[tta_listen_btn listen_text=”Audio” pause_text=”Pause” resume_text=”Resume” replay_text=”Replay”]
NOT for the first time, the cadres of Umkhonto we Sizwe borrowed a hymn and transformed it into a liberation song. And so they sang with great passion about the day they will report to their Commander:
Nxa e bizwa amagama amaqhawe,
ngobe lam ngolifica likhona;
Koba njani sesihlezi noTambo,
Sesimtshela ngamaBhul egingqika?
When the role of the heroes and heroines is called,
Will my name feature among these;
How will we feel the day we sit with Tambo,
And tell him of the enemy biting the dust?
We meet here today to say farewell to one who I am absolutely certain never doubted that her name would be there on the day of the rollcall, regardless of who it was who would be present to listen to the roll call our very dear Mme Sally Motlana, esteemed Member of the Order of the Baobab.
I say this not because she was an arrogant person, but because she was both an honest and a humble person who knew what she had done, who would have felt pain if she had not done what she should have done to take our people even one step forward towards their liberation and fulfilment.
As we lay to rest the mortal remains of Mme Motlana today, we may be saying farewell to one of the very last of an extraordinary generation of South Africans who were born at a time when it would have been madness to dream of freedom, but yet made the dream to come true.
It seems to me that this generation, the generation of Mme Sally Motlana, did this because it had the prescience and courage to follow in the footsteps of the earlier generations which had resisted the process of colonisation, and thus work to define itself as being other than the pliant and docile beasts of burden into which colonialism had tried to fashion the African oppressed – the sub-humans about whom Verwoerd said there is no place for (the Bantu) in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour!
Almost 45 years ago Mme Sally spoke to a foreign correspondent exactly about what Verwoerd meant and said:
(The white people) want me, the black person, they want me when it suits them. I nurse their babies, I suckle them, hold them to my black breast, feed them, and change them. I prepare their food with my black hands which they don’t want to touch, I take their children to the parks, and to the school. I teach them, I sing to them, I love them. And then, then when the children are 10 years old they are taught that they must never touch me, touch me because I am a stinking black, or they will turn partially black. That is why I feel sorry for them. They are not being honest with themselves. Even now you go to all these hotels and in the kitchen, there is a black man preparing the food, the waiters are all black. They’re not being honest with themselves.”
And thus spoke one of our women leaders over many decades describing in very graphic words the practice of servitude of forcibly providing to white South Africa certain forms of labour which are not above a certain level!
Her rejection of the servitude which Verwoerd believed was the natural order of things was an important step forward towards the reassertion of the identity of those who had known a protracted period of dehumanisation by colonialism and apartheid.
Mme Sally was saying to the oppressors, no longer will we be your housemaids and garden boys whom you named Jane and Jim, and shall therefore regain our identities and our names as Ntombenhle and Kgositsile.
During the interview we have cited given in 1979, during the very dark years of extreme repression, Mme Motlana said:
“I feel sorry for (the whites). They don’t understand what they are doing.
And what do we hear in those words?
We hear a voice of great compassion. We hear a voice of unequalled maturity. We hear a commander’s voice which says the struggle continues and victory is certain. We hear the soft-spoken promise of a combatant that she will liberate the oppressor. This is the voice of a humanist who will not allow the barbarism of white oppression and arrogance to turn her back on what she has learnt which is that ‘do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools. (Ecclesiastes: 7:9).
And what voice do we hear?
This is a black woman’s voice.
It tells us never to forget what Oliver Tambo meant when he said – Women in the ANC have a duty to liberate us men from antique concepts and attitudes about the place and role of women in society and in the development and direction of our revolutionary struggle.
In addition, Oliver Tambo had said the woman’s place is not in the kitchen, but in the battlefront of struggle!
Beyond all that, we should hear Mme Sally speak about herself and understand the true and deep meaning of what she said when she spoke to another foreign correspondent, 47 years ago, saying:
The Bible teaches me that I am made in the image of God. I believe that. I honestly believe that and I don’t see how other Christians can discriminate against me. Then they must teach me again, and tell me I am not made by God, and teach me who did make me.
And here spoke a woman who, by her deeds, had done what Oliver Tambo had called for to liberate us men from antique concepts and attitudes about the place and role of women in society, and in the development and direction of our revolutionary struggle.
Undoubtedly Mme Sally felt this very deeply that she should use her talents to help especially the millions of black women themselves practically to define their own place and role in society, fully cognizant that these, too, were made in Gods image, with Mme Sally knowing very well that God charged these who were made in his image, to:
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.
The more she recalled all this heavy and unique responsibility given to humanity, the more she bemoaned the condition of especially the black women of our country.
Even today, they remain at the bottom of the heap, the poorest and most abused echelon in our society. Where there is no water delivery and no electricity the task still falls on this black woman to work like a beast of burden to fetch the water and the firewood, otherwise the children and the family will not eat. And still, the cry rings out an end to gender violence – and yet the figures are read out every quarter and they tell a bleak story that yet more women have fallen victim to rape and other violent crimes against the person.
