- Programme Director;
- Compatriots of Peter Mokaba and Comrades;
- Veterans, Comrades, and Young Lions of Yesterday;
Thank you for the opportunity to engage with the Compatriots of Peter Mokaba in this space of dialogue across generations.
It is a privilege and a solemn duty to remember and reflect on the lives of Comrades and revolutionaries whose voices, actions and energies from a young age shook the foundations of apartheid, and whose spirit continues to call each generation of young lions to service and sacrifice.
This rare breed of leadership, the Young Lions Generation, understood that youth are at once the present and the future. They knew that history does not wait for permission. They stepped forward with conviction, radical imagination, and human compassion, to reshape the ANC, South Africa and ultimately Mother Africa herself.
To be radical is the prerogative of the youth, youth are meant to bring radical perspectives and to hold leaders accountable.
We recognise these women and men who, in the most brutal and unforgiving of times, carried the very life force of the ANC on their shoulders.
The Young Lions Generation are the subject and the story of today’s gathering.
Let me begin where this term, Young Lions, itself was born.
The metonymy or metaphorical use of the lion to symbolise bravery, courage, and strength has been a longstanding tradition within the ANC, dating back to the leadership and activism of Comrade Richard “Gert” Sibande.
Gert Sibande was nicknamed ‘Lion of the East’ due to his political activities in Eastern Transvaal, now Mpumalanga. As a farm labourer in the Bethal District, comrade Gert Sibande began to organise farmworkers against unsatisfactory working conditions in Bethal. He founded a farm workers association and was a local ANC spokesperson. In 1947, he disguised himself as a farmworker to investigate the working conditions of farmworkers in Bethal. He invited journalist, Ruth First as well as Michael Scott (priest) to assist him in exposing the near slavery conditions of farmworkers in Bethal farms.
The findings were published in the New Age. Later, the Guardian released a second article related to Gert Sibande’s findings on 25 December 1947. Drum Magazine released a similar article in 1952, the journalist Henry Nxumalo and photographer Jurgen Schadeberg played an active role in documenting the conditions of potato farm labourers in Bethal. This article received national and international attention however, the reports were dismissed by the Minister of Native affairs, Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd in Parliament. Sibande was deported from Bethal by authorities in 1953 due to his political activism. He later moved to Swaziland where he assisted the ANC military wing uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK).
Fast-forward to post 1976 period with the influx of young student activists into the ranks of the ANC and MK.
MK established a number of units to focus in different regions of the country. For instance there was a Natal Urban Machinery, and there was the Transvaal Urban Machinery led by Siphiwe Nyanda, which had a unit called G5-Unit which in the 1970’s attacked the following police stations, Moroka police station and Orlando police station and on the 4 April 1980 they attacked the Booysens police station. Some of the members of the G5 were:
- Johannes Rasegatla
- Solly Shoke
- Nicky Hlongwane
- Anthony Bobby Tsotsobe
- And Linda Jabane
MK operations from 1980 to ’89
In 1980 there were less than 50 MK operations but peaked in 1988 with some 250 operations and it is these activities which inspired the youth to be militant.
Bobby Tsotsobe gets arrested on 20 November 1980 and on the following day the police descend on the home of Jacob and Joyce Mabuza in Chiawelo Township (Soweto) where Linda Jabane was staying, as he was a friend to one of the Mabuza children.
And, in the true spirit of no surrender, he fought off the police and at the end he used a grenade to blow himself up rather than surrender. Linda Jabane, was thus referred to as the Lion of Chiawelo.
Within this context, COSAS was launched in 1979 to fight for free, compulsory and democratic education.
Between 1982 and 1983 COSAS was instrumental in setting up youth congresses in Soweto, Port Elizabeth, Western Cape and beyond. COSAS established good relations with parents and worker organisations (trade unions in other words), the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), Young Christian Students, and the Young Christian Workers. They led the campaign to popularise the Education Charter which was an elaboration of the Freedom Charter’s clause that deals with education:
“The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall be Opened!
“The government shall discover, develop and encourage national talent for the enhancement of our cultural life;
“All the cultural treasures of mankind shall be open to all, by free exchange of books, ideas and contact with other lands;
“The aim of education shall be to teach the youth to love their people and their culture, to honour human brotherhood, liberty and peace;
“Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children; Higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit;
“Adult illiteracy shall be ended by a mass state education plan;
“Teachers shall have all the rights of other citizens;
“The colour bar in cultural life, in sport and in education shall be abolished.”
In the 1985 January 8th Statement of the National Executive Committee of the ANC, delivered by President Oliver Tambo, he saluted students, workers, and young militants who had refused to be crushed by apartheid’s guns, teargas, and jail cells. In that speech, he said these words:
“The student and working youth of our country have once more confirmed their place in our hearts as the pride of the nation. These relentless fighters for a South Africa that we can proudly call our own have, throughout this past year, swelled the ranks of the mass movement by joining the struggle in hundreds of thousands. Despite the campaign of murder and terror unleashed by the racists against them, including the very young, they have stood firm in their demands. They have refused to break from the ranks of the struggling masses. In saluting our students and working youth, we can truly say that they have earned for themselves the honour of being called the Young Lions.”
