O n September 26, Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu delivered the Steve Bantu Biko Memorial Lecture. It is indeed very fitting that this Annual Lecture should be delivered in September, as Steve Biko, a great hero and son of our struggle and people, was murdered by the apartheid police on September 12, 1977, 29 years ago.
Correctly, the Archbishop paid tribute to Steve Biko. Among other things he said: "Right and goodness have triumphed even if we still do not have the whole, the true story of how Steve died.
"What is more, we have here an eloquent example that true greatness lies in having given oneself on behalf of others: Jesus did say, 'Greater love hath no one than that a person should lay down his life for others.' And the people have said a resounding 'Amen' to that, and you really can't fool all of the people all the time. They will always know who their leaders are and they will be ready to acknowledge them and to the extent that they can, will reward them, will express their appreciation to them.
"You cannot buy that affirmation by the people. We know it - the apartheid regime tried to foist its candidates on us as our leaders, and the people, i.e. the vast majority, rejected them as but pseudo leaders. Once people have taken you to their hearts as a true, a genuine leader, than nothing anyone tries to do can dislodge the real leader from the hearts of the people.
"Steve was a remarkable young man in his commitment and passion…He was ready to jettison (his medical studies) because of his all consuming passion to strive for the liberation of his people and their emancipation through appropriate community development and health enhancing projects. He possessed an incisive and indeed massive intellect."
The Archbishop said Steve Biko worked "to make us realise that…we were human and not inferior, as the white person was human and not superior. I (had) internalised what others had decided was to be my identity, not my God-given utterly precious and unique me.
"And when I looked inside me and saw this man-made caricature I bridled with anger and hatred and contempt of this false self. I then projected it outwards to those who outwardly looked like me. Before my superior white overlords I quaked with demeaning obsequiousness, and before those who looked like the thing I hated and despised, I was harsh and abrasive."
During the Lecture, among other things Archbishop Tutu raised serious concerns about important issues such as respect for the law, for life itself, and for one another, to eradicate gross criminal and other unacceptable behaviour in our society.
In this regard, he said: "Why have we lost our deeply African reverence for life? Just look at what happens with say a car hijack. The scared owner hands over the keys and for no earthly reason he/she will be shot dead in cold blood for the sheer hell of it; utterly gratuitously, wantonly.
"Is it not horrendous for an African, even before Black Consciousness came on the scene, for whatever reason for an adult man to rape a 9 month old baby? What has come over us? Perhaps we did not realise just how apartheid has damaged us so that we seem to have lost our sense of right and wrong, so that when we go on strike as is our right to do, we are not appalled that some of us can chuck people out of moving trains because they did not join the strike, or why is it common practice now to trash, to go on the rampage?
"What has happened to us? It seems as if we have perverted our freedom, our rights into licence, into being irresponsible. Rights go hand in hand with responsibility, with dignity, with respect for oneself and for the other.
"There are municipal, provincial, government offices which you go to only because you really can't help it. They behave as those others used to behave in the old pass offices - they are rude, inefficient and thoroughly unpleasant…We despise ourselves, we really hate ourselves and project it on to others.
"We should be dignified, law abiding citizens, proud of our beautiful land, proud of our freedom won at such great cost. We should not devalue it. We should not abuse our children, our womenfolk.
"The fact of the matter is we still depressingly do not respect one another. I have often said black consciousness did not finish the work it set out to do.
"The best memorial to Steve Biko would be a South Africa where everyone respects themselves, has a positive self image filled with a proper self esteem and holds others in high regard."
Speaking on behalf of the ANC, in its 1998 document entitled "The Moral Renewal of the Nation", our Commission for Religious Affairs expressed the same concern voiced by the Archbishop. It said: "Most people are moral. They are not criminals advocating unethical behaviour. They wish to bring up their children to be honest, with the desire to build a prosperous and peaceful South Africa for all who live in it. The cultures brought together in our nation also had high ethical standards…
"Corruption, criminality, tax evasion, fraud, rape, the abuse of women and children, drunkenness, extortion, and family breakdown, much of it touched by violence, are the outward forms of a diseased social climate which affects all of us. The whole country is passing through a period of transition in which we are seeking to establish a new and successful modern society. The problems we experience are not different from those in other societies - but at this formative stage we intend to do something to ensure that South Africa becomes a truly moral society. The ANC welcomes the Moral Summit process as an opportunity to analyse this situation, and seek a national commitment to overcome it."
On the issue of the need for good leadership, in its 2001 document "Through the Eye of a Needle", our movement said: "A leader should constantly seek to improve his capacity to serve the people; he should strive to be in touch with the people all the time, listen to their views and learn from them…A leader should win the confidence of the people in her day-to-day work…She should not seek to gain cheap popularity by avoiding difficult issues, making false promises or merely pandering to popular sentiment…
"A leader should lead by example. He should be above reproach in his political and social conduct - as defined by our revolutionary morality. Through force of example, he should act as a role model to ANC members and non-members alike. Leading a life that reflects commitment to the strategic goals of the NDR includes not only being free of corrupt practices; it also means actively fighting against corruption."
As has been the case when our movement has raised its voice to speak of the critical importance of moral behaviour in society as well as among our own members, some have sought to misinterpret the Archbishop's comments as indicating that what he thinks and said is that all that characterises our new democracy is the pervasive prevalence of unbridled and unstoppable depravity.
To continue the negative onslaught sustained by some over many years, to date, that we are bound to fail in our struggle to create a truly democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa, sections of the domestic and international media reported Archbishop Tutu's Steve Biko Lecture under such headlines as:
"Sth Africa is losing its way - Tutu"; "Apartheid may have destroyed moral sense, says Tutu"; "Tutu warns of dangers of ethnic strife afflicting South Africa"; "What has become of us, laments Tutu"; "Tutu berates South Africa"; "Tutu: Respect gone in South Africa"; "SA gained freedom and lost its soul -Tutu".
