Sub-theme: Developing the Compassionate Adult
- Programme Director
- The Don Mattera Family
- The Don Mattera Legacy Foundation
- Jenny Jeftha –Chairperson
- Teddy Mattera – Deputy Chairperson
- Vincent Charnley – Member
- Nazir Cassim –Member
- Verona Presslin – Member & Fundraising Volunteer
- Kevin Martin- Member & Project Co-ordinator
- Elvis Presslin – Member & Media & PR Co-ordinator
I would like to start by thanking THE DON MATTERA LEGACY FOUNDATION for inviting non-governmental organisations, academic institutions, responsible business leaders, civil society activists, and most importantly, the heroes that express the desires of the universe and interpret the conception of the inner-being — the artists and creatives whom we so cherish and admire.
Philosophers have had the following to say about art:
“Art is a form of reflection of reality in artistic images in the mind of man. Reflecting the surrounding world, art helps people to understand it and serves as a powerful instrument of political, moral and artistic education.
“The diversity of phenomena and events and also the different methods of reflecting them in works of art have given rise to diverse kinds of art: poetry and fiction, theatre, music, the cinema, architecture, painting, sculpture.
“The cardinal feature of art is that, in contrast to science, it reflects reality not in concepts, but in a concrete form perceivable by the senses, in the form of typical artistic images. The artist creates an artistic image, reveals common, essential features of reality and conveys these features through individual, often inimitable characters, through concrete phenomena of nature and social life. The more vivid, the more tangible the individual traits of the artistic character, the greater its attraction and influence.”
So, how do the colours on a canvas, the storytelling of a writer, the rhythm of a poem and the sonic echo of a song, address the division and discrimination we see in the world today?
How do the poems of Don Mattera brush against our psyche as a force for good?
How does the weight of his tales, pull us toward the gravity of life’s lessons?
However fragmented our world becomes, separating the prime meridian of our humanity, we can rely on the realm of the imagination and the work of artists to fill the void between us. However divided we find ourselves, we can, with faith, lean on the connections of art, literature and creativity as forces for good, to bind us more closely to that which we find ourselves torn from.
As each generation must define their own historic mission and defend their right to determine their own future, so must that generation give birth to writers and creatives who can interpret, inspire and invigorate the spirit of their time and give expression to the milieu of their movement. Like Don Mattera and his antecedent generation, so must this and the next generation, produce writers who can apply themselves in building a more humanely managed world.
This continuation of artistry — a generational inheritance of the power of the mind — is a force that brings us together for THE ANNUAL DON MATTERA LECTURE 2023, to propel the momentum forward and allow for legacy to inform legends of the future.
As younger generations navigate the rich tapestry of literature and weave their own colours and characteristics into the surface of their imaginations, their responses become the fabric of how we emotionally relate to the world around us. The patterns in their pictures have the potential to set the pace of the politics we put forward or pull down, and Don Mattera, himself, showed us that poetry can be a popular art form for protest, resistance, and empowerment.
Commanding enough to demand our attention and sensitive enough to cause even the most hardened to weep behind closed doors, Don Mattera makes many pains bearable with his melodic mouthfuls that prod our memory and guide our vision for a world we all love to live in. His work begs of us not to view this vale of tears that the world often presents itself as, but to see right through the rubble and reconcile with what we must do to soothe and find solutions.
His use of rhythm as a storytelling device is profound and healing.
His respite, his reprieve, and his recess in each and every stanza of each and every poem, leaves us holding our breath and holding onto the edges of his words. He suspends us in a tension only relaxed by the reading of the next line, the next stanza, and the next chapter of his anthology on how to live, how to love, how to learn and how to hold our heads up high.
Allow me to quote a few love bites from a vast selection of his poems that, as beautiful as they are in their creation, we may still recognise the bruises that they represent, caused by a bleeding under the skin of a people oppressed but never broken.
Flowers and waves / tidals rush / mist and wet lips / breathe and smile / trembling flesh / cosmic tension / kindness personified / liquid beauty / dusks that linger / ancient fragments of bone / and sun and moon and bird and wind / Mother of all humankind / mother earth / first earth / ancient place / frozen memories / forgotten spirits / moulding the mountains.
These are but a few love bites that jumped off the page and smote me with their grace.
