Date: 05/12/2009
Source: The African National Congress
Title: ANC: Zuma: Address by the President of the African National Congress, at the unveiling of the bust and allocation of a chamber to former ANC Secretary General Duma Nokwe, Johannesburg

Programme Director,
The Nokwe
family,
Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Mr Jeff
Radebe
Representatives of the General Council of the Bar
Representatives of
the Johannesburg Bar,
The Duma Nokwe Group of Advocates,
Ladies and
gentlemen,

Good morning to all of you.

It is a great privilege for me
to be afforded this opportunity to honour one of the great sons of South
Africa and the ANC.
Duma Nokwe is part of a generation of leaders whose
selfless sacrifice to the struggle laid the foundation for the freedom we
enjoy today.

It is a fitting salute to our 15 years of democracy that
today, the Duma Nokwe Chamber is opened, 53 years after the great man was
barred from opening offices in the City of Johannesburg.

Like many leaders
of that time Duma Nokwe had humble beginnings. He was born in 1927 in Evaton
to a working class family.

An exceptional student he studied at St Peters
Secondary School and later completed a B.Sc degree at Fort Hare in 1949.
Having completed a teaching diploma he entered the profession.

Having
come under the influence of both Madiba and Walter Sisulu he joined the ANC
Youth League and played an active role in the Defiance Campaign of the
1950s.

Like many other teachers of his time he was dismissed for his
political involvement.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise
because Comrade Nokwe thereafter studied Law at Wits University, while
teaching at the privately-run Central Indian School.

Following a visit to
the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries he was banned by the
apartheid regime. Nevertheless he completed his LLB in 1955 and qualified to
practise as an advocate.
However, the provisions of the Group Areas Act
meant that he was not allowed to open offices with other Johannesburg-based
advocates. Today's occasion is thus more significant as it highlights the
long road to democracy that we have traveled.

This also allows us to
celebrate our democracy. We should be proud of what we have achieved thus
far.
As one of the accused in the Treason Trial, Comrade Nokwe put his
legal experience to good use as an unofficial member of the defence team.

As one of the last treason trialists to be acquitted, he was jailed and
banned, and eventually forced to flee the country in 1963. A prolific
writer, he worked for the ANC in exile.

Based in Lusaka, Comrade Nokwe's
work in the diplomatic spheres helped the ANC gain international recognition
in the fight against apartheid.

I am happy that in a few day's time I
will visit Zambia which hosted Duma Nokwe and many other ANC cadres during
the seemingly hopeless days of the struggle. I intend to pay my respects to
him at his resting place in that wonderful country that supported us so
extensively.
A renowned internationalist, he was a well-known figure at the
United Nations, OAU and the various anti-apartheid organizations throughout
the world.

He was also the voice of the ANC as he broadcast over Radio
Freedom, the organisation's policies to an ever-widening audience.

He was
used by the organization to communicate ANC messages and policies.

His
selfless dedication eventually took a toll on his health and he passed away
at the very young age of 50 on 12 January 1978 in Lusaka.

His outstanding
abilities were best summarized by Comrade Oliver Tambo, then ANC President,
who remarked at Comrade Nokwe's funeral service that while he taught Comrade
Nokwe at school, in politics, OR became a student of Duma Nokwe's!

Ladies
and gentlemen,

Duma Nokwe was a staunch advocate for human rights,
sacrificing his life for the attainment of ideals he believed in.
The first
black advocate to be admitted to the Transvaal Supreme Court, he was an icon
to many.

Duma Nokwe belonged to a tradition of lawyers who fought for
this democracy. He used his knowledge of the law as an instrument to fight
for human rights.

Following in the footsteps of Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme,
Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and many others he represented a generation of
the legal fraternity who used the law to push the boundaries of what
constituted human rights.

All our heroes and stalwarts like Comrade Nokwe
would be happy that for the first time in our history we have a Constitution
that has an entrenched Bill of Rights with a wide variety of protected
rights and freedoms.

It is essential that we work towards ensuring that
these rights are enjoyed by all our people.

