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| Ek is lief vir Suid Afrika [boodskap #15668 is 'n antwoord op boodskap #15670] |
Di, 09 Junie 1998 00:00  |
Sarah Driver-Jowitt
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Ek het hierdie gelees. Ek kon dit nooit so perfek sê.
STATEMENT OF DEPUTY PRESIDENT THABO MBEKI, ON BEHALF OF THE AFRICAN
NATIONAL CONGRESS, ON THE OCCASION OF THE ADOPTION BY THE CONSTITUTIONAL
ASSEMBLY OF "THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA CONSTITUTION BILL 1996", CAPE
TOWN, 9 MAY 1996
On an occasion such as this, we should, perhaps, start from the
beginning. So, let me begin -
I am an African.
============
I owe my 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 fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the
wild blooms of the citizens of the veld.
The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the soil-coloured waters of the
Lekoa, iGqili noThukela, and the sands of the Kgalagadi, have all 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!
I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the
great expanses of the beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most
merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the
first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and
independence and they who, as a people, perished in the result. 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.
I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and
Sekhukhune led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle,
the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the
cause of freedom.
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 am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St
Helena and the Bahamas, who sees in the mind's eye and suffers the
suffering of a simple peasant folk, death, concentration camps,
destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins.
I am the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in
the world markets in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which my
stomach yearns.
I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being
resided in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical
labour, who taught me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who
taught me that human existence itself demanded that freedom was a
necessary condition for that human existence.
Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare
contest that assertion, I shall claim that - I am an African|
I have seen our country torn asunder as these, all of whom are my
people, engaged one another in a titanic battle, the one to 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 imposed 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 as a result of 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. And so, like pawns in the
service of demented souls, they kill in furtherance of the political
violence in KwaZulu-Natal. They murder the innocent in the taxi wars.
They kill slowly or quickly in order to make profits from the illegal
trade in narcotics. They are available for hire when husband wants to
murder wife and wife, husband.
Among us prowl the products of our immoral and amoral past - killers who
have no sense of the worth of human life, rapists who have absolute
disdain for the women of our country, animals who would seek to benefit
from the vulnerability of the children, the disabled and the old, the
rapacious who brook no obstacle in their quest for self-enrichment.
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 truimphalist 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.
We are assembled here today to mark their victory in acquiring and
exercising their right to formulate their own definition of what it
means to be African.
The constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutes an unequivocal
statement that we refuse to accept that our Africanness shall be defined
by our race, colour, gender or historical origins.
It is a firm assertion made by ourselves that South Africa belongs to
all who live in it, black and white.
It gives concrete expression to the sentiment we share as Africans, and
will defend to the death, that the people shall govern.
It recognises the fact that the dignity of the individual is both an
objective which society must pursue, and is a goal which cannot be
separated from the material well-being of that individual.
It seeks to create the situation in which all our people shall be free
from fear, including the fear of the oppression of one national group by
another, the fear of the disembowelment of one social echelon by
another, the fear of the use of state power to deny anybody their
fundamental human rights and the fear of tyranny.
It aims to open the doors so that those who were disadvantaged can
assume their place in society as equals with their fellow human beings
without regard to colour, race, gender, age or geographic dispersal.
It provides the opportunity to enable each one and all to state their
views, promote them, strive for their implementation in the process of
governance without fear that a contrary view will be met with
repression.
It creates a law-governed society which shall be inimical to arbitrary
rule.
It enables the resolution of conflicts by peaceful means rather than
resort to force.
It rejoices in the diversity of our people and creates the space for all
of us voluntarily to define ourselves as one people.
As an African, this is an achievement of which I am proud, proud without
reservation and proud without any feeling of conceit. Our sense of
elevation at this moment also derives from the fact that this
magnificent product is the unique creation of African hands and African
minds.
But it also constitutes a tribute to our loss of vanity that we could,
despite the temptation to treat ourselves as an exceptional fragment of
humanity, draw on the accumulated experience and wisdom of all
humankind, to define for ourselves what we want to be.
Together with the best in the world, we too are prone to pettiness,
petulance, selfishness and short-sightedness. 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.
