BLACK HISTORY MONTH: History of the Tsonga People

Tsonga

The Tsonga are a group of the Bantu-speaking population who live in areas extending from St Lucia Bay on the northern KwaZulu Natal coast, up to the Sabie River, which flows through Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Tsonga groups also live in the Lydenburg, Soutpansberg, and Waterberg districts of the Northern Province, where they are interspersed with the Pedi in the west and the Venda and Lobedu in the north. In Mozambique, they live in the Delagoa Bay area, Inhambane, and northwards up to the Limpopo River mouth.

Their traditional culture and customs endured until the nineteenth century when the Tsonga came under the influence of the Zulu nation. Their cultural change has been slow, but since the industrialisation of South Africa during the twentieth century, their communal and national life has been fundamentally altered by conversion to Christianity, schooling, and labour migration. The smooth functioning of the traditional pattern of life is now breaking down rapidly. The name Tsonga was given to them by Zulu invaders who enslaved many clans between 1815 and 1830.




Though there are similarities between Tsonga and Zulu, it is not merely a dialect of Zulu. Unlike Zulu there are no click sounds, for the Tsonga apparently had no contact with the San. The Tsonga language has some affinities with Sotho, particularly with the Pedi dialect.

Little is known of their early history. Some Tsonga think they came from the north in remote times 'along a wide, white straight road' until they reached the sea. Other clans believe they came from Natal or Swaziland.

By the nineteenth century historical facts about the Tsonga were more accurate. Events were dominated by the devastation of Shaka and the migrations of other warriors, who fled from Shaka with their supporters during the mfecane.

Tsonga traditional societies, though regulated by strict laws, are less formalised than that of the Nguni or Sotho peoples. The traditional chiefdom comprises some hundreds or thousands of individuals who have collected around a chief. Every man is welcome to air his views, but the chief's advisers are those who can speak authoritatively on social order and the observance of customary laws.



A traditional patriarchal Tsonga kraal is a self-sufficient, well-defined, extended family community. It usually composes a head, his father, wives, children, and the aged who depend on him. Sometimes his younger brothers with their wives and children live with him.

The Tsonga are traditionally an agricultural people. Cattle are valued but do not thrive for the Tsonga live in areas that are prone to stock diseases. Goats and fowls are kept for food and for ritual sacrifices. The Tsonga also enjoy fish and Tsonga men build weirs at the river mouths, placing the baskets with the mouths leaning against the outgoing tide. Tsonga boys shoot fish with bows and arrows.

SOURCE: South African History Online

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: "I Am an African" Speech by Thabo Mbeki

"I Am an African" - by Thabo Mbeki

"I Am an African" was a speech made by Thabo Mbeki on behalf of the African National Congress in Cape Town on 8 May 1996, on the occasion of the passing of the new Constitution of South Africa. At the time Mbeki was the vice president of South Africa under the presidency of Nelson Mandela.

The speech defined the political mood of the moment in post-Apartheid South Africa and enhanced Mbeki's reputation as a political orator, in which respect he has been likened to Martin Luther King Jr..

The speech is as follows:

TM Mbeki: Adoption of RSA Constitution Bill Statement of Deputy President TM Mbeki, on behalf of the ANC, on the occasion of the adoption by the Constitutional Assembly of The Republic of South Africa Constitution Bill 1996, 8 May 1996



Chairperson, Esteemed President of the democratic Republic, Honourable Members of the Constitutional Assembly, Our distinguished domestic and foreign guests, Friends,

On an occasion such as this, we should, perhaps, start from the beginning.

So, let me begin.

I am an African.

I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land.

My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter-day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightning, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope.

The fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the wild blooms of the citizens of the veld.

The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the soil-coloured waters of the Lekoa, iGqili noThukela, and the sands of the Kgalagadi, have all been panels of the set on the natural stage on which we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of the day.

At times, and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba and the pestilential mosquito.

A human presence among all of these, a feature on the face of our native land thus defined, I know that none dare challenge me when I say - I am an African!

