to address the question of joblessness and homelessness, to build all the facilities that have been enjoyed for centuries by a tiny minority...
'We will continue searching for solutions because we want everybody to feel that he or she is part and parcel of our efforts to resolve the problems of South Africa...The adoption of this constitution is the beginning of our efforts to resolve the problems of this country.'
Our Constitution pointed the way to what Nelson Mandela described as our country's rebirth. However, he pointed to the matter central to our struggle for self-determination, that whether this rebirth turned into reality or not would depend on what our people as a whole did with the freedom we had won and the authority given to the people fundamentally to change our country, which we had managed to encapsulate in our Constitution.
To give meaning to what had to be done in this regard, Nelson Mandela said 'we want everybody to feel that he or she is part and parcel of our efforts to resolve the problems of South Africa'. He spoke of a New Patriotism that should inspire all our people, united around the vision contained in our Constitution.
He said that unity and reconciliation 'shall remain the condition for reconstruction and development, in as much as reconstruction and development will depend on unity and reconciliation'. He said that together, we must roll up our sleeves to tackle the real problems of our country, and that the adoption of our Constitution constituted 'the beginning of our efforts to resolve the problems of this country'.
As Nelson Mandela saw it, this beginning of our efforts to resolve the problems of our country also marked the tipping moment in our country's history, the creation of the circumstances for the motherland to be 'cleansed of a horrible past, to mature from a tentative beginning, and to reach out to the future with confidence, and come of age'.
The outstanding African and Nigerian writer, Ben Okri, captured this sentiment and vision in his poem 'An African Elegy', in which he says:
We are the miracles that God made To taste the bitter fruit of Time. We are precious. And one day our suffering Will turn into the wonders of the earth.
There are things that burn me now Which turn golden when I am happy. Do you see the mystery of our pain? That we bear poverty And are able to sing and dream sweet things...
That is why our music is so sweet. It makes the air remember. There are secret miracles at work That only Time will bring forth. I too have heard the dead singing.
And they tell me that This life is good They tell me to live it gently With fire, and always with hope. There is wonder here
And there is surprise In everything the unseen moves. The ocean is full of songs. The sky is not an enemy. Destiny is our friend.
The moment of the adoption of our Constitution 10 years ago, which Nelson Mandela said 'captured, in a fleeting moment, the centuries of history that the South African people have endured in search of a better future', substantiated Ben Okri's conviction that for us as Africans, 'destiny is our friend'.
As Ben Okri said, this is a destiny characterised by hope, by the mystery of our pain, by wonders and surprises that will unfold, by the confidence of the African masses that the age of poverty will pass.
To bring all of this to pass, Ben Okri said our dead, the martyrs of the African struggles, were calling on the living not to lose the fire in their souls to bring about change, to avoid violence in their continuing struggle, and to continue to sustain the hope informed by the knowledge that one day our suffering will turn into sweet things, which all humanity would, in the end, consider one of the wonders of the earth.
The dead whose singing Ben Okri had heard, were communicating the same message that Nelson Mandela conveyed to the nation when he said, 'we want everybody to feel that he or she is part and parcel of our efforts to resolve the problems of South Africa.'
As form and convention demand, we must celebrate the 10th anniversary of the adoption of our Constitution with speeches, with ceremony and spectacle, with feasts, with wine and music and dance.
Despite this seeming luxurious abandon, we are indeed entitled to find all the appropriate ways to express our joy, that 10 years ago, our elected representatives, having extensively consulted the people, adopted a Constitution that 'gave voice to the yearning of millions'.
But even more important than this, all of us must ask ourselves and answer this question honestly, whether in the last decade, we have, like Ben Okri, 'heard the dead singing'.
We must answer the question honestly whether, out of respect for our martyrs, and inspired by the New Patriotism, each one of us has defined and acted out his or her role in the continuing struggle that Nelson Mandela spoke about, 'to resolve the problems of South Africa'.
Ten years ago, Nelson Mandela defined some of the challenges facing the new South Africa, visualised in our Constitution, as the achievement of the related and interdependent goals of unity and reconciliation, reconstruction and development, the eradication of joblessness, homelessness and the racial imbalances we inherited, and the building of a truly egalitarian and non-racial society.
As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the adoption of our Constitution, we must reconfirm the right of our diverse nation to self-determination, the right and duty of the nation to define its future in conditions of freedom. We must reassert what Nelson Mandela said, that the adoption of the Constitution constituted 'the beginning of our efforts to resolve the problems of this country'.
