Sortu offered an homage to Nelson Mandela this past Sunday in Donostia. The following are the words spoken by Hasier Arraiz, president of Sortu.
Sortu wishes to give homage to Nelson Mandela in full, to the complete revolutionary, without hiding any part of his figure, or of his journey. For that, in the first place, we want to remember the people and above all the most vulnerable who have been the main point of his thought and his actions. Until his final days, through his foundation, throughout the world, but especially in Africa, he worked to improve the life of those who lived in the worst conditions and of those who found themselves under the threat of AIDS.
This commitment with the people, this commitment against injustice, became a political commitment in his youth. That's how he began to participate in the mobilizations against Apartheid, that's how he began to take part in the assemblies of the ANC, and in that way the defence of the blacks of South Africa, he decided to practice the armed struggle. Yes, it is often hidden, but the man who received the Nobel Peace Prize, founded and led the armed organization Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).
His commitment to his people led him to prison, suffering 27 years in captivity in very harsh conditions. Then, not only for the segregationist government of Johannesburg, but for almost all of the supposed western democracies Nelson Mandela was nothing more than a terrorist prisoner. But when he left the prison at Robben Island he already had all the force of a myth that never repented any part of his militant trajectory. If Nelson Mandela had been Basque and had been incarcerated in a Spanish prison, without a doubt, he would have left prison in these days with the abolition of the so-called Parot Doctrine, but never before that.
Of course you also can't forget that he promoted and led national reconciliation. He was a great leader who knew how to convert all South Africans into victors with the peace process and democratic normalization. He taught us that in spite of the immense difficulties, even in the most ferocious conflicts you can disarm and come to the negotiating table.
We also want to make the long walk to freedom made by Madiba. In the Basque Country, as in South Africa, the time for the armed struggle has ended. But the path to national reconciliation still needs to be done. The scenario of peace and of a true democratic coexistence, in which all political projects can be debated and realized in an equality of conditions, still hasn't been achieved. Having Nelson Mandela, the ANC and the people of South Africa as an example, we also have the firm will to cover in the Basque Country the long walk that will make all Basque citizens victors. It is for that that we must continue struggling, without giving up, covering the path to freedom, daily liberating our country and ourselves.
The Basque Country isn't South Africa, EH Bildu isn't the ANC, Sortu isn't the South African Communist Party and of course Arnaldo Otegi isn't Nelson Mandela. But we can't avoid expressing that in the collective imagination of many people in the Basque Country underlies the dream that, here as there, we can someday see the time when today he who is a political prisoner will be the president (Lehendakari) of a free and independent Basque Country.
Meanwhile, we will continue advancing slowly on the path to freedom, searching for the place of this small country in the world. Madiba the entire person, Madiba the complete revolutionary taught us, to everyone that by changing our country we want to help change the world, that everything is impossible until it is done. Let us then do today what up to now was impossible.