President Cyril Ramaphosa: Eulogy at reinterment of Philemon Pearce Dumalisile Nokwe

Eulogy by President Cyril Ramaphosa at the reinterment of Mr Philemon Pearce Dumalisile Nokwe

Programme Director, 
The family of Duma Nokwe,
Ministers and Deputy Ministers,
Members of Parliament,
Leadership of the African National Congress,
Leadership of the Alliance,
Stalwarts and veterans of the liberation struggle,
Members of the legal fraternity,
Religious and community leaders,
Comrades and friends,

Good Morning,

Today is a solemn occasion. It is a moment both of sadness and joy.

It is a homecoming of one of our own, one of the finest sons of our soil, who gave everything for the liberation of South Africa and her people.

Duma Nokwe: leader, brother, comrade in arms, Mkhonto, welcome home.

We are here to receive you as your comrades, as your compatriots, to the free South Africa of your dreams.

We inter you at your final resting place alongside your beloved wife, Mrs Vuyiswa Malangabi-Nokwe.

Today is not as we would have wished it to be.

We would have wished to receive you home in life.

We would have wanted to be there, in our great numbers, as you stepped back on South African soil.

Yet we cannot turn history’s tide.

We cannot erase the great indignity to which you were subjected, taking your last breath in exile, far from a home to which you could not return.

The poet Breyten Breytenbach called exile “the elsewhere that cannot be reached”.

It remains a source of great sadness that Duma Nokwe passed away in exile.

He never got to set foot on the soil of a liberated, democratic South Africa.

Many, many more of our brave men and women were pursued, persecuted and hunted down by those who had exiled them.

Others were tortured and killed and lie buried in unmarked graves.

Advocate Duma Nokwe, you have returned to your people in the quiet dignity of death.

You bring with you the spirits of our many other fallen heroes.

As we pay tribute to you today, we honour them too.

They were denied the right to return in life, but today we break their exile and inter their spirits in the land for which they gave their all.

Duma Nokwe dedicated his life to the liberation of South Africa from the tyranny of apartheid.

He was a youth activist who rose to become the Secretary General of the African National Congress.

The apartheid regime tried in vain to thwart his activism.

He was jailed, banned and restricted.

He was dismissed as a teacher for his involvement in the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign.

Yet nothing could crush his spirit nor temper his determination.

He decided to enter the legal profession, believing in the power of the law as a shield for the vulnerable, as an instrument of change.

He entered a profession that was designed to exclude black people.

And yet he persevered, becoming the first black advocate to be admitted to the Johannesburg Bar.

The late George Bizos said that Duma Nokwe’s admission to the bar was a moment that cracked the façade of white legal supremacy.

Even as he reached this pinnacle, the regime continued to hound him, refusing to allow him to take chambers with his white colleagues in Johannesburg.

He would not be cowed.

He used his legal skills to defend those who stood up against tyranny.

In Long Walk to Freedom, President Nelson Mandela describes how, after the declaration of the state emergency in 1960, Duma Nokwe became both a defendant and the advocate for the defence in the treason trial.

This was after the lawyers from the defence team decided to withdraw in protest against the harassment they were facing from the authorities.

Duma Nokwe and Madiba helped the accused to conduct their own defence.

Of the trial, Madiba wrote: “Our case was far more than a trial of legal issues between the Crown and a group of people charged with breaking the law. It was a trial of strength, a test of power of a moral idea versus an immoral one.”

Duma Nokwe’s legal expertise was brought to bear in shaping the views of the liberation movement around constitutionalism and democracy.

He was a mentor to young black lawyers, and today this noble legacy lives on with the Duma Nokwe Group, the advocates’ chambers.

In recognition of the eminent position he occupied in the legal profession, we have posthumously conferred the silk status of senior counsel on Advocate Duma Nokwe.

In doing so, we are correcting a grave injustice done to one of our foremost legal practitioners.

We are making a declaration that his legal legacy did not end in exile, nor does it end today.

We are confirming our belief in his conviction that the law is to be used not merely to secure courtroom victories, but to achieve profound, lasting change.

In court, Duma Nokwe was an advocate for justice.

Outside the court, in the streets of our nation, in the capitals of the world, he was a respected and beloved advocate for freedom.

His voice – emphatic, compelling and sincere – resonated as powerfully through the halls of the United Nations as it did across the airwaves of Radio Freedom.

He wielded his words as instruments of liberation.

He sought to persuade, to empower and to inspire.

As a person, as an activist, as a leader, he was known for his humility and understanding, for his integrity and his unyielding commitment to the cause of humanity.

As he returns to the soil from which he was born, let us embrace all that Duma Nokwe represented and embodied.

At this time, when we strive to make a fundamental break with the many ghosts of our past, let us hold to the values that defined him and that make us so unique as a people: courage, empathy, understanding, tolerance.

We still have many more journeys to undertake. Our freedom is not yet fully formed.

Let us affirm that as South Africans we are all of the same soil.

We will never renege on the promise of equality, justice and freedom for all, as promised by our Constitution.

We will continue to build a South Africa in which no-one – neither black nor white, neither woman nor man – feels themselves a pariah in the land of their birth.

We owe this to the spirit and legacy of the great Duma Nokwe, who stood for non-racialism throughout his life.

Like many of his time, he cherished a dream he never got to see fulfilled.

It is incumbent on us, the living, to ensure that the legacy of Duma Nokwe lives on.

May his spirit rise. May it guide us in the hard work that lies ahead and may it inspire us.

Duma Nokwe was a revolutionary. He was a servant of the people. He was a man of unwavering principle, of great courage and of unmatched selflessness.

As we honour Duma Nokwe today, let us rededicate ourselves to fulfilling his dream of a non-racial, non-sexist South Africa that will forever remain democratic and free.

Hamba Kahle, Mkhonto. Rest in eternal peace.

I thank you.