I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and independence and they who, as a people, perished in the result.

Today, as a country, we keep an inaudible and audible silence about these ancestors of the generations that live, fearful to admit the horror of a former deed, seeking to obliterate from our memories a cruel occurrence which, in its remembering, should teach us not and never to be inhuman again.

I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still part of me.

In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.

I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom.

My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as Ashanti of Ghana, as Berbers of the desert.

I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena, [unclear], and the Vrouemonument, who sees in the mind's eye and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant folk, death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins.

I am the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in the world markets in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which our stomachs yearn.

I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me that human existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human existence.

Being part of all of these people, and in the knowledge that none dares contest that assertion, I shall claim that - I am an African.

I have seen our country torn asunder as these, all of whom are my people, engaged one another in a titanic battle, the one to redress a wrong that had been caused by one to another and the other, to defend the indefensible.

I have seen what happens when one person has superiority of force over another, when the stronger appropriate to themselves the prerogative even to annul the injunction that God created all men and women in His image.

I know what it signifies when race and colour are used to determine who is human and who, sub-human.

I have seen the destruction of all sense of self-esteem, the consequent striving to be what one is not, simply to acquire some of the benefits which those who had imposed themselves as masters had ensured that they enjoy.

I have experience of the situation in which race and colour is used to enrich some and impoverish the rest.

I have seen the corruption of minds and souls as a result of the pursuit of an ignoble effort to perpetrate a veritable crime against humanity.

I have seen concrete expression of the denial of the dignity of a human being emanating from the conscious, systemic and systematic oppressive and repressive activities of other human beings.

There the victims parade with no mask to hide the brutish reality - the beggars, the prostitutes, the street children, those who seek solace in substance abuse, those who have to steal to assuage hunger, those who have to lose their sanity because to be sane is to invite pain.

Perhaps the worst among these, who are my people, are those who have learnt to kill for a wage. To these the extent of death is directly proportional to their personal welfare.

And so, like pawns in the service of demented souls, they kill in furtherance of the political violence in KwaZulu-Natal. They murder the innocent in the taxi wars.

They kill slowly or quickly in order to make profits from the illegal trade in narcotics. They are available for hire when husband wants to murder wife and wife, husband.

Among us prowl the products of our immoral and amoral past - killers who have no sense of the worth of human life, rapists who have absolute disdain for the women of our country, animals who would seek to benefit from the vulnerability of the children, the disabled, and the old, the rapacious who brook no obstacle in their quest for self-enrichment.

All this I know and know to be true because I am an African!

Because of that, I am also able to state this fundamental truth that I am born of a people who are heroes and heroines.

I am born of a people who would not tolerate oppression.

I am of a nation that would not allow that fear of death, of torture, of imprisonment, of exile or persecution should result in the perpetuation of injustice.

The great masses who are our mother and father will not permit that the behaviour of the few results in the description of our country and people as barbaric.

Patient because history is on their side, these masses do not despair because today the weather is bad. Nor do they turn triumphalist when, tomorrow, the sun shines.

Whatever the circumstances they have lived through and because of that experience, they are determined to define for themselves who they are and who they should be.

We are assembled here today to mark their victory in acquiring and exercising their right to formulate their own definition of what it means to be African.

The Constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutes an unequivocal statement that we refuse to accept that our African-ness shall be defined by our race, our colour, our gender or our historical origins.

It is a firm assertion made by ourselves that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and White.

It gives concrete expression to the sentiment we share as Africans, and will defend to the death, that the people shall govern.

It recognises the fact that the dignity of the individual is both an objective which society must pursue, and is a goal which cannot be separated from the material well-being of that individual.

It seeks to create the situation in which all our people shall be free from fear, including the fear of the oppression of one national group by another, the fear of the disempowerment of one social echelon by another, the fear of the use of state power to deny anybody their fundamental human rights and the fear of tyranny.

It aims to open the doors so that those who were disadvantaged can assume their place in society as equals with their fellow human beings without regards to colour, to race, to gender, to age or to geographic dispersal.

