Speeches in the National Assembly

Mr. Greenidge: Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer a few comments in support of the motion before the Assembly. Prior to that, I would just like to tell the House that having listened to a certain presentation which I would not isolate, I am reminded of a saying by the people of Lesotho, which I do not think is too alien to us. It says, “Talking is not doing.”
As I turn to the motion before us, in keeping with the time, I shall like to start with a comment by the way of sport. In keeping with the times, soccer fans called him the “Black Panther”. He was born in Mozambique and he was the most captivating player of the 1966 World Cup. He has since been recognised as the centre of gravity of that tournament.
In 1998, a panel of 100 experts gathered by Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) named him as one of the sport’s top 10 greats. And in that very year, Mr. Mandela took the last of his three wives. Within a few days of Mr. Mandela’s death, that of the great Eusébio da Silva Ferreira was announced by his long-time club, Benfica. These are a few of the links between Mozambique and one of its most famous sons of the Republic of South Africa, Mr. Nelson Mandela. I will come back to the others later but I think this opening is important because...sufficed for me to note that these two great sons of Africa were both the products of a world which, at the time of their birth, regarded Africans as not worthy of much except music and sport, and, in the case of sport, they were only seen as capable of athleticism, physical prowess and power. In fighting that attitude in its most extreme form, a form which invests in South Africa, Mandela took up a mission which, by the time he left us, attracting a range of monikers such as Great Man of the Millennium and so on, in the same way Eusébio attracted such titles in the arena of sport. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Two interventions, in particular, made great emphasis of the overemphasis given to race in relation to the issue of apartheid. I would like to say a few words in relation to this arena. Apartheid was a regime of dispossession, human brutalisation and the total dominance of one race based on the theology of separate development of one race from others based upon, apparently, a theology of religion and, supposedly, separateness. I say theology because the separateness was respected more in the breech than in reality. Of course, regimes of brutalisation were known outside of Southern Africa, even on that continent. In that regard, Leopold’s Belgium Congo was described as a colonial regime of slave labour, rape and mutilation in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and, most recently, King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild describes very graphically the history of brutality that was visited on that nation.
More recently, there have been extensive discussions and calls on Germany to apologise for the 1904 to 1908 programme, a period during which the Germans attempted to wipe out the San, Herero and the Nama people of Southern Africa. So in passing, let me remind Colleagues that in contrast to slavery, it is important to understand the difference and the reason for the connection.
I take this opportunity to mention this point, particularly bearing in mind the contention that the experience of Southern Africa should have been equated, in terms of material assistance, with that of Vietnam. Let me just remind Colleagues that slavery was a regime not only of racial dispossession as of dehumanisation in which human beings were treated as property – a piece of furniture - the lives of which could be snuffed out without either explanation or with the benefit of recourse to the law. Those victims had no rights because they were chattels, no culture, no control over their destiny, their energies, and, more importantly for the time, no control over their labour power. Slavery in the Caribbean was specific to the Americas but it was part of a wider, more universal system in which the market forces, as we know them, were not allowed to operate. Over 16 million Africans were murdered over the course of their violent movement from the continent of Africa to the Americas as part of a triangular exchange.
Again I mention this so that we understand that in dealing with apartheid, it was not any other old system of market exploitation. There was no market to speak of. It was not a system of segregation, as I see one entity attempt to define them, but a system of brutalisation, domination and dispossession. It has very important connections with slavery. It was not as extreme as slavery, and I think we need to understand that. It is important because I will later come to point out how it is that the African, Caribbean and Pacific grouping came to play an important role in the fight vis-à-vis Europe in relation to this question of apartheid – an aspect I have heard nobody mention so far.
I see that we have a whole set of experts on Africa and, even better, African history; I think that is good. But in remembering the significance of the connection between these forms of exploitation, it would be useful for us, in case we had forgotten, to have a look, for example, at the Diary of Thomas Thistlewood, written between 1721 and 1786, just to give you a feel of the day-to-day implications of the treatment of people as chattels. This is the point I was making. One can compare that with Mr. Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom and also Ronald Segal’s The Race War. The other piece that would be useful in setting a context for the treatment of apartheid is, of course, A.R.F. Webber. Webber, in 1917, wrote the first complete Caribbean novel entitled Those That Be in Bondage: A Tale of Indian Indentures and Sunlit Western Waters. It is a fascinating piece about the politics, social domination and physical brutalisation of Indians in Guyana under the regime of Indentureship.
