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ZA COM MR-S-1114
Title
Address by Nelson Mandela to the PNDC
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- 1992-01-01 - 1992-12-31 (c1992)
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Transcription of speech made by Mr Mandela
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Migrated from the Nelson Mandela Speeches Database (Sep-2018).
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ANC Archives, Office of the ANC President, Nelson Mandela Papers, University of Fort Hare
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- English
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TRANSCRIPT
His Excellency, the Chairman of the PNDC,
Members of the PNDC,
PNDC Secretaries of State,
Members of the Diplomatic Corp
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen
I thank you for inviting me to address this public lecture. My return to Ghana, after almost thirty years, is a kind of homecoming. Ghana became a second home to me in 1962, when I spent a month in this prioneering country coming into dynamic, and almost physical, contact with the great movement for African independence from colonial rule. 1962, as most of the early sixties were, was a year of great expectations for the people of the continent of Africa. There seemed to be an inverse relationship between the great expectations of independence from colonial rule and oppression on the part of millions of Africans and those of us who happened to inhabit the part of Africa south of the Zambezi River. As African independence was gathering momentum the forces of apartheid, Portugese colonialism and white minority rule in Aimbabwe were consolidating and incresaing their repression of the people.
For us in South Africa it was clear that we were confronted by one of those choices that come rarely in the history of a people. We had either to submit or to resist. We chose to resist. We chose to do so not because of a special virtue we had but because all avenues of protest and redress, peaceful and otherwise, were closed to us. We waged the war against the combined forces of racist reaction to a degree fo success because of the inspiration we derived from the free countries of Africa such as Ghana and, since the formation of the OAU, through the material and diplomatic support of the entire African continent. For that inspiration and all the material support we wish to put our gratitude on record.
My return to Ghana takes place when there are again great expectations on the African continent. The great expectations this time relates to the renewal of many African nations and the consolidation of their independence. This renewal and the potential of economic growth is reawakening the African giant. I cannot help but imagine how proud that great son of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, would have been of the consolidation of independence. We took great inspiration in his vision of a united and totally independent Africa. We were fired with great determination by his words that Ghana could never ever be free until all of Africa is free. It is in this context that we can confidently declare that the air of optimism on the continent will not pass us by this time. In South Africa, in particular, we are determined to democratise our country, to extirpate all the vestiges of apartheid and to take our place in the community of nations on our continent. It is in this second sense that my return to Ghana is a homecoming.
I must take this opportunity to point out to you that the connection between the people of Ghana and the people of South Africa goes back to the contact that was made through the African American Working Men’s Union which operated in the United States, South African and the Gold Coast around 1895. This initial contact was strengthened by the settlement in Cape Town of Fzs Peregrino, a native of this country. From the end of the last century Peregrino published a militant newspaper in Cape Town, The African Spectator. He used the newspaper to advocate and agitate for unity amongst Africans in South Africa and elsewhere in the world. To this end he and Allan Kirkland Soga formed the Black Press Union of South Africa in 1908. The work of Peregrino and others was to culminate in 1912 in the coming together of all Africans, throughout all the colonies that constituted the Union of South Africa, to found the African National Congress. It is this third sense and connection that I am bold to say that in Ghana: I have come home.
We visit Ghana at a time when our country has great expectations of its own. These expectations are based on the real possibility that apartheid and all its vestiges is about to be defeated and that, in its place, a new democratic, non-racial and non-sexist society is about to emerge. Thanks to the heroic struggles of our people, supported all the way by the international community, especially the African continent, apartheid has rendered unworkable and indispensible. Apartheid, though not completely dead yet, has been mortally wounded. It is this undeniable truth that I pointed out to Mr P.W. Botha when I wrote to him from a prison cell in 1989.
Successive apartheid governments, I pointed out to Mr Botha, had failed to crush the opposition of the people to racist minority rule even though they had used the most barbaric repression in pursuit of that objective. The only rational option that was open to the regime was to unban the ANC and other liberation movements and to enter into negotiations for a political settlement, I advised Mr Botha. That position was supported by my colleagues in the National Executive Committee of the ANC and advocated in various international for a. It was consequently adopted in Africa as the Harare Declaration and universally, through the United Nations, and the Consensus Resolution on Apartheid and its Destructive Consequences in December 1989. Thus, we can proudly claim to be the initiators of the peace process in South Africa.