Consistent with our historic mission, members and supporters of the ANC, and all those who define themselves as part of the forces of the national democratic revolution, have a responsibility to mobilise all our people, regardless of colour, race, class, gender, disability or age, actively and consciously to use the right to self-determination we won through a costly struggle, to respond to the challenges that Nelson Mandela mentioned in 1996, as the Constitutional Assembly adopted our Constitution.
Our movement for liberation in all its echelons must continue to discharge its responsibility to our nation to act as the leader of the mass revolutionary offensive for the exercise of the right to self-determination.
This must focus on the achievement of the tasks that Nelson Mandela spoke about as we adopted our Constitution a decade ago.
No other force exists in our country to play this role. Our movement collectively, and no individual component part of the revolutionary democratic movement, can delegate this responsibility to other social or political forces in our country.
This also means that all genuine revolutionary democrats have a responsibility to defend and assist the democratic government and the democratic state, both eminent products of our struggle, continuously to improve their capacity to advance the national democratic revolution.
None of the component parts of the national democratic movement can count itself as part of this revolutionary democratic movement if, by its actions, it positions itself as merely a critic or a 'watchdog' over what others are doing to advance the national democratic revolution.
This includes the building of a 'revolutionary' constituency organised for the exclusive purpose to demand that the revolution must 'deliver' what this constituency demands, while it, and its leaders, consciously decide that they have no responsibility to contribute to the advance of the revolution.
This describes the strategic posture according to which the 'revolutionary' fighters thus described, demand that others must 'deliver', while they remain content to reap the fruits of the revolution, determined to make no contribution to the growth of these fruits.
Necessarily, consistent with their task, these 'revolutionaries' position themselves as the worst pessimists, determined to deny the victories that have been scored and the improvements brought about by the democratic revolution.
This is because they believe that the more they are able to demonstrate that the democratic revolution has brought no positive change for the masses of the people, regardless of the truth, the stronger their case becomes for the democratic revolution to 'deliver' more, consistent with their exclusive and selfish demands. Naturally, to give them their legitimacy, these demands will be presented as the very heart of what constitutes revolutionary and meaningful social change.
Ironically, and logically, if all components of our movement adopted this position, in this context condemning the revolutionary movement to focus on the non-antagonistic differences among its component parts, and therefore a 'watchdog' role over other revolutionaries, it would surrender the future of our people to the forces of reaction.
It is for this reason that, always, and within the context of a dynamic and quantitatively and qualitatively changing situation, one of the distinguishing features of successful revolutionary leadership is the ability correctly to identify the friends and foes of progressive change, and vary tactics, operations and strategy to respond to such changes.
The central challenge facing all revolutionary democrats is not the generation of media headlines. Neither is it the pursuit of the fruitless objective to project media images intended to 'outflank' or 'out-compete' other forces for national democratic change, in a meaningless contest to advertise any claimed revolutionary credentials.
Even the abuse of the aspirations of the people, to mobilise them to achieve what is historically impossible at particular moments, can only succeed in the short term. In time, those who believe that the masses of the people are an ignorant mass that can be taught lessons that bear no relationship to reality and the truth, come to learn that, in a revolutionary struggle, the masses of the people are the real teachers of what constitutes the truth.
A simple lesson of all revolutionary struggles is that historic, natural and objective allies cannot be, at the same time, tactical opponents and strategic enemies. All opportunism in this regard has, and will always self-destruct and crash against the understanding and acceptance by the masses of the working people of this obvious reality.
The adoption of our Constitution 10 years ago constituted an historic and permanent victory of our movement, which victory we must claim. Together with the value system on which it is based, and the legal order to which it has given birth, our Constitution stands out as a proud and fitting tribute and monument to the countless martyrs that perished for our freedom.
Most of these died fighting behind the banners and under the inspiration of our movement. The principled defence of the Constitution, in both its letter and spirit, therefore remains one of the principal strategic tasks of our movement.
Constructive engagement in the continuing, difficult and complex struggle to achieve the objectives it has set for the nation is what will define, in the eyes of the masses of our people, who is a genuine representative of these masses, and who is merely a pretender.
As Ben Okri said, one day our suffering as Africans will turn into the wonders of the earth. And as Nelson Mandela said, the Constitution we adopted 10 years ago began the process of our rebirth, created the basis for us to cleanse a horrible past, and enabled the nation to reach out to the future with confidence.
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the adoption of our Constitution, the ANC will continue to contribute to that rebirth, to the cleansing of that horrible past, and to the confident advance of the nation to the future that will give meaning to our common African dream of which Ben Okri spoke, when he said:
'We are the miracles that God made To taste the bitter fruit of Time. We are precious. And one day our suffering Will turn into the wonders of the earth.'
--Thabo Mbeki is the President of South Africa.
From ANC Today