As the system of apartheid evolved, a number of political groups in South Africa – African National Congress and others mentioned by Colleagues, including Steve Biko’s South African Students’ Organization – opposed apartheid using a variety of tactics, both violent and non-violent. Mr. Nagamootoo made mention to that range. This resulted in activists being severely punished and brutalised again.
In 1955, Mr. Mandela was among the 150 activists imprisoned on charges of treason, as mentioned earlier, but the charges were simply for signing the Freedom Charter – a document that merely called for civil rights and that Government is based on the will of the people.
In 1960, the year of the famous massacre in Sharpeville, police killed 69 people and wounded 180 people when 5000 demonstrators staged a non-violent protest against the past laws.
In 1976, police in the Soweto township opened fire on 15,000 secondary school students who were marching to protest a ruling which required that they be taught in Afrikaans, a language that neither they nor their teachers knew. Steve Biko, I might add, the leader of the protest was beaten to death in prison and a period of massive protests and increasingly repressive government followed that incident. So there is a historical context to this exercise that we are looking at. It is not simply a theoretical one.
The events I have described paved the way for daily news reports of the causes of death of key activists in the same manner that the body counts resulting from U.S. action in Vietnam triggered.
In 1962, the laws in South Africa were changed to permit imprisonment without trial and some things followed from this. Murder in police custody, unlike those that took place under slavery, had to be justified. At least they had to be explained. Some rationale had to be given. The reported causes of death are very interesting. In fact, the most frequently reported causes of death became increasingly bizarre as the years went on. Let me just mention six for you:
• Shot whilst escaping: well you may think that is reasonable because a prisoner might attempt to escape so he was shot;
• Suicide by hanging: that is also possible;
• Fell from a police car;
• Fell 13 or 14 storeys to his death: the explanation of Biko was not that he was beaten to death, but that he happened to have fallen out of a window. I am telling you what is being reported by the police. They used batons as well, no doubt.
• Fell against a chair: that is a cause of death; and
• Self strangulation.
There was another category namely “No Official Explanation”. There were a number of those. But after the regulations of 11th June, 1987, no explanation was required. These were emergency laws and, therefore, the leadership... The normal South African, Sesotho, Botswana, who were in South Africa and might have been part of that movement, were disposed of with impunity, but in the case of the leaders, some explanation had to be given by the police. These were the ones that were provided, just to give an idea of how that system worked and what had given rise to the process that persuaded Mr. Mandela to leave behind one form of struggle only, namely the non-violent struggle, and to broaden the armoury they employed. My colleague spoke on that so I will not say more.
I would say, however, that the struggle itself was multifaceted other than violent/non-violent in terms of, for example, ethnicity. Our colleague, the Hon. Mr. Moses Nagamootoo, spoke on that one. It also included the use of a variety of mediums – the use of poetry by Fahalele, Wally Serote, Oswald Mtshali, as well as a number of white radicals. It also included drama and I remember in the early days Serafina, as one of the musicals being taken to the United Kingdom in order to show, and they did so very effectively, in a humorous way the absurdity of both the rules and the draconian impact of the apartheid system on ordinary people in carrying out their duties and living their lives.
The struggle included music. Pardon me if I say a little more than you might expect on this particular matter. What I am saying here is that in mobilising the medium for communicating the message, for transmitting to potential supporters and people in and outside of Southern Africa, the reality of apartheid, a lot of different things were used - drama and so forth.
Music is an interesting one not only because the world has an attitude towards Africans and their music. Those who contributed in this way included both traditional - I mentioned some of those - and some controversial messages. In this genre, I do not know whether you may be aware of the name Ms. Brenda Fassie whom Time Magazine in a three-page spread called the “Madonna of the Townships” contributed the triple-platinum song that was very popular, called Vulindlela, Opened the gates. In the period beyond 1984, she was associated with what the South Africans called the bubble gum style and out of that came a very popular song called My Black President, dedicated to Mr. Nelson Mandela, and the freedom song.
