Our youth - badiredi ba Afrika!
On 16 June, large numbers of our people throughout the country came together to observe our National Youth Day. Quite appropriately, speakers at the public meetings paid tribute to the youth that began the Soweto Uprising on June 16, 1976, as well as those who continued to participate in our struggle for freedom after that date, making a decisive contribution to our liberation.
So tragic and dramatic were the events of that day in Soweto, 29 years ago, that necessarily the recounting of the events of June 16, and the years that followed, takes pride of place as we recall the Soweto Uprising on such occasions as National Youth Day.
The one great picture that has come to symbolise the slaughter that took place in Soweto on June 16, 1976 was taken by the photographer, Sam Nzima. It shows the dying Hector Peterson in the arms of Mbuyisa Makhubu, with the naturally highly distraught Antoinette, Hector's sister, accompanying them. Of this photograph, Sam Nzima has said: "I saw a child fall down. Under a shower of bullets I rushed forward and went for the picture. It had been a peaceful march. The children were told to disperse. They started singing Nkosi sikelela. The police were ordered to shoot."
Elsewhere, a cadre of Umkhonto we Sizwe, Isaac Seko, described what had happened on 24 October 1976, which compelled him to volunteer to take up arms to defeat the murderous apartheid regime, after considering this a hopeless venture during the four months since June 16, 1976.
Speaking in court after he was captured, and later sentenced to an effective 12 years in prison, he said:
"As I saw the situation with my own eyes, the police attacked, shot, killed, wounded and seriously injured many scores of young black people, mainly school children who were involved in nothing more than peaceful protests.... This is how the unrest began...
"On 24 October 1976, I attended a mass funeral for a young black man who had died whilst in detention by the security police. His name was Jacob Mashobane. Hundreds had gathered around the graveside where his coffin had been laid and even as the soil was filling it up, amidst the singing of a hymn, several cars drove up. The vigilantes of 'law and order' again, I have no doubt acting under instructions from their 'bosses', alighted from these cars and triggers were pulled. People scattered, running for dear life whilst others were brought down lifeless, some dead, some wounded. Those who managed to scale the cemetery fence were gunned down by a contingent that had stationed itself outside the cemetery.
"When the crowd had scattered, myself and a few remaining ones were forced at gunpoint to carry the dead and injured into carts and vans nearby. I remember carrying a badly wounded boy of about fifteen years old. I asked him for his name and address so that I could get in touch with his parents.... All he could say was that he was thirsty. I never heard his name as he spoke no more....
"After this funeral I went to work on the Monday. I left work that morning and never returned. I decided to commit myself fully to the cause of the black people..."
The Soweto Uprising, other mass struggles at home and abroad, and armed actions inside the country added further impetus to our offensive against the apartheid system. Responding to this situation, and for the first time ever, the United Nations allowed the leaders of our movement to address the General Assembly.
Speaking on this occasion in 1976, our late President, Oliver Tambo, said:
"For the first time in the history of the United Nations, a representative of the majority of the people of South Africa has been allowed and invited to share this prestigious rostrum with the representatives of the independent and sovereign nations and peoples of the world.
"This is a development of considerable significance, for which I most sincerely thank you, Mr President, and this august body, in the name of the African National Congress and the entire liberation movement in South Africa, and especially, on behalf of the oppressed people of South Africa, including their children, the current victims of murderous repression...
"For months before 16 June the African student youth of South Africa had protested not only against the enforced use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction but also against the whole system of 'Bantu education'. Typically, the fascist tyranny in our country did not bother to listen to the grievances of the students and the people as a whole.
"'It was at Orlando West', writes the black South African journalist Willie Bokala, 'near the Orlando West High School where the law, in its own fashion, gave a hearing to their grievances. Tear gas bombs and gun bullets were the redress they got'. That was on 16 June...
"There is no vocabulary to describe the nobility and the pathos of the conscious sacrifices that the black youth of South Africa have made over the last four months to free themselves, their people and their country from forces that are determined to keep us forever their chattels. Together with their mothers and their fathers they have seen hundreds of their compatriots pay the supreme sacrifice rather than accept a life of enslavement."
