South African History Online

Maputo, 16 July 1990

Comrade President Jacquim Chissano,
Comrades of the Frelimo Party, the
Government of the People's Republic of Mozambique and the Mass Organisations of
the People of Mozambique,

Comrades Residents of Maputo and Citizens of Mozambique:

This is need a great day for me. It is a great day because for the first time
in a life that cannot be considered too short, I have the opportunity to speak
to you al - you who are Mozambique, you in whose hands rests the destiny of this
ancient and historic land, you who are flesh of our flesh and blood of our
blood, a sister people whom we call a sister people because you and ourselves
are bound by a million ties.

It is great day because I carry the mandate of your comrades, your brothers
and sisters in South Africa, to convey to you their greetings, their love and
their appreciation of the suffering you have had to endure for their sake. I
carry also a message of comradeship and solidarity from your fellow combatants,
thee leaders, members and activists of the African National Congress and other
democratic organisations of our country.

Above all, I bring you the very best wishes of our President and leader of
both our peoples, Comrade Oliver Tambo. He has told us to convey his deep
gratitude to you for your good wishes and your prayers that he should regain his
health. He has told us to assure you that he will return to see you, to try to
take some of the burden of your pain, to participate with you in your
celebrations, to bring to you our problems, so that you can help us to solve
them. He says he will come again so that he can once more be among you who are
his family. He said w should tell you that every soon he will have the
possibility to invite you to visit him in his own house in South Africa, so that
he can return thee hospitality which you have extended to him and to so many of
our Comrades in the ANC.

BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF HEROIC MOZAMBIQUE:

The sun has begun to set on the evil system of apartheid. We can see the day
dawn Black people will no longer be condemned to be servants to others simply
because these have White skins. We know that the moment is not far when Black
people and White people in South Africa will live together as equals, as
brothers and sisters, sharing the same citizenship of a country which will
belong to all the people, whatever their colour, whatever their race. What you
have said in the past, as you struggled for your own freedom, we too repeat
today - A Vitoria E Certa!

The victory is talking about is possible and certain because of the victory
you yourselves achieved over Portuguese Colonialism, under the leadership of
your Heroic movement, Frelimo. Perhaps we would not talking of an impending end
to the system of apartheid, as we today. Your victory was therefore a vital
stepping stone to the success of the struggle against the system of racial
domination in South Africa.

Frelimo was formed on the same year that I was captured by the apartheid
police. I was therefore not able to add my own salute to the founding fathers of
this fighting movement, whose Heroic deeds we heard about despite the thickness
of the prison walls behind which we were held. I take this opportunity to do
today what I could not do in 1962, to hall the courageous and far-sighted
comrades who established Frelimo. As you know, these included some who are with
us here today, such as Comrade President Jacquim Chissano and the chairman of
the Nationally Assembly, Comrade Marcelino Dos Santos.

The year you launched the armed struggle, in 1964, was the same year we were
dragged from the prison cells to be given an additional sentence of life
imprisonment. Again, we were not present to add our own congratulations to
Frelimo and to you for this historic act which contributed so much tom the
collapse of the colonial system throughout Southern Africa. Therefore I take
this opportunity today to salute all those who served in the combat ranks of
Frelimo, and to pay homage to the Heroic sons and daughters of the people of
Mozambique who laid down their lives for the independence of this country.

When you gained your independence in 1975, we were not able to leave Robben
Island prison to join the declaration of the ANC to your celebrations, which was
led by comrade Oliver Tambo.

Therefore we could not be in your midst to rejoice with you and to
congratulate you as you repossessed your country after years of colonial
domination.

We take this opportunity today to salute you for the act of the creation of
the peoples republic of Mozambique, which served as a trumpet call to your own
brothers and sisters in South Africa to launch an all-round offensive that would
take our struggle for liberation to a higher level. That offensive, led by your
sister movement, the ANC, has brought us to where were are today, when we can
say with confidence that our common victory is in sight.

Comrade President;
Men and Women of Mozambique:

We would like to return to Mozambique during this year of our own release
from the prisons of apartheid South Africa. We would like to come back not
because we are not satisfied with the way you have received us this time. We
would like to return to join you in celebrating the victory of the cause of
peace-when at last the guns will have been silenced, when all the people of
Mozambique, from Rovuma to Maputo, will be able to go about their business, to
rebuild their lives and go to sleep, secure in the knowledge that nobody
anywhere threatens their lives.

It is and must be our responsibility to help to ensure that none in our
country does anything to subvert the peace process in which you are engaged. It
is and must be our responsibility to help to ensure that one in our country
continues to export instruments of death into Mozambique or continues to feed
those of this country. We have a responsibility, which we will carry out, to do
everything in our power to help end the destabilisation of Mozambique by anybody
within our country.

Peace in Mozambique is a matter of grave concern to our movement and people.
As you know more than we do, your country has known no peace for too long. Too
many innocent men, women and children have perished. The product of the labour
of millions of people has been turned to ashes and to ruin. The very sight of
the poor children, who amaze us because they are still able to laugh and play
despite their suffering, should be enough to move the men with hatred in their
hearts and death on their minds to understand that enough is enough. The killing
and the destruction must come to an end.

We had never thought live to hear the things we have heard of, the see the
pictures we have seen, all of which are a grave offence to the dignity and
honour of all African Men and Women everywhere, an insult an insult to the
humane traditions of our peoples, things that are Alien to our common history,
culture and customs. I speak here of the crimes committed by those who were
surely driven by the Devil himself to cut off the tongues and ears of other
human beings, to sever the breasts of women, to rape, to pillage and literally
to enslave people through the systematic use of terror.

