Programme Director, Ms Sakina Kamwendo,
The Simelane family,
Premier of Mpumalanga, Mr Mandla Ndlovu,
Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Mpumalanga, Professor Thenjiwe Meyiwa,
Executive Mayor of the Mbombela Local Municipality, Cllr Sibongile Makushe-Mazibuko,
Members of the inaugural board of the Nokuthula Simelane Foundation,
Members of the Students’ Representative Council and students,
Members of the media,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Sanibonani.
Thobela.
Dumelang.
On behalf of our Government and the people of South Africa, we extend heartfelt greetings and our sincere gratitude to the Simelane family.
Thank you for having given this nation your courageous and deeply committed daughter, Nokuthula Simelane.
We commend the University of Mpumalanga for hosting this inaugural lecture that bears her name and for the partnership that today gives birth to the Nokuthula Simelane Foundation.
We are gathered here to remember the life and the struggle of a young woman who dedicated herself to the cause of freedom.
We are here to honour a young life that was taken with such cruelty for no reason other than her love for her people and her dreams for her country.
Nokuthula Simelane was just 23 years old when she was lured to Johannesburg, abducted by apartheid security police, tortured and never seen again.
More than 40 years since Nokuthula disappeared, her remains are yet to be found.
For more than four decades, the Simelane family has not been permitted the basic dignity of laying their daughter to rest.
At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a former commander of the Soweto Intelligence Unit, Willem Coetzee, admitted to her capture and torture, but denied killing her.
We later learned from his colleague that Nokuthula was murdered and that her body was buried in the vicinity of Rustenburg.
Today, the nation still awaits the outcome of the criminal charges that were brought against Coetzee.
It is not enough for a family to be told that their child was murdered and buried somewhere unrecorded.
The Simelane family deserves to know the specific place where their daughter lies, so that they may finally lay her to rest with the dignity that was denied her in life.
To the Simelane family, we say that your pain is the nation’s pain.
It is a pain that will not be washed away by the mere passage of time.
We owe it to Nokuthula, and to every activist like her, to make sure the truth is uncovered and that justice is finally served.
More than that, we owe it to Nokuthula and to all who gave their lives for our freedom, to continue to strive for – and to achieve – the South Africa for which they fought.
Although she was young, Nokuthula lived her life with purpose.
Nokuthula understood apartheid for what it was: a cruel, unjust and unnatural system of racial separation that dehumanised the people of this country.
At a very young age, she rejected a social order that oppressed people and denied them their most basic human rights.
It was for this reason that she joined Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Nokuthula was still a student when she took on this responsibility.
She undertook the dangerous work of a courier, carrying messages between Swaziland and South Africa, maintaining links and keeping hope alive.
She was young. But she was not naïve.
Nor was she blind to the danger of what she had undertaken.
She would not surrender to fear of arrest, of torture or of death.
Had she lived, she would have seen apartheid fall.
She would have cast her first vote.
She would have been among those who wrote our democratic Constitution.
She would have been one of those building a new nation.
She would have been at the forefront of the fight against poverty and inequality.
Her life – a life so imbued with purpose, meaning and dedication – challenges us all to reflect on our purpose.
It challenges the young people of today to shape their principles and ideals.
To define the society they want to build and determine the lives they want to live.
Her life challenges the youth of today to find purpose and to strive as she did to realise the world in which she wanted to live.
Nokuthula never lived to cast a ballot.
On the 4th of November this year, millions of South Africans will vote freely – in conditions of fairness and peace – for democratic local government.
This will be the fourteenth time that voters will go to the polls in nation-wide elections for national, provincial or local government.
This is a great achievement.
But the strength of our democracy lies not merely in the conduct of regular elections.
It lies in the participation of those whom democracy is meant to serve.
In the 2024 elections, fewer than half of registered voters under the age of 30 turned out to vote.
Young people are less likely to be registered to vote than older people.
This puts young people at a disadvantage. It limits their ability to determine the future of their communities, their cities and towns, and their country.
As young people – and as a society – we must strive to ensure that through our electoral process the voice of youth is heard and that the power of youth is felt.
