STATEMENT BY HON.

UHURU KENYATTA & FAMILY ON ANC CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS

I am privileged and honored to be able to stand here on behalf of the late Mzee Jomo Kenyattas family and on my own behalf - to join South Africa, and people across the African nation in these centenary celebrations. To join in the joy as well as in the solemnity of this occasion: recognizing the many reasons why we are gathered here and embracing the deep sense of gravity that comes with these recollections. We feel, as many of you do, humbled at the opportunity to be a part of this moment that at once causes us to look back and stirs us to move forward and that reminds us once more that FREEDOM is always the culmination of struggle. Today, we join you all in acknowledging and honoring the ANC whose historical hallways are filled with the memories and memoirs and faces of individuals who acknowledged this fundamental truth. Who not only acknowledged but went on to experience its reality. Who were willing to sacrifice, to struggle, to endure hardship and trial, to live through unjust realities for the sake of a just cause that they believed in. For the sake of those ideals which humanity now protects and holds dear: justice, equality; autonomous self-rule. Today, with 100 years standing between our experiences and theirs, we must choose to pay them the deepest honour of all: the deepest show of gratitude that any one of us can muster. The most respectful and dutiful homage we are able to offer. We, as peoples across this continent must continue in those ideals that they fought for and that they longed to pass on as a torch to future generations. We must not only speak of them, we must act on them and find every opportunity to do so. And we must remember what they achieved. It is our duty, as those who benefited from their sacrifices, as those who choose to learn from rather than be mocked by history, to try to feel as so many of them, those commendable and formidable heros, felt, the deep privilege of being able to hold our destinies in our own hands.

The weight of great responsibility that comes with holding those fragile futures that we once could only look upon with seemingly unfounded hope, but which we, many of us, now can reach for with surety: because we know it is possible. It is our duty to recollect some of those stirrings that caused them to strive for something they were often unsure they would live to see. This is our duty, and our honour, and if we live up to it: it will be our tremendous achievement. We must attempt such great feats because the reality is that though those great and crucial struggles against imperialism were fought and overcome we must remember that across this continent, there are still struggles that demand that we rise up and raise not only our peaceful placards of protest but our voices and not only voices, but our genuine and concerted efforts, our minds and our abilities for the sake of freedom. We must acknowledge that there are still tyrants that warrant our fierce opposition: tyrants like unemployment which have dictated the lives of so many of our youth, which have suppressed their potential and disallowed their progress. Which have, by extension, crippled our own economic progress and productivity because at the end of the day a problem felt by some people somewhere within a nation, and even within a continent, is felt by all. We must know that there is still oppression that commands our attention and calls for our deliberate action. For is it not oppression, to have men and women and children who are still today unable to access medical services? Is it not oppression and great tragedy for a peoples to live under the very kind of leadership that those in the ANC struggled not to have? We know that these, and other struggles are a reality. That there are still other freedoms to be achieved. That to achieve these will take strength, dedication and commitment on the part of our people. On these points we must agree. As those who came before us were unified in their efforts we must be unified in agreement that this is the situation and this call, which was considered so worthy of response then, must take precedence with us now.

Let us continue to build on the freedom that was attained for the benefit of our people and for the sake of the generation which will be looking back 100 years from now. To the retired President and the face of this struggle, Nelson Mandela-Madiba, President Jacob Zuma, ANC and other liberation heroes and the people of South Africa we, the Kenyatta Family and the people of Kenya, salute you. Thank you and God Bless Africa Uhuru Kenyatta