It feels good that I can stand here as a South African and as a foot
soldier of a titanic African army, the African National Congress, to say
to all the parties represented here, to the millions who made an input
into the processes we are concluding, to our outstanding compatriots who
have presided over the birth of our founding document, to the
negotiators who pitted their wits one against the other, to the unseen
stars who shone unseen as the management and administration of the
Constitutional Assembly, the advisers, experts and publicists, to the
mass communication media, to our friends across the globe -
congratulations and well done|
I am 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 setbacks of the moment, nothing can stop us now] 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]
Thank you.
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| Re: Ek is lief vir Suid Afrika [boodskap #15669 is 'n antwoord op boodskap #15668] |
Di, 09 Junie 1998 00:00  |
G.B.
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"Sarah Driver-Jowitt" writes:
> 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.
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| Re: Ek is lief vir Suid Afrika [boodskap #15670 is 'n antwoord op boodskap #15668] |
Di, 09 Junie 1998 00:00 |
Ding!
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Sarah Driver-Jowitt wrote:
>
>
> I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the
> great expanses of the beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most
> merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the
> first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and
> independence and they who, as a people, perished in the result. 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.
>
Umm kan iemand vir my die stukkie verduidelik???
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| Re: Ek is lief vir Suid Afrika [boodskap #15671 is 'n antwoord op boodskap #15670] |
Di, 09 Junie 1998 00:00 |
Henri Burger
Boodskappe: 317
Geregistreer: Februarie 1998
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lou skryf:
>> I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the
>> great expanses of the beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most
>> merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the
>> first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and
>> independence and they who, as a people, perished in the result. 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.
>>
>
> Umm kan iemand vir my die stukkie verduidelik???
Lou,
Op Montagu is daar 'n museum. Daar is heelwat dokumente oor die doen en late
van my voorsate, die Burgers van die Klein Karoo. Ek moes tot my
ontsteltenis daar lees hoe hulle op georganiseerde 'Boesmanjagte' gegaan
het.
As ek reg onthou het Sir Laurens vd Post 'n soortgelyke 'claim to fame'. In
sy geval het dit in die Oos-Vrystaat gebeur. Ek dink sy oupa het die laaste
Boesman daar geskiet. By hom het hy bokhorinkies met gekleurde pigment
gehad - die laaste rotsskilder in SA?
Groete
Henri Burger, Tzaneen. RSA
'Afrika is Nie vir Sissies Nie!'
(e-mail: remove 'sukikaki.')
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| Re: Ek is lief vir Suid Afrika [boodskap #15702 is 'n antwoord op boodskap #15670] |
Wo, 10 Junie 1998 00:00 |
Ding!
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Henri Burger wrote:
>
> lou skryf:
>
>>> I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the
>>> great expanses of the beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most
>>> merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the
>>> first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and
>>> independence and they who, as a people, perished in the result. 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.
>>>
>>
>> Umm kan iemand vir my die stukkie verduidelik???
>
> Lou,
>
> Op Montagu is daar 'n museum. Daar is heelwat dokumente oor die doen en late
> van my voorsate, die Burgers van die Klein Karoo. Ek moes tot my
> ontsteltenis daar lees hoe hulle op georganiseerde 'Boesmanjagte' gegaan
> het.
>
> As ek reg onthou het Sir Laurens vd Post 'n soortgelyke 'claim to fame'. In
> sy geval het dit in die Oos-Vrystaat gebeur. Ek dink sy oupa het die laaste
> Boesman daar geskiet. By hom het hy bokhorinkies met gekleurde pigment
> gehad - die laaste rotsskilder in SA?
>
> Groete
>
> Henri Burger, Tzaneen. RSA
> 'Afrika is Nie vir Sissies Nie!'
> (e-mail: remove 'sukikaki.')
Sorry Henri ek was net bietjie sarkasties. Die San en Koi het die hele
SA bewoon - maar is uitgedryf en vermoor deur die inbewegende swart
stamme en later ook deur die wit nedersetters. Dit kom nie vir my so
mooi deur in M'Beki se toespraak nie.