And yet, in the same Steve Biko Lecture which these headlines seek to summarise, Archbishop Tutu made the heartfelt observations that: "We are generous, compassionate, caring people at our best…We have a wonderful country…We are wonderful people…We have produced outstanding people…We have given the world a splendid example in our relatively peaceful transition showing that former enemies can at least be colleagues…The world has marvelled at our capacity to forgive, to walk the path of forgiveness and reconciliation, to be magnanimous and generous."
On September 27, at our Eighth Awards Ceremony for National Orders, we had occasion once more to salute and celebrate the "outstanding people" our country and people have produced, to whom the Archbishop referred. What they have done, as a result of which they have earned the right to become Honoured Members of our National Orders, makes the very firm statement that, as the Archbishop said, we have a wonderful country and a wonderful people!
In the Ceremonial Oration we delivered at the Awards Ceremony, paying tribute to the outstanding South Africans identified and nominated by the public as fitting Members of the National Orders, we said: "The honours that we bestow today tell the story of what and who we are and who we shall be. These National Orders represent the nobility of human endeavour, constituting a hall of fame that will, today, be enriched by new and distinguished members."
What and who we are and who we shall be is represented by the Honoured Member of the National Orders (the Order of Mendi for Bravery), George Phela, who drowned at the Wemmer Pan Aquatic Club on January 31, 2005, having jumped into the dam at the Club to save a mother and child from drowning. George Phela could not swim. But when he heard the mother's cry of panic, with her child on her back, he jumped into the water to save the threatened mother and child from certain death. He managed to hold them up until they were pulled onto dry land. A couple of hours after the mother and her child had been rescued, George Phela's still body was found lying in silt and mud at the bottom of the dam.
What and who we are and who we shall be is represented by the Honoured Member of the National Orders (the Order of Mendi for Bravery), Marcel Christian van Rossum, who dived into the Indian Ocean at St Lucia in KwaZulu-Natal at the spur of the moment, to save Sipho and Sibongiseni Thela from certain death.
As their parents, Jabulani Thela and his wife, who could not swim, cried out for help and watched helplessly as the children were swept deep into the ocean, Marcel van Rossum, who was only passing by, relaxing on the beach with his wife, went twice into the ocean, saved the children and, unlike George Phela, was present at the Union Buildings to be admitted into the ranks of the Honoured Members of the Order of Mendi.
Also present to be admitted into these ranks, also as an Honoured Member of the Order of Mendi for Bravery, was the 85-year-old Soweto resident, Elizabeth Gumede.
During the course of our struggle, Mama Elizabeth, then an underground operative of APLA, the armed wing of the PAC, suffered terrible torture, assault and abuse at the hands of the apartheid South African Police, who wanted her to betray her comrades, and failed. To this day, she remains unshakable in her conviction that the freedom of our people is more precious than her own life.
What and who we are and who we shall be is also represented by the Honoured Members of the National Orders (Order of Ikhamanga), such as the musicians Thandi Klassen, Abigail Kubeka, Dorothy Masuka and Christian Ashley-Botha, the poet Don Mattera, the novelist Andre Brink, and the athletes Ryk Neethling and Oscar Pistorius.
In the Ceremonial Oration, of these and other Honoured Members of the Order of Ikhamanga, we said: "We have convened today at the seat of government, the Union Buildings, to admit to the Order of Ikhamanga our leading cultural workers and sportsmen and women. All of them have contributed to the pride we, as a nation, feel in our achievements that celebrate our inner African and human soul.
"Their accomplishments are representative of the wealth of human imagination and talent brought forth from our continent, which has, since time immemorial, endowed the planet earth with the things of beauty that are products of human creativity."
What and who we are and who we shall be is also represented by the Honoured Members of the National Orders (Order of Mapungubwe), the scientists Selig Percy Amoils, Lionel Opie, and Patricia Berjak. These compatriots are gifted with, and have developed original minds which they have used further to unveil the secrets of nature, helping our people and all humanity both to continue "the flight from wonder", wonder born of unknowing, of which Albert Einstein spoke, as well as create the new knowledge that enables all human beings to lead better lives.
Between them they have discovered new knowledge hitherto hidden from all humanity, covering such areas as curing diseases of the eye, curing diseases of the heart, understanding seeds, to ensure food security for all, especially the poor, and saving from extinction the genetic material of the plants used over the millennia in highly effective traditional African medicine.
We convened at the Union Buildings, on September 27, the day after Archbishop Tutu delivered the Steve Bantu Biko Lecture, to confirm the truth of what the Archbishop had said, that we are a wonderful people and a wonderful country.
On this day and at this occasion, as at the previous Award Ceremonies, we could understand what Martin Luther King Jr meant when he said, "I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land"; and what Archbishop Tutu meant when he said, declining to proclaim victory too soon, "we are indeed a scintillating success waiting to happen."
I know this as a matter of fact that our great people, the millions of ordinary South Africans who produced our Honoured Members of the National Orders, who, in turn are taking us to our mountain top, will not allow that the depravity of a few among us turns our promised land into a mirage in the desert.
In the Ceremonial Oration we said: "We are especially blessed that this ceremony permits us to share a brief encounter with the Honoured Members of the National Orders, who live. We are especially privileged that this ceremony brings us into communion with the noble souls of the Honoured Members of the National Orders who have departed from the world of the living. To them all, the living and the dead, on this day, the nation says - bayethe!"