The struggles of comrade Nokwe
served as a reminder of the hard road that we have traveled. It also reminds
us of the road still to be journeyed towards the full transformation of the
legal profession.

This would make us fulfill the ideals of the Freedom
Charter and the country's Constitution, which state that all are equal
before the law.
As government and the ruling party we are working hard to
fulfill transformation goals. We invite the legal profession to continue
prioritise this important task.

As the ruling party we would want to see
faster progress on transformation during this term of office. We do not want
to be asked in four year's time when we celebrate 20 years of freedom, why
many transformation issues still remain unresolved.

That is why we also
appointed a Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Council comprising 19
members from the legal, business, labour and community sectors to help us
drive economic transformation.
With regards to the legal profession, the
Constitution of the Republic compels us to ensure that the judiciary
reflects the racial and gender composition of our country.

To help us to
fulfill our responsibilities, there must be a readily available pool to
choose from. However, the racial and gender composition of members of the
General Council of the Bar of South Africa indicate that like other
professions, the legal profession still has some way to go.

Out of 2103
members, there are 1309 white males, 281 white females, 209 black males, 61
black females, 41 coloured males, 32 coloured females, 109 Indian males and
61 Indian females.

We have seen and are proud of the outstanding
performance of black and female legal practitioners at all levels of the
profession.

We therefore urge the profession to work harder to promote
transformation and youth development. We welcome the commitment of the Duma
Nokwe group of advocates in this regard.

Transformation also includes
promoting access to justice.
Poverty is still one of the major barriers for
our people in enjoying or exercising their right of access to justice.
Some
of the poverty related factors, which inhibit access to courts or justice,
includes the high cost of hiring defence lawyers.

People also report
challenges in receiving legal assistance from the Legal Aid Board, a matter
we are looking into.

We said in the State of the Nation address that we
would work hard to establish a transformed, integrated, modernised,
properly-resourced and well-managed criminal justice system.

Amongst
these is the need to improve the efficiency of the courts and the
performance of prosecutors, and to enhance detective, forensic and
intelligence services.
We added that we would ensure that we increase the
number of prosecutors and Legal Aid Board personnel as well as police
detectives. We are already implementing these measures.

The long
distances that many of our people have to travel in order to access the
courts and related services is another problem we are trying to minimize.
This we are attending to by bringing justice closer to the people as much as
we can especially in rural areas.

We also want to make justice more
proactive in assisting the poor, and more preventative in nature. This means
that we must in essence improve our social crime prevention mechanisms, to
eliminate social causes of crime.

We must also make our system more
proactive in the sense of being able to stop crime before it happens.

We
have instances where the police would say to people who report threats that
they must wait until "something happens" first before they report!

It must
be possible to deal with the matter before a person is harmed. It is usually
the poor, who have no money to apply for restrictive and protective court
orders, who are the victims of such lethargy from the police.
Compatriots,
this being December, we emphasise human rights. We highlight the rights of
women and children not to be abused, the rights of people living with
disabilities and the rights of our people to have access to health care and
other key social services.

On the 1st of December we unveiled new
treatment measures and called for an end to stigma, silence, discrimination
and shame surrounding HIV and AIDS.

We want to work with all South
Africans to ensure that we strengthen prevention, which is our most powerful
weapon in fighting this disease.

We appeal to you, to work with us in
this fight against AIDS. Help us promote the notion of individual
responsibility to stop the spread of HIV.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Last
night we hosted the Final Draw of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Over 200 million
people around the world focused their eyes on Cape Town in celebration of
our long walk to freedom.
It is because of the sacrifices of our leaders
such as Comrade Duma Nokwe that we were able to host the world and give hope
to millions in the continent that Africa's time has indeed come.

In that
spirit of celebrating achievement and excellence, it gives me great pleasure
to open the Duma Nokwe Chambers and unveil the bust of Duma Nokwe.

Let
the chamber be a constant reminder of Duma Nokwe who was not only a staunch
nationalist but an equally staunch internationalist, who used every inch of
his ability to work for justice, human rights and the liberation of his
people.

I thank
you.