Statement by His Excellency Joaquim Alberto Chissano, President of the Republic of Mozambique, Before the Combined House of Parliament, on 2 November 2004

The Right Honourable the Prime Minister

Honourable President of the Senate

Honourable Members of Parliament

Honourable Members of Government

Ladies and Gentlemen

We are greatly honoured for the kind invitation extended to us to visit this beautiful country and for the warm and unique hospitality accorded to me and my entourage.

We would like to greet most warmly the Members of the National Assembly and Honourable Members of Government and all dignitaries that are gathered here.

We are profoundly grateful for the rare privilege we were granted to say a few words on the occasion of this visit.

We bring you warm greetings and a message of appreciation from the Mozambican people to the brothers and sisters in Lesotho.

Madame Speaker;

 Honourable Prime Minister;

Ladies and Gentlemen

Within four weeks, the Mozambican people will elect a new leader following the elections scheduled for the 1st and 2nd December this year. Therefore, this is a singular occasion for me to bid farewell to the Government and people of this great Kingdom and to put on record my special acknowledgement and gratitude for the honour you have bestowed on me and on the Mozambican people through an honest and exemplary friendship. Because our bonds are extremely solid I can assuredly state that they will transcend generations and generations of leaders in our two countries, for, they constitute a valuable asset and heritage of both the Mozambican and the Basotho people.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

For eighteen years I have had the privilege to embody and to personify every success and blessing that results from the collective work of the Mozambican people as a whole. Indeed, as I address this august assembly, I am pleased to be associated to the peace we have been enjoying for twelve years now and to the positive developments that have occurred in virtually the whole of our country in the various domains of our life.

In the wake of this association and understanding, we had various citations and told words of praise and affection by ordinary people, eminent personalities and governments. In this very hall, we feel touched by the kind and friendly words that were addressed to us. They will stay engraved in our memories forever.

As this is the last opportunity I have to talk to Your Excellencies in my capacity as Head of State, please allow me to drift a little as I speak to you.

On 22 October I celebrated my 65th anniversary and, as I said then on that occasion I became the youngest among the elderly! I was wished well and received many gifts from relatives, friends and colleagues.

But of all the gifts there was one that touched me in a special way because of its emotional fervour as it was evocative of an important episode in my life. It was the cutting of an article from the Noticias, a daily newspaper of Mozambique dated 15 June 1950. In the article, the Negro Association Centre, a nationalist organisation in those days, was paying tribute to Eduardo Mondlane, who later would become the Founder and First President of Frelimo, as he was leaving to Lisbon to pursue his studies.

For reasons that I would only be able to understand later, my father would insistently force me to learn and give the correct interpretation of that piece of news. And whenever he would be with his friends he would ask me to repeat to them what I had learned from that article,  which I did accurately, to the surprise of many and his own pride and satisfaction. At the time I was eleven years old and my father wanted me to grow up with that image of the great Mozambican hero.

By a twist of destiny eleven years later, I got to know Eduardo Mondlane in person and work under his leadership for the freedom, self-determination and independence of our people.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

If I had not become today the President of Mozambique or if I had not gone through the path I did, the episode would not have any significance or importance.

It is important, at least for me, because it portrays Chissano as a child, who was not different from any other child. Today, as I am about to retire from public life and from the helm of my country, this is the image that I would like to leave behind, that of a simple and humble man, like anyone else, someone whose only destiny and historic processes have accorded the opportunity to serve the country. Like me and alongside me, many other comrades and citizens, some of whom are unsung heroes, have served our nation.

When in 1962 we embarked on the epic of national liberation, we were just a group of young Mozambicans like many others. We simply had the dream of one day becoming free and independent and of being us the subjects of such liberation process. We had been contaminated by the audacity of thinking about the unthinkable. It was as if we had had the vision of the promised land, a vision that was the foundation of our actions and which would catalyse our belief in the victory, in making the impossible possible.

An outstanding son of this country, Lesotho, would say that we were overwhelmed by naivety that was natural in the Africans, which make us belief in the impossible and inaccessible. As he would put it, it is this endowment that is at the root of our victories and achievements, even in the most trying circumstances.

This is how we conquered our independence. This is how we managed to defend and preserve it in the face of the ruthless aggression from our enemies, namely the apartheid regime and its destablisation war and other forms of subjugation and domination.

But the material expression of our philosophy and existence lies in our strong belief in unity, in the leading role of the people and in solidarity.

It is the strength of our just cause and the universal nature of the values that we advocate. In actual fact, it was the unity in our thinking and our actions that enabled us to defeat the attempts by colonialists to divide and fragment us.

It was in the everlasting strength of the people that we sought the inspiration and creativity to rejuvenate so as to be able to move forward. As leaders, we have adopted a leadership philosophy and style which consisted in being guided by the most legitimate interests and wishes of the people.

Thus, we have opted for s leadership posture that can be summarised in what a revolutionary said, something like: I am their leader, I follow them.

In solidarity we, often times, found the necessary  ingredient to season our struggle and in other occasions it was the lubricant to smoothen our march.

Because our cause was just and our values were universal, other people, from within and outside Africa understood our struggle and became sympathetic to it. They embraced our struggle as if it were their own.

Honourable Speaker of Parliament,

Honourable Prime Minister

Ladies and Gentlemen

There is nothing that reflects in a more vivid manner the triumph of our struggle that the African Union. Today, we are a big family of independent states aspiring to a more dignifying place in the community of nations, a place that is compatible with their greatness and magnanimity of their ideals and purposes.