Cheers
Lou
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| Re: Ek is lief vir Suid Afrika [boodskap #15703 is 'n antwoord op boodskap #15670] |
Wo, 10 Junie 1998 00:00 |
Johan N Potgieter
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On 9 Jun 1998 20:07:22 GMT, wrote:
> "Sarah Driver-Jowitt" writes:
>
>
>> 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.
>
Hygskrywe wat niks sê nie....
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| Re: Ek is lief vir Suid Afrika [boodskap #15704 is 'n antwoord op boodskap #15670] |
Wo, 10 Junie 1998 00:00 |
Henri Burger
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lou skryf:
> Sorry Henri ek was net bietjie sarkasties. Die San en Koi het die hele
> SA bewoon - maar is uitgedryf en vermoor deur die inbewegende swart
> stamme en later ook deur die wit nedersetters. Dit kom nie vir my so
> mooi deur in M'Beki se toespraak nie.
Lou, ek dink as 'n ou sy toespraak onbevange en met 'n oop gemoed lees, kom
jy tot die gevolgtrekking dat hy 'n opsomming probeer gee het van hoe ons
almal hier beland het, en dat daar dinge hier gebeur het wat tragies is na
die een of ander kant toe.
Die feit is ons is hier, en daardie dinge het gebeur. Geen WVK, of wat ook
al, gaan 'n blou duit daaraan verander nie. Dit gaan nie die San, of Piet
Retief, of Steve Biko terugbring nie. Ons moet hierdie goed diep in die
geheue bêre, die los stukke optel, en aangaan. Dis hoe ek dit sien.
Onthou ook dit was met die aanvaarding van die nuwe grondwet, wat die
enigste instrument van beskerming vir ons almal is.
Groete
Henri Burger, Tzaneen. RSA
'Afrika is Nie vir Sissies Nie!'
(e-mail: remove 'sukikaki.')
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| Re: Ek is lief vir Suid Afrika [boodskap #15705 is 'n antwoord op boodskap #15670] |
Wo, 10 Junie 1998 00:00 |
Ding!
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@igs.net wrote:
>
> "Sarah Driver-Jowitt" writes:
>
>> 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.
>
En jou punt is Gloudina wat verstaan hoe nuuslesers werk??? :)
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| Re: Ek is lief vir Suid Afrika [boodskap #15748 is 'n antwoord op boodskap #15670] |
Do, 11 Junie 1998 00:00 |
IRQ0
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Henri Burger wrote in message ...
> Onthou ook dit was met die aanvaarding van die nuwe grondwet, wat die
> enigste instrument van beskerming vir ons almal is.
Tot die ANC daai 2/3 meerderheid kry ;)
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| Re: Ek is lief vir Suid Afrika [boodskap #15770 is 'n antwoord op boodskap #15670] |
Vr, 12 Junie 1998 00:00 |
mafuta[1]
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i can tell you stories about BLACK MAMBA.
@igs.net wrote in message ...
> "Sarah Driver-Jowitt" writes:
>
>
>> 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.
>
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| Re: Ek is lief vir Suid Afrika [boodskap #15771 is 'n antwoord op boodskap #15670] |
Vr, 12 Junie 1998 00:00 |
INFO SERVICES
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Very Nice,
Thanks for sharing that with us. I am sure I will sleep alot better now at
night, knowing we have poets in Government.
Sarah Driver-Jowitt wrote in message
...
> Ek het hierdie gelees. Ek kon dit nooit so perfek sê.
>
>
> STATEMENT OF DEPUTY PRESIDENT THABO MBEKI, ON BEHALF OF THE AFRICAN
> NATIONAL CONGRESS, ON THE OCCASION OF THE ADOPTION BY THE CONSTITUTIONAL
>
> ASSEMBLY OF "THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA CONSTITUTION BILL 1996", CAPE
> TOWN, 9 MAY 1996
>
> On an occasion such as this, we should, perhaps, start from the
> beginning. So, let me begin -
>
> I am an African.
> ============
> I owe my 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 fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the
>
> wild blooms of the citizens of the veld.
>
> The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the soil-coloured waters of the
> Lekoa, iGqili noThukela, and the sands of the Kgalagadi, have all 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!
