Durban — Former eThekwini Municipality city manager Dr Michael Sutcliffe reflected on and remembered those heroes who fought for freedom during apartheid, in his speech after receiving a prestigious Honorary Doctorate from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville Campus, on Tuesday.
Sutcliffe said his political consciousness developed and he became an activist from the 1970s. He added that when he became a young adult he started realising black people were being “consciously hidden” and even when they were present, they had no voice. When he was a student, this awareness started to shift. He recalled the 1973 workers’ strike in Durban and when he joined just before entering the university, as being what drove him to fight for freedom against apartheid.
Sutcliffe said that was the year of mass arrests and banning.
“Steve Biko, later brutally killed, and many Saso (South African Student Organisation) leaders, including Mzala, Paul Pretorius and Nusas leaders, and Rick Turner, a senior lecturer, later also assassinated,” he said.
“I knew then that student leadership was infiltrated and my instincts were correct and as I saw the repression of the apartheid state, even the infiltration into the white student structures of the SRC. Later when I returned from studying into Planning, we had to pretty much force the then vice-chancellor to not allow the return of a student spy to our programme”, said Dr Sutcliffe
Sutcliffe encouraged South Africans to never give up fighting for freedom.
“In fighting for freedom one must never be distracted by chihuahuas yapping at one’s heels. Stick with your ideas, your programmes, your love, your excellence. Try not to be distracted, and if you are distracted, learn from that and readjust, but stay true to yourself,” Sutcliffe said.
Sutcliffe thanked his parents for all the sacrifice and hardships they endured. He was the first sibling in his family to get a degree. Sutcliffe thanked friend and business partner in City Insight (Pty) Ltd, Sue Bannister, and his teachers, including Cletus Mzimela, who had no formal education except what he got in 15 years on Robben Island. Sutcliffe also remembered Soobs Moonsammy.
“I must particularly thank those I still see in the empty seats today, including the young people who were brutally killed during apartheid and with whom I worked along the way so that we could have freedom. Many of them would be graduates today too if the apartheid state did not exist,” Sutcliffe said.
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