We are the beneficiaries of a legacy of unity; we have been bequeathed with an illustrious history of deep intellectual reflection and consideration of the constructs of a modern development paradigm.
Our forebears who saw their roles and responsibilities as being to procure a future better than theirs, spent countless of unpaid hours imagining, dreaming and constructing a new world in which we had to live.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Pan-Africanism was conceived as a political project by a group of intellectuals and activists of African origin pursuant to the conditions of, among others, slavery and colonialism which necessitated that Africans on the continent and the Diaspora find ways and means to restore their true humanity.
Africans, notwithstanding wherever they would be in a given time, have always associated themselves with the continent as their ancestral homeland.
The Pan-Africanist project was therefore not only limited to physically reconnecting the people of African origin with their continent, but to ensure the restoration of dignity and freedom of Africans, the world over.
The accomplished Pan-African ideologues such as WEB Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and our own, Pixley Ka Isaka Seme, Prof Matthews, Robert Sobukwe and Steve Biko, wear the accolades of being trailblazers to a thought wh