The countries of our region can be proud for having contributed to the total emancipation of the continent and for having continued to fight for its consolidation and development.

In fact, it was here in Southern Africa and within SADC space that the most decisive battles were fought and led us to victory over colonialism and apartheid in Africa. With its new bodies, namely the Commission, the Peace and Security Council and the Pan-African Parliament, our organisation is equipped to yet again place Africa on the world map. In the face of the enormous challenges, old and new, with which our organisation is confronted, particularly concerning peace, stability and the implementation of NEPAD, a lot is expected from our region and from SADC.

The health of SADC is important to the Union, for it contributes 35% to the overall economy of the economy. NEPAD, in turn, can only materialise of its building blocks are prosperous and stable regions. therefore, the progress mad in the consolidation of our regional integration is very encouraging.

Today we are a community that has worked out very clearly the objectives it wants to achieve in the political and security field, and in the economic arena as reflected in the strategic Indicative Plan for the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation (SIPO) and in the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP), respectively.

Very recently, Lesotho was chairing the SADC Organ on Defence and Security Cooperation and we are highly grateful for your leadership.

Lesotho, together with Mozambique and South Africa share the huge responsibility of representing SADC in the Peace and Security Council, an important organ of the African Union responsible for the management of the continent's peace agenda. We are certain that your country will live up to its important role in this Organ.

A more effective Peace and Security Council has an important role to play in the search for solutions to the conflicts that ravage the continent like in the Darfur region and in Cot'e d'Ivoire, and also to ensure that the success achieved in Burundi, DRC, Liberia, Somalia and Sudan processes remain irreversible.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The destiny of our regional community depends on the fate of its members. Its credibility and prestige will be what its members will accord to the community. Fortunately, all countries of our region are enjoying a climate of peace and stability and they are in a steady process of consolidating democracy

The region is also showing encouraging levels of economic growth. the Kingdom of Lesotho is a case in point. With growth rates of around 5 %, it is successfully recovering from the political turmoil of 1998.

Having realised that violent and destructive confrontation is futile, the Basotho people found in the constructive dialogue, mutual tolerance and respect for the difference and diversity of opinion, the road to peace and stability,

Today, the people and the Government can focus on the implementation of their programme as reflected in Vision 2020.

This show of maturity of the Basotho people has brought it greatness. It is also a reason for joy in SADC, for, through its encouragement, it helped the Basotho to resolve for themselves a problem that was dividing them. We hope that this example of reconciliation will be an important benchmark for all of us, particularly to those in our region who are still treading the path of harmony and reconciliation.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As I retire from public life, after about 50 years serving my motherland, eighteen of which as a Head of State, I do so with a sense of mission accomplished. The march that our community has embarked upon towards total integration is irreversible.

SADC is today a solid community with an identity and personality of its own. It is looked upon as a serious and credible partners, with a robust and consistent agenda. Thus, it is imperative for us to do all we can to preserve this capital of trust and prestige.

Many challenges still lie ahead for us. The core challenge, however, is to transform the community of States that we have into a union of peoples. It is imperative that the peoples of our countries take ownership of the integration process and they should dictate the path it has to follow. To the capital of friendship and comradeship that exists among the present generation of leaders, thanks to the fact that they were comrades in arms, there is a need to add the sense of commonality of destiny.

As I sometimes like to say, we are like vital organs, either we live together or we die together. There is no other way.

We have to the challenge to eradicate once and for all violence from our midst. As we have witnessed violence and bloody wars in Southern Africa, we should turn peace and the culture of peace into the cornerstone of our domestic and external policy.

For us in Southern Africa, peace constitutes the foundation and pinnacle of democracy and the rule of law. We need to be vigilant so that we do not allow ourselves to be deceived.

We also must stop to rest when the time comes. To look at the break as a well deserved gift to someone who has done his or her work.

We further have the challenge to assure that those to whom we will hand over power will honour and revere the blood shed and the sacrifices made for us to achieve our independence.

We have the challenge to win the battle against poverty and underdevelopment which is associated with the successful implementation of NEPAD.

We also need to develop the capacity to manage and sustain our political processes, including the electoral processes and to consolidate the mechanisms to legitimise them.

Honourable Speaker of Parliament;

Honourable Prime Minister

Ladies and Gentlemen

Considering the experience I have gone through and having witnessed true acts of courage, heroic feats and determination displayed by us Africans, I am absolutely certain that we will successfully confront these challenges. We have survived slavery, we have defeated colonialism and apartheid, so there is no reason for us not to win the present battles. Not even the adverse effects of globalisation can stop the impetus of our march.

We have our everlasting reservoir that is our people's firm determination to triumph. We know that our cause is just and noble. We have the solidarity of those who share with us the universal ideals of justice, freedom, equality and equity. We also have this endless capacity to believe that only a blur boundary separates the possible from the impossible.

We believe that the impossible takes cover in the lack of faith in ourselves and faith in the inevitability of god over evil, of the just over the unjust, of freedom over subjugation and domination. Because we, Africans, have faith in all this, a faith that was built and consolidated during our difficult but heroic struggle, for us nothing is impossible.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Allow me to conclude by reiterating our profound gratitude for the kind invitation extended to us to visit this beautiful country, the Kingdom in the Sky. We wish the Government of Lesotho every success in the consolidation of democracy and in fostering the country's economic development.

Thank You

27 October 2004