As a people, we have built and sustained one of the more resilient constitutional democracies to emerge from the twentieth century.
We have built robust and durable institutions.
We have independent courts that act without fear or favour, that safeguard the rights of the vulnerable and hold the powerful to account.
We have a free media, strong unions and a vibrant civil society.
Our Constitution is among the most progressive in the world.
Our Bill of Rights guarantees fundamental rights that were denied Nokuthula: freedom of association and expression, the right to vote, the right to human dignity and the right to life.
The Bill of Rights does more. It is an instrument of transformation.
It provides to every person the right to housing, to health care, food, water and social security, to education, and to a healthy environment.
Thirty years since the adoption of that Bill of Rights, we must ask how South Africans experience those rights.
What does the Bill of Rights mean for a person still living in a shack, for a child learning in a classroom that is falling apart, for a family that goes hungry, for a household without water?
Nokuthula did not fight so that human dignity would exist only on paper.
She fought so that human dignity would be a lived reality.
It is our responsibility – our purpose – to give meaning to those rights.
As one travels across the country, one can see the many ways in which our constitutional promise is made manifest.
Millions of houses have been built where once there was just empty ground.
These are neighbourhoods, with roads and streetlights, schools and clinics.
These are homes with electricity, water and sanitation.
Living in these homes are parents with opportunities that never existed before: to enter an occupation of their choosing, to start a business, to own property.
Living in these homes are grandparents, persons with disability and children who receive social grants.
There are children in those homes who go to fee-free schools, where they receive a free daily meal, and who can look forward to studying at a university or college funded by the state.
We have a social wage that reaches millions.
We continue to expand access to housing, water, electricity, health care and education.
Last year, we achieved our highest matric pass rate ever.
In the past two decades, the proportion of South African adults with at least a matric qualification has increased from less than a third to more than half.
Health outcomes have improved. Life expectancy has increased. Infant mortality has declined.
We have one of the largest HIV treatment programmes in the world and are moving ever closer to ending AIDS as a public health threat.
All of this tells us that we have made real progress.
Yet, if we are to give a fair account of the last three decades, we must acknowledge that there are areas where progress has been slow or insufficient.
It is true that more than 88 percent of households live in formal dwellings.
Yet we have a backlog of some 2.6 million housing units.
This backlog deepens every year, as thousands more people move to our cities.
These people are often forced to live in informal settlements and abandoned buildings, placing a strain on social infrastructure and services.
More than 82 percent of households have access to clean water. Yet millions do not.
Progress is not merely about units delivered.
It is about lasting change in people’s lives.
A tap in the home means little if there is no water.
A streetlight serves no purpose if the bulb is never replaced.
A matric certificate is of little value if there are no jobs available.
We must concern ourselves not merely with the various components of development – houses, social grants, schools and the like – but also with how people experience development.
We must concern ourselves both with how their lives are transformed and the many ways in which their progress can be held back.
We may marvel at the new hospitals and clinics we have built.
But we must give just as much attention to the quality of care that people receive at these facilities, to the time they must spend in the waiting area, to whether the medicines they need are available.
We are proud that we have massively expanded financial support to students from poor and working class families.
But we must be concerned when students cannot find accommodation, when payments are delayed, when they have to forgo meals, or when they are ill-prepared for the studies they want to undertake.
These are challenges that we cannot leave to the state alone to fix.
These are challenges that call for social activism, for partnership and for shared solutions.
As we strive to give life to the rights contained in our Constitution, we carry a responsibility to unite a divided country.
Nokuthula Simelane fought for a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it, black and white.
She fought for a non-racial South Africa.
A South Africa in which all people would be equal, not only in rights, not only in opportunity, but equal in lived experience.
We have done much to break down the barriers of racial exclusion.
Children of the formerly oppressed and children of the formerly privileged now sit in the same classrooms.
They play on the same sports fields. They go to the same clubs.
Grandchildren of domestic workers and farm workers are now scientists, doctors, judges and Cabinet Ministers.
But the divide between black and white remains.
It is a divide that is evident in the economy.
It is evident in the architecture of our towns and cities.
It is evident in the health care people can afford. In the schools they can attend.
