Remarks by President Cyril Ramaphosa at the Commemoration of the Battle of Delville Wood

Programme Director,
Your Majesty Queen Masalanabo Modjadji VII
Prefect Rollon Moochel Blaisot
Ministers and Deputy Ministers,
Representatives of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF)
Representatives of the French Armed Forces,
Military veterans,
Members of the diplomatic corps,
Traditional and religious leaders,
Descendants of those who served,
Distinguished guests,
Fellow South Africans,

We gather in solemn remembrance of the sons of South Africa who served and died during the First World War.

We remember them not merely as names inscribed upon stone, nor as figures recorded in military archives, but as human beings whose lives were interrupted by war.

They were sons, husbands, fathers and brothers.

They came from farms, villages, towns, mines and cities. They spoke different languages, belonged to different communities and lived under vastly unequal conditions.

Yet, when the call came, thousands left their homes and travelled to distant lands to serve in a conflict whose violence and scale the world had never before witnessed.

Many would never return.

Today, we remember the South African soldiers who fought at Delville Wood.

We remember the Black South Africans who served in the South African Native Labour Contingent.

We remember the members of the Cape Corps.

We remember the men who died when the SS Mendi sank beneath the cold waters of the English Channel.

We remember all those whose contribution was diminished, ignored or deliberately excluded from the official history of our country.

We gather to affirm that the memory of a nation cannot be divided according to race.

Sacrifice has no colour- and courage belongs to no single community.

The blood shed in service cannot be ranked according to the racial classifications imposed by governments.

For too long, South Africa remembered only part of this history.

Today, we remember it in full.

In July 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, the 1st South African Infantry Brigade was ordered to capture and hold a small wooded area near the French village of Longueval.

It was called Delville Wood.

The South African soldiers were given an instruction that would become one of the most famous and tragic commands in our military history:

They were to take and hold the wood- at all costs.

On the morning of 15 July 1916, more than 3,000 South African soldiers entered Delville Wood.

They entered a landscape of trees, thick undergrowth and narrow pathways.

Within days, almost nothing remained.

The wood was torn apart by artillery.

Trees were shattered and stripped bare.

The ground was churned into mud, blood and broken timber.

Trenches disappeared beneath bombardment.

The wounded lay among the dead.

Water became scarce.

Food and ammunition could barely reach the men who remained inside the wood.

For six days and five nights, the South Africans endured relentless shelling, repeated attacks and close-quarter fighting.

They were surrounded from several directions.

They were exhausted, thirsty and depleted.

Still, they held their positions.

They held because they had been ordered to hold.

They held because they would not abandon their comrades.

They held because, even amid the horror of war, discipline and solidarity bound them together.

When the survivors were finally relieved on 20 July 1916, the brigade that emerged from Delville Wood bore little resemblance to the one that had entered it.

Of the more than 3,000 men who went into the wood, only a small fraction were able to walk out in organised formation.

Hundreds had been killed.

Thousands had been wounded, captured or reported missing.

Entire units had been reduced to handfuls of survivors.

Delville Wood became a symbol of South African courage.

It also became a symbol of the terrible cost of war.

We honour the courage of those soldiers.

But we should never romanticise the conditions under which they died.

War is not glorious to those who lie wounded in the mud.

There is no glory in a mother receiving a telegram informing her that her son will not return.

There is no glory in young men being sent into artillery fire from which few are expected to survive.

The true honour lies not in war itself, but in the courage, loyalty and humanity shown by those who endure it.

The men of Delville Wood endured what few human beings should ever be asked to endure.

Their sacrifice deserves the eternal gratitude of our country.

Yet the story of South Africa in the First World War does not end at Delville Wood.

It cannot be told only through the experience of white combat soldiers.

It must also include the thousands of Black South Africans who served in the South African Native Labour Contingent.

Under the racial policies of the Union of South Africa, Black South Africans were generally not permitted to carry arms as equal soldiers in the European theatre of war.

They were willing to serve.

They were willing to risk their lives.

But they were denied the status, recognition and dignity afforded to white combatants.

More than 20,000 Black South African men travelled to France to perform essential labour in support of the Allied war effort.

They unloaded ships.

They built and repaired roads.

They maintained railway lines.