These forms of transmitting the message mobilising sympathy went along with the combination of dance and song that... I do not know about in Guyana but elsewhere one of the things we see almost every time there is a South African strike or political demonstration is people dancing and singing. I think people assume that this is just another set of Africans. The music is playing and they twitch to it, but in South Africa, that genre of protest came out of the mines where people were placed. In slavery, they were forbidden to speak common languages except English. They were unable, in many instances, to get rest and break as normal laws would allow and, therefore, they developed various forms of resistance. If one follows the history of calypso, one will see an interesting similarity between the way that music and dance evolved and how calypso evolved as social commentary, starting off as criticism and caricature of the slave owners. That gave rise to songs and dances of resistance under the rubric of what became in South African pop music and culture the gumboot style.
Ms. Miriam Makeba, of course, was a major factor in helping to sell that story. The important point about the music, dance and medium is that Mr. Mandela and his team of leaders were able to hold a set of messengers, in addition to the politicians, who could deliver a message for them, people whose core values and behaviour they may not have always embraced, but Mandela was able to inspire them to lend support to the message that he and his political movement were trying to sell.
Mr. Speaker, it may appear to some people listening that these issues – drama, music and so forth – are tangential to the issue of Mr. Mandela. Let me say to you that I think that far from being tangential, they are central because there are many leaders who have the characteristics and abilities I have pointed out just now that Mr. Mandela had: the ability to compromise and to negotiate. But what makes him so different from the others? I think in understanding how he was able to serve as a glue for this spirit, sometimes convicting... As the Hon. Mr. Moses Nagamootoo was saying, Mandela could sometimes bring within his camp those who not only had different views, but who might also have been enemies. It is a capacity that our leaders need to learn.
Ms. Miriam Makeba was associated with a song called Sangoma which also had a track by Ms. Brenda Fassie called Soon and Very Soon. The title alone gives you an idea of the message that these people were transmitting to the communities. Now Is The Time was also one of the albums produced, in this case, between Ms. Brenda Fassie and Mr. Papa Wemba, who is perhaps one of the most popular and well-known Congolese artistes across Africa and certainly in Europe. This album became a best selling release and won numerous African awards.
Of course, N'kosi Sikelel' iAfrica, the song of resistance of South Africa and the South African freedom fighters is now known as the National Anthem of South Africa, again showing the influence of Mr. Mandela and the tools he used on the continent itself. In other words, it is not a case of a leader whose influence was geographically limited to the country in which he was fighting the struggle, which could not be said of many of the others who fought wars of independence. I will come back to that in a little while.
The National Anthem N'kosi Sikelel' iAfrica is probably more widely known than any other anthem today, with the exception of the stars and stripes. However, unlike the stars and stripes, it is a politically popular anthem and linked to Mr. Mandela and his people’s successfully shared struggle against the second most heinous form of racism this world has experienced.
The switch to the international stage from the national struggle is really... I am just emphasising one of the special features of Mr. Mandela’s contribution to the exercise of overthrowing apartheid. As was mentioned earlier, it is true both India and China as countries, long before they were independent, contributed together with the struggle domestically, in Guyana for example, to the abolition of Indentureship. The same could not be said of the abolition of slavery as such. But in relation to apartheid, there were many individuals, non-state actors in and out of South Africa, as well as a range of states – not simply a state from which these people emanated – contributed to tightening a ring of sanctions around South Africa, raising awareness of the actions of the Government of South Africa and, in the process, building a resistance to apartheid. Many of them were inspired by Mr. Mandela and his team of leaders. I am not going to go through those names again because people have been mentioning them. The point I want to make is that the capacity to hold the struggle together in immeasurably difficult circumstances was also a result of Mr. Mandela and his leadership being able to project what we now call, in another context, a rainbow leadership – a leadership of many political and ethnic colours. That is important.
Respected individuals, including superstars, Harry Belafonte, for example, took up the struggle. He was part of the American Committee on Africa and the African Unification Front. There were also radical movements, including the Black Power Movement, in the 1970s.
