The life of the dead is placed in the memories of the living. We will continue to remember and emulate the exemplary leadership of our heroes who died in the Central African Republic.

Over the weekend our entire nation took the long journey to accompany the mortal remains of our sons who died during the African Union peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic to their final resting place. The memories of these heroes of our nation who died in combat wearing the glorious boots and uniform of our National Defense Force hoisting the beautiful flag of our Republic, will forever inspire the generations of mankind to come. They are the true national heroes of our Republic.

We the African people believe that the dead remain living on our side. We are a society of the living and the dead. We believe that the immortal spirit of these heroic sons of our soil will rise again each dawn, inspiring our people to continue with their determination to make our country and the continent a better place for humanity. Their immortal spirit will forever presides over the solidarity of the working class struggles across the world against imperialism and neo colonialism.

The best homage we can pay to these extraordinary brave young men of our Republic is to emulate their noble ideas and convictions they lived and volunteered their lifes for. We should emulate their noble ideals of taking forward the struggles for the total liberation of the people of our continent and the world, the struggles for the socio economic transformation of the living conditions of the people of our continent and the struggles for the unity and cohesion of our people as a precondition for the successes of our continent.

Our national democratic revolution is traversing the most difficult epoch in its history. Counter revolution and infantile disorder is at its determination to undermine the tremendous achievements we have accomplished. Imperialism and international monopoly capital is manipulating some of our prodigal sons and naked opportunists such as our former Minister of defense force and now the beleaguered President of the Congress of the People Mr Mosioa Terror Lekota, to choose the path of plunging confusion amongst our people into believing that humanity can live a future which is not sure of its today. 

Our culture fears and respect the dead and their families. We do not expect a leader of his calibre or any other individual of high moral values to choose the path of self aggrandizement and triumphalism at the expense of the grief of our people. He has proven himself to be an embodiment representing the worst form of populist opportunism of the 21 century. 

The painful period of our national mourning has exposed  him as such an insensitive demagogue that can rise to the occasion and become an instant hero out of the carcasses of our dead. The future will remember him as the worst opportunist of his own kind who can stand on the shoulders of the dead to elevate and satisfy his selfish personal glory. 

I am sure that the mortal remains of our martyrs whom we have accompanied to their final resting place, will reverberate from their graveside upon hearing the insinuations from Mr Terror Lekota, that the noble cause that inspired them to be selfless and true patriots of our Republic, was a worthless end. 

The history of our country will prove him wrong to have been amongst our prodigal sons who joined forces with counter revolution, to destroy the seedbed that our heroic sons who died at the Central African Republic and many others elsewhere in the different parts of the world, nourished with blood for the sake of their own people.

As the former Minister of Defense and a member of the executive council, he has taken an oath that he shall serve the people of our country and the constitution with integrity and loyalty. He has taken an oath that he will never betray the constitution and the democratic values and principles of our country.  His distortions of the true historical facts about the memorandum of understanding he signed between our country and the Central African Republic is an act tantamount to treason.

This is indeed an act in contrast to a man who has always paraded himself with the artificial audacity that he commands, teaching us about the moral values of our constitution, the principles of freedom charter and the noble principles of high morals values he always boost to be emulating the father of our revolution Tata Nelson Mandela. 

He is the custodian of the memorandum of understanding that he signed on behalf of our Republic and the Central African Republic. His signature to the memorandum giving way for the bilateral agreement on exchange of defense expertise between the two countries, on behalf of our Republic, represents the executive council he served under oath, our constitution and therefore the trust of the people of our country.

It is myopic of him to think that he can rebuke the existing bilateral agreement between our country and the Central African Republic, based on the unscientific premise of the number of troops deployed from the time of his signature of the MOU and today. He cannot therefore manipulate the interpretation of the spirit of the memorandum of understanding because of the different circumstances dictated by the essence of the current time and space. Our revolution is in a constant state of a scientific motion guided by prevailing material conditions of the time.

It is therefore absurd of him to think that the memorandum of understanding between the two countries become correct in so far as only his personal involvement in the process is concerned. The primary thrust of the need for our country and other countries of the continent to assist the army of the Central African Republic, in line with the directive of the African Union still exist. In other words the implementation of the memorandum of understanding he himself signed on behalf of the republic and many others elsewhere will continue to exist with or without him.

What he does not understand in his journey of discovering himself as the most abstract aspirant leader we ever imagined, is that ours is a revolution embedded on the foundations of scientific realities. His narrow and selective interpretation of our constitution and the unfolding world events, reflects his feeble intellectual outlook to the objective material conditions affecting the people of our country and the continent.

Phatse Justice Piitso is the former Ambassador to the Republic of Cuba and the former provincial Secretary of the SACP writing this article on his personal capacity.

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