South Africans of all races will vote for a people's contract

THIS IS the last edition of ANC TODAY ahead of the April 14th elections. We would therefore like to take this opportunity to wish all our people peaceful and successful elections. Once more we urge all the political parties contesting the elections to do everything possible to contribute to this outcome.

We also extend our best wishes to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and its entire staff to continue to discharge its responsibilities to our country and people to ensure that we hold and free elections, as it has done in the past. We will also continue to count on all our country's security forces and agencies to support the IEC in this regard.

We would also like to urge that all the political parties participating in the elections should deploy party agents in the voting stations as provided for in the IEC procedures. This must be done to assist the IEC to ensure that the elections are both free and fair and are accepted by all, including the political parties, as having been free and fair.

It is clear that some parties are preparing for their possible defeat in a special way. They are hoping that they can concoct sufficient "evidence" to argue that their defeat is due to fraudulent activity.

The deployment of party agents, who will monitor the voting process and verify the vote count, will play an important part in defeating the schemes of those who, for purely partisan purposes, will try to discredit our hard-won democratic system by attempting to deny the fact of their rejection by the people.

Again, the security forces, working with the people and all organised formations committed to the protection of the democratic victory, will have to do their best to ensure that these party agents are not exposed to violence and intimidation by those who want to win votes by resort to illegal means.

As we have said before, our country enters its Second Decade of Liberation with great possibilities to record important victories in the continuing struggle to defeat poverty and underdevelopment. And as our movement has said, this will require, among other things, that our country unite in a people's contract to bring together the capacities of all our people to confront the common challenge to build a winning nation.

The achievement of this objective demands that we ensure that the government that leads our country derives its legitimacy from the free expression of the will of the people. This obliges us to ensure that the forthcoming elections are truly free and fair, and are accepted by the masses of our people as having been truly free and fair.

This will enhance the possibility for the new government to mobilise the people into the united national movement for progressive change represented by the concept of a people's contract.

The question of the response of the people to the national challenges of our democracy has been one of the central issues defining the role and place of the various political formations in the reconstruction and development of our country. Naturally, the 2004 elections have brought this matter to the fore, as each of these formations has sought to win the support of the people.

Throughout its history, the ANC has understood and projected the view that our people, black and white, are confronted by a number of common challenges. Convinced that our country belongs to all who live in it and that, regardless of differences of race, colour and culture, our citizens share a common destiny, our movement has for more than nine decades fought for the unity of all our people in the struggle to determine that shared destiny.

Pixley ka Isaka Seme presented this view as early as 1911 when he and his fellow patriots were working to convene the founding conference of the ANC on January 8th, 1912. In an article in the newspaper "Imvo Zabantsundu", explaining the purposes of the "Native Union" that was still to be, he wrote: "There is today among all races and men a general desire for progress, and for cooperation, because cooperation will facilitate and secure that progress.Cooperation is the key and the watchword which opens the door, the everlasting door which leads into progress and all national success. The greatest success shall come when man shall have learned to cooperate, not only with his own kith and kin, but with all peoples and with all life."

The 1944 Manifesto of the ANC Youth League contains the following interesting observation: "The African regards the Universe as one composite whole; an organic entity, progressively driving towards greater harmony and unity, whose individual parts exist merely as interdependent aspects of one whole, realising their fullest life in the corporate life where communal contentment is the absolute measure of values. His philosophy of life strives towards unity and aggregation; towards greater social responsibility."

In its January 8th, 1982 Statement marking the 70th anniversary of our movement, the ANC NEC said: "We have striven for seven decades to build one common nationhood with one destiny.All of us - workers, peasants, students, priests, chiefs, traders, teachers, civil servants, poets, writers, men, women and youth, black and white, must take our common destiny into our own hands."

In the document "Ready to Govern", adopted at the 1992 National Conference of the ANC, we said: "We have to develop a truly South African vision of our country, one which is not distorted by the prejudices and sectarianism that have guided viewpoints on race and gender in the past. We have to rely on the wisdom, life experiences, talents and know-how of all South Africans, men and women. There can be no 'apartheid' in finding solutions to the problems created by apartheid."