It provides the opportunity to enable each one and all to state their views, to promote them, to strive for their implementation in the process of governance without fear that a contrary view will be met with repression.

It creates a law-governed society which shall be inimical to arbitrary rule.

It enables the resolution of conflicts by peaceful means rather than resort to force.

It rejoices in the diversity of our people and creates the space for all of us voluntarily to define ourselves as one people.

As an African, this is an achievement of which I am proud, proud without reservation and proud without any feeling of conceit.

Our sense of elevation at this moment also derives from the fact that this magnificent product is the unique creation of African hands and African minds.

But it also constitutes a tribute to our loss of vanity that we could, despite the temptation to treat ourselves as an exceptional fragment of humanity, draw on the accumulated experience and wisdom of all humankind, to define for ourselves what we want to be.

Together with the best in the world, we too are prone to pettiness, to petulance, selfishness and short-sightedness.

But it seems to have happened that we looked at ourselves and said the time had come that we make a super-human effort to be other than human, to respond to the call to create for ourselves a glorious future, to remind ourselves of the Latin saying: Gloria est consequenda - Glory must be sought after.

Today it feels good to be an African.

It feels good that I can stand here as a South African and as a foot soldier of a titanic African army, the African National Congress, to say to all the parties represented here, to the millions who made an input into the processes we are concluding, to our outstanding compatriots who have presided over the birth of our founding document, to the negotiators who pitted their wits one against the other, to the unseen stars who shone unseen as the management and administration of the Constitutional Assembly, the advisers, the experts and the publicists, to the mass communication media, to our friends across the globe - congratulations and well done!

I am an African.

I am born of the peoples of the continent of Africa.

The pain of the violent conflict that the peoples of Liberia, and of Somalia, of the Sudan, of Burundi and Algeria is a pain I also bear.

The dismal shame of poverty, suffering and human degradation of my continent is a blight that we share.

The blight on our happiness that derives from this and from our drift to the periphery of the ordering of human affairs leaves us in a persistent shadow of despair.

This is a savage road to which nobody should be condemned. The evolution of humanity says that Africa reaffirms that she is continuing her rise from the ashes.

Whatever the setbacks of the moment, nothing can stop us now! Whatever the difficulties, Africa shall be at peace!

Thank you very much.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: “I am an African” - by Pixley Isaka Seme

“I am an African” an iconic speech by a former president of the ANC

“I am an African, and I set my pride in my race over against a hostile public opinion”.

Sounds familiar?

Nope, it’s not former South African’s president Thabo Mbeki’s most memorable speech. It is in actuality the beginning of an iconic speech in 1906 by one of the founding fathers of the ANC, Pixley ka Seme, and perhaps forms some of the inspiration for Mbeki’s more famous oration.

Seme gave his speech at Columbia University in the US, where he was studying for a BA degree (before he went on to study law ay Oxford). This speech won him the University’s highest oratorical honour, the George William Curtis medal.

Here it is…

The Regeneration of Africa by Pixley Ka Isaka Seme

5 April 1906

I have chosen to speak to you on this occasion upon “The Regeneration of Africa.”

I am an African, and I set my pride in my race over against a hostile public opinion. Men have tried to compare races on the basis of some equality. In all the works of nature, equality, if by it we mean identity, is an impossible dream! Search the universe! You will find no two units alike. The scientists tell us there are no two cells, no two atoms, identical.

Nature has bestowed upon each a peculiar individuality, an exclusive patent from the great giants of the forest to the tenderest blade. Catch in your hand, if you please, the gentle flakes of snow. Each is a perfect gem, a new creation; it shines in its own glory – a work of art different from all of its aerial companions.

Man, the crowning achievement of nature, defies analysis. He is a mystery through all ages and for all time. The races of mankind are composed of free and unique individuals. An attempt to compare them on the basis of equality can never be finally satisfactory. Each is self.

