As I reflect on the life of Sally Motlana, a political activist, educationalist, and a church activist, I wish to borrow the words of another great black woman of ages, Maya Angelou.
The words of the poet and writer par excellence are: “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour and some style.”
I wish to add that if Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was the mother of the nation, it is an accolade, by force of reason, she ought to share with Sally Motlana, who died last week at the age of 96 – four years short of concluding a century.
As former ANC Youth League leader of the early 1950s, mama Motlana’s paths crossed daily with those of Madikizela-Mandela, who in the words of the biblical Hebrew expression “has gone the way of all the earth”, dying in 2018 at the age of 82 after a short illness.
A gigantic struggle icon, who at the University Fort Hare rubbed shoulders with the cream of black political stalwarts, including the likes of Nelson Mandela, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, and Nthato Motlana, her late former husband, a medical doctor and political icon who played a sterling role in the liberation struggle.
Not only that. Mama Motlana’s political life was inspired and influenced in large measure by the highly esteemed and respected cleric Trevor Huddleston of the Community Resurrection – an Anglican prelate who immersed himself in the politics of the ANC, becoming its paid-up member.
He was the author of Naught for Your Comfort, a book depicting the injustices of apartheid which, in its clarion call, among other things, demanded the church to take political posture to fight an evil system that was far from being godly and just.
Huddleston argued to the end of his life that the church must seek the reign of God within political and economic systems – which is to be part of the hurly-burly of political life, and part of a political community that commits itself to changing an unjust political system through revolutionary methods, if needs be.
He belonged to a political organisation whose leader at the time, Oliver Tambo, resorted to armed struggle through the military wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe, because peaceful methods of persuading the apartheid system to grant human rights to black people had failed.
The just war theory, espoused by Tambo under the tutelage of the ANC and under a properly established authority, justified the armed struggle Tambo sought, as a last resort to change the status quo in an oppressed country such as South Africa.
It is that organisation Mama Motlana joined and prosecuted its ideals of bringing about fundamental changes in an unjust society whose discriminatory policies against black people were inspired by a deep sense of evil and hatred of black people, and not recognising their worth and their human dignity.
Mama Motlana became a proud member of that organisation and we could surmise that she was urged on by his spiritual mentor Huddleston to be on the side of justice by waging the people’s struggle under the wing of the ANC for the liberation of black people.
We go back to where we started. The words of Maya Angelou beckon, and these mama Motlana embraced. To end our reflection, we repeat them: “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour and some style.”
She possessed all the attributes Maya Angelou refers to.
Tomorrow, on Monday, mama Motlana will be laid to rest at the Fourways cemetery in Johannesburg after a requiem mass at the All Saints Anglican Church in Fourways.
Requiescat in pace, mama Motlana.
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