The Emancipation of Mama Africa--> Congressional Forum, July 12, 2011

Sisters and Brothers of SAWIP, WIP and NSL;

Esteemed Congressmen and Congresswomen;

Noble members of our Board of Directors, Advisory Board, and Host families...

I am a woman; an infant woman born to Africa.

I have climbed her granite breasts , smooth and round.

I have traced my body from the grove of her back to her yielding neck, as the rivers of her tears drowned me down into her depths.

This formidable She is the woman from loins I sprang: the woman whose fertile valleys grew the immaculate womb of Natural Life.

Through the wide berth of her war-torn, scarlet seas came the arrival of my ancestral flesh and bone- and to her- I am indefinitely tethered by the umbilical cord of a romantic Human beginning.

With her stony, labouring arms she formed a cradle, not a mere crib- but a cradle of Humanmankind; a cradle in which the lullabies of shooting stars in the Southern Skies have caressed both you and I.

She is more than a bearer of Life- she is the embodiment of Vitality.

She is Africa.

Even when we leave her soil for distant immigrant lands, She does not leave us.

How could she?

We are her offspring of sun-baked, rolling deserts and bountiful, fertile farmlands.

We are the hope of children enslaved to toils her African soil.

There is no denial; no hesitance; no resistance: I am a daughter of this Earth born unto Africa. I am born to an Africa free from centuries-old colonial clutches.

History books tell us that the shackles of colonial oppression have been cast away; that Africa now emerges ready to walk with her own two feet. Little does History tell us of the nightmares of oppression that continue to enslave Mama Africa’s mind. After centuries of repression and subsequent abandonment, what could be done to nurse Mama Africa back to health? Who dared shed light o the Dark Continent?

In giving birth to a free Africa, this continent endured agonizing labour pains- pains that reverberate to this day in the suffering of socio-economic turmoil; political instability; civil bloodshed; disease; hunger; and self-oppression.

But she endures still. She has endured the sufferings of her Sudanese people, and just last week, Saturday 9 July 2011, Africa celebrated the birth of South Sudan. After nearly 99% of Sudanese voters declared, yes, to a referendum on the splitting of the country into North and South. The affirmation of choice that came with the birth of South Sudan is symbolic, too, of the birth of self-determination: one of the most important characteristics of an infant nation.

Before then, Africa kicked and screamed, tweeted and galvanized in the Arab Spring: embodying the spirit of defiance that only an African woman knows: that when one strikes a woman, one strikes a rock.

From infant democracies to on-paper democracies and to teenage democracies: I stand before you all today, in delirious love with the African continent: with all her heartache, history, hope and promise.

In fact, it was not until I was yanked a few thousand kilometers away from home and placed in a land where most people knew only of this hero named Nelson Mandela- that I truly began to appreciate the intricacies of diversity that my heritage holds.

And it dawned on me…

As Africa nurses her infant nations like South Sudan, she must now also reign in her wayward teenagers. 17 years into democracy, South Africa is the triumphant, temperamental teenager sitting at the global Table of Democracy. Our Constitution is enshrined worldwide, and as many with inflated chests would proudly declare: We have arrived: in ideological, reconciliatory and constitutional style.

But this, ladies and gentlemen, merely earned us a seat at the same bench of post-conflict democratic discourse with America after a  victorious civil-rights movement; India after a deeply-entrenched social caste system; Brazil post-Portuguese influence; Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and a myriad more.

It’s little wonder that we’re now another BRIC in the emerging market wall.

The task at hand is to ensure that when South Africa feeds at this table of democracy, every South African has an equal opportunity to create and consume substantially, sustainably and sufficiently.  In truth, we must not only ensure that we have the policies and strategies to grow organically, but we need to readjust the poverty-mindset of self-limitation and persistently ask, “Where are the biggest, and brightest, opportunities in South Africa? And Africa- for that matter. (How’s that for self-limitation?)

This Outlook on Opportunity is what the entrepreneur in me dictates, and what the optimist celebrates.

The pragmatist in me, however, is also acutely aware of the factors that continue to impede South Africa’s growth. This, however, is not my forum to propose radical socio-economic policy changes.  (We’ll do that over tea after this )

However, as a youth in a teenage democracy, I am obliged to do what youth do best: to question; question everything.

Ask me not What I do, ask me Why I do it.

This, for me, is the most sincere window into a nation’s soul.

Who will tackle our country’s problems?

Who will tame the radical cannons of media sensationalism?

How can we engrain a culture of national responsibility in emigration-hungry, apathetic youth?

How can we cultivate entrepreneurial minds more visionary than a corner-café-concept?

Is this even possible?

Throught these questions, one young voice emerges:

IF South Africa is make tangible, consistent gains to be a democracy Mama Africa could be healed from, such gains are up to us- the sons and daughters of our liberation movers, shakers and fighters.

I see it in the burning eyes of my team-mates every day: and I am confident in saying that we have the energy; we have the vision; and we have the courage. What we need is the willingness of the generation that brought South Africa to the Table of Democracy to entrust the role of nourishment to a generation of what we in South Africa would call, “Keen Beans.”

Looking ahead, as I walk this path from post-colonial African infancy, to teenage South African democracy, I arrive at the unclear crossroads of my path towards the Emancipated Womanhood of Africa’s re-emergence.

Dreams of our ancestors became realities of the freedom of slaves; dreams of our mothers and fathers became realities of democracy; and now dreams of prosperity become the challenges incumbent on visionaries like:

Abednigo, Crytal, Erik, Ilke, Mpumi, Matt, Thembi, Mangaka, Irene, Sizwe, Dempers, Wandile, Thuli and Tess.

These dreams transcend national borders and speak to the challenges facing our one, shrinking, inter-connected world.

By unraveling our stories, of heritage, of existence and of historical turmoil and triumph, we begin to see each other as human beings, as inter-connected webs of emotions, experience; intellect and culture.

In spaces like this, we sew our human threads together to generate wisdom, patience and understanding.

And therein lies the profound impact of this programme on me: SAWIP has brought us together (in a myriad of moments where I have literally had to pinch myself ); and it has  spurred us to face adversity, embrace diversity, and engage with the universality of our rights and responsibilities as Humans born from the Cradle of Mama Africa.

And in doubt or disarray, the words of Mongane Wally Serote reminds us:

We have but one mother, that none can replace;

Just as we have no choice to be born-

We cannot choose mothers.

And Africa, my beginning was knotted to you.

And when all these worlds became funny to me,

I silently waded back to you.

and amid the dusty rubble I lay

...Simply African.