My thesis stands on this truth; time has proved it. In all races, genius is like a spark, which, concealed in the bosom of a flint, bursts forth at the summoning stroke. It may arise anywhere and in any race.

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.

I could have spoken of the pyramids of Ethiopia, which, though inferior in size to those of Egypt, far surpass them in architectural beauty; their sepulchres which evince the highest purity of taste, and of many prehistoric ruins in other parts of Africa.

In such ruins Africa is like the golden sun, that, having sunk beneath the western horizon, still plays upon the world which he sustained and enlightened in his career.

Justly the world now demands-

“Whither is fled the visionary gleam, Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”

Oh, for that historian who, with the open pen of truth, will bring to Africa`s claim the strength of written proof. He will tell of a race whose onward tide was often swelled with tears, but in whose heart bondage has not quenched the fire of former years. He will write that in these later days when Earth`s noble ones are named, she has a roll of honor too, of whom she is not ashamed.

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 valor done.

Mr. Calhoun, I believe, was the most philosophical of all the slaveholders. He said once that if he could find a black man who could understand the Greek syntax, he would then consider their race human, and his attitude toward enslaving them would therefore change.

What might have been the sensation kindled by the Greek syntax in the mind of the famous Southerner, I have so far been unable to discover; but oh, I envy the moment that was lost! And woe to the tongues that refused to tell the truth!

If any such were among the now living, I could show him among black men of pure African blood those who could repeat the Koran from memory, skilled in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldaic – men great in wisdom and profound knowledge – one professor of philosophy in a celebrated German university; one corresponding member of the French Academy of Sciences, who regularly transmitted to that society meteorological observations, and hydrographical journals and papers on botany and geology; another whom many ages call “The Wise,” whose authority Mahomet himself frequently appealed to in the Koran in support of his own opinion-men of wealth and active benevolence, those whose distinguished talents and reputation have made them famous in the cabinet and in the field, officers of artillery in the great armies of Europe, generals and lieutenant generals in the armies of Peter the Great in Russia and Napoleon in France, presidents of free republics, kings of independent nations which have burst their way to liberty by their own vigor.

There are many other Africans who have shown marks of genius and high character sufficient to redeem their race from the charges which I am now considering.

Ladies and gentlemen, the day of great exploring expeditions in Africa is over!

Man knows his home now in a sense never known before. Many great and holy men have evinced a passion for the day you are now witnessing their prophetic vision shot through many unborn centuries to this very hour.

“Men shall run to and fro,” said Daniel, “and knowledge shall increase upon the earth.”

Oh, how true! See the triumph of human genius to-day!

Science has searched out the deep things of nature, surprised the secrets of the most distant stars, disentombed the memorials of everlasting hills, taught the lightning to speak, the vapors to toil and the winds to worship-spanned the sweeping rivers, tunneled the longest mountain range-made the world a vast whispering gallery, and has brought foreign nations into one civilized family.

This all-powerful contact says even to the most backward race, you cannot remain where you are, you cannot fall back, you must advance!

A great century has come upon us. No race possessing the inherent capacity to survive can resist and remain unaffected by this influence of contact and intercourse, the backward with the advanced. This influence constitutes the very essence of efficient progress and of civilization.

From these heights of the twentieth century I again ask you to cast your eyes south of the Desert of Sahara. If you could go with me to the oppressed Congos and ask, What does it mean, that now, for liberty, they fight like men and die like martyrs; if you would go with me to Bechuanaland, face their council of headmen and ask what motives caused them recently to decree so emphatically that alcoholic drinks shall not enter their country – visit their king, Khama, ask for what cause he leaves the gold and ivory palace of his ancestors, its mountain strongholds and all its august ceremony, to wander daily from village to village through all his kingdom, without a guard or any decoration of his rank – a preacher of industry and education, and an apostle of the new order of things; if you would ask Menelik what means this that Abyssinia is now looking across the ocean – oh, if you could read the letters that come to us from Zululand – you too would be convinced that the elevation of the African race is evidently a part of the new order of things that belong to this new and powerful period.

