Mbeki lauds Botswana for SA liberation

GOTHATAONE MOENG
Staff Writer | Monday May 14, 2012 00:00

 

Botswana was then 'a vital bridge' between apartheid South Africa and liberated Africa, as well as the rest of the world, Mbeki said. He was in Gaborone Friday night at the invitation of the Sir Ketumile Masire Foundation.

Mbeki reminisced about the symbolic first international match the South African football team played after its re-admission into FIFA in 1991 against the Zebras in Gaborone at the National Stadium in 1992. 'A few of us drove from Johannesburg to witness this historic but friendly game, which I think the Botswana team lost, but whose intent and spirit had little to do with sporting prowess and everything to do with what I have said - about Botswana serving as the bridge in the historic transition from apartheid in South Africa to African liberation,' he said at the foundation's annual fundraising dinner.

Mbeki said the spirit of the game enabled Batswana and South Africans to celebrate the imminent liberation of the latter from the apartheid government. Mbeki, who said he feels linked to Gaborone by an 'unbreakable umbilical cord', said he first came to the city almost 50 years ago as part of a group of young students en-route to Tanganyika, Tanzania.

'Thus I will forever refuse that anybody should separate me from this city and the sister African people of Botswana who constructed it, and according to what I have said, who therefore also made it possible for us to achieve our liberation,' he said. 

He mentioned the role of the former Botswana Commissioner of Police, Simon Hirschfeld, who in 1976 in collaboration with the ANC, made clandestine arrangements for Steve Biko, who was then restricted to King Williamstown, to fly into Gaborone to meet Oliver Tambo, who had been invited to Botswana's 10th Independence celebrations.

Although the operation was not successful, Mbeki said this shows that Botswana played a critical role in the struggle to end apartheid. 'We can truthfully say that thanks to the principled and courageous leadership provided by Sir Ketumile Masire and others, Botswana stands out as one of the important African architects of the new democratic South Africa.'

Mbeki said Masire refused to be intimidated into turning his back on the struggle for a liberated South Africa. He called Masire a 'tried and tested fighter' for the freedom of African people continent-wide. Mbeki said the African Union and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in recognising that Masire is 'an invaluable asset', selected him to chair the Panel of Eminent Persons to investigate the 1994 Rwandan genocide, to facilitate the Inter-Congolese negotiations and to help various political formations in Lesotho to end the trend under which the country regularly experienced mutinies by security forces after general elections.

The Sir Ketumile Masire Foundation was founded by Masire and his wife, Lady Olebile Masire in 2007 to contribute towards the socio-economic and political developments of Botswana and the sub-region.