In the world of Don Mattera, we all wear sunlight gold in our crowns. He sees us all, stately and tall, and crashing down when our moment comes. He leaves us love struck for the human heart / the human soul / the human child.
The relief in his poetic pause — the physical dialogue that our body has with his words — is like a truce, offering us graceful solutions to life’s unanswerable doubts. Guiding us towards collective amnesty, wrapping us in his white flag of peace and poetry, and cradling our blues and our burdens as if we, the readers, are his own children.
He fills us with belonging.
He embraces us.
He shows us life from all sides, and in his work we realise just exactly how much more there is to know.
Clinging to his sparkling imagery which floats us up to horizons so high, we are offered a gift to see and feel beyond. We clutch to these symbols, etched into our mind, in the same way he nestles and lulls over his many expressions of light and fragments of life, and, in the same way we do for all of the work of this prescient prophet.
Programme Director,
When considering the power and potential of an artist and the written word to answering the questions around Developing a Compassionate Adult, allow us to be guided by the words of Herbert Isaac Ernest Dhlomo, who in 1939, wrote the following:
“We live under conditions in many ways similar to those that produced great Greek dramatic literature and immortal Elizabethan drama. What, then are some of the conditions under which great literature thrives? It is a time of transition of migration of population, of expansion, of the rise of new horizons and new modes of thought and life.
It is a time when old indigenous culture clashes with a new civilization, when tradition faces powerful exotic influences.
It is a time when men suddenly become conscious of the wealth of their threatened old culture, the glories of their forefathers, the richness of their tradition, the beauty of their art and song.
It is a time when lamentations and groans, thrills and rejoicings, find expression in writing.
It is a time when men discover in their history, great heroes whose activities are near enough to be of interest and meaning, but remote enough to form subjects of great dispassionately passionate creative literature.
It is a time when men realise they can preserve and glorify the past not by reverting back to it, but immortalising it in art.
It is a time when men embrace the old and seize upon the new; when they combine the native and the alien, the traditional and the foreign, into something new and beautiful.
It is a time when men become more themselves by becoming transformed, when they retreat to advance, when they probe into their own life by looking outward at the wider world, when they sound the mute depths by gazing at the rising stars.”
Don Mattera loved children and created time and space to ameliorate their plight wherever and whenever possible. He lived to uphold mankind, “but more its children”, to paraphrase his famous Azanian Love Song poem. Many children, and the youth, escaped many of the vicissitudes of life through Mattera’s intervention. Materially speaking, he might not have had much, but whatever he had, Bra Don prioritised society’s marginalised and less-fortunate.
In his poem entitled, “Child”, Mattera writes poignantly about life and purpose, reflecting his personal principles and beliefs. In one stanza, Mattera writes: “Yet amid all the hate and hostility, I do not hate those who hold us in servitude, though I have tried hard to do so, I just cannot hate.”
In the next stanza he reveals what I can only liken to the wisdom of a Sage, as Mattera further writes: “Perhaps it is a weakness on my part, Perhaps the folly of the oppressed, Is that we do not hate enough, Or that we love too much, But it is a truism that revolutions, Are born out of love, Love for land and liberty, Love for humanity and love for oneself.”
This sentiment resonates with the words of James Baldwin even across the Atlantic:
“It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.”
Using history as a teacher, we may look back at the timeline of the development of human rights and review how children’s rights have evolved over the years.
In an article in the New York Law School Law Review by Professor Warren Binford, entitled, “The Constitutionalization of Children’s Rights in South Africa”, we gain clearer insight into the tumultuous progression of human rights when the Republic of South Africa drafted its Interim Constitution in 1993 and its final Constitution in 1996, marking a ground-breaking moment in the advancement of children’s rights. It was the first time that children’s rights were robustly and comprehensively recognised in the express language of a nation’s constitution.
Professor Binford’s article reveals how South Africa has inconsistently recognised children’s rights over the past century. On the one hand — Professor Binford explains — South Africa was an early and active leader in the recognition of children’s rights in the international community. The Union of South Africa was a founding member of the League of Nations and voted to endorse the first major international instrument recognising children’s rights, the 1924 Declaration of the Rights of the Child (“1924 Geneva Declaration”).
The 1924 Geneva Declaration recognised children’s fundamental political, civil, economic, and social rights, presenting them all as “first-generation” rights. After the League of Nations was dissolved following World War II, the Union of South Africa became a founding member of the United Nations and in March 1949 was one of twenty-one governments to send comments to the Secretary-General in support of adopting a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, similar to the 1924 Geneva Declaration.