The African already recognizes his anomalous position and desires a change. 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!

By this term regeneration I wish to be understood to mean the entrance into a new life, embracing the diverse phases of a higher, complex existence. The basic factor which assures their regeneration resides in the awakened race-consciousness. This gives them a clear perception of their elemental needs and of their undeveloped powers. It therefore must lead them to the attainment of that higher and advanced standard of life.

The African people, although not a strictly homogeneous race, possess a common fundamental sentiment which is everywhere manifest, crystallizing itself into one common controlling idea. Conflicts and strife are rapidly disappearing before the fusing force of this enlightened perception of the true intertribal relation, which relation should subsist among a people with a common destiny. Agencies of a social, economic and religious advance tell of a new spirit which, acting as a leavening ferment, shall raise the anxious and aspiring mass to the level of their ancient glory.

The ancestral greatness, the unimpaired genius, and the recuperative power of the race, its irrepressibility, which assures its permanence, constitute the African`s greatest source of inspiration. He has refused to camp forever on the borders of the industrial world; having learned that knowledge is power, he is educating his children.

You find them in Edinburgh, in Cambridge, and in the great schools of Germany. These return to their country like arrows, to drive darkness from the land. I hold that his industrial and educational initiative, and his untiring devotion to these activities, must be regarded as positive evidences of this process of his regeneration.

The regeneration of Africa means that a new and unique civilization is soon to be added to the world. The African is not a proletarian in the world of science and art. He has precious creations of his own, of ivory, of copper and of gold, fine, plated willow-ware and weapons of superior workmanship.

Civilization resembles an organic being in its development-it is born, it perishes, and it can propagate itself. More particularly, it resembles a plant, it takes root in the teeming earth, and when the seeds fall in other soils new varieties sprout up. The most essential departure of this new civilization is that it shall be thoroughly spiritual and humanistic -indeed a regeneration moral and eternal!

O Africa!

Like some great century plant that shall bloom

In ages hence, we watch thee; in our dream

See in thy swamps the Prospero of our stream;

Thy doors unlocked, where knowledge in her tomb Hath lain innumerable years in gloom.

Then shalt thou, walking with that morning gleam,

Shine as thy sister lands with equal beam.

SOURCE: Shaka Sisulu website.

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SA NEWS

COME OVER TO THE DARK SIDE, WE HAVE COOKIES

11 FEBRUARY 2016 13:59 (SOUTH AFRICA)

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OPINIONISTA ZWELINZIMA VAVI

What the SONA 2016 ought to be saying

• ZWELINZIMA VAVI
 
• 09 FEB 2016 03:03 (SOUTH AFRICA)

Madame Speaker of the National Assembly, Madame Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, Honourable Members and People of South Africa: In previous years in my State of the Nation Address I said that I had a good story to tell, but today I must be brutally honest - the state of our nation is not at all good. In fact, it is disastrous.

South Africa is facing its worst-ever crisis of distrust under my leadership. Its like we are in the deepest ocean on the darkest night and we, the captains, are blindfolded and carrying no compass to tell us whether the ship is moving south, north, west or east or just floating dangerously towards an iceberg.

I have read the recent report from the World Bank, which says, “South Africa’s economy is at risk of falling into recession”. The Bank has cut the country’s growth forecast for this year to a pathetic 0.8%, which sadly is in line with the International Monetary Fund’s estimate of 0.7%.

“The economy” says the World Bank, “is flirting with stagnation if not recession”. This year’s growth estimate was cut from 1.4%, while next year’s projection was lowered to 1.1% from 1.6%. The rand has plunged 14% against the dollar in the past three months as sentiment worsened and credit-rating companies downgraded the nation’s debt because of growth risks.

These grim statistics are bad enough but the main reason why I have such a bad story to tell is what all these figures mean for the poor, the black majority of South Africans.

In particular I want to apologise to the nation for my government’s failure to implement the resolutions of the 2007 ANC National Conference, which raised such hopes amongst the people.

