Dr Obasanjo’s insight welcomed

• Published date: 23 March 2023
• Publication title: Daily News

In being the servant of us, as the people of Africa, for so many decades, His Excellency has hardly any peers. It is humbling indeed to have such an eminent and respected African leader accept the invitation to deliver this inaugural lecture. More so because the invitation did not come from me, I would have been very shy to approach His Excellency to speak about our friendship, about the work I have done to secure liberty, democracy, and justice, and about so much that he has done to serve all of us as people of Africa

However, the coard of the Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi Foundation invited His Excellency to speak and received his kind confirmation before they informed me of this wonderful news! Of course, I was delighted not only by the prospect of hearing His Excellency’s wisdom but by the opportunity to see him again.

We were last in one another’s company at His Excellency’s 82nd birthday, in Ogun State, Nigeria, in March 2019, when he invited me to deliver a lecture hosted by the Centre for Human Security and Dialogue of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library. The theme I was given for that lecture was: “Colonialism, Apartheid, Freedom and South Africa Rising”.

Even with a broad theme like that, I know how difficult it is to condense everything that could be said into the few things that must be said. I therefore applaud His Excellency for giving us pearls of wisdom. What he said here today is exactly what needs to be said and what we need to hear. Let us take heed and consider how South Africa might benefit from the renewed perspective we have been offered.

I have been tremendously blessed in these twilight years of my life to spend time with several of the great men and women with whom I engaged Africa’s liberation struggle. In the very year that His Excellency Dr Obasanjo invited me to Nigeria again, I was invited by His Royal Highness Inkosi Yama Nkosi Mpezeni IV of Zambia to attend the 2019 Nc’wala Traditional Ceremony.

During that visit, arrangements were made for me to meet again with His Excellency, former President Kenneth Kaunda, in Lusaka. Looking back now, I thank the Almighty for His intervention, for not only would the Covid-19 pandemic shut down international travel just months after these trips, but there would sadly not be another opportunity for me to see the late Dr Kenneth Kaunda.

President Kaunda is revered by all here for the risks and sacrifices that he and the people of Zambia made for our liberation. It is wonderful to...