House Chairperson, allow me to recognise the veterans from the Western Cape and to invite them to join Mr Mlangeni and other veterans in Parliament in the office of the Chief Whip to enjoy a piece of birthday cake. [Applause.]
Almost 150 years ago, African American Frederick Douglass, a one-time slave who became a leader of the abolitionist movement, said: "If there is no struggle, there is no progress." It is through struggle that we enjoy freedom and celebrate our Africaness today. This progress came at a price including the payment of the supreme sacrifice, that of life and limb.
At its 21st summit, the African Union declared 2013 the year of Pan- Africanism and the African Renaissance, ideas born out of Ethiopianism or African Redemption.
Our icon Nelson Mandela told us in 1992 that the relationship between the Ethiopian or African church and the struggles of the African peoples dates back to the 1870s, when people realised that some missionary societies adulterated Christianity to justify racism, slavery, colonial oppression and exploitation. The sons of the missionaries assumed positions in the magistracy, which were charged with the responsibility of enforcing colonial laws which forcibly deprived Africans of their humanity and cultural, social and economic rights.
It was the hardships visited on African people by slavery and racism in church and state institutions that forced the African clergy to break away from missionary churches and led to the establishment of Ethiopian or African churches.
It is necessary for us to look briefly at the history of Pan-Africanism and its underlying values. It was a Trinidadian lawyer and priest, Henry Sylvester Williams, who founded the Pan-African Movement. Williams believed in the equality of the human race and nonracial inclusivity. He rejected the notion of European superiority over Africans.
During his stay in the United States and Canada, Williams witnessed the oppressive conditions under which black people lived and, upon his arrival in England in 1896, where he was employed by a church society to lecture in different parts of the British Empire, he learnt from Mrs Kinloch from KwaZulu-Natal about the adulteration of Christianity and the ill-treatment of African people by some missionaries in that province and South Africa as a whole.
These experiences and the victory of Ethiopia over the fascist Italian forces aroused Williams' Pan-African national consciousness. This found expression in the African Association which he founded on September 24, 1897. The stated objectives of the African Association were:
To encourage a feeling of unity and to facilitate friendly intercourse among Africans ... to promote and protect the interests of all subjects claiming African descent, wholly or in part in British colonies and other places especially in Africa by circulating accurate information on all subjects affecting their rights and privileges as subjects of the British Empire, by direct appeals to the Imperial and local governments.
Williams believed, and later urged Africans to unite and to do for themselves what no one else could do for them, however noble their intentions might be. He stated this at the first gathering of the African Association held on January 11, 1898. This belief is manifested in today's slogan that "people are their own liberators".
Williams was greatly aggrieved that the African race, unlike the British people, had no representation in Parliament. He condemned this as manifestly unfair. He charged the British government with condoning the introduction of slavery in South Africa under the leadership of Cecil John Rhodes.
Last, but not least, Williams appealed to the British Empire, on behalf of the African Association, to call upon its representatives to ensure fairness and justice for African people. He said that the association would welcome institutions such as the industrial schools and the basic teachings of Christianity that would provide education and moral structure, not adulterated Christianity.
As a result of the activities of the African Association, a call was made as early as 1898 for the 1900 Conference in London that first gave currency to the concept of Pan-Africanism. In fact, Williams had conceived the idea of a world conference of African people in 1897 even before the formation of the African Association. In December 1897, Henry Williams and Bishop Henry Mason Joseph met and consulted Benito Sylvain from Haiti, on the idea of the Pan-African Congress.
Williams also consulted with two leaders of African churches - Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Bishop Alexander Walters of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Zion. The African or Ethiopian Church therefore made a significant contribution to the development of Pan-Africanism.
On the advice of these leaders and a number of others from Africa, the West Indies and the United States who visited London for various reasons, a preparatory meeting of a Pan-African Congress convened on June 12, 1899. The committee called for, inter alia, the retention of African culture in institutions which were not offensive to humanity and the establishment of a nondenominational African church.
This was not surprising because of the dominance of Ethiopian Christian leaders opposed to the adulteration of Christianity by some Western denominations and its use to advance the interests of slave masters and colonialists. Before the conference started, it was agreed that Bishop Alexander Walters should preside and W E B Du Bois should chair the committee on the address to the nations of the World.
The first committee report presented and adopted by the first Pan-African Congress recommended the formation of a Pan-African Association which would have branches in other parts of the empire, including South Africa. The aims and objectives of the Pan-African Association were to rescue Africans throughout the world and secure true civil and political rights, and "to ameliorate the conditions of our brothers on the continent of Africa, America and other parts of the world".