This divide between black and white is the stubborn remnant of apartheid that we have worked together over the last 30 years to eradicate.
We have introduced laws and implemented programmes that affirm the position of those who were discriminated against in the past.
Our black economic empowerment policies have improved the participation of black people and women in the economy, enabled greater access to land and contributed to the growth of emerging businesses.
These policies have contributed to a significant expansion of the black middle class and improved standards of living for black people.
Statistics South Africa tells us that in the last two decades, the average income of Africans increased in real terms by 46 percent.
Over that time, the level of poverty in the African population fell from 67 to 44 percent.
Yet, despite this progress, the average income of white households is still nearly five times as high as that of the average African household.
It is that divide that we must make it our responsibility to bridge.
If we are to overcome our devastating apartheid inheritance, if we are to end poverty and reduce inequality, then we need to drive economic growth that is sustained, sustainable and inclusive.
We need to create employment and livelihood opportunities for young people.
And we need to provide the infrastructure, social support and public services that lift people out of poverty.
At this moment in our country’s development, we must make it our responsibility to drive inclusive growth.
The State is driving growth through a massive investment in infrastructure.
We are also rebuilding the backbone of our economy through far-reaching reforms in energy, water, ports, rail and telecommunications.
We are directing our industrial policy to support industries that employ the most people and create the most value.
We are expanding established industries like mining, agriculture, manufacturing and construction, while building new industries in renewable energy, electric vehicles and the digital economy.
Through growth that is inclusive, we will be able to create more jobs and business opportunities for the five million young people who are unemployed.
But we realise that this will take time.
We recognise that young people must still overcome many obstacles to find work.
Therefore, as we pursue faster and more inclusive economic growth, we have undertaken programmes on a large scale to provide opportunities for young people to earn an income, develop skills and gain work experience.
Through public and social employment programmes, through the Employment Tax Incentive, through the Youth Employment Service and through the SAYouth platform, we are supporting millions of young people on their path to employment.
Critical to our vision of a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it, is the advancement and empowerment of women.
We recently celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Women’s March on the Union Buildings on the 9th of August 1956.
We recall the courage and determination of the women of our country in standing up not only to the apartheid government, but to the laws, practices and attitudes that prevented South African women from realising their rights.
We have carried that spirit into the Constitution, the laws and the programmes of the democratic South Africa.
As a society, we have worked to advance the representation of women in all areas of life and to ensure their full and equal participation in decision making.
Women lead institutions that are vital to our democracy.
Women are ministers, mayors, judges, traditional leaders, diplomats, police officers, soldiers, entrepreneurs, farmers, scientists, engineers, academics, artists and athletes.
Today, more women than men are enrolled in our universities and colleges.
Over the years, we have accelerated women’s access to basic services, including social welfare provisions and economic opportunities, lifting millions out of absolute poverty.
The Employment Equity Act and other progressive laws have paved the way for more equitable representation of women in the economy.
Over a quarter of top managers in the private sector are now women. Just under a half of senior managers in national government departments are women.
We are using preferential procurement, industrial financing institutions and various support programmes to promote the advancement of women entrepreneurs.
Young women today have opportunities that previous generations only dreamt of.
But they still confront great challenges.
Girls have a greater chance of dropping out of school due to domestic responsibilities.
Many female learners lose out on school days because they do not have sanitary pads.
Young women have a greater likelihood than young men of not being in employment, education or training.
Women of all ages fear for their safety, with young women at the greatest risk of experiencing intimate partner violence.
These are not challenges that women must confront alone.
These are challenges that we must confront as a society.
As men, we have a responsibility to confront the attitudes, institutions and practices that continue to discriminate against women.
We have a responsibility as men to prevent violence against women.
To speak out against it. And not to commit it.
As a society, we share a responsibility to ensure that girls remain in school and that they are able to further their education in their chosen area of study.
That means we must address issues of safety, sanitary products, childcare for young mothers and pathways back into the education system for those who drop out.
We must ensure that young women have equal opportunity to enter the workplace, to earn equal pay for equal work, and to be able to pursue their careers without hindrance.
