Pretoria, July 3, 2026

Your Excellency Ambassador Wu Peng, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to South Africa;

Your Excellency, Cde Kgalema Motlanthe, Former President of the Republic of South Africa;

Cde David Makhura, Member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress;

Cde Snuki Zikalala, President of the ANC Veterans League;

Cde Ben Martins, Secretary of International Affairs and Relations of the South African Communist Party;

Cde Chris Malematja, Deputy Chairperson of the South African National Civic Organization;

Dr Naledi Pandor, Former Minister of International Relations and Cooperation; 

Excellencies, Ambassadors and members of the Diplomatic Corps present; Leaders of our Alliance partners, SACP, COSATU and SANCO,

Distinguished guests, 

Comrades and compatriots,

It is a profound honour to stand before you today, to join the Communist Party of China and the people of the People's Republic of China in celebrating one hundred and five years since the founding of the Party in 1921.

On behalf of the President of the African National Congress, President Cyril Ramaphosa, the National Executive Committee, and the entire membership of our movement, I bring warm and revolutionary greetings to President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China.

One hundred and five years is a testament to conviction, to sacrifice, and to the extraordinary capacity of an organised people to bend the arc of history toward justice.

The CPC in its 105-year history has built a China that today feeds one-fifth of humanity, has lifted eight hundred million people out of poverty, and stands as a pillar of a more balanced, multipolar world. The journey of the CPC is one of the greatest political achievements of the modern era. There is an ancient Chinese saying: “when drinking water, remember the source.” Today, as the ANC joins the CPC in celebrating this important anniversary, we remember the source of our friendship.

Comrades, the friendship between the African National Congress and the Communist Party of China is one forged in the trenches of struggle. When our movement was banned, when our leaders were on Robben Island, when the apartheid regime hunted our cadres across the frontline states, the Communist Party of China and the People's Republic of China stood with us. You stood with us openly and materially. Providing us with training, resources, and above all political solidarity, at a time when many others hesitated, or looked away, or actively armed our oppressors.

That solidarity was grounded on principle. It flowed from a shared understanding that the liberation of the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America from colonialism and imperialism was one struggle, indivisible. It flowed from the Bandung spirit, from the traditions of the Non-Aligned Movement, and from an unshakeable belief that a better world is not only necessary but possible.

We remember, too, that our own President, Comrade Nelson Mandela, spoke often and warmly of what China meant to him during the long dark years of his imprisonment. In his own words:

“China is the spiritual pillar which helps me survive the days in Robben Island prison.”

Those were not the words of a diplomat. They are the words of a prisoner of conscience, drawing strength across the oceans from a people who had themselves been humiliated by imperialism and had risen — as Chairman Mao Zedong declared in 1949 — to stand up. Madiba understood, as we understand today, that the friendship of the Chinese people is a friendship of the soul.

Comrades, the Communist Party of China has, over one hundred and five (105) years, offered the world more than an example of national development. It has offered an existential principle that each nation has the right to choose their own path, in accordance with their own conditions and their own history, and that no external power has the right to dictate that path. This is a principle the ANC embraces without qualification.

We have watched, with admiration and we have studied, the strides China has taken. The complete eradication of extreme poverty by 2021 is a feat unprecedented in human history. The building of the world's largest high-speed rail network. The leadership of China in renewable energy, in electric mobility, in artificial intelligence, and in the technologies that will define the twenty-first century. And through the Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilisation Initiative, China is offering the Global South real, practical partnerships. Partnerships built on mutual respect, not conditionality.

For South Africa, and for our continent, these partnerships have translated into infrastructure, into industrial capacity, into scholarships and skills, and into a growing chorus of African voices in the reformed institutions of global governance. The BRICS family, expanded and strengthened, is one visible expression of this new dispensation in which the Global South is no longer merely beneficiaries of aid, but key players in global commerce and governance.

South Africa and China have entered an All-Round Strategic Cooperative Partnership in the New Era. That must not remain a beautiful phrase in a joint statement. It must become a living programme of practical cooperation.

It must become a factory floor in South Africa. It must become a rail line that connects our cities and communities. It must become a port that moves our cargo to all corners of the world. It must become advanced manufacturing, technology innovation, energy security, food security, skills for young people, opportunities for women, and jobs that the next chapter of South Africa-China relations must be felt by the unemployed graduate, the township entrepreneur, the woman farmer, the young artisan, the factory worker, the student, the scientist and the child who deserves a future.

The African National Congress does not celebrate this anniversary as a spectator, but rather as a fraternal party. The Party-to-Party relations between the ANC and the CPC have grown from strength to strength, through cadre exchanges, through political schools, through joint work on questions of governance, of party renewal, and of the eternal challenge of keeping a movement close to its people.

We have much to learn from the CPC's ceaseless work of self-rectification, of anti-corruption, of ideological renewal. We take these lessons seriously. A movement that does not renew itself does not survive. The ANC, like the CPC, is engaged in the difficult, honest work of renewal, of returning to the values that defined the character of our movement since its inception, and of proving ourselves worthy of the trust of our people.

We also stand with the People's Republic of China on the questions of principle. We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to the One-China policy. We reject unequivocally any attempt, whether through trade wars, technological blockades, or geopolitical provocation, to contain China's peaceful development or to deny the Chinese people the fruits of their own labour. We equally join the international community in supporting China's call for a community with a shared future for humankind - for peace, for development, for cooperation, and for mutual benefit.

Comrades, as we look ahead, the challenges before both our organisations are daunting. The world is in a moment of profound transition - economic, technological, ecological and civilisational. Old certainties are collapsing. New possibilities are emerging. It is up to parties like ours, rooted in the struggles of ordinary people, to shape what comes next.

We must therefore deepen our cooperation. We must also expand our exchanges - not only at the level of leadership, but among our youth, our women, our workers, our intellectuals and our provinces. Let us build together the Africa-China partnership envisioned at FOCAC - a partnership of shared modernisation, of green and inclusive growth, of dignity restored. And let us continue to speak, together and clearly, for a world in which no nation is bullied, no people is left behind, and no child of the Global South must apologise for the ambition of a better life.

On behalf of the African National Congress, I once again extend our heartfelt congratulations to the Communist Party of China on the occasion of its one hundred and fifth anniversary. We salute your founders. We salute your martyrs. We salute the tens of millions of comrades who, generation after generation, have given their labour and their lives so that China might stand tall and so that the peoples of the world might have a friend in the East.

May the friendship between our two parties, and between the peoples of South Africa and China, continue to flourish - deep as the ocean, high as the mountains, and enduring as the sun.

Long live the Communist Party of China!

Long live the friendship between the ANC and the CPC!

Amandla!

I thank you.