WeeklySA_AdminHUMBLE:Recently retired secretary of defence and head of defence department held various leadership positions
By Vusi Mavimbela
Greetings Dr Sam Makhudu Gulube! Those who shared the combat trenches of the liberation struggle with you will salute you by the nom de guerre of Scientist Manifesto. I greet you from across the vast waters of the Atlantic Ocean. If this distance from where I greet you sounds too distant, you and I must at least remind ourselves that it is these very vast waters that conveyed millions of African slaves from our continent to the lands of the Americas. In that sense then I am not far away from you because our distance has been bridged by the human cruelty and the heroism that defined the Atlantic slave trade.
I salute you in this hour of your exit from this great theatre of our dreams, of our tribulations and our imperfections. It is Shakespeare who said all the world is a stage and all of us are mere actors. Some of the actors will enter this stage, play their part and depart leaving behind a legacy of great accomplishments that shall forever impact in many positive ways the lives of the people. However there are others who will enter this theatre, hobble along on stage and one day they will depart leaving behind a lasting unbearable stench of betrayal to the course of the people for liberation.
I could not be with you today at this defining hour but the least I could do is to convey this farewell message to you in the company of the National Flag of a liberated South Africa. You sacrificed your youthful life and dedicated it to the realisation of this Flag. This Flag represents your precious blood that you had surrendered to the struggle as insurance for our liberation. You were prepared to lay down your life for this liberation to be achieved.
This Flag represents the black majority whose aspirations encapsulated the moral justification of the liberation struggle. It reflects the green and the gold as a measure of the natural endowments that should accrue to the people and nourish the character of their lives. I see in it the blue infinity of the oceans and the skies as they reflect the boundless expression of people’s enterprising culture, their limitless hopes and their free spirit to scale the greatest of heights and the deepest of human inquiry. It is with great regret that I cannot touch your hand now and bid you a good farewell embrace that befits the loftiness of your liberation contribution. I however take solace in that you left us with this Flag; we owe it to you to protect what it represents, to uphold it at all times and hoist it high to the heavens on earth.
Dr Gulube, It is for that reason that I must conclude by apologising to you because of those that have entered the theatre of our lives, not to hoist this flag high but to desecrate it. As you depart today, you leave behind an unbearable stench of destruction caused by some who masquerade as your comrades still. As we bid you farewell, large segments of the country’s infrastructure have been looted and set ablaze by some who masquerade as your comrades still. They too make bold and loud claims still that they are upholders and defenders of this very Flag and the plight of the poor. They have looted the country’s family silver and sold it to the highest bidder, but they too claim to be revolutionaries still.They have infiltrated and gutted different institutions of democracy, accountability, law enforcement and service delivery, but they too claim to be revolutionaries still. They have flouted fundamental precepts of the Constitution, the judiciary and the rule of law, yet they also claim to be revolutionaries still.
They have barricaded the highways, seaports and rendered delivery to the people unworkable, but they too claim to be revolutionaries still. Their coldly calculated actions have led to the tragic deaths of many innocent poor people, but they claim to be revolutionaries still. Their actions have disabled the flow of goods and services to South Africa’s neighbouring countries, making the poor of those countries to endure further hardships but they also claim to be revolutionary still.
Pixley Ka Isaka Seme, more than a century ago, admonished us against the spectre of racialism and ethnicity. Today his white bones must have been greatly disturbed because there are those shadowy characters that have resorted to social media and have unashamedly fanned the fires of racialism, ethnicity and xenophobia that has led to the loss of human life and yet they boldly claim to be revolutionaries still.
Dr Gulube, we can only pledge our commitment to work hard to uphold and defend the principles that made you fight for liberation.
However we should never and can never forgive ourselves for the damage that we have done to the aspiration of the people for speedy and full emancipation.
