SPEECH AT THE LAUNCH OF THE AFRICAN RENAISSANCE INSTITUTE Pretoria October 11 1999 Chairperson, Distinguished Elders of Africa, Secretary General of the Organisation of African Unity, Your Excellencies Ministers, Ambassadors and High Commissioners, Distinguished participants, Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am very pleased indeed to welcome you to the launch of the African Renaissance Institute. I sincerely thank you for giving us, as South Africans, the opportunity to host this launch and for me to speak at this Opening Session. I would also like to welcome to our country those of our brothers and sisters who come from beyond our borders. Once more, we would like to express our profound appreciation to you all for the contribution that you made to our own struggle for liberation. Liberated South Africa is therefore your home, not merely because it is an African country, but because without your determined struggles, perhaps we would not be a free people today. The sacrifices the peoples of our Continent made to end the apartheid crime against humanity,which denied the very humanity of everybody who was African, were many and varied. Among other things, the countries of Southern Africa also paid a very high price in human lives lost, as well as property and infrastructure destroyed, as they withstood the campaign of aggression and destabilisation conducted by the apartheid regime. Undoubtedly, Angola and Mozambique paid the highest price in this regard. I would like to take this opportunity, once more, to reiterate our profound appreciation to their governments and peoples for their extraordinary solidarity, which our people will never forget. I am also very pleased to make special mention and pay tribute to our elders who are here, of whom we are justly proud and whose wisdom and African patriotism will make an important contribution to our common quest for an African Renaissance. All of us are greatly distressed that that great son of all Africa, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, is unable to be here, owing to a difficult health condition. I am certain that we would all agree that we should send him a heartfelt message of support and our wishes for his speedy recovery. We have also received the apologies of another great son of our Continent, Ahmed Ben Bella, who could not joint us owing to prior commitments. Chairperson: As you are aware, the movement of our own struggle for national liberation is the ANC, the African National Congress. Brought up as we were by this movement and led by it, throughout the entirety of our political lives we have been exposed to the inspiring perspective of African unity and solidarity and the renewal of our Continent. Beyond this, the struggle for our own liberation led to the development of perhaps the largest and most determined Pan-African movement of solidarity our continent has ever seen, involving both governments and all sections of the population, in every country. We are therefore pleased and moved that some of our fellow Africans took the initiative to establish the Institute that we are launching today. I am convinced that all of us present here share a common vision in favour of African unity and solidarity, African development and renewal and an end to the marginalisation of our Continent in world affairs and development processes. It would seem to us vitally necessary that whereas, for some time, the achievement of these objectives has been left to our governments, it is necessary that we return this vision to the people. We are therefore of the firm view that there is a critically important and urgent need to develop a Popular Movement for the African Renaissance. Accordingly, we believe that political organisations and governments in all African countries should be mobilised to act in furtherance of the objectives of the African Renaissance. Equally, the masses and their organisations in all African countries should similarly be mobilised and drawn into action. We must also pay attention to the intelligentsia, the professionals, the trade unions, business people, women and the youth, the traditional leaders, cultural workers, the media and so on, to bring them into the popular struggle for Africa's rebirth. The question has been posed repeatedly as to what we mean when we speak of an African Renaissance. As all of us know, the word "renaissance" means rebirth, renewal, springing up anew. Therefore, when we speak of an African Renaissance, we speak of the rebirth and renewal of our continent. This idea is not new to the struggles of the peoples of our continent for genuine emancipation. It has been propagated before by other activists for liberation, drawn from many countries. But it has been suggested that when this perspective was advanced in earlier periods, the conditions did not exist for its realisation. Accordingly, what is new about it today is that the conditions exist for the process to be enhanced, throughout the continent, leading to the transformation of the idea from a dream dreamt by visionaries to a practical programme of action for revolutionaries. What, then, are these conditions! These are: the completion of the continental process of the liquidation of the colonial system in Africa, attained as a result of the liberation of South Africa; the recognition of the bankruptcy of neo-colonialism by the masses of the people throughout the continent, including the majority of the middle strata; the weakening of the struggle among the major powers for spheres of influence on our continent, as a consequence of the end of the Cold War; and, the acceleration of the process of globilisation. As we take advantage of these changed circumstances, we must move from the fundamental proposition that the peoples of Africa share a common destiny. Each one of our countries is constrained in its ability to achieve peace, stability, sustained development and a better life for the people, except in the context of the accomplishment of these objectives in other sister African countries as well. Accordingly, it is objectively in the interest of all Africans to encourage the realisation of these goals throughout our Continent, at the same time as we pursue their attainment in each of our countries. We speak of a continent which, while it led in the very evolution of human life and was a leading ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------