What makes a man take up a political career?

4 June 2003

What makes a man take up a political career? Back in the 1920's Roy Cambell
put into one of his poems the gibe that South Africa was "famous for
politics and little else besides."; but there was, and still is, a deep
truth in the remark, though not in the derisory way he meant it.

Politics has been prominent in this country, but with good reason: we have
had to grapple over many years with a profound question that seldom raises
itself in other countries, either at all or with the same force - namely,
where and what is our nation? Or, put another way: what does it mean when
we say, in the ringing words of Hendrik Biebow on 6 March 1707, "Ik ben een
Afrikander!"? And I venture to suggest that it has been the attempt to find
or give an answer to this vital and searching question that has led many of
us, on all sides of the House, into the field of politics.

The answers and objectives have varied over the years, and still do; perhaps
a definite answer will continue to elude us; but it is not a question that
can be evaded.

May I be permitted a short historical digression? (Perhaps primarily from
the vantage point of a English-speaking South African Christian Democrat.)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there began to emerge
from our balkanized country of that time a broader identity variously
calling itself "Colonial", "Afrikander" or simply "South African, in
contradistinction to its roots overseas. It sought to traverse a middle
path - perhaps a knife-edge - between the two extreme poles of its day: on
the one hand, what Cecil Rhodes used to call "the imperial factor", and on
the other a parochial or even obscurantist form of nationalism. Latterly
the term African is used to describe South Africans, but no one is sure as
to whom this includes or excludes.

This is one of the golden threads in our history: the search for the
centripetal rather than the centrifugal forces in our society in the face of
division. It has been my purpose too. This long search has been marked or
marred by many fits and false starts, progress and retrogressions; in its
course some of our most distinguished sons were hurt or even brought low.
But the search continued; and one makes bold to say that the names that will
finally stand out in the scroll of our history will be those whose life's
work was conciliation rather than conflict. Reconciliation rather than
reaction.

Let us take just a few examples, confined to those who sat in this very
House.

There is "Onze Jan" Hofmeyr and his Afrikaner Bond, working with Cecil
Rhodes in the 1890's.

John X Merriman and his valiant little South African party, upholding fair
play for the Boer against the imperialism of Milner and Chamberlain; with
lieutenants such as the Molteno brothers and FS Malan, heir to Onze Jan,
imprisoned by the military in the Boer War but later President of the
Senate.

Sir Richard Solomon, abandoning a promising future to stand with Het Volk
against the denomination of Randlords in the Transvaal. (incidentally, he
was also our first High Commissioner in London in 1910)

Botha and Smuts, seeking to heal wounds not only between Boer and Brit but
also between hensopper and bittereinder.

The great experiment of Union in 1910.

The birth of the ANC in 1912 and the National Party in 1915.

General Hertzog, preaching a broad "Afrikanderdom" embracing both language
groups, and who joins with Smuts to found the United Party.

Smuts and his philosophy of Holism, which sees disparate elements coming
together through overlapping fields of force and emerging as new ambitions
that are more than the sum of their parts.

These and many others, both in Parliament and without, form a great cloud of
witnesses to the enduring ideal of a South Africa at peace with itself. An
ideal that became more real than ever before under the leadership of
President FW de Klerk working with Mr Nelson Mandela and visa versa.

For many 1991 and beyond was the fulfillment of the search.

In early days it was chiefly the language divide and its spin-offs that was
the focus of the ideal. Even when I first came to Parliament the divide
remained. How it has shrunk! In more recent years, of course, the bounds
have been set still wider, to embrace all the inhabitants of our country and
all classes of our society under an ANC government. But even now there are
hints of exclusion and new forms of discrimination.

There have certainly been setbacks, and some very saddening ones, on this
uphill road to unity. Nor could it be otherwise, in a country that is a
microcosm of those daunting questions of intergroup relations that have so
long troubled mankind. But today we can honour the men and women whose
guiding star was inclusion, and we can resolve to take up the work with even
greater energy and dedication now that "South Africa" is moving finally and
irreversibly in that direction. Even though new forms of discrimination
exist in the name of equity.

We lives in momentous times and we have traversed light years since 1977
when I first came to Parliament.

I am humbled but gratified by the thought that I have been allowed to play a
role in bringing together rather than rending apart. All my life I have
tried to build bridges inside and outside of this House. First between
English and Afrikaans speakers and now between all South Africans.

Currently I am trying to unite people under a common value system, Christian
democracy.

In looking back over the time I have spent at Parliament and my thoughts go
back to a cameo Merriman and Smuts. Smuts in an uncharacteristic mood of
black despair; confesses to Merriman that he feels like dropping politics
altogether. "Perhaps", he says "at bottom I do not believe in politics at
all as a means for the attainment of the highest ends". The older and wiser
John X gently reproves him: "Surely", he replies, "politics is not the
means, it is itself the highest end: not politics centering on the dreary
wrangles of the ins and outs, but the politics aimed at making a small city
great, and raising the whole life and character of every class in the
community. There can be no higher ambition nor any more worth object".

I have sought to be true to that noble deal.

May God Bless our State President, all of you, and all the leaders of this
land in these decisive years in the quest for the new South Africa.