The many resolutions included:

1. A developmental state to ensure that our national resource endowments, including land, water, minerals and marine resources are exploited to effectively maximise the growth, development and employment potential embedded in such national assets, and not purely for profit maximisation.
2. Making the creation of decent work opportunities the primary focus of economic policies.
3. Transforming the structures of production and ownership, including… an active beneficiation strategy, building sustainable export industries, and expanding production for domestic and regional consumption.
4. Broad-based BEE aimed at broadening and deracialising the ownership and control of productive assets by black people, women and youth.
5. An anti-monopoly and anti-concentration policy aimed at creating competitive markets, broadening ownership and participation by our people, addressing monopoly pricing and other forms of rent-seeking and anti-competitive behaviour.
6. A comprehensive and clear rural development strategy, which builds the potential for rural sustainable livelihoods, particularly for African women, as part of an overarching vision of rural development.
7. Directly absorbing the unemployed through labour intensive production methods and procurement policies and a significant expansion of the public works programmes linked to the expansion of economic infrastructure.
8. Ensuring universal and subsidised access to basic services, health care, affordable transport and access to government information, free and compulsory education and on going campaigns for adult literacy.
9. Maintaining and where appropriate expanding the provision of social grants and finding ways and means of alleviating the burden of low-income earners.
10. A comprehensive social security net to provide a targeted and impeccable approach in eradicating poverty and unemployment and a mandatory system of retirement funds and a broad-based retirement fund that covers low-income groups.
11. Reaffirming the implementation of the National Health Insurance System by further strengthening the public healthcare system.
12. Discarding the market-driven land reform and immediately review the principle of willing-seller, willing-buyer so as to accelerate equitable distribution of land.
13. Macro-economic policies that support and sustain growth, job creation and poverty eradication on a sustainable basis. We must reaffirm the Freedom Charter as a premise when discussing social transformation.

These are just some of the main promises, but there is no way I can honestly say that they have been fulfilled, particularly the commitment to base policies on the economic demands of the Freedom Charter.

The much-spoken-about second phase of radical economic transformation that heralded so much hope that we will return to the 1969 Morogoro ANC conference resolutions, the economic demands of the Freedom Charter and the 2007 resolutions, has largely come to nothing. I am acutely aware that had I led the ANC to rigorously implement these resolutions, there would have be no EFF or a talk of a new trade union federation today. The ANC itself would not be as divided and weakened as it is today.

My comrades have opportunistically jumped into the race bandwagon and so liberally played the race card, which threatens to undermine the work done by forebears such as Nelson Mandela. At the same time we have ignored the root causes of racism. My ANC way back in 1969 stated:

“In our country more than any other part of the oppressed world – it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without the a return of wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore the fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy.

“To allow existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation in our land. This cannot be effectively tackled unless the basic wealth and basic resources are at the disposal of the people as a whole and are not manipulated by sections or individuals be they White or Black.”

Now, almost 22 years after our liberation, our people, in particular the black working class, can without any fear of a contradiction, state that the first two decades of freedom have benefitted more, in economic terms, white monopoly capital than the motive forces of the liberation struggle.

Divisions have arisen as others feel the National Democratic Revolution is off the rails; hence the arrogance of the white extremists calling our people monkeys.

More than any other failure, this is the biggest sin we have committed against the revolution. In fact this is an outright betrayal of the aspirations of the people.

Our country has been de-industrialising since 1994. The last time I checked the manufacturing sector, which used to contribute 23% to our GDP, is now down to around 12%. The ongoing mining and steel commodity crisis will simply worsen this situation. There is a complete job loss blood bath in both sectors.

Workers’ confidence in the future is at all time low. The share of wages in the national income has plummeted from 57% in 1991 to below 50% today. This means wages have been suppressed whilst profits have been rising.

Even the capitalist class increasingly realise that its own future, to get returns from their investments, can’t be guaranteed. The capitalists are reported to be sitting on R1.5 trillion of investable cash but won’t invest it, mainly because of lack of confidence to our collective future.