We must have clinics where young women can access contraception, HIV prevention and treatment, and reproductive health care with ease and without judgment.
Colleagues and friends,
As we remember the life and the death of Nokuthula Simelane, we must reflect on our nation’s experience of justice and reconciliation.
We must confront what the American novelist William Faulkner meant when he wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
For the Simelane family, the past is not past.
It is not past for the thousands of families who placed their faith in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and who were met, too often, with silence, evasion and half-truths from those who took their loved ones.
There is a view that has taken root in parts of our national life: that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded this business and that it is time to move on.
We must resist this view.
We must not allow the passage of time to dim our recollection of the atrocities committed against our people.
We must not allow ourselves to forget.
Because to forget is to deny the suffering and the sacrifice of those who made our freedom possible.
To forget allows space for such atrocities to be committed once again.
To forget lifts the burden of moral responsibility from those who committed and enabled such crimes.
We must similarly confront the view that responsibility for apartheid’s crimes rested only with the security officials who committed the crimes and not with the system that sheltered and rewarded them.
The late Professor Kader Asmal put it plainly in a lecture in 2000.
He said:
“If you never pulled a trigger nor held a smoking gun, but yet you benefited from the societal system defended by the violence – if all you did was loaf around a poolside in an opulent white apartheid suburb – you still needed to be involved in the process [of transitional justice].”
Reconciliation asks something of all of us.
Nation-building is our collective responsibility.
Overcoming the apartheid legacy is as much – if not more – the responsibility of those who continue to benefit from that legacy as it is the responsibility of those who continue to suffer under its oppressive weight.
It is precisely because we dare not forget the atrocities of our past that we must attend to the unfinished business of our journey towards justice and reconciliation.
We must welcome the renewed energy with which the National Prosecuting Authority is pursuing both truth and justice through establishing inquests and through the prosecution of alleged perpetrators.
We must recognise that, even now, this work does not always proceed at the pace we want. There are still challenges and setbacks.
But we must continue to do all within our means to ensure that the relevant authorities have the support and encouragement they need to fulfil this responsibility.
The work of transitional justice will not be complete unless we answer the charge that there was deliberate interference in the investigation and prosecution of apartheid-era crimes identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
We therefore welcome the work of the judicial commission of inquiry led by retired Constitutional Court Judge Sisi Khampepe, which is expected to complete its work by the end of this year.
We have been clear that this inquiry must be able to do its work without fear or favour.
We will stand behind this Commission until the truth is told.
Without justice, there can never be lasting peace.
We owe the Simelane family and every family still waiting for a grave to visit nothing less than the whole truth.
Friends and Comrades,
The South Africa that Nokuthula Simelane fought for – and for which she gave her life – is a nation still in the making.
We have realised much of what she dreamed of. But there is still much to do.
It is what remains undone that makes the Nokuthula Simelane Foundation and this memorial lecture so necessary.
The Nokuthula Simelane Foundation and the Nokuthula Simelane Centre for Gender and Intersectional Studies established here at the University of Mpumalanga are part of our arsenal of memory, remembrance and renewal.
This Centre must carry a living promise that the voices of women, of young people, and of historically marginalised communities will continue to guide the direction of our nation.
It is an affirmation that our universities remain places where difficult questions are asked and where solutions to society’s greatest challenges are developed.
Through the work of this Centre, we must deepen the understanding that gender equality, like racial equality, is not a favour, but a fundamental human right.
Through the work of the Foundation and the Centre, we must encourage the young people of our time to find and to pursue their purpose.
To the Simelane family, our pledge remains.
We will not abandon the search for the truth about what happened to Nokuthula.
We will not rest until she can be laid to rest and until those responsible are held to account.
As the French author Guy de Maupassant wrote:
“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.”
Through this Foundation, through this Centre and through this annual lecture, we give life back to Nokuthula Simelane.
Through our daily actions to improve the lives of those around us, we give life back to Nokuthula Simelane.
May her memory strengthen our resolve to build a country that protects human dignity and advances equality for all.
May her memory inspire us to finish the work she started.
May we never rest until we achieve the South Africa of which she dreamed and for which she courageously fought.
I thank you.
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