Castle of Good Hope SLAVE DAY 01 December 2013
Key note address delivered by Deputy Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, Marius Fransman Chairperson of the Castle Control Board and our kind Host tonight, Lieutenant General Justice T Nkonyane & CEO Calvyn Gilfellan Member of Parliament's Defence and Military Veteran's Portfolio Committee, Honourable Ms HC Mgabadeli Chief of the Gorachouqua, Hennie van Wyk Consul General of Britain, Honourable Chris Trott Consul General of Portugal, Honourable Jorge da Fonseca Consul General of Brazil , Honourable Mrs Debora Barenboim The High Commissioner of Mauritius, Honourable Mr P Gopaul The Chairperson of CONTRALESA Western Cape, Prince Messelaar Kings, Chief and other Traditional Leadership Present Speakers and cultural performers Leaders of the Religious Community Representatives from business, communities and workers Members of the Media Senior government Officials and staff Ladies and Gentleman I greet you on behalf of the Government of the Republic of South Africa and in particular the Department of International Relations and Cooperation. I want to thank you for taking out time to come and commemorate arguably one of the most important days on our historic calendar. Sadly, it is perhaps also the most understated and under-appreciated event in our country. I hope this fact will become evident as I conclude my short input here today. Before I proceed I want to share with you a sense of how far we have come as slaves. Two hundred and eighty years ago in 1733 the first portrait of a freed African slave, Ayuba Suleiman Oiallo, was commissioned in Britain. In August 2013 the Booker prize winner for literature, Ben Okri wrote the following poem to accompany that historic portrait on display in the national art gallery. It is called: Diallo's Testament by Ben Okri Who can read the riddle of life In this portrait of mine? I am one on whom providence Has worked its magic reversals. Behind me are silent stories Like a storm. I have worn History round my neck like chains. Freedom is a difficult lesson to learn. I have tasted the language of death Till it became the water of life. I have shaped a little my canvas of time. I have crossed seas of fires And seen with these African eyes The one light which neither empires Nor all the might of men obscure. Man is the sickness, God the cure. Behind us are indeed silent stories. If the walls of this historic castle could only tell us all its tales, then perhaps the lessons of freedom would not be so hard to learn. The history books tell us that on 1 December 1834, slavery mercifully came to an end in the Cape Colony. The move to abolish slavery in the Colony came a year after the Slavery Abolition Bill of 1833 was passed by the British House of Commons and by the House of Lords. The aftermath of this is well-documented. Please allow me to highlight some for the purposes of tonight's proceedings: Legally, 36 000 slaves, were freed on that historic day. They were from Angola, Mozambique, Madagascar, Mauritius, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and many other countries. It is a fact that after their release they were stuck in South Africa with very little material possessions. Their former masters were of cause royally paid out by the British government. The ramifications of this process are still not comprehended in full. Who was it that said: "Freedom isn't free"? Ladies and gentlemen; the history of the Castle is the history of our subjugation, incarceration, punishment and suffering .Many a slave was held in incarceration in these walls until one fateful morning when the sound of ninety drums would herald the opening of the gates and the march of ignominy as the poor soul such as Greta the khoisan woman took less than 100 steps across to the public hanging gallows where Buitenkant and Darling Street converge on the upper corner of the Grand Parade. First she would be tied to the wheel of torture and stretched to a point of exhaustion and collapse. Then she would be left on public display for three days as a deterrent for other slaves who may be contemplating rebellious acts. Finally, without much fanfare on the morning of the fifth day she would face either public beheading, with the head left on a stake as display as the final humiliation or the march to the gallows and its elevated trap door with a noose tightly strung around the neck. We salute the memory of Greta the Khoisan woman in these 16 days of activism as her life came to an abrupt and cruel end for killing her slave-master after a life of repeated rape, abuse and beatings. We are all the descendants of Greta and others like her, some of us by genealogy and others by the fate of history-descendants of slave masters and their crimes of power. This city and its history is replete with stories in need of emancipation. That is the only way we can restore and heal our traumatic past for the truth will set us free. To the many untold stories of fallen freedom fighters and slaves that these cold Castle walls conceal, I dedicate the words of Roque Dalton, the revolutionary poet of EI Salvadore when he said: The dead are more unmanageable every day; Before it was easy with them; we gave flowers to the upright ones we gave t relatives the names on one long list; to these we gave national borders; to those we gave remarkable peace; that one we gave monstrous marble tomb; Then we saluted memory of the corpses and went to their cemetery rows, marching the compass of old music. But where the dead go now is different. Today they ask ironic questions. They ask questions about our slave roots and our KhoiSan ancestry. Some of us, black and white, even live in denial of our slave ancestry. That is both a tragic aberration of history and a gross travesty of the more than three centuries long history of struggle. The advent of democracy in 1994 created the platform for more and more of our people to claim their history and to be the proud torchbearers of light and civilisation. Ours is a unique history and one which merits further reflection and contemplation. As one writer noted: "A history was constructed, told, taught and written to erase this from their memory and helped to forge a white identity, based on a mythological genetic purity, descending solely from the original settlers.” For instance, Simon van der Stel, after which Stellenbosch was named, was actually of 'mixed descend', in other words he was coloured. I make this point because today, at the advent of 20 years of democracy, we all have the opportunity to rewrite that history - and collectively construct a history of reconciliation, common-identity, integration and healing. On a cultural level the development of the Afrikaans language is part of the heritage of slavery as well as 'typical' Cape and Afrikaner food, literature and songs. I call upon places like the Afrikaans Language Museum, the Slave Lodge, Mission Stations and the Castle to coordinate their efforts and actively act as the concrete sites to unite people around their collective heritage and culture. In doing so, we will be able to create the conditions to undo the impact of a system that was further solidified by 40 years of Apartheid rule. If we look around us today, we have not yet broken those invisible shackles. Today, we find trafficking, debt slavery, sex slavery, etc. Today we find the privileged offspring of slave-masters still owning the usurped land and holding tightly onto the reigns of the economy. They even still control our bodies as I was abhorred to read that in some African countries babies are actually bred for the international adoption trade. The point of World Aids Day and the 16 Days of Activism Against Women and Child Abuse is to remind us of new forms of slavery which we all should reject and fight against. The struggle is not over yet! Given the Castle of Good Hope's (as an historic institution) central role in the administration of slave and other oppressive legislation, General Nkonyane, my Department is fully behind your vision to use the Castle to commemorate and celebrate events such as the abolition of slavery in our beautiful land. This is in line with Government's view to utilize the Castle of Good Hope as a place of reflection, healing , reconciliation and nation-building. I wish to welcome you and hope that you will find this event both entertaining and educational but more importantly - commit to rid our country, and especially this Western Cape from all forms of slavery and oppression. I thank you. Print Top