RECONCILIATION IS THE BEST TRIBUTE WE CAN PAY TO MANDELA
This year has been declared the year of Nelson Mandela. Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula pays tribute to the first Commander-in-Chief of the Democratic South Africa and also reflects on the leading role played by the SANDF in fostering reconciliat
Our first Commanderin-Chief, Nelson Mandela, has been described as the father of our nation partly because of the leading role he played in ushering in the new South Africa. But Madiba’s enduring legacy is reconciliation and entrenching the rule of law.
Because of his outmost respect for the rule of law, Mandela, despite the fact that he was the first trained solder and commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe, was unequivocal in his stance that the new South African National Defence Force (SANDF) upheld the letter and spirit of the Constitution and nothing else.
It would have been tempting for Mandela and his post-apartheid administration to create the army in the image of MK as the dominant factor in the liberation Struggle. But he did not. He understood that the new defence force was an instrument that should serve all South Africans, regardless of their political affiliations and beliefs. He appreciated the crucial role that the SANDF would play in safeguarding the territorial integrity of the Republic of South Africa and beyond.
As a visionary that he was, Madiba was fully cognisant of the fact that for the SANDF to succeed in carrying its constitutional mandate, it would have to be above party politics and to enjoy the confidence of all South Africans regardless of their political background. Today, as we pay home to Mandela, the first Commander-inChief of the defence force, we say without any fear of contradiction that we are living the Madiba legacy. That culture that he inculcated remains. The SANDF remains loyal to the Constitution and nothing else.
Our defence force serves the interests of our country and all its people. Perhaps we owe our current position of total loyalty to the Constitution to the emphasis that Mandela placed on national reconciliation and his efforts to bring seven armed warring factions together to form a single national defence force guided by the Constitution.
And if there was a case to be made to prove the existence of national reconciliation in the country, the SANDF would be exhibit number 1. With good reason. The SANDF is a living embodiment of national reconciliation.
We celebrate National Day of Reconciliation on December 16. As we remember Mandela and his contribution to our country, it is appropriate to reflect on the day and its historical importance for South Africans of all races.
The current day SANDF is made up of the former liberation movements – Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), the former South African Defence Force (SADF) and the defence forces from the former independent homelands of Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei.
For MK, which was the military wing of the ruling party, the African National Congress, December 16 has a special meaning. The “People’s Army”, as MK is referred to by some freedom loving people, was launched on December 16 in 1961. Its first trained soldier was Mandela, the icon of our liberation and the father of the post-apartheid South Africa.
It is difficult to understand how somebody who suffered so much could be the champion of reconciliation. Mandela was jailed for 27 years. When he was in prison, his son, Thembi, died in a car accident in 1969. He was refused permission to attend his son’s funeral. Madiba recounted this as one of the worst experiences he had had to endure while in prison.
He also felt responsible for the continued harassment of his wife, Winnie MadikizelaMandela by the security police. Madikizela-Mandela was detained and later banished to the Free State town of Brandfort.
But after 27 years in prison, Mandela came out to preach reconciliation. He was not bitter. He did not only talk about the need to reconcile but took extra-ordinary steps to promote reconciliation. How can we forget the famous visit by a sitting president to Orania, a whites-only enclave in the Karoo, to Betsie Verwoerd, the widow of apartheid architect, Hendrik Verwoerd, in August 1995?
Some of our people felt that Madiba was over-doing this reconciliation thing. After all, Mrs Verwoerd had chosen to live among the section of the Afrikaners who wanted to perpetuate racial segregation and apartheid in its purest form. But the visionary Mandela understood that it is more important to extend a hand of friendship to your enemy than to your friend. That visit proved to the doubting thomases that Mandela and by extension his administration was serious about reconciliation. He won over the conservative white community, especially the Afrikaner section, to support the project of a non-racial and democratic South Africa.
Increasingly, the ultra-right as represented by AWB leader Eugene Terre’blanche, which had preached war, gradually lost support and became irrelevant in our national politics. Mandela defused the threat of war by the rightwingers by showing them that he was serious about reconciliation and that they had nothing to fear from an ANC government.
While December 16 marked the formation of MK, the day had a different but not less significant meaning for those in the other side of the political spectrum. For years, the Afrikaners had commemorated December 16 as Day of the Vow. They made a covenant to God to help them defeat the Zulu warriors of King Dingane led by his army general Dambuza. When the Afrikaners emerged victorious in the battle that was latter known as the battle of Blood River, they vowed that they would continue to honour and serve God for giving them that victory over the Zulus. That is how December became known as the Day of the Vow.
Before the formation of the union of South Africa in 1910, the Day of the Vow had been a holiday in the Boer Republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State since the battle of Blood River in December 16, 1838. After 1910, the day became a national holiday in the South African calendar.
It is important to understand that the Afrikaners who defeated the forces of Dingane represented the colonial force that was designed to keep the African indigenous people in political and economic bondage. Through colonial conquest, Africans lost their land to the Afrikaners and other Europeans invaders through the barrel of the gun.
Decades of peaceful marches, demonstrations and petitions by African leaders to the English monarch proved useless to change the political situation for the black majority who were seeking equal rights to their white counterparts.
In 1960, the apartheid police proved beyond measure of doubt that peaceful protest would not be effective to reverse apartheid when they opened fire, with live ammunition, mowing down 69 protestors and wounding hundreds others in Sharpeville on March 21.
Police’s brutal response to peaceful protest convinced Mandela and other ANC leaders that it was useless and futile to engage peacefully with a regime whose response to was brute force. Mandela then became the first volunteer in chief of MK and the People’s Army was founded in 1961, December 16.
MK was formed to liberate South Africa through the use of force. On the other end, SADF’s brief was to liquidate “the terrorist” MK and any other liberation forces.
Fast forward to 2018. The sworn enemies of MK and the SANDF are working together in the new SANDF in defence of South Africa and all its people. The integration of the various armies has been so successful that it is now impossible to trace the original differences of the forces.
And there is more. While in the past, SADF would conduct military raids such as Matola raid in Lesotho, Kasinga in Angola and the Gaborone in Botswana, in pursuit of the ANC “terrorists”, the SANDF of today exports peace to its neighbours and the rest of the African continent.
South African military is no longer the destabilising force in the region but plays a constructive role to support peace missions throughout the continent.
SANDF is a force of good against evil. When we engage in combat, the objective is the attainment of lasting peace for political stability and economic progress.
As a country, we can draw inspiration from the reconciliation experiment successfully executed by the SANDF.
We can use 2018 – the year of Mandela – to recommit ourselves to the national reconciliation as championed by our founding father Nelson Mandela.
We should not allow a tiny minority to divide us by exploiting our differences. We should rather see our differences as strengthening our nation with its diverse racial and cultural groups. We have come a long way to allow a few misguided people to revise the poison of racism.
The SANDF is fully transformed and reflects the demographics of the country in their fully glory. It has already showed us that reconciliation is not only possible but an imperative necessity for peace and economic development.
We should shun those who are trying to create racial tension among our people. We dare not soil the legacy of Mandela.
For example of how this is done, just look at exhibit 1 of the reconciliation case – the SANDF and its first Commander-in-Chief Nelson Mandela.
As South Africans, let us use 2018 the 100th year of his birth to vow to pay allegiance to the national flag and the Constitution and continue with his heritage of reconciliation.