The sentiments expressed so eloquently in 1911, 1944, 1982 and 1992, for cooperation with all peoples and all life, for unity and aggregation, for building one common nationhood with one destiny, for the development of a truly South African vision of our country, find their expression today in the people's contract that our movement has presented to our country.

Opposed to this perspective in whose defence many sacrificed their lives, is the view advanced by some of the political formations in our country that the central task facing the masses of our country is to divide into two opposing political factions that must engage in an endless struggle to gain supremacy one over the other.

Our movement upholds the view that the central challenge facing the masses of our people is voluntarily to use the space created by our democratic system to act in unity "to build one common nationhood with one destiny".

Our opponents propagate the view that the masses of our people should use this space to polarise themselves into contending entities with no shared destiny. They characterise the entrenched national division for which they are working as the very essence of our democracy.

White minority power in our country, in all its forms and manifestations, was necessarily always founded on the division and polarisation of our people and the denial of our common nationhood, sharing one destiny.

Whereas our movement has always urged progress for our country achieved through cooperation "among all races and men", our oppressors have treated this movement as an opponent that must be defeated and destroyed.

Thus they decreed that not only the survival of the system of white minority rule, but also the very welfare of white society depended on the interaction between our movement and themselves as opposing entities.

This approach finds expression today in the view advanced by some opposition parties that the litmus test defining whether we have a genuine democracy or not is the strength of the Opposition, and therefore the division of our country into permanently antagonistic camps.

The principal task of this Opposition is then defined as opposing everything the government does, with no concern about participating in the effort to address the fundamental challenge our country faces to eradicate the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.

This leads naturally to the result that the weakening of the ANC, "cutting it down to size", has become the beginning and the end of the campaigns of these opposition parties, rather than the projection of their programmes. This opposition at all costs will then be extended to the period after the elections.

The ANC is determined to unite our people in the struggle to build a non-racial society, speaking for all South Africans. However, some among the Opposition are equally determined to emphasise our racial and ethnic divisions, to polarise our country along these lines, informed by the "prejudices and sectarianism" of the past.

To this end, these opposition parties claim special status as representatives not of our people as a whole, but of particular ethnic or racial groups. They argue against affirmative action, such interventions as the Employment Equity Act, minimum wages and other measures for the protection of workers' rights.

They assert that individual merit should be the determinant of what happens to each South African, knowing very well that the persisting impact of the legacy of the past denies the majority of our population the possibility to compete on an equal basis with those who were advantaged by the apartheid system.

All this is nothing but a camouflaged message that black upliftment is contrary to the interests of the white section of our population. By this means, these opposition groupings indicate their opposition to the perspective projected by the ANC that "there can be no 'apartheid' in finding solutions to the problems created by apartheid."

They continue to advance a particular view about what we should do with our democracy, basing themselves on what the ANC characterised as an approach that is "distorted by the prejudices and sectarianism that have guided viewpoints on race and gender in the past."

Necessarily therefore, one of the central issues that will face the electorate during the 2004 Elections will be to decide whether we want to conduct ourselves as a diverse but united nation, or prefer to divide ourselves into polarised and competing political, ethnic and racial factions.

The electorate will have to decide whether it agrees with the ANC when it says that to achieve our goal of providing a better life for all, "we have to rely on the wisdom, life experiences, talents and know-how of all South Africans, men and women" and that all of us "workers, peasants, students, priests, chiefs, traders, teachers, civil servants, poets, writers, men, women and youth, black and white, must take our common destiny into our own hands."

The votes this electorate will cast on April 14 will indicate whether it believes that we should perpetuate the racial, ethnic and gender divisions of the past, making the statement that we should use the apartheid divisions of the past to "find solutions to the problems created by apartheid."

The key challenge facing our electorate is not whether our country should have "a strong opposition" or not, responding to a fictional threat of a one-party state. The key question is whether our people, black and white, men and women, are ready to give further impetus to the process of national reconciliation by acting together in unity in a people's contract focused on building a caring, people-centred and winning nation.

We have no doubt that South Africans of all races will vote to return the ANC to power with a decisive majority, and thus vote in favour of the people 's contract that will further reinforce the process of national reconciliation for the promotion of social transformation.

By this means, our people will make the unequivocal statement that they reject the dismal vision of some of those who define themselves as the Opposition, of a South Africa that would continue to be characterised by the divisions, tensions and conflicts deliberately created and entrenched by the apartheid system.

