I am an African.
I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land.
My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope.
The fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the wild blooms of the citizens of the veld.
… (Extracts: Thabo Mbeki, on the Occasion of the Adoption by the Constitutional Assembly of “The Republic of South Africa Constitutional Bill 1996.” Cape Town, 08 May 1996)
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We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force.
We have seen our lands seized in the name of allegedly legal laws which in fact recognized only that might is right.
We have witnessed atrocious sufferings of those condemned for their political opinions or religious beliefs; exiled in their own country, their fate truly worse than death itself.
Who will ever forget the massacres where so many of our brothers perished, the cells into which those who refused to submit to a regime of oppression and exploitation were thrown?
All that, my brothers, we have endured.
Together, my brothers, my sisters, we are going to begin a new struggle, a sublime struggle, which will lead our country to peace, prosperity, and greatness.
Together, we are going to establish social justice and make sure everyone has just remuneration for his labor.
We are going to keep watch over the lands of our country so that they truly profit her children. We are going to restore ancient laws and make new ones which will be just and noble.
We are going to put an end to suppression of free thought and see to it that all our citizens enjoy to the full the fundamental liberties foreseen in the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
We are going to do away with all discrimination of every variety and assure for each and all the position to which human dignity, work, and dedication entitles him.
We are going to rule not by the peace of guns and bayonets but by a peace of the heart and the will.
I ask all of you to forget your tribal quarrels. They exhaust us. They risk making us despised abroad.
I ask all of you not to shrink before any sacrifice in order to achieve the success of our huge undertaking.
Glory to the fighters for national liberation!
Long live independence and African unity!
… (Extracts: Patrice E. Lumumba : Congo Independence Day Speech, June 30, 1960)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olVADbv7Wts
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