They carried supplies.

They handled ammunition.

They dug trenches and defensive positions.

They worked in forests, ports and military depots.

They buried the dead.

They performed the exhausting and dangerous work without which no army could remain in the field.

The soldiers at the front could not have fought without food, ammunition, roads, railways, ports and supplies.

The contribution of the labour contingents was therefore not secondary to the war effort.

It was essential to it.

Yet, for decades, their service was treated as though it mattered less.

Many returned home without the recognition given to white servicemen.

Their names were absent from prominent memorials.

Their stories were not told with the same reverence.

Their service was obscured by a political system that could accept their labour and their sacrifice, but refused to recognise their equality.

This was not merely an omission.

It was an injustice.

Perhaps no event reveals this injustice more powerfully than the tragedy of the SS Mendi.

On 21 February 1917, the SS Mendi was carrying more than 800 members of the South African Native Labour Contingent towards France.

In thick fog near the Isle of Wight, the Mendi was struck by another vessel.

The ship began to sink rapidly.

In the cold and darkness, hundreds of men were thrown into the sea.

Many could not swim.

There were not enough opportunities for rescue.

More than 600 Black South Africans perished.

It remains one of the greatest maritime disasters in South African history.

In the final moments before the ship disappeared beneath the water, the Reverend Isaac Wauchope Dyobha is remembered as having called upon the men to face death with courage and dignity.

He reminded them that they were brothers.

He urged them to stand together as Africans.

The precise wording of his speech has been passed down in different forms, but the meaning has endured.

In the face of death, these men asserted their humanity.

They stood together.

They met terror with dignity.

They transformed their final moments into an enduring declaration of courage and brotherhood.

The men of the Mendi were not armed soldiers.

But they died in the service of a war effort to which South Africa had committed them.

Their deaths were deaths in service.

Their sacrifice was a national sacrifice.

Yet their recognition was not equal.

For generations, the story of the Mendi lived more strongly in oral history, family memory, poetry and community remembrance than in the official ceremonies of the state.

The families of those who died carried the pain.

Communities carried the memory.

But the nation did not fully acknowledge the debt it owed them.

The same was true of many members of the Cape Corps and other South Africans of colour who served in various theatres of war.

They demonstrated courage, discipline and devotion.

They served despite discrimination.

They fought for a country that did not grant them equal citizenship.

They wore its uniform, served its war effort and, in many cases, gave their lives.

Yet when the history was written, their contribution was too often pushed to the margins.

This is one of the great contradictions of our past.

Black South Africans were considered fit to labour in dangerous conditions, but not fit to be treated as equals.

They were expected to show loyalty to the state, while the state denied them political rights.

They were called upon to sacrifice for a country in which they had no vote and little protection.

Their service exposed the moral bankruptcy of racial rule.

It showed that bravery and patriotism could not be confined by the colour bar.

It showed that those who were oppressed were nevertheless prepared to act with courage, discipline and humanity.

Our task today is not merely to add forgotten names to old memorials.

Our task is to transform the meaning of remembrance itself.

A democratic South Africa must remember differently from the governments of the past.

We cannot repeat a history that elevates some lives and diminishes others.

We cannot honour the soldier and forget the labourer who supplied him.

We cannot remember Delville Wood and neglect the SS Mendi.

We cannot speak of national sacrifice while excluding the majority of the nation.

We must build a common memory.

That common memory does not erase the differences in the experiences of those who served.

It acknowledges them.

White soldiers fought as recognised combatants.

Black servicemen often served under discriminatory conditions and were denied equal military status.

Their experiences were not the same.

Their treatment was not equal.

But their humanity was equal.

Their courage was equal.

The grief of their families was equal.

The soil of France and the waters of the English Channel did not distinguish between them.

Death made no racial classification.

It is fitting, therefore, that the Delville Wood Memorial has evolved from being a monument associated primarily with white South African sacrifice into a place that seeks to commemorate all South Africans who served.

This transformation is an important act of historical justice.

But memorials alone are not enough.

The true test of remembrance is what we teach our children.

It is the stories we include in our textbooks.

It is the names we speak at national ceremonies.

It is the dignity we afford to the descendants of those who served.