Those of us who lived through that era would not forget the teaming up between Miriam Makeba and Stokely Carmichael, whose origins lie in the Caribbean. They brought radical rhetoric and music to the struggle. They helped to bring in a sense theatre and rhetoric to the struggle as well. The song Pata Pata, as my Colleague was mentioning to me earlier, and the Click Song, were, for many people, the first time they recognised they had a culture that, in terms of language, for example, was radically different to anything else that we knew - the formation of the music itself and its structure, and this is even without mentioning the interesting and outstanding harmonies associated more with the United States and Gospel than with Africa. It is, in fact, the male harmonies in the Cold War in Southern Africa that in fact also help to make the world understand that there was something that was interesting and carried a message with it.
Apartheid was not slavery, but the severity of its impact, its racial basis, could be easily comprehended, or should I say, should be easily comprehended by the people of the Caribbean, whatever their ethnicities. Along with the African America, which I have already mentioned, we have, over the years, provided support to the movement, born of the share of experience. The contributors included prominent Guyanese such as Guyanese musicians, Eddy Grant, for example. His song Gimme Hope Jo'Anna is regarded by many as the very anthem of apartheid’s demise. That song made UK’s top ten in 1988 and was banned for its troubles by the South Africa Government.
Let me also say that states also supported the struggle for apartheid. Let me remind the House that at the time when lip service was being paid by many Governments in this region to the struggle against apartheid, there were Governments in this region which were actually providing material support. As I said, the Cisoto says that there is a difference between talk and doing. There were some in this region that did not merely say that they would help once they did not have to provide material resources, but they actually contributed to facilitating the continued activities and sanction breaking by South Africa. That is what I was referring to when I heard a Colleague suggest earlier that all Caribbean Governments provided support to the apartheid movement. That is not the case.
Mr. Speaker, you know I would not miss the opportunity to draw the attention of the House and remind the House, even though I am not going to repeat the cases already made, of the contribution of Guyana…
Mr. Speaker: One second, Minister Rohee what is it,... role as a paparazzi. I do not know that the persons whose photographs you are attempting to take have given permission for their images to be…
Mr. Rohee: [Inaudible]
Mr. Speaker: I see. Sorry for the interruption.
Mr. Greenidge, perhaps it would be wise to have an extension for you at this point in time.
Ms. Ally: Mr. Speaker, I would like to move that the Hon. Member be given 15 minutes to conclude his presentation.
Question put and agreed to.
Mr. Greenidge: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker and Mdm. Chief Whip. I was saying that I would not miss the opportunity, of course, to highlight the contribution of Guyana, the People’s National Congress (PNC) Government, under the leadership of Forbes Burnham, in this regard. I would just like to say that in addition to providing material support to the liberation movements, which material support was mentioned earlier, directly or through assistance to Cuba, for example, over flights by both South African Airways and El Al of Israel, at the time, an ally of South Africa, were banned from Guyana’s airspace. It was one of the many reasons, of course, that that regime was vilified by many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The other was, of course, the position taken in relation to the so called cricketing rebels that arose out of those who bucked the Gleneagles Agreement.
In speaking of the contribution of Guyana, I think I can do a little better than to simply adopt the words of Ali Masjid, who, in 2010, offered a contribution on Guyana’s liberation movement. I would make this available, Mr. Speaker, so I would not read it from beginning to end. I would just highlight very quickly that he pointed to the fact that between 1970 and 1975, John Carter played a critical role as the Chairman of the Commonwealth Sanctions Committee, which helped to chart the Commonwealth’s policy on both Zimbabwe and apartheid in South Africa.
In London also, Guyana was a prominent member of the Southern Africa Committee. The Commonwealth Secretary General, Shridath Ramphal, former Foreign Affairs Minister of Guyana, played a powerful and unremitting role in this particular arena. The United Nations (UN) General Assembly, on the occasion of the 35th Assembly, Guyana’s (Permanent Representative) PR, Noel Sinclair, served as Chairman of the 4th Committee, which dealt with the issue of decolonisation. In that forum, Guyana championed the cause of decolonisation and resolutely lent support to the liberation movement.
