The president of the republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, recalled this Wednesday his visit to South Africa, in his youth, during the apartheid regime, which he found “impressive and shocking”.
The head of state spoke to journalists in Johannesburg outside the Apartheid Museum, which he visited this Wednesday with the Prime Minister, António Costa, before meeting Portuguese emigrants and Portuguese descendants to celebrate Portugal Day.
“It is a visit that is particularly impressive to me. Firstly, because I represent a country whose country had been a colonial empire for centuries,” he stated.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said he had already made speeches in the Assembly of the Republic in which he took “responsibility for this colonialism”, with “everything that was negative”, noting: “This is very timely when visiting to a museum that has memories of the past here in South Africa, but those lessons are for the future”.
The president of the republic then recalled that as a young man he spent time in Mozambique – then an overseas province, of which his father, Baltazar Rebelo de Sousa, was governor-general between 1968 and 1970 – and that during that time he visited Africa do Sul, where the ‘apartheid regime’ of rational segregation had been in force since 1948.
“People have no idea what the ‘apartheid regime’ really was. It really has no parallel to what the colonial experience was like in Mozambique or Angola or in other Portuguese colonies at the time, because it was the total rigid segregation by races, there was no possibility of circulation in the territory,” he said.
The head of state stressed that “everything from public transport, schools to hospital structures was defined on the basis of race, not just political participation”.
“That was so shocking, even to those who thought they were witnessing the end of the Portuguese Empire, that it seemed impossible, unlikely that such a regime existed,” he added.
Costa talks about projects to preserve the historical memory of the dictatorship and fight for freedom
The Prime Minister stressed that Portugal will have two new spaces to preserve its historical memory, the National Museum of the Resistance, in the Peniche fortress, and the 25 de Abril Interpretative Center in Lisbon.
“It is very important to preserve the historical memory. As the guide told us, [o ator John Kani] itself a victim of Apartheid, it is essential that the new generations, children and young people know what happened,” the leader of the Portuguese government stressed in statements to journalists at the end of an hour-long visit to the Apartheid museum .
“It will be the future museum of the struggle for the liberation of Angola. And this is a way to celebrate this dual liberation struggle: liberation through democracy and the end of colonialism,” he stressed.
Afterwards, the Prime Minister pointed out that the future Interpretive Center 25 de Abril, in Lisbon, is a project that will be financed by the state.
“We are going to transfer the facilities currently used by the Ministry of the Interior, in Praça do Comércio. It will be a project directly implemented by the Associação 25 de Abril. It will be a remarkable moment of April 25”, emphasized he.
Also according to António Costa, the National Museum of Resistance will be inaugurated next year, which will be built in the fortress of Peniche”.
“It will tell the history of the resistance against the dictatorship, from 1926 to April 25, 1974,” he stressed.
Of his visit to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, accompanied by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, António Costa highlighted the images of the old South African school, in which black children were not entitled to chairs or a desk, as the most striking moment. , and they learned sitting on the floor or on their knees.
“It was very moving to see the concrete features of discrimination. Apartheid was reflected in the smallest things in a person’s life, like when a child enters school,” he added.
Source: DN