It is whether the history of the Mendi is known as widely as the history of Delville Wood.

It is whether young South Africans understand that people of every race contributed to the making of our country, even during periods when the country itself was profoundly unjust.

We owe it to future generations to tell the full story.

We must tell them that South Africans fought with extraordinary bravery in the fields and forests of Europe.

We must tell them that Black South Africans crossed oceans to serve, despite being denied equality at home.

We must tell them that the men of the Mendi faced death with unity and dignity.

We must tell them that recognition came late, and that historical truth sometimes has to struggle against the power of official silence.

Above all, we must teach them that a nation is strengthened when it has the courage to confront all of its history.

True patriotism does not require us to hide injustice.

True patriotism requires us to correct it.

True remembrance does not divide the dead.

It gathers them together.

As we honour the fallen, we must also reflect on the lessons of the First World War.

It was a war born of militarism, imperial rivalry, nationalism and the failure of diplomacy.

Millions died.

Empires collapsed.

Entire communities were traumatised.

The consequences shaped the world for generations.

The fields of the Somme remind us that political failure is ultimately paid for in human lives.

They remind us that leaders have a profound responsibility to pursue peace.

They remind us that the language of war may be spoken in conference rooms, but its suffering is endured by ordinary people.

As South Africa, we must remain committed to the peaceful resolution of conflict.

We must defend the principles of international law.

We must oppose aggression and the targeting of civilians.

We must support diplomacy, dialogue and negotiation.

We must never lose sight of the human cost when nations resort to war.

At the same time, we honour those who serve in our armed forces today.

The men and women of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) carry forward a proud tradition of service.

Their constitutional duty is not to defend the privilege of one race or one group.

It is to defend the Republic, its people, its sovereignty and its democratic order.

The military of a democratic South Africa must reflect the values for which generations struggled:

Equality.

Human dignity.

Non-racialism.

Discipline.

Professionalism.

Service to the people.

The memory of Delville Wood and the Mendi should inspire every member of our armed forces to serve with honour.

It should remind our nation that those who wear the uniform must be respected, properly supported and never carelessly placed in harm's way.

We also remember the families.

Behind every fallen soldier and every lost labourer was a family that waited.

Some waited for letters that never came.

Some received official notices of death.

Others never knew exactly where or how their loved ones had died.

Many families had no grave to visit.

The sea became the grave of the men of the Mendi.

The battlefields of Europe became the resting place of thousands of Africans far from home.

Today, we say to their descendants:

Your forebears are not forgotten.

Their service was not without meaning.

Their sacrifice belongs to the history of this nation.

Their names deserve to be spoken with dignity.

We recognise the pain caused by their exclusion from our national memory.

We accept the responsibility to preserve their stories.

We honour them not as servants of a racial state, but as sons of Africa whose courage transcended the injustice of their time.

To the fallen soldiers of Delville Wood, we say:

You stood in the shattered forest when retreat seemed the only path to survival.

You remained with your comrades.

You endured the unendurable.

Your courage will not be forgotten.

To the men of the South African Native Labour Contingent, we say:

You carried the burden of war while being denied the equality you deserved.

You performed essential and dangerous service.

Your contribution will no longer be treated as a footnote.

To the men of the SS Mendi, we say:

The waters that took your lives could not erase your names.

The silence that followed could not extinguish your memory.

Your courage continues to speak across the generations.

To all South Africans who served and died in the First World War, we say:

You belong to one national memory.

You are part of one shared history.

You are mourned by one people.

As we leave this place of remembrance, let us carry with us a renewed commitment to build the country that those men were denied.

A country in which citizenship is equal.

A country in which service is recognised without regard to race.

A country in which every life has equal value.

A country that remembers all its children.

Let the names of Delville Wood be spoken.

Let the names of the SS Mendi be spoken.

Let the names of the forgotten be restored.

Let every monument, every classroom and every national ceremony proclaim the truth:

That South Africa's freedom, history and identity were shaped by the courage and sacrifice of people of every race.

May those who died in the forests of France rest in peace.

May those who perished in the waters of the English Channel rest in peace.

May all South Africans who served and sacrificed in the First World War rest in peace.

May their courage continue to guide us.

May their memory unite us.

May we always remember them.

I thank you.