Right from the beginning of the South African transition the apartheid regime set itself very limited and contradictory objectives. That stood to reason because even the acceptance of the necessity for change was wrestled through struggle from a reluctant regime. Therefore, the regime followed a double agenda from the beginning of the South African transition. Whilst talking to the ANC and others it sought to weaken the liberation movement through stratagems that have ranged from failure to implement agreements to violence. The South African state had, over the years, developed a capacity for the use of violence within and without her borders that is unequalled on the continent or in comparable situations in the world. The apartheid regime managed to destabilise the entire southern African region using whatever combustible material it found in each situation. As the regime was being forced through struggles inside and outside the country to withdraw from overt military and other destabilisation of the region it relocated its special forces inside South Africa. This has been the case with Koevoet used in Namibia, the Mercernary Batallion 32 used in Southern Angola, elements of Renamo used in Mozambique and the various death squads used inside and outside South Africa.
The regime found in certain black organisations combustible material that it has used in its perpetration of violence against the African population. It found in these organisations and their leadership a group of Africans who are haunted by the fact that their collaboration with the regime through the implementation of the Bantustan policy had made them immensely unpopular. Besides this lack of popularity, these organisations were driven into bed with the regime because of fear to lose the material and power benefits that accrue to them and their leadership through the Bantustan system. The system of divide and rule was paying dividends to the regime. Violence initiated and perpetrated through various vigilante forces is also convenient because some racists invented the catchy nonsense of black on black violence.
As the ANC we have sought to contain the violence as much as we could. We have entered into bilateral discussions with some of these organisations at local and national level long before our movement was unbanned. In the process we have swallowed insults, disregarded breaches of agreements and forged ahead with reconciliation because of our commitment to liberation and national unity. We negotiated and signed the National Peace Accord well aware of its limitations but also alive to the promise of a peaceful transition. We are convinced, especially after revelations of the fact that the regime spends millions of tax payer’s money on promotion of certain black organisations allied to it, that violence in South Africa will only be curbed when the Nationalist Party is no longer in sole control of the state machinery. For this reason we are calling for the urgent setting up of an Interim Government in South Africa. If an Interim Government of National Unity is set up in South Africa most obstacles to a negotiated settlement will be removed. That includes the current spate of violence that is plaguing South Africa at the moment.
We have not allowed obstacles, including violence, to divert us from the urgent task of democratising South Africa. In pursuance of our strategic objective of a transfer of power to the people we and more than 90 organisations of the people of South Africa have just emerged with a clear declaration from the Patriotic Front Conference. The concept of a Patriotic Front is an old one in the struggle of the people of South Africa. In 1936 the All Africa Convention brought all the organisations of the oppressed against further disenfranchisement of Africans through the Hertzog Bills. In the early sixties South African liberation movements had a united front based in London. In 1989 the oppressed people of South Africa got together in the Conference for a Democratic Future. We approached the Patriotic Front humbled by the attempts and successes of our people to forge untied action but also fired by the conviction that a Patriotic Front was an idea whose time has come. The Deputy President of the ANC, Cde Walter Sisulu, spoke for many South Africans, inside and outside of the ANC, when he told the Patriotic Front Conference in his opening speech that:
“Our immediate task in this conference is to seek common ground, so that while preserving the distinct identity and integrity of each one of the organisations represented here, we are able to march in step. But, we will only succeed if we pay heed to our experience. The one lesson that stands out is that we won our victories when we were united in action. We built organisations of struggle, and we built unity in struggle. Our task now is to take this process further.”
The unity in struggle that Comrade Sisulu is advocating has already been put in practice in South Africa in the current two day stay-away organised by the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the National Council of Trade Unions with the support of all liberation movements. Reports we have received from South African this morning indicate that the support for the first day of the general strike against further taxation without representation has ranged in all the industrial areas of the country between 80 and 100%. It is the intention and the conviction of the ANC that the Patriotic Front be strengthened such that it becomes a vehicle for unity in action even though the constituent organizations will retain their identities and programmes.