Moreover, the Union of South Africa was one of only five member states to send draft texts. The efforts of South Africa and others were eventually successful. Ten years later, the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child (“1959 Declaration”) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly; the vote was unanimous, and there was not a single abstention.
The 1959 Declaration went even further than the 1924 Geneva Declaration. It recalled the 1924 Geneva Declaration and incorporated both the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ensuring that everyone understood that the rights it enumerated supplemented children’s core rights as human beings. Moreover, whereas the 1924 Geneva Declaration encouraged the “men and women of all nations” to accept as their duty the fulfilment and protection of children’s rights, the 1959 Declaration also called upon parents, voluntary organizations, local authorities, and national governments to recognize children’s rights and “strive for their observance by legislative and other measures.”
Under the 1959 Declaration, children were recognized as subjects, rather than objects, with rights to non-discrimination; adequate nutrition, housing, and medical care; a name and nationality; social security; play and recreation; and education. Additionally, special care was owed to disabled children and those without a family.
At the same time the 1959 Declaration was adopted, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution “calling upon Governments to recognise the rights, to strive for their observance and to publicise the Declaration ‘as widely as possible.’”
Although South Africa established itself as a leader in the international community, the rise of apartheid policies after World War II led to a widespread failure to respect those same rights domestically. South Africa’s repeated violations of human and children’s rights alienated the country from the international community.
For example, a resolution was presented to the United Nations Security Council in October 1974 that would have expelled South Africa from the United Nations due to its apartheid policies, but, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France vetoed adoption of the resolution, and so South Africa was not expelled. The following month, however, the United Nations General Assembly suspended South Africa from the Assembly’s work. Subsequently, South Africa was unable to participate fully in the United Nations until after the democratic elections in 1994 and the country’s reformation as the Republic of South Africa.
During that time, important children’s rights work was accomplished at the international level.
The Year of the Child was 1979, five years after South Africa’s suspension from the General Assembly and just three years after the Soweto Uprising, a peaceful march by black children (many in their school uniforms) to assert their education rights.
The demonstration became violent when the apartheid government opened fire on the students. Ultimately, hundreds of young people were killed or injured. The apartheid regime’s brutality during the Soweto Uprising is cited by some as the death knell for apartheid, as even those countries that had tolerated the government’s violations of the civil rights of adults, could not rationally defend the killing of innocent schoolchildren.
Professor Binford aptly explains how the Soweto Uprising was not the only example of South Africa’s failure to respect at home the same children’s rights that it had advocated for internationally. Indeed, of 22,000 people detained during the State of Emergency in South Africa, forty per cent (40%) were children. International children’s rights scholar Geraldine Van Bueren repeatedly cites South Africa in her book entitled, “The International Law on the Rights of the Child”, to provide examples of state violations of children’s rights.
Examples include:
- detaining children as young as eleven years of age for attending a funeral to express their grief;
- passing the Internal Security Act, which allowed “authorities not to inform relatives of the detention of a family member” in violation of children’s family rights;
- and the impact of hunger and poor nutrition on children’s education.
Programme Director,
Sadly, there are many, many more painful and tragic examples of South Africa’s widespread violations of children’s rights during the apartheid regime and still today in democratic South Africa.
From a historical point of view, the New York Law School Law Review article widens the context of understanding and explains how, while South Africa was violating the same children’s rights the country had recognised and advocated for earlier in the twentieth century, the rest of the world was busy drafting the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Drafting began in 1979 and lasted for nearly ten years. In its final form, the Convention recognized children’s rights in four core categories: protection, provision, participation, and prevention of harm.
The treaty eventually became the most widely ratified human rights treaty in the history of the world.
In fact, every country in the world has ratified it except the United States. South Africa did not participate in the drafting process. Other African countries were involved in drafting the Convention but were not proportionally and consistently represented. However, the continent was strongly represented and among the first nations that went on to sign and ratify the treaty quickly nonetheless.
In fact, of the fifty-seven countries that signed the Convention in the first month, over one quarter were African. The Union of South Africa never ratified the Convention. It was not until the transition to a constitutional democracy that the treaty was finally signed in 1993.