All the foregoing, describing what had happened during the protracted Soweto Uprising, correctly reflects the courage of our youth in the face of merciless repression. That courage, the response of our youth to our people' s hunger for freedom, was also informed by a value system that had been promoted by an earlier generation of our youth, the 1944 generation of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede.
Lembede, the first President of the ANC Youth League, passed away suddenly on 30 July 1947. In an editorial published on August 7, 1947, the newspaper 'Inkundla ya Bantu' said: "In a sense, Mr Lembede died fighting and in this respect his name will occupy a proud place among those of the fallen heroes of our race. He worked himself literally to death, to see his, a free race. The example he set will guide many a coming servant of Africa...Our race needs many more young men and women imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice which Mr Lembede personified...When we show ourselves as ready to pay the price of becoming free, we shall surely shake off our ankles the shackles that bind us."
Paying tribute to Anton Lembede in the same newspaper on 27 August 1947, Govan Mbeki said: "In his selfless struggle for the national cause, he has built himself a monument in the hearts of his people. His name will live eternally in the history of his people. His memory will ever be a source of strength to all Youth to devote themselves, as he exemplified, to the most sacred and most sublime of all causes - the liberation of their people."
On 7 August 1947, the 'Guardian' newspaper carried a "Tribute to A.M. Lembede", written by JB Marks. He said: "'To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.' In these words do I wish to pay tribute to the late Mr Lembede, M.A., LL.B., who very unexpectedly died in Johannesburg on Wednesday, July 30, 1947...Those of us who shared his views give him the assurance that what he has left incomplete we shall complete. To the critics, I say let us write the late Lembede's virtues in brass and his vices, if any, on water."
Time was to confirm the predictions made at the moment of his death that Anton Lembede's memory would "ever be a source of strength to all Youth to devote themselves, as he exemplified, to the most sacred and most sublime of all causes - the liberation of their people".
He became this everlasting source of strength because in his conduct he demonstrated a revolutionary morality, dedicating his life entirely to the liberation of our people. It was for this reason that JB Marks wrote that Anton Lembede's virtues should be written in brass and his vices, if any, on water.
As one of the founders and leaders of the ANC Youth League, Lembede had also sought to imbue the youth of our country with a value system he believed they needed to become the servants of Africa of whom 'Inkundla ya Bantu' wrote.
The Youth League Manifesto issued in March 1944 included the Creed of the League. Among other things, the Creed said: "We combat moral disintegration among Africans by maintaining and upholding high ethical standards ourselves."
In an article on "African Youth Plans for the Future" published by 'Inkundla ya Bantu', Anton Lembede said: "We need young men and women of high moral stamina and integrity; of courage and vision. In short, we need warriors. This means that we have to develop a new type of youth - not the pleasure-loving, frivolous, dissolute, light minded type - youth of stoical discipline, trained to endure suffering and difficulties. It is only this type of youth that will achieve the national liberation of the African people."
In a 24 February 1945 article in 'Ilanga lase Natal', entitled "Some Basic Principles of African Nationalism", Lembede wrote: "Morality is the soul of society. Decay and decline of morals brings about the decay and decline of society - so History teaches."
The generation of 1976 demonstrated the revolutionary morality which Anton Lembede and the founders of the Youth League demanded of the "new type of youth (that would) achieve the national liberation of the African people".
Because of that morality, the youth of our country laid down their lives for our freedom, and volunteered "to commit (themselves) fully to the cause of the black people", as the cadre of Umkhonto we Sizwe, Isaac Seko, put it.
As they did all this, they expected no personal reward or accolades. They were content that they would be at peace with their consciences, having done what they could, to live up to the call made by Anton Lembede, for them to be "a new type of youth (that would) achieve the national liberation of the African people".
Because of what the youth of our country did, together with the rest of our people, we are free. This has given us the possibility to work towards the achievement of the goal we have set ourselves of ensuring a better life for all our people.
On many occasions before, our movement has pointed to the fact that because we are now free, membership of our organisation no longer entails the sacrifices that earlier generations had to make. It has therefore spoken out against those who join our ranks to abuse their membership to seek personal gain, rather than serve the people.
