REMARKS BY ANC TREASURER-GENERAL MATHEWS PHOSA IN CAPE TOWN TO MARK THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RELEASE OF NELSON MANDELA FROM PRISON, FEBRUARY 11 2010

1. When Mandela left Polsmoor prison 20 years ago, and walked free, the whole of the oppressed South Africa walked behind him from the darkness of incarceration to the light of freedom.

2. His own imprisonment 27 years before captured and reflected the physical, mental and intellectual chains that held down the majority of our nation for many decades.

3. When our former president walked away from prison, however, he immediately taught us one of the most important lessons of great leadership, namely:

4. Do not let the trauma of the past pull you backwards,

5. Rather let the energy and allure of a better future pull you forward.

6. He also taught us that forgiveness means making your former enemies and adversaries your partners in South Africa incorporated.

7. He taught and lived the example that love will always conquer hate.

8. It is unique for a person to be inaugurated as President a little more than four years after being released from prison.

9. It is further unique for one of the most revered sons of the globe to walk away from power after a mere five years as President of the Republic of South Africa.

10. It takes a unique person to create space for other leaders to emerge and find their own specific spaces of excellence within the leadership of both the ANC and the country.

11. What did we learn from this great man:

• Your enemies can and should be persuaded into becoming your partners
• The future is a better motivator than the past
• Leadership is a privilege to be handled and managed carefully, and not a right
• Leaders should always create room for others to emerge as equally strong leaders
• Always impose peace on violence, not the other way around
• We are all accountable to those that elect us, and we owe them the opportunity granted to us-by the democratic vote, to govern.

12. Mandela set the stage for us as political actors to change a hideous past into better future.

13. We must recreate the passion with which he declared that a free South Africa is something that he live for, but was willing to die for.

14. We must search for that energy inherent in that willingness to die, but this time for better housing, improved healthcare, more and sustainable jobs, a safer neighborhood and a cleaner environment.

15. We cannot become complacent, fat and content.

16. When one looks at the fact that we have been free for almost sixteen years, it is less than the time that this great visionary spent in jail.

17. We owe him more than our liberation, all of us, black and white, we owe him the utmost dedication to make South Africa a better country to live in.

18. We owe him, finally, as leaders to work towards a future that is vastly better and safer than the past we were liberated from-starting with his release in 1994.

19. We honour a great man, a great leader, the father of our nation, but we also honour his vision of a united, reconciled and strong South Africa.

I thank you.

Statement issued by the African National Congress, February 11 2010

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