Poverty, unemployment and inequality are all getting worse. Three University of Cape Town economists have said that a study they recently undertook suggests that Statistics South Africa’s poverty line underestimates poverty: “The Stats SA line indicates that approximately 53% of South Africans are poor, but ours suggests that this is closer to 63%.”

I am sickened at the Oxfam report that 13-million South Africans go to bed hungry every night. That is just about twice the size of the population of the Eastern Cape, and more than 25% of the total South African population. How can that be explained in a wealthy country like ours? How have we let our agriculture sector be so under-supported? How could provinces like the Eastern Cape, Northwest go hungry when they have so much potential?

We have failed to keep our promise when unemployment, by the true definition which includes those who have given up looking for jobs because there are none, is around 34%.

We have failed to keep our promises to our young people, with more than 20 million South Africans between 15 and 34 years of age struggling for opportunity and less than 33% of them working.

Fellow South Africans, under my leadership, the youth of this country will have no future, with the two-tier education system which not only marginalises the students but puts most black students in a vicious cycle that means generations to come will not escape poverty and unemployment.

The two-tier health care system also means the same. I know I have not been visiting any public hospitals and I will not dare submit myself or my family to that kind of humiliation. Yet our main supporters suffer that indignation daily.

Jobs of thousands of other workers are now at risk, as entire industries face possible collapse – mining, steel, the Post Office, SAA, etc.

Owing to my own rural and poverty background, I am deeply hurt that inequality has under our watch risen since 1994; the World Bank reveals that the Gini coefficient is 0.77, on a scale of 1 (where one person has all the income) to zero (where income is equally shared) making us the world’s most unequal society.

The state welfare grants that go to 17 million people used to be one of my good stories, but they are shrinking in value after the Honourable Nhlanhla Nene lowered them in real terms by more than 3% in last year’s budget. The child grant of R340 is worth US$0.67 a day, about a third of what even the World Bank considers poverty.

We have shamelessly not only maintained a two-tier system in service delivery, but have actually entrenched it, as the gap widens between the top-class provision of private education and healthcare for the rich, largely white minority and the pathetic service to the poor, overwhelmingly black majority, but we have also commodified the best infrastructure in Gauteng through e-tolls. This mean the rich can have access to the best roads whilst our poor voters are systematically being pushed to the overcrowded second-class roads. This is an economic apartheid that would shock our struggle heroes like Chris Hani.

We have failed to introduce the comprehensive social security and national health insurance systems. I have let them sit on the back burner.

We have failed to keep most of the promises to the poor; hence more and more angry communities across the country are taking to the streets, often violently, in protests over housing, water, roads and corruption.

Most seriously we have failed to keep our promises to our hard working labour force. As a result, labour relations are at their worst since the end of apartheid. Employers are waging war on workers’ hard-won rights, through the use of labour brokers, outsourcing work, getting round collective bargaining and even refusing to recognise trade unions.

Even where laws are in place to protect workers, my ineffective Department of Labour has not ensured that there is a campaign to enforce and protect workers. Deregulation by stealth has allowed the employers to take advantage of undocumented labour and have sidelined local labour in sectors such as hospitality, security and transport. This is what has in some cases created tensions, seen as xenophobia by many.

This means more workers are employed in precarious forms of employment, moving us further and further away from the concept of decent work which was so enthusiastically welcomed by workers in 2007. And I have failed to even try to put a stop to this.

State-owned enterprises are in a mess. Eskom, SAPO, SAA, PetroSA and others are staggering from one crisis to another, worsened by constant allegations of corruption and nepotism within their top management. Far from being an advertisement for publicly owned enterprises, their adoption of capitalist methods has reduced many of them to virtual bankruptcy.

Similar chaos and incompetence is to be found in public institutions - the SAPS, the National Prosecution Agency, the SA Revenue Service. I am aware and deeply troubled by the perception that has deepened over time that the reason why these important institutions are in trouble is because I have sought to appoint to them people that will guarantee that I never have to face the 783 charges that were dropped against me in 2009. I am also aware that I have been accused of deploying people with links to my family.

