Opinion

'Forward ever, backwards never'

May 25, 2005 Edition 1

Ebrahim Rasool

Our celebration of Africa Day today marks what I hope is a renewed sense of our identity as Africans, as a people with a critical role to play on our continent.

This is the mission of our President Thabo Mbeki, whose vision has inspired many to look in the direction of Africa, to salute its achievements and potential and to work for its future.

Recently, the Western Cape hosted an event to celebrate our commitment to African history and scholarship, when we organised a banquet to raise money for a library to house and preserve ancient and unique African manuscripts.

On his visit to Mali in 2001, President Mbeki described these manuscripts as "real evidence of African scholarship, reading and writing, at extremely high levels of sophistication, centuries before colonialism", in subjects ranging from astronomy, maths and science to religion.

It was under Mansa Musa that Timbuktu became one of the major cultural centres, not only of Africa, but of the entire world. Under Mansa Musa's patronage, vast libraries were built and madrassas (Islamic universities) were endowed; Timbuktu became a meeting-place of the finest poets, scholars, and artists of Africa and the Middle East. Even after the power of Mali declined, Timbuktu remained the major Islamic centre of sub-Saharan Africa.

To put this in perspective, it is recorded that a 14th century scholar wrote of Scotland: "There are neither roads, nor towns nor people."

The importance of the Mali project and other similar projects is that they begin to shift the centuries of prejudice and pessimism about Africa and its role in the world. If Africa is to succeed, it must be acknowledged. If it is to believe in its future, it must celebrate and honour its past. And, if it is to be reborn, we must all begin to recognise ourselves as the sons and daughters of Africa.

The Africa project forces us to reconsider who we are. The colonialists found a peaceable people living in the Western Cape, whom they sought to enslave and conquer. Others came here against their wills - as slaves, as cheap labour and as political prisoners.

Amongst these, we count the Xhosa people of the Eastern Cape, the leaders and scholars of Islam, religious non-conformists like the Huguenots, and many others who fled persecution and oppression elsewhere.

Amongst them we count the prisoners who created out of the prison walls and spiritual desolation of Robben Island, what has been described as "our university".

Our lasting shame is, of course, that we exercised our own forms of oppression and persecution. Our lasting pride is that we finally opened our hearts and acknowledged, in the words of the Freedom Charter, that "South Africa belongs to all who live in it".

Over the past 10 years, we have begun to see a flowering of this pride. We have begun to see our diverse origins and cultures, not as otherness, but as part and parcel of a heritage as rich as any other.

We have begun to say with Mbeki: "I am an African." We have begun to create for ourselves a new identity as members of a vast and beautiful continent.

Only a few years ago, then minister of telecommunications, Jay Naidoo, undertook a journey he called the African Connection, driving the 16 000 kilometres from the ancient site of Carthage in Tunisia to Cape Agulhas. His purpose was to highlight and promote the role of telecommunications as a means of connecting Africa with itself.

He opened telecentres, showcased telemedicine in our own country and returned inspired by its power to change lives. This is one of many initiatives that our country has undertaken to promote both in South Africa and beyond and, under the leadership of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, promotes a dialogue and connectivity between African and African.

Only the other day, Mbeki returned from Kinshasa, where he witnessed the adoption of the new Democratic Republic of Congo constitution, forged at last out of decades of conflict and misery. He quoted the words of Patrice Lumumba, another great and visionary African leader who died for his belief in the liberty of his country.

"Forward ever, backward never" was Lumumba's call to his people and today, out of a brutal colonialism and almost half a century of bitter conflict, the DRC is able indeed to begin to look forward.

Perhaps the greatest message of Nepad is contained in its full name - a New Partnership for Africa's Development. Because, after centuries of domination, it is partnership that Africa seeks. We demand equal status in a world that turned its back on Africa, a world that saw Africa as an empire to plunder, a source of riches on which they would found their own empires, build their own palaces and feed their own people.

We demand a say in the affairs of our continent, in the affairs of the world, because we are part of that world and we have a great deal to contribute.

One of these contributions is the legacy of what has been described as the "South African miracle", heralding a style and a spirit of dispute resolution, reconciliation and governance that has begun to influence and guide the efforts of many troubled areas in Africa and the world.

It was an example of the way Africa solves its problems and finds its own solutions. In the process, it showed how the spirit of ubuntu, compromise and humanity can begin to influence the road to world peace.

The challenges of Africa are very great. But they cannot be resolved by contempt or neglect. They cannot be met without engagement and compromise.

I firmly believe that, when we look back on the early years of this century, we will remember a time when Africa again came into its own; an era when it began to solve its own problems, find its own solutions and dream its own dreams. And it will have done so, not as the booty and plunder of colonialism, not as a neglected and despised people, but as a proud partner of the world community.

On this Africa Day, in our quest to make the Western Cape a Home for All, we must add to the natural categories on which we seek to build this home, such as race, language and religion, that we open our arms to fellow Africans, and turn our back on xenophobia.

We must acknowledge this as a problem amongst us, a problem that often follows the same pattern of competition around scarce resources that emboldens other prejudices. We must also see the enormous economic potential of South Africa as many Western Cape businesses are beginning to see in tourism and investment.

Nobody will deny the enormous problems Africa faces, nor the volume of work there is to be done. But, as we begin to acknowledge our African-ness, as we begin to see ourselves as the daughters and sons of what historian Basil Davison called "Black Mother", we will truly begin to come into our own.