I can only imagine the intense pain and shame Mme Motlana must have felt as she listened to the Police Service announce that,
between the Apr/June 2021 Quarter and the Apr/June 2022 Quarter,
Sexual Offences as a whole increased by 74.1%,
Rape by 72.4% and,
Sexual Assault by 77.6%.
This was an outstanding female leader of our people who sought to rebuild our nation by, among other things;
fighting dependency, especially among black women for its corrosion of human agency on the one hand and lowering the dignity of the human being;
opposing supplication as a means of fighting poverty as it not only lowered the dignity of the supplicant but also exposed her to all manner of abuse; and
encouraging self-reliance as the most authentic expression of taking charge of one’s immediate environment, preparatory to the exercise of the right to self-determination.
It is because of all this that it would be a grave error to mention only in passing the Black Housewives League. The League was not a passing hobby or diversion to Mme Sally.
It could not be a mere diversion because it was to the black oppressed an important school, and incubator in which was developed the dignified, self-reliant and self-confident black woman, and especially the rural black woman, inspired to reach out towards the new society which would open all doors for her fully to realise herself and all her aspirations.
Mme Sally was driven to immerse herself in the work of the Black Housewives League because she was inspired by the blessed call:
Cast thy bread upon the waters,
For thou shalt find it after many days.
Thus was Mme Motlana a nation-builder who would have cried out as she listened to the crime statistics, which, inter alia, speak of the sustained abuse of women she would have cried out – of what significance is it, then, that we are made in Gods image, entrusted with dominion over all other living things on earth!
Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi was a student at Fort Hare during the same period as Mme Motlana, then Miss Maunye. Of her Nkosi Buthelezi has said:
(She was) passionate. A good activist and a great patriot. She silenced quite a number of us male comrades. She was very blunt and very passionate absolutely very blunt. She didn’t hesitate to speak truth to power. She really stood out.
Nkosi Buthelezi was speaking of a fellow member of the ANC Youth League who ended up being Secretary of the Victoria East Branch of the ANC, which included Fort Hare.
Explaining why she got there, Mme Sally said:
“(As you grew up) you began to see the interconnectedness of things in a way that made more sense. Why were Black people at the bottom of the rung with respect to everything? The answer to that (was that) it was the outcome of political decisions by those with power, and when you probed further, you found out that the way they got to be powerful was part of the wrong that needed to be corrected in this country.”
And so it was that she joined those in our country who had decided to confront what she called the wrong that needed to be corrected in this country, obliged never to hesitate to be blunt and passionate and to speak truth to power as Nkosi Buthelezi said.
It spoke to the high esteem in which she was held already then, in 1953 when she got married to the now late Dr Nthato Motlana, that Oliver Tambo and Father Trevor Huddleston spoke for the family of the bride.
The honour and respect bestowed on her even on the occasion of her wedding proved justified during the following decades of Mme Motlanas’s activism.
Because of what she did to advance the cause of freedom, she became, in many respects, the exemplar of the all-weather cadre for the liberation of our country.
A devout Christian and eminent faith leader, she reaffirmed the principled posture of the Christian Church which was expressed in the 1985 KAIROS document in these words:
For very many Christians in South Africa, this is the KAIROS, the moment of grace and opportunity, the favourable time in which God issues a challenge to decisive action. It is a dangerous time because, if this opportunity is missed, and allowed to pass by, the loss for the Church, for the Gospel and for all the people of South Africa will be immeasurable.
Mme Motlana stood firm and said she was ready for decisive action.
And so it was that she never betrayed the struggle even though she was subjected to frequent bouts of imprisonment. And so it was that she stood with the children as they defied apartheid terrorism from 1976 onwards. And so it was that she remained a constant pillar which drew many to her to receive inspiration to rally behind the cause of liberation, confident of victory.
I am certain that even from a distance we could always hear her sing, even to herself:
Lizalis idinga lakho,
Thixo Nkosi yenyaniso!
Zonk iintlanga, zonk izizwe,
Ma zizuze usindiso
Bona izwe lakowethu,
uxolel izoono zalo;
Ungathob ingqumbo yakho,
Luze luf usapho lwalo.
Mme Sally Motlana has left us, but such is the state of the nation that we too who live must repeat after her and Tiyo Soga,
Bona izwe lakowethu,
uxolel izoono zalo;
Ungathob ingqumbo yakho,
Luze luf usapho lwalo.
We say a fond farewell to an outstanding South African heroine, forever thankful for everything she did for our nation and country, confident that when it is time for the roll call to honour the heroes and heroines, her name will be among the first to be called.
Truly to respect her, this I must say:
I felt very sad but moved by her usual honesty and well-known bluntness when she said, not long before she passed away:
The ANC I knew has died. We must start anew and build it. The ANC I knew was the ANC of Luthuli, Mandela, Robert Resha
The Official Oration of the President on the Solemn Occasion of Admission into the National Orders, such as the Order of the Baobab, ends with these words:
To them all, the living and the dead, on this day, the nation says – bayethe!
On this day, let all citizens and patriots proclaim: Glory to the Honoured Members of the National Orders!
May the Esteemed Member of the Order of the Baobab, our eminent leader and comrade, Mme Sally Motlana, rest in eternal peace.