The Republic of South Africa ratified the Convention on June 16, 1995, without a single reservation. South Africa also did not participate in the drafting or adoption of the Declaration on the Rights and Welfare of the African Child by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organisation of African Unity in 1979 (“African Children’s Declaration”). Because the Organisation of African Unity was committed to removing colonialism and white minority rule from the African continent, South Africa did not become a member until May 23, 1994, less than six weeks after its first democratic election.
The African Children’s Declaration was a non-binding instrument that, inter alia, emphasized the African child’s special role in protecting African heritage, encouraged implementation and the updating of domestic legislation regarding children, and recognized the 1959 Declaration.
South Africa was unable to participate in the drafting of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (“African Children’s Charter”), the regional treaty introduced in 1990 exclusively devoted to children’s rights.
The African Children’s Charter was the world’s first regional children’s rights treaty and went beyond the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. For example, whereas the Convention identified the “best interests of the child” as a primary consideration in all decisions affecting the child, the African Children’s Charter identified the “best interests of the child” as the primary consideration. The African Children’s Charter also took a bright-line approach to defining a child as anyone under eighteen years of age, provided more express protections for girls, and included an enforcement mechanism for children whose rights had been violated.
The African Children’s Charter not only addressed some of the shortcomings that had been identified in the Convention but also adapted the construction of children’s rights to Africa’s unique historical and cultural context. For example, it recognized the heightened importance of family to the African child with relationships that were reciprocal and multilateral. Under the African Children’s Charter, children were viewed as having not only rights but also obligations to their families.
The Charter also recognized some of the unique challenges facing the continent and included provisions on child marriage, child trafficking, child labour, children in armed conflict, and harmful cultural practices.
With regard to South Africa, two provisions were especially key:
(1) the protection against discrimination and apartheid, and
(2) the obligation of states parties to provide material assistance to children affected by such practices.
The African Children’s Charter was signed by President Nelson Mandela in 1997 and finally ratified by South Africa in 2000.
Professor Binford also expresses that it was not surprising that Nelson Mandela oversaw the signing of the African Children’s Charter and the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as the first President of the Republic of South Africa.
History makes clear that President Mandela maintained a longstanding recognition of both children and family rights; in fact, both were outlined in the Freedom Charter in 1955 at Congress of the People in Kliptown.
The Freedom Charter called for the elimination of child labour and laws that separate family members. It called for free and compulsory universal education and recognized children’s rights to equal status in schools, in addition to free medical care (with special care provided for mothers and young children), and government care for orphans. Family rights included parents’ rights to educate their children and bring up their families “in comfort and security,” as well as the right of working mothers to maternity leave with full pay.
How a review of our collective history assist us, is by demonstrating how countries such as South Africa has a history of international leadership in the advancement of children’s rights until the nation became side-lined from the international stage due to its own human rights abuses under the oppressive apartheid regime.
South Africa also has a definite history of domestic recognition of children’s rights within the prescripts of the Freedom Charter.
We are reminded that the Freedom Charter is also characterised by its opening demand, “The People Shall Govern!”
We must also remember that South Africa has a history of strong, proud, and vocal children who demanded that their rights be recognized both under apartheid, as in the Soweto Uprising, and during the transition to democracy.
Over 200 South African children met in the Western Cape in 1992 at the International Summit on the Rights of Children to address the violation of their rights and discuss the problems they continued to face following apartheid.
Their discussions led to the drafting of the Children’s Charter of South Africa, which asserted that children were not being included in the nation’s transition to a constitutional democracy, and that children’s rights were not on the agendas of either the government or any of the political parties.
However, for all the children’s rights that are enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic, to this day we still have innocent children drowning in pit latrines.
The need to access and actualise the children’s rights enshrined in the Constitution, is of paramount importance and ought to be a mobilising tool.
Programme Director,
If we are to consider the significant role that South Africa’s children played and the ultimate price they paid in resisting the injustices of apartheid and the struggle for freedom, it is easy to accept and appreciate why children deserve a seat at the decision-making table.
But, my dear friends and comrades, what is blocking the sunbeams from penetrating into our eyes, warming our hearts and illuminating the smile of the child that comrade Don’s lifelong work and desire shone so brightly for?
How do we begin to consider the concept of compassion if so many here today were not privileged with even the most basic of children’s rights? How are any young people today and tomorrow expected to become the compassionate adults we so wish them to be, if, even with children’s rights in place, they do not have access to dignity?