It has called for the continued inculcation among all our members of the value system that Anton Lembede and the founders of the ANC Youth League stood for, which was so courageously upheld by the youth who participated in the Soweto Uprising.
As recently as at its last meeting, held on 27-28 May 2005, yet again our National Executive Committee (NEC) addressed this challenge. In its subsequent statement, issued on 30 May, the NEC said it would:
- "act with firmness and resolve against corruption within the organisation and against any members of the ANC found guilty of any misdemeanour;
- "reinforce in practice the long-standing and defining values of the movement - service to the people, selflessness, honesty and integrity;
- "further elaborate through clear organisational guidelines to ANC leaders and members issues of participation of public officials in business, matters of conflict of interest, abuse of power, and so forth, in the context of the ANC constitution, existing policies, and the values and traditions of the movement."
The NEC said that, "in all this, we are guided by the principle that the ANC is a voluntary organisation, which people join with the express purpose of serving the people of South Africa".
When it referred to "the long-standing and defining values of the movement -service to the people, selflessness, honesty and integrity", "the values and traditions of the movement", and "serving the people of South Africa", our National Executive Committee was reaffirming the critical importance of the revolutionary morality that Anton Lembede exemplified and called for.
Lembede had understood that such morality needs to be cultivated and developed deliberately and consciously. For this reason, in 1945, he wrote that, "we have to develop a new type of youth".
Despite the fact that today we are free, we are still confronted with the task to develop a new type of youth. This is because our movement has a continuing responsibility to achieve the liberation of all our people -liberation from poverty and underdevelopment, from racism and sexism, from ignorance and disease, from a legacy that infected some with a dehumanising inferiority complex and imbued others with an anti-human superiority complex, from a value system that places the personal acquisition of wealth above everything else.
To discharge our continuing responsibility to serve the people, we need the "new type of youth" that Anton Lembede said our movement had to develop. To guarantee that our movement maintains its character in future, we have to develop our cadres and members fully to internalise and espouse the revolutionary morality that defined such revolutionaries as Anton Lembede and the generation of 1976.
This means that we must conduct sustained political education among our youth. Among other things, we must expose them to, and inspire them through better acquaintance with the struggles, ideas and practices of the generations of 1944 and 1976. Only in this way will we be able to produce worthy successors to these heroic generations.
Writing about "The Congress Youth League" in the 'Bantu World' of 18 January 1947, Anton Lembede said:
"The decision of the African National Congress about three years ago, to form a youth league under Congress, was a very progressive step indeed. It is imperatively necessary to mobilise the nation in all its ramifications -men, women and young people. It is especially necessary that young people be imbued and indoctrinated with the Congress spirit based on African nationalism - the ideology underlying our struggle for national liberation...
"It is an incontrovertible and unchallengeable fact that the leaders of tomorrow will be recruited from the youth of today...The League is the product and child of Congress and has no alternative but to carry out the policy and programme of the Mother Body....According to the Youth League's Manifesto, a true leader must be the embodiment or incarnation of the wishes and aspirations of the masses."
However challenging it may be, our movement as a whole has to do everything possible to ensure that the leaders of "the youth of today" indeed become "the embodiment or incarnation of the wishes and aspirations of the masses". Only in this way can we truly honour the memory of the martyrs who laid down their lives on June 16, 1976 and the subsequent years.
When I spoke at the National Youth Commission Youth Day Rally in Kimberley, I mentioned that the great patriot, Sol Plaatje, was buried not far from where thousands of our youth had gathered to listen to the June 16 Addresses. I said his tombstone carries the words - "Ikhutse Morolong: Modiredi was Afrika", (Rest in peace Morolong: Servant of Africa).
As 'Inkundla ya Bantu' had done as it mourned the death of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede almost 60 years ago, I too called on the assembled youth of our country to see themselves and act as Badiredi ba Afrika. The actions of the youth of our country, rather than their words, will tell our movement whether it is succeeding to mould them into these servants of Africa. When all is said and done, it is not easy to deceive a movement such as the African National Congress, which is more than nine decades old.
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