In their normal weekly meeting, held yesterday, March 29, 2010, at the ANC Head Office in Luthuli House, the officials of the ANC did a detailed analysis of the current political environment, with particular reference to the emerging racial polarization of our society. In their analysis, the Officials came to the conclusion that the hot debate about the freedom struggle song is a manifestation of a society that has not come to terms with itself. We are dealing with a society that wants to wish its own history away by picking up on any petty issue that trigger disagreement and conflict. Irritation resulting from pronouncements made by the ANCYL President from time to time is elevated to defining how our society should be shaped. The debate about one of the many liberation songs is dealing with symptoms rather than the real issues that need our attention.

The officials of the ANC expressed concern about the determination by some interest groups use of courts over political issues and to seek to eradicate our proud history and heritage through unenforceable judgements such as declaring the struggle songs as unconstitutional. The struggle for our freedom was declared as just by the entire world, it is apartheid that was declared evil against humanity. Going through the judgement by the South Gauteng High Court we were even more worried to find that the applicant and the respondent are belonging to the same organization, but differ on technicalities of the case. It appears to us that an artificial contestation was created to arrive at a pre-determined outcome.

In view of the above the ANC: -

Will appeal the judgement and seek to get a more correct constitutional interpretation of the many liberation struggle songs which form a big and important part of our history.

• Will file an application to the equality court to test whether the publicly announced "prosecute Malema campaign" by the Freedom Front constitutes real hate speech or not.

We also reminded ourselves that part of our ugly history is that when the rightwing groups started an aggressive propaganda about individual members of our movement in the past such members ended up being assassinated. We are hoping that there is no attempt to create such an environment around the young man, Malema, irrespective of the irritation we may be having with him.

• The announcement by the Pan African Congress Youth that Malema will be found either in hospital or in the mortuary is not just hate speech but a public declaration of the intention to kill. The ANC takes it very seriously and expect law enforcement agencies to follow this threat through.

• Welcomes the appropriate approach used by a group of journalists who have directly approached the ANC with a complaint regarding the spokesperson of the ANCYL, and that complaint will be attended to immediately.

We will participate in any initiatives aimed at preserving our history and heritage as a country and a nation. We must own our history and heritage whether good or bad. We must talk more about the genocide against the Khoi San, the wars of dispossession, and the concentration camps during the South African war. We must be more open about the longest struggle for freedom carried out by the oldest liberation movement in the continent and the various phases thereof. We must accept that thirty years of this struggle had armed insurrection as one of the pillars. During this phase of the struggle songs that capture the mood and the moment were sung to mobilize our people to be part of determining their own future. These songs cannot be regarded as hate speech or unconstitutional. Any judgement that describes them as such is impractical and unimplementable.

We must all come together and discuss ways and means of preserving this history and heritage, cautious enough to avoid offending each other. In this process there must be no group that will project itself as having the monopoly of victimhood. We must strive to link the Freedom Park and the Voortrekkerhoogte monuments into a single precinct. We must systematically own all our history and heritage and undo the appropriation of parts of our history and heritage to individual nationalities in the country. We are a single nation that must work together in building our country. Easy legal victories by any grouping in society will further polarize our society. All the institutions must make a positive contribution in this process rather than artificially using tensions in society to argue for "independence".

We believe that all of us, as South Africans, including institutions created to uphold our democracy, can learn a lot from the thought that informed the crafting of our National Anthem.

Statement issued by Gwede Mantashe, African National Congress secretary general, March 30 2010

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