Even in his final years, Mattera was concerned for the plight of the youth and still took up various projects aimed at uplifting the lives of children. One such project was Yolisa’s Map Book, a Gautrain Management Agency Children’s Book launch in 2020.
At the event, he launched the Children’s Book during a live book read online at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The book sought to inculcate a culture of deriving pleasure and mental stimulation out of reading. Even on the many occasions where Mattera appealed to God to save his people, he emphatically singled out a special plea for the little ones, saying: “But more the children.” Mattera’s preoccupation with the welfare of children remains phenomenal and prophetic.
A recent assessment by the Progress in International Reading Study, unveiled a staggering 81% illiteracy rate among Grade 4 learners in South Africa. According to the report, over three quarters of the nation’s Grade 4 children are unable to write sufficiently, read comprehensively, or in any language whatsoever. Whereas this is a stark reminder of the kind of literacy work that Don Mattera did with children, it is also a blot in nearly thirty years of democracy.
The so-called “born-frees” should have been our re-born nation’s bright sparks and shining examples of what post-apartheid means. But, as studies continue to reveal, our new democratic order is littered with a litany of what the Social Sciences describe as “the disordered faults of progress”.
Therefore to continue with the noble works of Don Mattera, is not only to keep alive his beautiful legacy, but rather to help fulfil UNICEF’s world-wide mission to promote the health and well-being of children. The rights of children are sacrosanct, and that is a non-negotiable as we aspire for a better tomorrow.
Don Mattera was born and bred during the most trying times in the history of our beloved country. And, like all of us he was a child of his own environment.
In his own words, a young Don Mattera, who had just returned from a Catholic Convent School in Durban, asked Father Trevor Huddleston:
“so Father, which is the right church, the Anglican or the Catholic church, because I come from a Catholic school, and they told us that the Catholic church is the true church of God?
Father Huddleston smiled and shook his head very gently. I repeated my question. He then rubbed my head tenderly, and pressed the long, bony forefinger of his right hand into my ribs, where my heart was beating fast. “There, my son, there, in your heart is the true church of God”.
To appreciate how deep the influence of the interaction with Father Trevor Huddleston had on Don Mattera and his conviction in all spheres of life, we need only turn to Bra Don’s famous quote: “The highest religion is compassion.”
His politics and religion were neither narrow and partisan nor tendentious. In his life he was once a member of ANC Youth League (ANCYL), the Black Consciousness Movement, and the Pan-Africanist Congress. He served all of them with loyalty and aplomb. His politics were all inclusive and unifying.
When Don Mattera was part of the formation of the Union of Black Journalists, his black colleagues recall how the white establishment that dominated the media, attempted to dissuade him from his activism in this regard by offering him positions in the newsroom, positions that were above those occupied by his black colleagues. But, Mattera being who he was, rejected outright the overtures with scorn and contempt.
Mattera was later part of the Forum of Black Journalists (FBJ) that went to present the story of racism in the media to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1997. In every aspect of his life, Mattera gave his all, and shone head and shoulder above many.
He did not suffer from identity crisis, as I indicated earlier. He knew who he was, and he upheld the principle of ideological and human solidarity to the core.
Don Mattera delivered speeches at political rallies and consistently called for the unity of masses of the people through political collaboration by all the liberation movements.
He knew too well that ideological differences in our struggle against apartheid need not turn us into enemies.
Don Mattera was a thorn in the flesh of the apartheid government. He used his pen and speech as lethal weapons to topple the erstwhile white minority regime.
For his troubles, Mattera was banned for eight and a half years, from 1973 until 1982, spending a good period of his banning order under house arrest. Apart from his lengthy banning order, he was also detained and tortured on a number of occasions for his anti-apartheid activism. A true freedom fighter, he was.
As an example of how Bra Don encouraged others and young people to read and embrace literature, and since I was younger than he was, he gave me a classic book by Sir Leslie Stephen entitled, “Thackeray and his Biographers – In 1891”, and felt that I should read this book.
Having read it, I think I found the appropriate quote from the book to really describe who Bra Don was:
“Nothing could be told of his private life by those who have the fullest means of knowledge which would not confirm the highest estimate derivable from his writings of the tenderness of his heart and the moral worth of his nature; and all that could be told would tend to justify the profound affection with which they cherish his memory.”
I thank you.
