Good evening ladies and gentlemen! I am delighted to extend greetings to Deputy State President and Deputy President of the African National Congress and Deputy Secretary General of the ANC Jesse Duarte.
Thank you to you all, ladies and gentlemen, and distinguished guests for joining us this evening.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation has organised and participated in numerous events, gatherings and projects over the last ten days to mark the first anniversary of the passing of our beloved Founder. I think you would agree with me that it has been moving to see demonstrated once again Madiba’s power to bring people together and for those gatherings to inspire us in the manner that he did. People the world over joined South Africans in remembering a global figure.
There have been some light moments. It is reported, for example, that at a recent charity event in Canada in honour of Nelson Mandela, Jonathan Bernier, goalkeeper for the ice-hockey team Toronto Maple Leafs, was interviewed on the red carpet about his knowledge of Madiba.
"He’s one of the most known athletes in the world,” he responded with ease. “He had a lot of impact in any kind of sport that he did. Even playing hockey…everyone knows him right? From being the kind of person he was off the ice and on the ice."
This could easily be another kind of sign language of the kind we saw on Madiba’s Memorial Service. Light moments that Madiba almost certainly would have seen for what they are!
For tonight’s event, the last of a series to commemorate the first anniversary of our Founder’s passing, we have partnered with the African National Congress. We are grateful to be able to partner in this manner in honour the memory of Nelson Mandela’s membership of the ANC.
Madiba was a member of the ANC from 1944 until his passing. It shaped him politically and nurtured him over decades. In his own words in 2008 he said: “I would be nothing without the ANC.”
From this comment could resonate a question many South Africans have asked: what will our future be without Nelson Mandela? It is a question that was asked even more pointedly in his last days. How will we, as a nation, face the future without him?
I am certain that many in the ANC will have similarly asked: What will the ANC be like without Madiba?
There is no question about the rhetorical truth of Madiba’s assertion. It draws its power from his unfailing reference to his being a part of “the collective”, thus de-emphasising his impact as an individual. But this rhetorical truth might be seen also to mask something deep within it, that contradicts it.
The power of that contradiction comes from the very fact that many of us ask what things will be like without Nelson Mandela. the person who was a leader. That very question is a recognition of the power we all have as individuals.
Thus, the more Madiba de-emphasises his individuality, the more his individuality is morally elevated by others who are concerned about the future in his absence. It is afterall, an individual, isn’t it, who in making his or her assertion, denies their own individuality. He or she can never really escape from being the individual who makes the assertion, who takes a position. Thus individuality is affirmed at the precise moment that it is denied.
The capability to do so has particularly marked out people such as Madiba. It marked out Martin Luther King; marked out Mahatma Gandhi; marked out Malcolm X; marked out Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; marked out Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, marks out today the DaLai Lama, and countless other leaders who have pushed the frontiers of the human sensibility towards greater refinement.
Indeed, the individual is the basic, most fundamental site of conscience, which then becomes co-created to more inclusive dimensions with others, often in organisational contexts, for the benefit of the greater human society.
That is why the most democratic of organisations and institutions always create room for dissent based on conscience. Whenever a moment of conscience arises within it, an organisation must pause for deep reflection. Should an organisation pass by such moments, wilfully or by default, it loses an opportunity to revitalise its vision, and so revitalise itself.
And so Madiba’s Foundation is here this evening with Madiba’s African National Congress to remember together, and partly to ponder together the future that led Madiba to say: “I would be nothing without the ANC.” With that I want to thank the ANC for working with us to make this event possible.
I invite us to remember how Madiba ended his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom: “The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road … The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.”
In my humble view, Deputy President, this ending compels us to consider convening a national dialogue facilitated by the Foundation in accordance with the mandate given it by its Founder, to consider the special challenge his statement presents. Such a dialogue could involve Madiba’s governing party and other parties we have seen recently locked in fierce contestation in Parliament.
However, disruptive, discomforting, and disconcerting the experience may have been, some may see in it a signal for a need for something new to emerge.
It seemed the contestants were crying out, without saying so, for something to believe in together. In this none of them were completely right, none completely wrong: only that the vital points of convergence seemed difficult to discern. Such values of convergence may need to be rediscovered together once more to restore collective purpose to the national endeavour.
But tonight is significant for two other reasons. Firstly, it coincides with the 20th anniversary of the publication of that seminal work Long Walk to Freedom. Not only has it become one of the world’s all-time bestsellers, it is also arguably our post-apartheid South Africa’s founding narrative. Later this week the Foundation will be placing online a feature about the writing of Long Walk, which began in 1976, and the text’s long journey to publication in 1994.
It is not widely known that Madiba intended to write a sequel to Long Walk. Indeed, in 1998 he started the manuscript of a work he provisionally titled “The Presidential Years” and kept working on it sporadically until 2002, when he finally ran out of steam. Here in the Centre of Memory’s archive we have versions of ten chapters from that work.
I want to announce tonight that the Foundation has embarked on a project to see the completion of The Presidential Years as an authorised account of Madiba’s presidency. The work on the manuscript is painstaking and calls for the most rigorous collaborative work. We aim to publish the work in 2015.
While Madiba, collaborative to the end, was working on The Presidential Years manuscript he relied on a number of trusted advisers to offer suggestions on the drafts he was writing. It is no accident that one of them is our keynote speaker tonight – Deputy President of the ANC Mr Cyril Ramaphosa.
It is now my great pleasure to introduce him to you. Not that he needs introduction to this audience! We regard him as a friend of the Foundation’s. He visited Madiba here many times. He has addressed gatherings here on invitation from us. Of course, he had a long association and friendship with Madiba. And he is certainly someone who knows what it means to keep working, to take on every challenge that we are confronted by. Deputy President, as always, it is an honour to have you with us.
Professor Njabulo S Ndebele
Chairman: Nelson Mandela Foundation
15 December, 2014