Solomon Mahlangu

Our duty to those who fell before the dawn of freedom

This Week we honour and remember one of the greatest and finest young freedom fighters to have emerged from within the ranks of our youth, a symbol of youth resistance, courage and resilience. Twenty-five years ago this week, Solomon 'Kalushi' Mahlangu was executed by the apartheid government. We draw inspiration from Solomon 'Kalushi' Mahlangu, that brave and fearless young cadre who was executed at the age of 23, the prime of his youth.

Solomon Mahlangu represents the spirit of defiance and determination that has always been associated with the youth of our country. Having left South Africa shortly after the June 16, 1976 soweto uprisings, and joined MK, he returned to South Africa the following year with instructions to be part of student demonstrations. He was captured by the police after a shootout in which two civilians were killed. We also salute and remember Monty Motloung, who was brutally tortured by police to such an extent that he was brain damaged and could not stand trial with Kalushi in March 1978. The third comrade, George Mahlangu managed to escape.

On his way to the gallows, Solomon Mahlangu motivated millions of other youths of our country to the fighting trenches of our struggle, when he said: "My blood will nourish the tree that will bear the fruits of freedom. Tell my people that I love them. They must continue the fight". His last words and his brutal death thus inspired thousands of other young people to join the cause of freedom.

Solomon Mahlangu belonged to a militant generation and age of youth activism and resistance in South Africa. Therefore, when we remember him, we also remember the contribution of all generations of our youth, in the struggle for freedom, as the youth of our country has always been in the forefront of the struggle. South Africa has been fortunate to have had during each historical period, outstanding and revolutionary youth in its history.

During the early, middle to late 1940s and 1950s, the generation of Anton Lembede, Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, just to mention a few, formed the ANC Youth League which helped to transform the ANC to a popular mass movement and precipitated a change in methods of struggle. This generation revolutionised the ANC, turning it from its passive resistance path to the militant and revolutionary movement it was to become from the 1950s onwards.

They also contributed immensely to the crystallisation of the methods of our struggle, and the nature of our freedom, for example through influencing the drafting of the Programme of Action in 1949 and the Freedom Charter in 1955, stating the minimum demands of our people. The active militant resistance of the 1950s, through the Defiance Campaign and the launching of the armed struggle in 1961 took our struggle to greater heights.

This generation was arrested after the Sharpeville Massacre and were jailed after the Rivonia Trial and some went to exile in the early 1960s to continue the struggle in prison and exile. Another generation emerged to take an active participation, operating underground during the repression that followed, to take forward the task of liberating the country from racism and apartheid.

This was the Luthuli Combat Detachment, dedicated to the memory of the late ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli, who had died just before the Rhodesian MK operations. The Luthuli Detachment generation took part in the Wankie and Sipolilo Operation that began in 1967. While they had been involved in various sabotage operations inside the country from 1961, in the then Rhodesia the Detachment faced the first direct combat operations.

The Luthuli Detachment were the trailblazers of the armed struggle who withstood all hardships so that MK could survive. The group formed the core of MK during its first decade in exile, and later became trainers and instructors in MK camps for the younger generation which was to swell the ranks of MK in the 1970s. Among these cadres were Chris Hani, Flag Boshielo, Julius Mokoena, Alfred Wana and many others.

The Luthuli Detachment played a critical role in our liberation struggle, since they were the first MK unit to confront the might of the apartheid army in the battlefield. The experience that was gained through this was to lay foundations for the later battles between the apartheid forces and MK cadres. Some of these brave cadres fell in Rhodesia and other combat zones.

The youth generation which took the baton after the Rivonia Trial and after the Wankie operation of the late 1960s was influenced by the rise of Black Consciousness in our country, leading to further active resistance in our townships.

The Soweto youth generation of 1976, of which Solomon Mahlangu was part, displayed the militancy that had been shown by previous generations, and continued with the mission of seeking to liberate the country, a mission that all previous generations had been seized with. This generation added its own impetus, and brought freedom closer, especially due to effective co-ordination. The struggles which were waged in the classroom by students were united with struggles that were waged by the workers at factory floor, and those that were waged by parents at a community level.