We have identified the continuation of the apartheid regime in office as the major obstacle facing a negotiated settlement in South Africa. The Nationalist Government would continue to become player and referee in the transition period if it remained in power. It has already demonstrated how unhealthy this situation is through the use of state resources to destabilise opponents through violence, harassment, promotion of allies, manipulation of state controlled electronic media etc. For this reason we are calling for the establishment of an Interim Government. But, such an Interim Government will have to be set up in a gathering of all significant political actors in South Congress to be convened in South Africa to:
1) Work out the mechanisms of setting up an Interim Government of National Unity.
2) To work out the mechanisms of setting up an election for a Constituent Assembly that will draw up the new South African constitution.
3) To draw up broad constitutional principles on which the new constitution will be based.
The regime also called for a multi-party conference which will work out the new constitution. Though the concepts of a multi-party conference is similar to our proposal of an All Party Congress there is a major and fundamental difference. The regime wants the Multi Party Congress to draw up the new constitution unelected as it is. The All Party Congress would not draw a constitution but would work out the modalities of a transfer of power from the Nationalist Party and the white minority to a Government of National Unity, the creation of a Constituent Assembly and work out broad constitutional principles. We reject the Government Plan as undemocratic and unlikely to produce a just result.
We have met the regime twice in the past month to work out plans for the convening of an All Party Congress. We believe that this is an urgent tasks because it is the route through which we will relieve the regime of the exclusive responsibility for management of the state and its resources during the transition. We believe that the first meeting of the All Party Congress will take place before the end of this month. Last weekend I met Mr F.W. De Klerk to iron out issues relating to progress in the negotiation process. We are optimistic that the remaining obstacles, serious as they are, are no insurmountable. We are convinced that a system of linkages between the attainment of certain objectives in the South African transition such as the setting up of an Interim Government and the lifting of sanctions and other pressures on the regime is most likely to deliver the best results.
In conclusion, his Excellency, Chairman of the PNDC and distinguished guests, our people are determined to finish the project of independence that was started by the people of Ghana in 1957. We are convinced that the best way of showing our gratitude to your support over the years and the inspiration of your leaders, nay, I should say African leaders, such as Kwame Nkrumah, is to lead a free, united, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa into the community of African nations. As our slogan goes "Mayibuye i-Africa" Africa must come back from colonial rule. It is going to happen in our life time. We thank you for making it possible through your varied contributions.
Amandla, power to the people of Ghana, power to the people of South Africa.
His Excellency, the Chairman of the PNDC,
Members of the PNDC,
PNDC Secretaries of State,
Members of the Diplomatic Corp
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen
I thank you for inviting me to address this public lecture. My return to Ghana, after almost thirty years, is a kind of homecoming. Ghana became a second home to me in 1962, when I spent a month in this prioneering country coming into dynamic, and almost physical, contact with the great movement for African independence from colonial rule. 1962, as most of the early sixties were, was a year of great expectations for the people of the continent of Africa. There seemed to be an inverse relationship between the great expectations of independence from colonial rule and oppression on the part of millions of Africans and those of us who happened to inhabit the part of Africa south of the Zambezi River. As African independence was gathering momentum the forces of apartheid, Portugese colonialism and white minority rule in Aimbabwe were consolidating and incresaing their repression of the people.
For us in South Africa it was clear that we were confronted by one of those choices that come rarely in the history of a people. We had either to submit or to resist. We chose to resist. We chose to do so not because of a special virtue we had but because all avenues of protest and redress, peaceful and otherwise, were closed to us. We waged the war against the combined forces of racist reaction to a degree fo success because of the inspiration we derived from the free countries of Africa such as Ghana and, since the formation of the OAU, through the material and diplomatic support of the entire African continent. For that inspiration and all the material support we wish to put our gratitude on record.
My return to Ghana takes place when there are again great expectations on the African continent. The great expectations this time relates to the renewal of many African nations and the consolidation of their independence. This renewal and the potential of economic growth is reawakening the African giant. I cannot help but imagine how proud that great son of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, would have been of the consolidation of independence. We took great inspiration in his vision of a united and totally independent Africa. We were fired with great determination by his words that Ghana could never ever be free until all of Africa is free. It is in this context that we can confidently declare that the air of optimism on the continent will not pass us by this time. In South Africa, in particular, we are determined to democratise our country, to extirpate all the vestiges of apartheid and to take our place in the community of nations on our continent. It is in this second sense that my return to Ghana is a homecoming.
