Hon Speaker, hon Deputy President, hon members, in his message to the World Social Forum in Mumbai in 2004 former President Nelson Mandela remarked that, and I quote:
We owe a huge debt to future generations in the form of a better world. It has to be a better world, one in which the rights of every individual are respected, one that builds on past aspirations for a good life, and one that enables every individual to optimally develop their potential.
It is therefore very fitting that our Parliament has decided to provide leadership regarding this celebration of our legacy of advancing humanist and moral values which the honourable Nelson Mandela, as the leader of the ANC and our nation, championed with distinction.
The ubuntu values and principles embodied in the person of Nelson Mandela are rooted in our glorious past ... [Applause.] ... as African people who, under his leadership and that of many others, successfully fought for our freedom and independence, and equality for all.
Nelson Mandela joined the ANC at the height of World War II and banded together with other young people under the leadership of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede. These young people set themselves the formidable task of transforming the ANC into a mass movement deriving its strength from the unlettered millions of working people in the towns and countryside, peasants in the rural areas and professionals.
Nelson Mandela and his comrades, like the founders of African democracy, notably W E B du Bois and Marcus Garvey, espoused a radical African nationalism, grounded in the principles of national self-emancipation and self-determination.
Together with David Bopape, Walter Sisulu, O R Tambo and others, he composed the ANC Youth League subcommittee that drew up the 1949 Programme of Action. This programme was aimed at the attainment of full citizenship, as well as direct and democratic parliamentary representation for all South Africans.
In policy documents he co-authored, the ANC Youth League paid special attention to the redistribution of land, trade union rights, education and culture. The ANC Youth League aspired to achieving free and compulsory education for all children, as well as mass education for adults.
Having been admitted as attorneys who established a law firm, Tambo and Mandela rose to professional status in society. However, every case in court, every visit to prisons to consult with clients, reminded them of the humiliation and suffering experienced by their people. Mr Justice Ramsbottom refused to strike Nelson Mandela off the roll of practising attorneys on the grounds of his conviction under the Suppression of Communism Act. The learned judge found that Mandela had been moved by a desire to serve his black fellow citizens and nothing he had done showed him to be unworthy to remain in the ranks of this honourable profession. [Applause.]
During the early 1950s Nelson Mandela played an important part in leading the resistance against the Western Areas removals and the introduction of Bantu education. He also played a leading role in popularising the Freedom Charter, which was adopted by the one and only Congress of the People in 1955. [Applause.]
After the collapse of the Treason Trial in 1961, Nelson Mandela delivered a keynote address at an All-In African Conference in Pietermaritzburg. In this electrifying address, which anticipated the Constitution Act of 1996, which gave birth to the Constituent Assembly and, in turn, gave birth to our current Constitution, Mandela challenged the apartheid regime to convene a national convention, representative of all South Africans, to thrash out a new constitution based on democratic values and principles. Our icon believed in peace and development, and only encouraged violent forms of political struggle when the regime left him with no other choice.
In his pursuit of the struggle, our beloved icon appreciated the role of international solidarity. While in Ethiopia in 1962 he addressed the conference of the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa to solicit international support for the struggle for liberation and freedom in South Africa.
Mandela anticipated the transformation of the judiciary that President Zuma called for in this House in his address to the top judges of our country on Monday, 6 July 2009. Answering a charge of having left the country without a passport, Mandela replied that he considered the prosecution a trial of the aspirations of the African people. Thereafter, Mandela decided to conduct his own defence and applied for the recusal of the magistrate on the grounds that in such a prosecution a judiciary controlled entirely by whites was an interested party, and therefore not impartial.
He also argued that he owed no duty to obey the laws of a white parliament in which his people were not represented. Mandela prefaced his defence with the affirmation: "I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man." [Applause.]
After his conviction for leaving the country illegally, Mandela made a historic, antidomination statement, and I quote:
I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to see realised. But ... if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
[Applause.] Hon members, we sit here now because that ideal has been achieved. Pat yourselves on the back. [Applause.]
Upon his release on 11 February 1990, Mandela wholeheartedly devoted his life and work to striving to attain the democratic values and principles which the founding fathers and mothers of the ANC set out to achieve decades ago.
Mandela has never wavered in his devotion to democracy, equality and learning. Despite terrible provocation, he has never answered racism with racism. His life has been an inspiration in South Africa and throughout the world to all who are oppressed and deprived, and to all who are opposed to oppression and deprivation.
In a life that symbolises the triumph of the human spirit over man's inhumanity to man, Nelson Mandela accepted the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of all South Africans who suffered and sacrificed much to bring peace to our land. The progressive values and principles that Mandela embodied became abundantly evident in his 1993 Nobel lecture. First and foremost, he acknowledged other recipients of the award, including F W de Klerk, Chief Albert Luthuli, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King Jr. He pointed out in particular that Martin Luther King grappled with and died in an effort to make a contribution to, the just solution of the same grade of issues of the day that we have had to face as Africans. Madiba summed up these issues in a more definite and emphatic way. He went on to declare, and I quote:
We stand here today as nothing more than a representative of millions of our people ... These countless human beings, both inside and outside our country, had the nobility of spirit to stand in the path of tyranny and injustice, without seeking selfish gain. They recognised that an injury to one is an injury to all and therefore acted together in defence of justice and a common human decency.
Hon members, we must be proud today as we sit here that the hon President, Jacob Zuma, has been able to link the humanity that Nelson Mandela called for to the priorities that this government has set for itself. In his state of the nation address and in response to the debate, President Jacob Zuma ably said that we cannot fully recover the humanity of all, unless there is decent work for all, unless there is quality and affordable education for all, and unless all of us can live in peace and security in our houses.
So, we as the ANC are pleased to see that the agenda that Nelson Mandela set for our nation is the agenda that this House has set for itself and the agenda that we are going to pursue together, working together. I think that the call that the Deputy President, Kgalema Motlanthe, has made in regard to 18 July is a call that all of us will pursue.
In conclusion, I am pleased to say that in our Chief Whips' Forum all the parties undertook to work for this same common good that Nelson Mandela set out to work for. I want to thank you, hon members, for the opportunity to address you on this important day. Thank you very much. [Applause.]