Chapter Nine institutions have been undermined, for which I share responsibility as a result of my disrespect for the office of the Public Protector. Judges have been severely attacked by leaders of my party and I have kept silent, notwithstanding the oath I took to defend what is in the best interest of the republic.

Corruption is running out of control in both the public and private sectors, despite strong resolutions at successive ANC Conferences. It has become very difficult to do business with my government without greasing the hands of corrupt officials. The creation of the Integrity Commission was supposed to discipline ANC members against whom serious allegations have been made, yet not one of the many of those accused have been has yet been brought to book. Hyenas continue to loot resources intended to provide services to the poor to line their own pockets.

The business sector is just as guilty. Collusion and price-fixing by big monopolies keep coming before the Competition Commission. When the US Securities and Exchange Commission charged Hitachi, Ltd. with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing my own ANC, Hitachi agreed to pay $19 million to settle the Security and Exchange Commission charges, which is an admission of guilt. I have done very little to confront this private sector corruption.

In 2013 alone $29 billion was illegally taken out of South Africa in illicit financial flows ($21 billion/year on average from 2004-13). The SARB and Treasury should have immediately investigated large multinational corporations and prosecuted those like MTN and Lonmin (where my Deputy Cyril Ramaphosa was a top corporate official) and De Beers, where research shows they have been looting South Africa.

I looked the other way because of the benefits to me personally though I was keenly aware how angry many South Africans are about my family links with the Gupta family. I don’t blame them for holding the view that because of these links this family has grown more and more arrogant.

In all my life I have never heard of any business people landing a plane in a army air force base, landing helicopters in the zoo, demanding that they be allowed to build a helipad on the roof of their house in a residential area, ordering ministers around and telling my comrades that they will be appointed into my Cabinet even before I do so.

I blame myself and my Executive, including the ANC leadership, who have sprung to my defence when every South African of independent mind was so disgusted at all of this, worst of all that I appointed the person who allegedly approved the use of Waterkloof facility to be an Ambassador in the Netherlands.

Another example is that I have appointed a senior policeman found guilty by SAPS for fraud in relation to the falsification of his CV to an ambassadorial position in Mali. This has completely eroded confidence in my leadership.

The capitalists’ political representatives conned my government into adopting a National Development Plan, which enshrined all their chosen laissez-faire free-market policies – less government ‘interference’, more ‘flexible’ labour laws, etc. That remains the root cause of all the problems I have listed.

In response to all these failures there has been a call that Zuma Must Fall. I disagree. Guilty though I am, one individual alone cannot be blamed for everything. I am therefore submitting the resignation of both myself and my entire cabinet and calling fresh elections. I also will step down as the President of the ANC and hereby make a call on all members of National Executive Committee to follow my example.

I agree that in future the citizens must directly elect the President. The Van Zyl Slabert report on the need to change our electoral system so that it could embrace both the constituency and proportional representation system must be implemented without further delay.

The people must decide!

It saddens me that having played such a critical role in the liberation of my country and as celebrated peacemaker in my own land and in other countries of Africa that I step down with my legacy in tatters. This country with its huge potential deserves better.

I apologise one more time for my failures, my lack of moral leadership, my lack of principles and for the failure to insist that all those in our government serve the people first as opposed to themselves. I acknowledge that some in my Executive and the ANC NEC have worked very hard to take our vision forward but they have been too few and therefore are themselves overwhelmed by all the negativity.

I have lost the trust not only of the key sections of our society such as the working class, the middle strata and the capitalist class but also of international community. Our country is no longer a gateway to Africa and has been overtaken by countries like Nigeria. I will now retire to my newly renovated home at Nkandla and I am willing with the help of my business friends to pay whatever amounts to be determined in a fair and transparent fashion.

Goodbye, the good people of South Africa! DM

• ZWELINZIMA VAVI
 

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