I must take this opportunity to point out to you that the connection between the people of Ghana and the people of South Africa goes back to the contact that was made through the African American Working Men’s Union which operated in the United States, South African and the Gold Coast around 1895. This initial contact was strengthened by the settlement in Cape Town of Fzs Peregrino, a native of this country. From the end of the last century Peregrino published a militant newspaper in Cape Town, The African Spectator. He used the newspaper to advocate and agitate for unity amongst Africans in South Africa and elsewhere in the world. To this end he and Allan Kirkland Soga formed the Black Press Union of South Africa in 1908. The work of Peregrino and others was to culminate in 1912 in the coming together of all Africans, throughout all the colonies that constituted the Union of South Africa, to found the African National Congress. It is this third sense and connection that I am bold to say that in Ghana: I have come home.
We visit Ghana at a time when our country has great expectations of its own. These expectations are based on the real possibility that apartheid and all its vestiges is about to be defeated and that, in its place, a new democratic, non-racial and non-sexist society is about to emerge. Thanks to the heroic struggles of our people, supported all the way by the international community, especially the African continent, apartheid has rendered unworkable and indispensible. Apartheid, though not completely dead yet, has been mortally wounded. It is this undeniable truth that I pointed out to Mr P.W. Botha when I wrote to him from a prison cell in 1989.
Successive apartheid governments, I pointed out to Mr Botha, had failed to crush the opposition of the people to racist minority rule even though they had used the most barbaric repression in pursuit of that objective. The only rational option that was open to the regime was to unban the ANC and other liberation movements and to enter into negotiations for a political settlement, I advised Mr Botha. That position was supported by my colleagues in the National Executive Committee of the ANC and advocated in various international for a. It was consequently adopted in Africa as the Harare Declaration and universally, through the United Nations, and the Consensus Resolution on Apartheid and its Destructive Consequences in December 1989. Thus, we can proudly claim to be the initiators of the peace process in South Africa.
Right from the beginning of the South African transition the apartheid regime set itself very limited and contradictory objectives. That stood to reason because even the acceptance of the necessity for change was wrestled through struggle from a reluctant regime. Therefore, the regime followed a double agenda from the beginning of the South African transition. Whilst talking to the ANC and others it sought to weaken the liberation movement through stratagems that have ranged from failure to implement agreements to violence. The South African state had, over the years, developed a capacity for the use of violence within and without her borders that is unequalled on the continent or in comparable situations in the world. The apartheid regime managed to destabilise the entire southern African region using whatever combustible material it found in each situation. As the regime was being forced through struggles inside and outside the country to withdraw from overt military and other destabilisation of the region it relocated its special forces inside South Africa. This has been the case with Koevoet used in Namibia, the Mercernary Batallion 32 used in Southern Angola, elements of Renamo used in Mozambique and the various death squads used inside and outside South Africa.
The regime found in certain black organisations combustible material that it has used in its perpetration of violence against the African population. It found in these organisations and their leadership a group of Africans who are haunted by the fact that their collaboration with the regime through the implementation of the Bantustan policy had made them immensely unpopular. Besides this lack of popularity, these organisations were driven into bed with the regime because of fear to lose the material and power benefits that accrue to them and their leadership through the Bantustan system. The system of divide and rule was paying dividends to the regime. Violence initiated and perpetrated through various vigilante forces is also convenient because some racists invented the catchy nonsense of black on black violence.
As the ANC we have sought to contain the violence as much as we could. We have entered into bilateral discussions with some of these organisations at local and national level long before our movement was unbanned. In the process we have swallowed insults, disregarded breaches of agreements and forged ahead with reconciliation because of our commitment to liberation and national unity. We negotiated and signed the National Peace Accord well aware of its limitations but also alive to the promise of a peaceful transition. We are convinced, especially after revelations of the fact that the regime spends millions of tax payer’s money on promotion of certain black organisations allied to it, that violence in South Africa will only be curbed when the Nationalist Party is no longer in sole control of the state machinery. For this reason we are calling for the urgent setting up of an Interim Government in South Africa. If an Interim Government of National Unity is set up in South Africa most obstacles to a negotiated settlement will be removed. That includes the current spate of violence that is plaguing South Africa at the moment.
