Rear Admiral Junior Grade L M Hendricks

Major General Sitshongaye on behalf of the Chief Brigadier General E Visagie of the SANDF

All veterans

Religious leaders

Distinguished guests

Members of the media

Ladies and gentleman

Good morning, and thank you for joining us here at the cenotaph in Adderley Street for the observation of Remembrance Day, as we honour the memory of our soldiers who did not return from the Great War over a hundred years ago, as well as the Second World War and subsequent wars.

​​A cenotaph such as this beautiful monument here is a memorial to fallen soldiers, but you might not know that the word "cenotaph" is derived from a Greek compound word that literally means empty tomb.

It not only symbolises the absence of the fallen soldiers, but is also a gravesite – a way of conducting a burial and giving people a place to remember loved ones and to mourn their loss.

So many young men were laid to rest in fields half a world away from their homes and their families, and I cannot begin to imagine what that must have been like for their people back home. And particularly for their parents.

No parent should have to bury a child.

As a mother or father, you look at your child who is just becoming an adult with a sense of wonder and optimism for their future. You think of the decades that have passed since you were their age, and you imagine all the things – all the living – your child will do in the coming years.

Over the course of the two World Wars, millions of parents across the world experienced the most profound loss imaginable as they had to accept that their boys would not come home and would not go on to live full lives, start families and touch the lives of others.

And that includes thousands of parents here in South Africa.

Around 7,000 South African soldiers lost their lives between 1914 and 1918. That's out of roughly 250,000 South Africans of all races who volunteered to serve alongside the Allied Forces.

Two and a half decades later, a further 11,000 South Africans – from over 330,000 volunteers – did not return home from the battlefields of North and East Africa, and Italy in the Second World War.

The grief and loss is hard to comprehend. I can't imagine what those mothers and fathers must've gone through in sending their boys off on ships to battlefields thousands of miles away, knowing that there was a good chance they would not return.

And I call them boys, because that's what they were. Most of those who volunteered were the same age as the children we send off to university today, or even those sitting down right now to write their matric exams.

Many were teenagers, 18 or 19 years old, who'd had no time to live their adult lives and yet were sent off to fight a war planned, started and conducted by adults.

The thought of sending your beautiful boy off on a ship to a terrible war is hard to contemplate. And to then receive news that he won't be returning home is surely the worst thing any parent can go through.

That is why we remember them today. Partly to express our enormous gratitude for their sacrifice in protecting the world from the worst tyranny imaginable, but partly also to mourn their tragic deaths.

We stand here by their empty tomb, and even though a century has passed, we are sad for the loss of these young men and we grieve along with the families and descendants who had to say goodbye to a son, a brother, a father way too soon.

But many of them did indeed return at the end of those wars. Many were greeted by overjoyed and relieved families on docks and train stations, and then went on to live full and happy lives.

We are incredibly honoured today to have with us two surviving members of South Africa's enlisted men during the Second World War – and as far as we could ascertain, the only two surviving veterans.

Both of them have been blessed with long and fulfilled lives spent with loving families and friends, and they both join us today at the age of 99, having enlisted more than 80 years ago when they were still just teenagers.

The first of them, Mr Jackson Human, joined us here last year as well, and I am extremely honoured and grateful that he could do so again this year.

Mr Jackson is a veteran from the Indian Malay Corps and served in a transportation unit in North Africa.

It is an honour to have you here today, sir, and I thank you for your selfless contribution all those years ago.

Our second special guest today is Mr William Small, a Navy veteran who signed up in 1942 at the age of just 18, and served as an Able Seaman on a minesweeper ship.

Since returning from the war, Mr Small – who hails from the Underberg area of KwaZulu-Natal – has gone on to make a tremendous contribution to our country's natural treasures as a Chief Conservation Officer in the Drakensberg region.

​​Thank you for traveling all the way here today, sir, and for your selfless duty during the war.

Mr Jackson and Mr Small offer us a living connection to a time and events that we cannot forget. Their presence here must urge us to want to do better and not repeat the worst horrors of the previous century.