Rashleigh Jackson himself, later appointed Foreign Affairs Minister, made a very important set of contributions in this regard. Cecil Pilgrim, to whom I will make reference shortly again, then Cuba’s Ambassador in Havana, worked almost inseparably with the African liberation leaders, who, in turn, became national leaders on the occasion of the triumph for their revolution. He paid special attention to the ANC in South Africa and he developed a close relationship with Alex La Guma and his wife Blanche Valerie Herman. Subsequently, as Guyana’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Pilgrim represented the non-aligned movement at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). He was also a member of the Commonwealth Observer Mission for the first free elections in 1994.
When the Government of Guyana was informed of that role, I must say, in passing, that, it objected to him being involved. Luckily when the Commonwealth Secretary General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, brought that information to the attention of the Government of Guyana... It was not to ask the Government’s permission. It seemed to have thought at the time that that was the purpose. Pilgrim, in recognition of the role that he and Guyana had played in the liberation of Sothern Africa, was included as member of that team in defiance of the position of Southern Africa.
Let me quickly turn to the African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States (ACP), an arena in which I have had some experience. It is no secret that from the time of its establishment, the ACP group had arrangements internal to it in which the Caribbean and the Pacific were the closest of allies. They worked very closely together with Nigeria, in fact, in the establishment of the ACP.
What perhaps is not as well understood is that the Caribbean and Southern Africa shared a special relationship beyond that between the Caribbean and the Pacific. I took the trouble earlier to outline the similarities between apartheid and slavery so that one could understand part of the reason for that almost automatic bonding when these people, many of whom I have never met before, met within the confines and the arena that was called the ACP group in the framework of Lomé. So, I do not need to go through the bond and the reason for the bond.
What I want to say is that many of the radicals, including those with close association with South Africa itself - some of the them were mentioned - regarded the ACP, as it was formulated, as simply a manifestation of what Marlowe called the Faustian Deal. It is where a deal is struck with the devil.
In fact, the ACP group proved to be a device via which considerable pressure and embarrassment was brought on Europe, in relation to emphasising the urgency of bringing to an end not only its support for racist South Africa, but also its material support to South Africa and its actions in the rest of Southern Africa.
Under the guise of the imperatives of the Cold War, Europe, like the United States, banned, as was mentioned earlier, and treated Mandela, his organisation and his colleagues as terrorists. This was the case in Europe.
The ACP group, in the course of its discussions on what is called “Man as the Centre of the Universe” – this was the principle that pulled them together in putting the Lomé Convention together – got around to a discussion on policy dialogue. The Europeans wanted to speak about the policies of the African, Caribbean and the Pacific countries vis-à-vis their people. The African, Caribbean and Pacific countries turned that dialogue into a discussion on the European support, the European Economic Community (EEC) support for the South African regime across Southern Africa. Lomé I and Lomé II: the debates went on and nothing could be shown for it. Lomé III: the Europeans decided that they will make mention of this question of human rights. It was the first time that it was going to appear in there. In Lomé IV, it appeared in an annex. 
The Lomé Convention is a legal document, as is the Cotonou Convention now, enforceable against the signatories to it. That is why each country has to sign. By putting the declaration of human rights as an annex, there was no obligation for the Europeans to implement. One could not do anything about it. By the time you got to the Lomé Convention and Lomé’s replacement, which is the Cotonou Convention, the ACP group had managed to bring into the body of the Convention, under Article 5(1) and (2), the principles pertaining to respect for human rights. It was directed, almost exclusively, at European support and collaboration with the South African regime. So, paragraph 5 (1) and (2) committed the parties to greater respect and to proceed to remove all obstacles to the achievement of full human rights in Southern Africa and elsewhere.
Today, of course, the Agreement finds a home in Article 195 of the Cotonou Convention. It is also the case that the Europeans, or the world, having seen the collapse of the apartheid regime, the first time in which the sanction itself was invoked against a member state was against Sudan, an African State. This is one of the ironies of agreeing to laws and principles and not seeing all the way down the line as regards their implications.
By that time, South Africa, of course, had been confronted with a whole set of sanctions. You had the case of Cuito Cuanavale, which was mentioned by a colleague already. The South African regime, in a sense, levied for the eventual dismantling of apartheid. In that collapse, it is clear that the world has decided that the major catalyst there was Nelson Mandela. His effectiveness in fighting apartheid earned him sobriquets, as I mentioned before, such as Man of the Millennium. Many regard him as the greatest African ever.