We have not allowed obstacles, including violence, to divert us from the urgent task of democratising South Africa. In pursuance of our strategic objective of a transfer of power to the people we and more than 90 organisations of the people of South Africa have just emerged with a clear declaration from the Patriotic Front Conference. The concept of a Patriotic Front is an old one in the struggle of the people of South Africa. In 1936 the All Africa Convention brought all the organisations of the oppressed against further disenfranchisement of Africans through the Hertzog Bills. In the early sixties South African liberation movements had a united front based in London. In 1989 the oppressed people of South Africa got together in the Conference for a Democratic Future. We approached the Patriotic Front humbled by the attempts and successes of our people to forge untied action but also fired by the conviction that a Patriotic Front was an idea whose time has come. The Deputy President of the ANC, Cde Walter Sisulu, spoke for many South Africans, inside and outside of the ANC, when he told the Patriotic Front Conference in his opening speech that:
“Our immediate task in this conference is to seek common ground, so that while preserving the distinct identity and integrity of each one of the organisations represented here, we are able to march in step. But, we will only succeed if we pay heed to our experience. The one lesson that stands out is that we won our victories when we were united in action. We built organisations of struggle, and we built unity in struggle. Our task now is to take this process further.”
The unity in struggle that Comrade Sisulu is advocating has already been put in practice in South Africa in the current two day stay-away organised by the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the National Council of Trade Unions with the support of all liberation movements. Reports we have received from South African this morning indicate that the support for the first day of the general strike against further taxation without representation has ranged in all the industrial areas of the country between 80 and 100%. It is the intention and the conviction of the ANC that the Patriotic Front be strengthened such that it becomes a vehicle for unity in action even though the constituent organizations will retain their identities and programmes.
We have identified the continuation of the apartheid regime in office as the major obstacle facing a negotiated settlement in South Africa. The Nationalist Government would continue to become player and referee in the transition period if it remained in power. It has already demonstrated how unhealthy this situation is through the use of state resources to destabilise opponents through violence, harassment, promotion of allies, manipulation of state controlled electronic media etc. For this reason we are calling for the establishment of an Interim Government. But, such an Interim Government will have to be set up in a gathering of all significant political actors in South Congress to be convened in South Africa to:
1) Work out the mechanisms of setting up an Interim Government of National Unity.
2) To work out the mechanisms of setting up an election for a Constituent Assembly that will draw up the new South African constitution.
3) To draw up broad constitutional principles on which the new constitution will be based.
The regime also called for a multi-party conference which will work out the new constitution. Though the concepts of a multi-party conference is similar to our proposal of an All Party Congress there is a major and fundamental difference. The regime wants the Multi Party Congress to draw up the new constitution unelected as it is. The All Party Congress would not draw a constitution but would work out the modalities of a transfer of power from the Nationalist Party and the white minority to a Government of National Unity, the creation of a Constituent Assembly and work out broad constitutional principles. We reject the Government Plan as undemocratic and unlikely to produce a just result.
We have met the regime twice in the past month to work out plans for the convening of an All Party Congress. We believe that this is an urgent tasks because it is the route through which we will relieve the regime of the exclusive responsibility for management of the state and its resources during the transition. We believe that the first meeting of the All Party Congress will take place before the end of this month. Last weekend I met Mr F.W. De Klerk to iron out issues relating to progress in the negotiation process. We are optimistic that the remaining obstacles, serious as they are, are no insurmountable. We are convinced that a system of linkages between the attainment of certain objectives in the South African transition such as the setting up of an Interim Government and the lifting of sanctions and other pressures on the regime is most likely to deliver the best results.
In conclusion, his Excellency, Chairman of the PNDC and distinguished guests, our people are determined to finish the project of independence that was started by the people of Ghana in 1957. We are convinced that the best way of showing our gratitude to your support over the years and the inspiration of your leaders, nay, I should say African leaders, such as Kwame Nkrumah, is to lead a free, united, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa into the community of African nations. As our slogan goes "Mayibuye i-Africa" Africa must come back from colonial rule. It is going to happen in our life time. We thank you for making it possible through your varied contributions.
Amandla, power to the people of Ghana, power to the people of South Africa.
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- Mandela, Nelson Rolihlahla (c1992)
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Acquisition method: Hardcopy ; Source: ANC Archives, Office of the ANC President, Nelson Mandela Papers, University of Fort Hare. Accessioned on 13/01/2010 by Zintle Bambata