>
> I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the
> great expanses of the beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most
> merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the
> first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and
> independence and they who, as a people, perished in the result. 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.
>
>
>
> I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and
> Sekhukhune led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle,
> the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the
> cause of freedom.
>
> 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 am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St
> Helena and the Bahamas, who sees in the mind's eye and suffers the
> suffering of a simple peasant folk, death, concentration camps,
> destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins.
>
> I am the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in
> the world markets in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which my
> stomach yearns.
>
> I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being
> resided in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical
> labour, who taught me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who
> taught me that human existence itself demanded that freedom was a
> necessary condition for that human existence.
>
> Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare
> contest that assertion, I shall claim that - I am an African|
>
> I have seen our country torn asunder as these, all of whom are my
> people, engaged one another in a titanic battle, the one to 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 imposed 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 as a result of 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. And so, like pawns in the
> service of demented souls, they kill in furtherance of the political
> violence in KwaZulu-Natal. They murder the innocent in the taxi wars.
> They kill slowly or quickly in order to make profits from the illegal
> trade in narcotics. They are available for hire when husband wants to
> murder wife and wife, husband.
>
> Among us prowl the products of our immoral and amoral past - killers who
>
> have no sense of the worth of human life, rapists who have absolute
> disdain for the women of our country, animals who would seek to benefit
> from the vulnerability of the children, the disabled and the old, the
> rapacious who brook no obstacle in their quest for self-enrichment.
>
> 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 truimphalist 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.
>
> We are assembled here today to mark their victory in acquiring and
> exercising their right to formulate their own definition of what it
> means to be African.
>
> The constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutes an unequivocal
> statement that we refuse to accept that our Africanness shall be defined
>
> by our race, colour, gender or historical origins.
>
> It is a firm assertion made by ourselves that South Africa belongs to
> all who live in it, black and white.
>
> It gives concrete expression to the sentiment we share as Africans, and
> will defend to the death, that the people shall govern.
>
> It recognises the fact that the dignity of the individual is both an
> objective which society must pursue, and is a goal which cannot be
> separated from the material well-being of that individual.
>
> It seeks to create the situation in which all our people shall be free
> from fear, including the fear of the oppression of one national group by
>
> another, the fear of the disembowelment of one social echelon by
> another, the fear of the use of state power to deny anybody their
> fundamental human rights and the fear of tyranny.
>
> It aims to open the doors so that those who were disadvantaged can
> assume their place in society as equals with their fellow human beings
> without regard to colour, race, gender, age or geographic dispersal.
>
> It provides the opportunity to enable each one and all to state their
> views, promote them, strive for their implementation in the process of
> governance without fear that a contrary view will be met with
> repression.
>
> It creates a law-governed society which shall be inimical to arbitrary
> rule.
>
> It enables the resolution of conflicts by peaceful means rather than
> resort to force.
>
> It rejoices in the diversity of our people and creates the space for all
>
> of us voluntarily to define ourselves as one people.
>
> As an African, this is an achievement of which I am proud, proud without
>
> reservation and proud without any feeling of conceit. Our sense of
> elevation at this moment also derives from the fact that this
> magnificent product is the unique creation of African hands and African
> minds.
>
> But it also constitutes a tribute to our loss of vanity that we could,
> despite the temptation to treat ourselves as an exceptional fragment of
> humanity, draw on the accumulated experience and wisdom of all
> humankind, to define for ourselves what we want to be.
>
> Together with the best in the world, we too are prone to pettiness,
> petulance, selfishness and short-sightedness. 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.
>
> It feels good that I can stand here as a South African and as a foot
> soldier of a titanic African army, the African National Congress, to say
>
> to all the parties represented here, to the millions who made an input
> into the processes we are concluding, to our outstanding compatriots who
>
> have presided over the birth of our founding document, to the
> negotiators who pitted their wits one against the other, to the unseen
> stars who shone unseen as the management and administration of the
> Constitutional Assembly, the advisers, experts and publicists, to the
> mass communication media, to our friends across the globe -
> congratulations and well done|
>
> I am 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 setbacks of the moment, nothing can stop us now] 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]
>
> Thank you.
>
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