When you look at the work that Mandela did, the contributions and the negotiations, it is hard, perhaps at first, to understand why it is that he would warrant such descriptions. He was clearly a negotiator with special abilities, a capacity to compromise and to be flexible. It sometimes backfired. That is true and I do not think that anybody would deny that. Perhaps the comment I would make – I am not drawing any lessons as my Colleagues were – is a Nigerian saying, which says “In the moment of crisis, the wise build bridges and the foolish build dams.” We had a discussion about dams before. Perhaps this is relevant here.
Mandela was surely a very great orator. The Prime Minister cited from his trial. I do agree that that is one of his great strengths. From the same intervention, he had a comment that said that he was looking forward to revolutionary democracy in which poverty, want and insecurity shall be no more. Some people are judging him by that particular declaration. The truth is that the continent has generated many greats. In terms of orators, for example, Nkrumah, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Kenyatta, Noraray, Samora Machel of Frelimo and the neighbouring country come to mind in terms oratory. There were others who contributed, perhaps even more, to the Pan African movement. They were not necessarily leaders, but Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria is amongst those. It is part of the revolution in which Frantz Fanon played such an important role as an intellectual leader.
Guinea-Bissau, for example, had a leader that had a successful and very brutal thirteen-year Guerrilla War to get the independence for Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. Zimbabwe and Dr. Mugabe and their struggle should not be forgotten in that regard. Sekou Toure of Guinea also should not be forgotten.
There were many independence revolutionaries. Mandela was one of many. It is the case that many of them were killed, even before they finished their revolutions and many of them suffered from being demonised because they had the audacity to fight their colonial powers. There were many inspirational leaders, Noraray as well as people like Sankara, Cabral and even…
Mr. Speaker: Hon. Member, you have two minutes remaining.
Mr. Greenidge: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The intellectual spokesmen also include Leopold Senghor of Senegal. Mandela himself acknowledged the strength of many of these other leaders, including Machel of whom he said, “We mourn in Mozambique for the loss of a statesman, soldier and intellectual, who we claimed as our leader too. He was taken from us even as a new South Africa was struggling to be born amid the death rows of the colonial and apartheid order.” The question is: why then, if there are all these others, does Mandela warrant the attention and adulation that he gets?
Let me quickly try to capture what I think are the features. I think that the sense of adulation was felt when I met him, for example, when the ACP and European Union (EU) invited him to address them at the Joint Council in Luxembourg. It is also, I think, important to say, quickly, that his greatness clearly was contributed to, in great measure, by the wives that he took. I made mention of the link with Mozambique. I think, while the time may not permit, I would not be forgiven for not mentioning the role of the wives in that regard. Since time is limited, let me say that Graça Machel, again, who we worked with when I was at the CTA, is surely one of the most charming women. Apart from charm, there is a capacity in her own right, a presence in her own right.
Clearly, you get the impression from these women that Mandela had the characteristics of a leader who would not be uncomfortable with people close to him or around him, who would not merely support him, but who would just as soon challenge an idea that he raised as to offered different ideas to him. He exhibited an unusual degree of selflessness. His attitude to the incidence of rugby after he had been elected, having lunch with his prosecutor, declining an opportunity to serve a second term as President of South Africa, whilst he was at the height of his popularity, are all things that mark him out on the continent of Africa. There were signs of a special being. His dignity, clarity of expression, amazing lack of rancour in dealing with what clearly was a very brutal and inhuman regime, manned by a set of people that were clearly cynical and similarly murderous was quite remarkable.
Perhaps, the words of one of the commentators from the Rhodes University best captured Mandela’s right to this adulation he gets. He said, “We would do well to remember that no radicalism can be counted as adequate with situation if it allows that situation to constrain its vision and to distort its conception of what is ethical.” So, there is a dimension of Mandela’s behaviour that has to do with his ethical behaviour.
Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to be able to complete that exercise and to say to you that I would like to invite Colleagues to support the motion. It is a motion which is very fulsome in its praise of Mandela and of the roles that many others have played in achieving the freedom of Southern Africa and South Africa, in particular. I would like to invite Colleagues to embrace the motion.
Thank you very much. [Applause]