Date: 25/05/2010
Source: The Department of Transport
Title: SA: Ndebele: Address by the Minister of Transport, at the African Renaissance Conference, Durban

PROGRAMME DIRECTOR
MINISTER OF JUSTICE AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT MR. JEFF
RADEBE
MINISTER OF HOME AFFAIRS DR NKOSAZANA DLAMINI-ZUMA
MINISTER IN THE PRESIDENCY MR COLLINS CHABANE
PREMIER OF KWA ZULU-NATAL DR. ZWELI MKHIZE
MEC FOR ARTS AND CULTURE MS. WEZIWE THUSI
VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE AFRICAN RENAISSANCE TRUST PROF SIHAWU
NGUBANE
DISTINGUISHED GUESTS
MEMBERS OF THE MEDIA
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

"TAKE CHARGE AFRICA - THE FUTURE OF AFRICA IS IN YOUR HANDS"

Happy Afrika Day!

On 15 April 2004 when FIFA President Sepp Blatter announced that
the 2010 World Cup would be held in South Africa, it was time for
Africa to take charge. In just over 10 days South Africa will play
centre stage to the world when we host the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Africa has taken charge.

The 2010 World Cup will for ever demonstrate Africa's capacity
to deliver world-class events. It will also serve as a lever for
our own project of nation-building and social cohesion. The World
Cup is indeed an opportunity for Africa to take charge.

An African World Cup in 2010 is also an opportunity for Africans
to re-examine where we are in the project of moving Africa from
where it is to where it should be. The tournament is being held on
the centenary of the Union of South Africa and calls on us to look
back 100 years to see what we should change regarding the course of
Africa's development.

At the turn of the 20th century apartheid and colonialism had
not yet perfected themselves. The system had not yet destroyed our
worth, first in our own eyes and then in the eyes of the rest of
the world. At the turn of the century, we still had clear memories
of ourselves as a free people. We had both individual and social
pride.

Yet how was it possible for people such as WEB du Bois and ANC
President Pixley ka Isaka Seme to predict with such clarity the
challenges facing Africa in the century that was unfolding.

Writing in The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, WEB du Bois said and
I quote: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of
the colour line - the relation of the darker to the lighter races
of men (and women) in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands
of the sea".

As du Bois identified the problem, a solution was being proposed
about the same time. The African renaissance was foretold by one of
the founders of the African National Congress, Pixley ka Isaka
Seme, in "The Regeneration of Africa" Article in The African
Abroad, April 5, 1906 and I quote:

"I am an African, and I set my pride in my race over against a
hostile public opinion...I would ask you not to compare Africa to
Europe or to any other continent. I make this request not from any
fear that such comparison might bring humiliation upon Africa. The
reason I have stated - a common standard is impossible! Come with
me to the ancient capital of Egypt, Thebes, the city of one hundred
gates.

"The grandeur of its venerable ruins and the gigantic
proportions of its architecture reduce to insignificance the
boasted monuments of other nations. The pyramids of Egypt are
structures to which the world presents nothing comparable.

"The mighty monuments seem to look with disdain on every other
work of human art and to vie with nature herself. All the glory of
Egypt belongs to Africa and her people.

"These monuments are the indestructible memorials of their great
and original genius. It is not through Egypt alone that Africa
claims such unrivalled historic achievements.

"The giant is awakening! From the four corners of the earth,
Africa's sons, who have been proved through fire and sword, are
marching to the future's golden door bearing the records of deeds
of valour done...

"The brighter day is rising upon Africa. Already I seem to see
her chains dissolved, her desert plains red with harvest, her
Abyssinia and her Zululand the seats of science and religion,
reflecting the glory of the rising sun from the spires of their
churches and universities.

"Her Congo and her Gambia whitened with commerce, her crowded
cities sending forth the hum of business, and all her sons employed
in advancing the victories of peace - greater and more abiding than
the spoils of war. Yes, the regeneration of Africa belongs to this
new and powerful period...It therefore must lead them to the
attainment of that higher and advanced standard of life".

At the time when these two men wrote, colonialism constituted a
few administrators and many people had not come into any contact
with the settlers.

Fascism as theory and practice had not been created. Racism had
not been systematized or perfected. In South Africa there was no
Union of the Whites which was only forged in 1910 with the Union of
South Africa. Even white Women were not voting. There was parentage
of various parts of the country to different countries in Europe.
The English-speaking territories consulted with London, the
Afrikaners consulted with the Netherlands. Disunity became a source
of wars.

As Seme spoke these words in the first decade of the 20th
century, a dark future yet awaited the peoples of the African
Continent. Â The darkest night of colonial oppression and
exploitation had just started all over Africa. But now a century
later, the African Renaissance must dawn.