Those who taught us these diabolical practices did so only because they have
the greatest contempt for the African people. They induced us to commit these
crimes because they have no respect for the very people they have turned into
their instruments of vile death and mutilation. There must be humanity enough
left in all of us, to call of us , to call a halt to all this and to prevail
over the merchants of death in the interest of life itself and our pride and
integrity as African people.

I knew and worked with the greatest son of the people of Mozambique, Eduardo
Mondlane, when he was a student in South Africa. He was to us no less a South
African and no less a militant of the ANC that the rest of us were. He was moved
by the same things that moved all of us, to see our peoples free, to see our
continent liberated from the yoke of colonial and racist domination, to see our
peoples free from hunger, poverty and backwardness.

We did not have the privilege of meeting that other great son of your people,
Samora Moses Machel. But we knew of him through his brothers who served with us
in branches of the ANC in South Africa. as have done many Mozambicans who are as
much militants of Frelimo as they are of the ANC. We also know of him from what
has great friend and admire, Comrade President Oliver Tambo, has told us. We
know him too by his deeds which speak of an outstanding giant of the cause of
African Emancipation, advancement and prosperity, which speak of a great fighter
for the rights of Men and Women everywhere, regardless of their colour of race.

Both these Titans, and others among their comrades, laid down their lives in
the struggle for our common emancipation, the one in Tanzania and other, on our
own soil. When we heard of their deaths, as we did when we heard of the massacre
at Amatola, we grieved in our prison cells with a feeling of loss whose
intensity you can only imagine, and did what we could to salute these
irreplaceable fighters for freedom.

All these and other great sons and daughters of our peoples have left us with
the task of completing the work they started. To honour their memory we must sue
for the victory of the cause for which they perished. They have entrusted to us
the sacred mission of ending the apartheid system in South Africa, restoring
peace to Mozambique, Angola and the rest of our region, and building a system of
cooperation among our peoples so that none dominates the other, so that none
threatens the security of the other, so that none walks around with a full
stomach while another goes hungry.

Our message to you today, Dear Mozambican friends, Comrades, bothers and
sisters, is very simple indeed. It is that we are getting there. We are getting
close to the realisation of the objective of transforming South Africa into a
United, Democratic, non-racial and non-sexist country. We are as impatient to
reach this goal as you are, because no sane person can wish to see the apartheid
system last even one day longer. If you hear anybody say that the ANC is
dragging its feet and thus slowing down the effort to end apartheid, do not
believe them. We have dedicated our entire lives to the objective of attaining a
speedy end to the racist system of oppression and exploitation which has brought
so much suffering both to you and to our selves. Even now, we are as determined
as ever to move with the greatest speed to reach the day of freedom. When we
return home on Wednesday, it will be one of our first tasks to find out what
everybody has done, including our own movement as well as the Government, to
take us nearer to the day when the system of apartheid will be no more.

It is also our firmly held belief that all of us in this region should begin
the discussion about how we should, when apartheid goes, as it is bound to go,
cooperate so that we use the enormous riches that are to be found in our seas,
on land and under the soil of the countries of Southern Africa to feed, clothe,
house and educate all our peoples, attend to their health and take care of the
old and disabled.

We must all move quickly to end conflicts in our region and arrive at just
and permanent solutions so hat we can together declare war on hunger and
poverty. As you know, we ourselves have started the process of talking to the
government of President F.W. De Klerk.

We are determined that the process of negotiations should move forward as
rapidly as possible so that we produce a new constitution which will give
everybody the right to vote and which will ensure that all South Africans live
together in peace and as equals, in a common motherland. We are happy to report
that a good start has been made.

Already many of your South African brothers and sisters who were imprisoned
for fighting for freedom have been released. Some of those you meet here in
Maputo and elsewhere in Mozambique when they were in exile have returned home to
make their own contribution to the process of ending the apartheid system of
White minority domination as quickly as possible. We make a commitment to you
that we will keep on this course and work hard so that you inherit a neighbour
that no longer treats Mozambique as an enemy, that no longer treats Mozambicans
who come to South Africa as unwanted Aliens.

Dear Mozambican Friends,
Dear Comrade President:

Thank you very much for the warmth with which you have received my
delegation, my wife, and I. Thank you for treating with us in a way that has
once more confirmed that Mozambique is our home. Thank you for the enormous
contribution you have made to our struggle in the past and which you continue to
make today. We shall forever be moved by the fact that the government and the
working people of Mozambique, despite their own suffering, decided to extend
practical assistance by helping us to furnish the offices of the ANC which we
are reopening, 30 years after a frightened apartheid regime decided to close
them down.

Thank you also for the fact not for a single day did you forget us when we
were in prison. It is the campaign you waged, together with the rest of
humanity, which has enabled us to be here today. It is the relentless struggle
in which you engaged, not only for the release of political prisoners, but also
for the freedom of our people, which broke down the walls of the maximum
security jails of South Africa so that we can rejoin you in the common struggle
to bring freedom, peace, happiness and prosperity to all the peoples of Southern
Africa and the rest of our continent.

In a few days we shall return to South Africa. We will tell your brothers and
sisters that despite your own problems, you too are concerned that they should
be free. We shall tell them that in all the days we were in Mozambique we were
enveloped in a spirit of friendship, comradeship and solidarity. We shall tell
them also that, in return, we assured you that we admire you, we respect you and
above all we love you.

A Luta Continua!

A Vitoria E Certa!

Amandla Ngawethu!