SA: Statement by Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa, on Joe Mathews (28/08/2010)

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Published: 28 Aug 2010

SA: Statement by Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa, on Joe Mathews (28/08/2010)

Our dearest friends, the Matthews family:

The news struck as from the blue on August 19 that Joe Matthews, Uncle Joe, had passed away. Only a few days had passed when we had been informed that he had taken ill and had been hospitalised.

Our wishes and prayers were not realised that this would be but a short stay in the care of doctors and nurses, and that he would soon return to converse with us once again, about what was, what is and what should be.

His passing has once more confirmed a painful truth we would prefer not to know, but cannot avoid, that steadily a generation of national heroes and heroines is departing our midst to join the unknown world of our ancestors and forebears.

Today we look with wonder and admiration and many thanks at the long road travelled by these whom we proudly proclaim as our national heroes and heroines.

I speak of the generation of which Joe Matthews was an outstanding member and representative, which intervened in the processes that would culminate in an historic outcome fully five decades later, when we could joyfully declare, remembering the words of the inestimable Martin Luther King Jr - free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last!

This generation joined our struggle for national liberation as the world, including our own, was engaged in a titanic struggle to defeat and destroy the criminal Nazi regime and its allies.

That struggle conveyed a message of hope for the oppressed of the world when some of its leaders produced the 1941 Atlantic Charter, which said the Allied Powers, "respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them."

To claim these rights as our own, our leaders of the time produced our own Atlantic Charter, the African Claims.

It was to realise that vision of self government that the Joe Matthews generation entered the struggle for national liberation.

That generation will forever occupy a special place of the highest esteem in the national historical record. Because of its unwavering dedication to serve the people of South Africa, it occupied the front ranks in the mass army of the democratic revolution as the forward march of struggle took us during a whole half-a-century:

from the mass struggles of the 1940s and 1950s;

through the period of extreme reaction marked by unbridled state terrorism, bannings and banishment, imprisonment and exile;

to the day, on May 10, 1994, when Nelson Mandela spoke at the Union Buildings and said "never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. Let freedom reign. The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement!"; and,

further forward into the years when we have engaged in a complex struggle to build the new South Africa for which so many sacrificed so much, and which would have remained a mere dream if Joe Matthews and others of his generation had not by their example inspired later generations and the nation as a whole never to surrender.

Yet another member of the generation of our national heroes and heroines, Joe Matthews, has left us.

No longer will we have the possibility to ask him about a past we did not fully understand, as we sought to empower ourselves the better to respond to the challenges of our day.

No longer will we have the privilege to mine his immense intellect and wealth of knowledge, the better to answer questions about what we should do to give birth to a better tomorrow.

No longer will we have the gift to share even the brief moments when, ever so effortlessly, he would make penetrating remarks to shine a new light on the national, the African and the international developments of our time.

With the departure of Joe Matthews we have lost one of our guides, a staff on which many of us had leant to steady our course as we took to a road we had never before travelled.

As we say farewell to him, we promise him that we will forever treasure his memory and will continue to hold on to his guiding hand by reaching into the recesses of our minds always striving to remember what he said, imagining what he would have said, and continuing to teach ourselves constantly to inquire as he did, to find the answers to the challenges to which we must continue to respond, as we strive to serve the peoples of Africa, including our own.

Zanele and I convey our heartfelt condolences to all members of the Matthews family and wish to assure you that we too suffer the pain of the loss to you of a brother, a father and a grandfather, and to us a leader who privileged us by his friendship.

Many thanks Uncle Joe for everything you did for the nation and for us. May you rest in peace!