It is against this background that the likes of Seme and Du Bois
called for the regeneration of Africa. Regeneration is about
overcoming one's inferiority complex. Renaissance means Africa
starts to see itself through its own eyes. A renaissance means
Africa must play sport against itself at youth and intervarsity
level. Africa must increase intra-Africa trade. That trade must not
be skewed in favour of one particular nation.

That trade must seek to develop regions and the continent.
Artists must collaborate to create new music and to bring back the
old tunes. This is how Africa begins to deal with its abject
self-abnegation.Islands of excellence are not sustainable in a sea
of mediocrity.

Our task as the African Renaissance is to create out of the
islands of excellence, a sea of achievement. In time our islands
must grow into larger land spaces.

If a lake is where you have more land than water, an island an
instance when there is more water than land, then Africa has
islands of excellence in a sea of underachievement. This must be
turned around.

The African Renaissance thrives to create an achiever nation
made up of achiever individuals. The African Renaissance thrives to
create achiever countries out of achiever individuals. The African
Renaissance must create an achiever continent out of achiever
nations. This is what we are achieving at political level in the
continent.

Today Burundi is a peaceful country. Today the Congo is
peaceful. Having achieved partly what Seme and Du Bois dreamt
about, i.e. political freedom, we face the breakdown of the African
man-child. The African man-child in Africa as in the United States
remains a weak link.

The African man child's propensity to wanton violence and women
abuse reflects the inferiority complex engendered by oppression.

The question we are asking is that the struggle for a non-racial
society must be accompanied by gender equality. According to the
Human Sciences Research Council women medical students began to
outnumber men in 2000 when they formed 51% of MBChB enrolments:

"By 2003 they had increased to nearly 55% and formed even
greater proportions at some medical schools. Â Only Medunsa (the
Medical University of Southern Africa, now part of the University
of Limpopo) had a smaller proportion of women than men (44%). At
the other end of the spectrum, the University of Cape Town (UCT)
had 63% women students".

Faced with these statistics we ask how males in Africa are
dealing with conditions of gender equality. Is it sustainable for
women to develop alone without their men folk? Is it possible to
grow Africa without the active participation of men and women? What
does this development mean for the creation of stable societies in
Africa?

The other pressing issue facing the African Renaissance movement
is to change the image of Africa in the world. When a particular
image of Africa predominates, all the good of Africa is buried with
Africa.

SO WHAT IS TO BE DONE

The final declaration of the 1945 Pan African Congress held in
Manchester urged colonial and subject peoples of the world to unite
and assert their rights to reject those seeking to control their
destinies.

Congress participants encouraged colonized Africans to elect
their own governments, arguing that the gain of political power for
colonial and subject peoples was a necessary prerequisite for
complete social, economic, and political emancipation. The
Pan-African Congresses helped to increase international awareness
of racism and colonialism and laid the foundation for the political
independence of African nations.

In May 1963 the influence of these congresses helped galvanize
the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), an
association of independent African states and nationalist groups
now known as the African Union.

The Africa Renaissance in the 21st century requires students and
youth formations and civil society across political formations to
rise and take their place in the revival and rejuvenation of Africa
in the continent and in the Diaspora. A free Africa shall not come
just through the interventions of those residing in the continent.

Those in the Diaspora have several advantages already.

They possess the skills necessary to drive the African
Renaissance together with us here in the continent. The call for an
African Renaissance is therefore a call to the acquisition of
skills which are necessary for the development of Africa. This will
happen first at the level of individuals, then at the level of
nations and then at the level of a unitary continental entity.

A new nation must be borne across Africa. This is the nation of
which Inkosi Albert Luthuli dreamt in which the colour of the
person's skin would be irrelevant. This is the nation of which
Martin Luther King Jr dreamt in which the people are judged not by
the colour of their skin but the content of their character.

This ideal state of non- racism and non-sexism will exist when
we do not repeat the Songs of Solomon where it is said: I am black,
but I am beautiful. Or the situation echoed in Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night in which one of the suitors of Portia who was from
Morocco pleads with the object of his charms to "mislike me not for
my complexion".

The founders of the Soviet Union grappled with the process of
building a state out of many nations. They defined a nation as
primarily "a community, a definite community of people. This
community is not racial, nor is it tribal...What distinguishes a
national community from a state community? The fact, among others,
that a national community is inconceivable without a common
language, while a state need not have a common language"

"A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of
people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory,
economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common
culture".

On 30 April 2010 we announced the process of launching an
African Renaissance Institute based here in KwaZulu-Natal. The
Institute will be based locally. Its approach and impact will be
global.

Through such institutes we must turn corners in which we find
ourselves into centres of excellences and drive the creation of a
better Africa WHEREVER WE ARE.

Through these centres we will create a new and regenerated
Africa.

I THANK YOU!