Moreover, the delegates hoped to establish a united front of independent African states, an objective that would later be resuscitated by Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.
Bishop Alexander Walters and Reverend Sylvester Williams respectively were elected chairperson and secretary of the African Pan-African Association. The report on the Pan-African Association was followed by the address to the nations of the world which was delivered by W E B Du Bois. Du Bois prophesied that racism would be the great problem of the 20th century. Indeed, at the end of the Anglo-Boer War, the Britons and the Boers concluded the Treaty of Vereeniging in 1902, which legalised racism. This was followed by the South African Native Commission of 1905 to 1906, which recommended territorial segregation between black and white in South Africa.
Meanwhile the arrival of Bishop McNeal Turner of the AME Church in 1898, Henry Sylvester Williams and Peregrino, the Ghanaian journalist in 1900 and the South African Ethiopian movement, had already sown the seeds of Pan- Africanism. In Cape Town, Williams helped Abdullah Abdurahman and Sol Plaatjie to establish the African People's Organisation, APO. Abdurahman correctly used the terms African and coloured interchangeably because coloured people are part and parcel of the African family.
Peregrino founded a newspaper, the South African Spectator. In it he sought to connect Pan-Africanism and African nationalism. Having lived in the Rochester area, USA, for a decade, before coming to South Africa, Peregrino identified the similarities in the nature of racism that confronted the African people in South Africa and the African Americans. He made the South African Spectator the political and intellectual forum of this connection across the Atlantic.
Pan-Africanism was thus born out of the triple African struggle against racism, slavery and colonialism. It was, firstly, a struggle for the recovery of African humanity and its inherent and inalienable dignity. Secondly, it was a struggle against the triple evils of racism, slavery and colonialism, which forcibly degraded and dehumanised Africans on the continent and the Diaspora. Thirdly, it was a movement for the unification of people of African descent, the world over, in the struggle against those triple crimes against African humanity. Fourthly, it was a struggle to regain political, cultural and socioeconomic rights, and lastly, freedom and independence. Thus, human dignity, unity and co-operation, shared responsibility and prosperity among people of African descent became the core values and principles of Pan-Africanism. The colonial onslaught notwithstanding, Africans did not lose faith and hope.
In 1905, Pixley ka Isaka Seme in his lecture, The regeneration of Africa, called for a new and unique civilisation for Africa and Africans. The concept of the regeneration of Africa, later the African Renaissance, received impetus in the second half of the 20th century from the writings of Booker T Washington, WEB Du Bois and Marcus Garvey.
Garvey's radical Pan-African nationalism and his slogan of "Africa for Africans", propagated under the auspices of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, UNIA, catalysed the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. The leaders who were influenced by Garveyism were Kwame Nkrumah, Mnandi Azikiwe and Nelson Mandela himself, who embraced the concept of the African Renaissance.
In 1945, the Pan-African Congress held in Manchester was seen, in retrospect, as a pacemaker for decolonisation in Africa and in the British West Indies. It marked a significant advance in the participation of workers, peasants, youth and women in the Pan-African cause. It demanded an end to colonial rule and an end to racial discrimination, while it carried forward the broad struggle against imperialism, for human rights and equality of economic opportunity.
The Pan-African Congress manifesto itself positioned the political and economic demands of the congress within a new world context of international co-operation. Pan-Africanist interests once more returned to the African, with a particular focus on African unity and liberation. Most notably, the congress drafted the declaration of the colonised against imperialism. Ultimately, most of the resolutions were implemented over time with African countries achieving their political independence.
A number of leading Pan-Africanists, particularly George Padmore and WEB Du Bois, emphasised their commitment to Africa by immigrating, in both cases, to Ghana and becoming African citizens. Across the continent, a new group of Pan-Africanists arose amongst the nationalists - Kwame Nkrumah and others.
On the eve of Ghana's independence on 6 March 1957, Nkrumah, influenced by 20th century advocates of Pan-Africanism, and a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity, declared that the independence of Ghana was meaningless until it was linked to the total liberation of the African continent.
In 1958, Nkrumah convened a conference of independent states. Later in the same year, Nkrumah and George Padmore organised an All-African Peoples Conference in Ghana, which laid the foundation for the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity, OAU, in 1963. At the 21st summit, the AU adopted the declaration of the 50th anniversary of the OAU-AU. The declaration reaffirmed the commitment of African leaders to the ideals of Pan-Africanism and Africa's aspiration for greater unity. They also reaffirmed their determination to build an integrated and prosperous Africa, driven by its citizens.
I hope this Parliament will support the declaration of the AU and commit resources to its implementation. Thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]