I am pleased to share with you that we have several other ways of remembering too. On Friday I had the honour of laying a Remembrance Day wreath at the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital in Rondebosch.

As you can tell from the name, that amazing paediatric hospital was built in the early 1950s as a living war memorial to our fallen soldiers.

It was the idea of South African servicemen stationed in Italy waiting to return home after the war. Deeply moved by all they had seen during their time of service – and particularly by the senseless suffering of children in the war – they proposed the building of a dedicated children's hospital in Cape Town as a living war memorial.

Those servicemen all gave up a portion of their wages as a contribution, and further public fundraising made a huge dent in the hospital's then hefty price tag of £700,000.

Today the Red Cross Children's Hospital is considered one of the leading paediatric hospitals in the world, treating 250,000 ill and injured children from across the country and the continent every year, and I can think of no better way to honour the memory our fallen soldiers.

Another war memorial which not too many Capetonians know about, is hidden away up in the clock tower of our beautiful City Hall. There we have a carillon – a music instrument made up of 39 carefully tuned bells – which was installed a hundred years ago in tribute to the fallen soldiers of World War 1 by the then Mayoress of Cape Town, Anna Thorne, as a peace offering from the women of the city.

Over the decades, the instrument's mechanics have fallen into disrepair and it's been a long time since the peal of the bells has carried across the city.

But the good news is that we have embarked on a mission to raise funds for its restoration, along with the incredible pipe organ in the City Hall, and one day not too far away we will again hear those bells ringing out over the Parade and beyond.

Many of the bells were inscribed with either the names of battlegrounds of the First World War, or the names of those who donated them, and it will be a wonderful tribute to our war heroes to be able to play the only working carillon on the African continent once more.

And then next month, in a special Council meeting, there will be yet another remembrance of a South African war hero.

We recently revived the tradition of bestowing Civic Honours on Capetonians – living or deceased – who have made a significant contribution to the world through their service and their talents.

And one of the 13 recipients whose names and accomplishments will be recorded in the Civic Honours Book this year is Adolph Gysbert Malan – known to those who served alongside him simply as Sailor Malan – South Africa's World War 2 fighter pilot ace in the Royal Air Force.

Sailor Malan was the Wing Commander in the 74 Spitfire Squadron and was considered one of the greatest airmen of the RAF, accredited with the highest rate of shooting down enemy aircraft from his cockpit.

Upon his return after the war, Malan took a principled stance against apartheid and led many protests under the banner of the Torch Commando.

I am proud to bestow our city's Civic Hounours posthumously on Sailor Malan.

And while we remember and deeply appreciate the heroics of people like Malan, or the men honoured by the Red Cross Children's Hospital, and the men in whose memory this cenotaph was erected, let us also reflect on what that memory should mean for us.

It should be a reminder of the brutality and the futility of war. Of the senseless loss and the enormous price paid by families, communities and countries. When we remember those men, we should also be making a vow not to repeat those mistakes.

But when I look around at what's happening in the world right now, it seems we haven't heeded those lessons. The horrors playing out in the Middle East, as well as the ongoing occupation and destruction of Ukraine, are a blight on the 21st Century.

We have to do better. We cannot let our world be shaped and controlled by the masters of war. We need leaders who abhor the fighting and killing and destruction of war – whose only mission is to find common ground and seek workable compromises.

Because those solutions must exist, and those compromises must be found.

I pray that the voices of reason and negotiation become louder and stronger in these terrible conflict situations, and that the makers of peace prevail over the masters of war.

The world has enough cenotaphs. We don't need any more monuments to young men and women sent off to die for the selfish and hate-fueled causes of others.

In 2023, with all we have witnessed over the past century and all the lessons we could have learnt, there simply has to be a better way than waging war.

There has to be a way of finding our common humanity and our shared values, rather than giving in to the schemes of violent men. 

That would be the best possible way to honour the memory and sacrifices of those who died in the Great Wars.

Never forgotten, but also never again.

Let that be our pledge today as we pay our respects to our beloved fallen soldiers.

Thank you.