In the aftermath of Soweto Uprising many youths left the country to join and strengthen uMkhonto we Sizwe, and Comrade Solomon Mahlangu was amongst them. Many of these youths formed part of the June 16 Detachment.

I still have fond memories of receiving him and his two comrades in Maputo on their way to South Africa from Angola after completing their training. At the time I was responsible for their political preparation, while Joe Modise and Joe Slovo were responsible for the military preparation.

We must also recall the heavy losses suffered by this generation through the brutality of the apartheid forces. Many young cadres, male and female, were murdered during cross-border raids in Matola, Mozambique, Maseru in Lesotho, in Botswana, Swaziland and other parts of Southern Africa.

We also remember those who died within South Africa, killed by the apartheid forces who sought to delay or prevent the dawn of freedom. As we prepare to celebrate 10 years of freedom, we must remember that these patriots paid the ultimate price so that we could be free.

The period of the mid-1980s saw the emergence of another generation of youth, which was also in line with its time - and was militant and radical in outlook. This generation, also under the guidance of the ANC, took the struggle to new heights and pushed the apartheid regime to a point of desperation, through mass formations such as the United Democratic Front.

This is the youth which President OR Tambo affectionately called the "young lions". The young lions took the cause of struggle with much vigour and determination that the regime unleashed a series of repression measures to no avail. Their resolve was reflected in their popular slogan, "Freedom or Death!! Victory is Certain".

This generation responded to the calls made by the ANC to "make the country ungovernable" with much determination, thus contributing to preparing the conditions which forced the apartheid regime to later unban the liberation movements and release political leaders.

The youth of our country have therefore played a pivotal role towards the attainment of freedom which we finally achieved on 27 April 1994. The outstanding role that the youth played in achieving democracy must be properly recorded in our history.

On 27 April this year, we will be celebrating the freedom and democracy that all the previous generations of our youth have fought to achieve, from Nelson Mandela, Solomon Mahlangu to Peter Mokaba. The major task that had faced these youth generations was to liberate our country and achieve freedom.

But the freedom that has been attained has come with responsibilities. It therefore goes without saying, that the positive role that the youth played in the course of struggle, poses enormous challenges to the youth of today.

Firstly, there is a major challenge of defending this hard-won freedom. It means that we must all work to strengthen all democratic structures in our country, and participate actively in governance, to meet the needs and challenges of the youth in our time.

We have travelled many parts of our country during this election campaign, and have spoken to hundreds of young people. They all cite the question of unemployment as well as lack of appropriate skills as a critical challenge facing them.

They feel redundant and unable to contribute meaningfully in the development of their country. This issue is being addressed through structures such as the National Youth Commission and Umsobomvu Youth Fund and various government initiatives in partnership with the youth and the business community.

We will in the new term be seeking to deal with the structural challenges within our economy, for example the dichotomy of the First and Second Economies.

While the First Economy is modern, continues to produce the bulk of the country's wealth and is more or less integrated within the global economy, our main challenge remains that of transforming the Second Economy to deal decisively with the socio-economic marginalisation of our people and poverty. We expect the youth to play a key role in this enormous project.

I must also mention another challenge that faces our youth today, that of combating the spread of HIV and AIDS. We are pleased with the high awareness levels in the country, put at more than 95%. This awareness must translate into a positive change in behaviour so that we can arrest the spread of the disease. The youth must also take lead in accepting and supporting family members, relatives, friends and neighbours who are living with HIV, to eradicate the stigma associated with this disease.

We also look up to the youth to participate in eradicating other social ills and helping us to build a caring society. Eradicating crime, domestic violence, child abuse, alcohol and drug abuse are some of the campaigns we hope to see the youth actively involved in, as part of nation building.

The necessity of defending our democracy and freedom puts an enormous responsibility upon all of us, especially the youth. We must therefore come out in our millions to vote on April 14, and give the ANC a resounding victory. Let the youth give the ANC a powerful mandate to speed up change, eradicate poverty and create a better life for all.

We owe it to Solomon Mahlangu and indeed all young comrades who fell before the dawn of freedom, to achieve the better life that they fought for.

This is an edited version of a speech by ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma on the 25th anniversary of the execution of Solomon Mahlangu, 6 April 2004

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