When ANC President Oliver Tambo first called you “Young Lions” in 1985, it was not a casual phrase. It was a recognition of the fire that had taken root in the youth, a generation willing to give everything, including their lives, to bring apartheid and oppression to its knees.
But today, comrades, we come as veterans and as elders asking of ourselves and of our peers a profound question:
- What is our purpose now?
- What does it mean to be a Young Lion when age takes its toll?
- And, how do we serve when the struggle no longer demands the same sacrifices we once made?
Apart from a discussion on political education, these questions serve as a starting point for conversations about life, legacy, and the meaning of service.
In some ways this act of naming could have been seen as a political baptism, by which a generation was called to step forward and define its purpose. That is the generation many comrades present here today belong to.
Although, with the power of hindsight, it may be pertinent to point out that to be a Young Lion perhaps was less about age and more about one’s attitude, courage, conviction and heart:
- believing that no power, no injustice, no system was too strong to be challenged;
- courage driven by principle;
- and that the struggle for freedom was a personal, national, and global movement.
Belonging to a generation that did not ask, “who will save us?”, meant that the generation of Young Lions had to become their own saviours and that of a nation of people.
It is against this historical backdrop that we appreciate the importance of context, revealing how that spirit of yesterday is still in many ways a legacy that defines the generation of Young Lions today.
Although today the questions we face are different, there is an essence that remains the same: the nature of freedom, and how to live with it in a way that still honours the struggle.
Perhaps this is a question that every revolutionary generation has faced around the world and throughout history.
Some have asked:
- after the storm, what does a revolutionary do with quiet mornings?
- when there are no combatants to join, how do we continue to serve?
- when our own children seem more interested in social media and celebrity culture than in values of struggle, how do we teach and imbue lessons?
But equally so, when the world no longer asks you to die for freedom, are our communities asking us to live for justice?
Or are we to recount, regroup, reassess and reaffirm our evolving strengths as lions to become the storytellers, the mentors, the ethical guides and the custodians of memory that our children, our grandchildren and our communities need of us today?
Your roar must now take a different form.
In today’s chaotic world of media and misinformation, history can be distorted, revised, edited, even erased. Those who lived it, and are here to tell the story, are best placed to protect and preserve it.
The political education of the future should not be sanitised, it must be humanised, and it is through dialogue and gatherings such as today’s event that we may reinforce the humanity of our stories.
Many of us, and this is true for most activists, struggle to make time for our own children and help them find meaning, in a world where revolutionary icons, symbols and memorabilia are used as pop culture and fashion brands, instead of a way of life to be emulated.
To show our families and communities that to live meaningfully is to live in service of others, whether as teachers, artists, entrepreneurs, community leaders or volunteers, service to society is still the highest calling.
We know that the world of today is not the world of 1985. Our struggles have evolved with corruption, the rapid rise of technology, vast economic inequality, gender-based violence and cultural misappropriation – these are some of the new frontiers.
Perhaps as we walk further along the journey of our years on this earth, our role tends to be less about having all the solutions at our grip, yet rather to help young minds of today find their own answers, grounded in the values you as the Generation of Young Lions fought for:
- Freedom.
- Justice.
- Non-racialism.
- Service.
- Unity in struggle.
To remember the Young Lions Generation is to understand the DNA of the ANC, and perhaps somewhere in that exploration of the past, the youth of today can find inspiration to redefine and redesign the ANC for themselves and for a world that is calling them to the fore.
It is and always has been the task of young leaders to redesign the ANC for their needs.
Comrades, although evolution is inevitable, a political movement only survives if it serves a living purpose and thus renewal is through the energy and innovation of young leaders.
Our history teaches us that renewal is inseparable from the role of the youth in the Organisation.
As we remember all those Young Lions that have left us, we can feel their rumble and hear their echo. Through these reverberations we celebrate our young people today and their dynamic power to innovate and inspire, and we invite them to step up to the plate as we step back in time to a past laden with lessons.
There are no limits to what young people can achieve and do as we learn from the history of those gathered here today. We encourage the youth to connect with that which came before, and we embolden them to roar across the landscape of this great continent: to lead us from the front.
The best way to train young people, is to give them responsibility. Failure to do that is nothing but an excuse.
That is the least we can do to honour the memory of the generation of Young Lions.
The ANC does not need obedient followers, it needs courageous leaders of the 21st Century and it needs the youth to demand better, to build smarter, and to lead with integrity.
Every science, including the science of revolution, is verified by experience.
Revolutionaries do not struggle for honour or glory, or to occupy a place in history. A revolutionary is always absolutely selfless and so her or his life becomes an example. Revolutionaries know how to wait; they know how to be patient, they never despair.
Allow me to leave you with the words by William ‘Bloke’ Modisane, on accountability:
“But I sometimes think it important to examine what people do about the things they say, rather than what they say about what they more often than not do not do.”
I thank you.
