President Jacob Zuma,
Former President Thabo Mbeki,
Speaker of the National Assembly, Ms Baleka Mbete,
Archbishop Thabo Makgoba,
Premier of Gauteng, Mr David Makhura,
Former Chair of the AU Commission, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma,
Former Deputy Chief Justice, Justice Dikgang Moseneke,
Mayor of Johannesburg, Cllr Herman Mashaba,
Members of the Mamoepa family,
Friends, Comrades,
Fellow South Africans,
 
We are gathered here to pay our final respects to one of the finest human beings to have walked among us.
 
Molopyane Ronald Mamoepa was a remarkable person who, more than most, gave real meaning to the expression, Motho ke motho ka batho. 
 
His abundant humanity in many ways affirmed and celebrated our shared humanity.
 
Through his vitality, his passion, his essential integrity and his abiding love for his people he reminded us of what it means to be human.
The way he lived his life and the effect he had on so many of us makes us appreciate the immutable ties that bind one person to another.
 
We have gathered here to give comfort to Audrey, his children Olefile, Muriel, Sakhile, Ntando and Ofentse, his siblings and all the members of the Mamoepa family.
 
We wish to express our deep and abiding gratitude to them for having shared Ronnie so generously with the nation.
 
As we ease your pain with our presence, prayers and messages to you as a family; we who knew and worked with Ronnie are also here to comfort each other, for we have, each of us, suffered a great loss.
 
We have each lost a friend, a colleague, a confidant, a teacher, a mentor, a comforter and a constant presence.
 
Ronnie Mamoepa was a product of our struggle.
 
He was born into a generation that was destined to rise up and challenge the might of a repugnant and reviled system; and to rouse the people of this country to throw off the shackles of oppression and exploitation.
 
His character, his consciousness, his resilience and his capabilities were forged in the crucible of that struggle.
 
In his own words, when he arrived on Robben Island as a teenager he was a tabula rasa – an empty slate –.

He had been drawn to political activity, he said, by a combination of anger, youthful bravado and a burning desire to be free.
 
Over the course of five years of incarceration – toughened by hardship and deprivation, nourished by solidarity and friendship, educated by the great leaders of our movement – his political thinking matured and his resolve hardened.
 
Ronnie went into prison an activist. 
 
He emerged from prison a revolutionary.
 
If the apartheid government thought that prison would crush the spirit of this defiant youth, they were greatly mistaken.
 
Instead, he was emboldened, he was determined, he was ideologically and politically equipped to take forward with even greater vigour the fight for freedom.
 
Ronnie’s outstanding work ethic, the depth of his political understanding and his growing talent as a media activist ensured that he would be given ever greater responsibilities for communicating the news and positions of various structures of the mass democratic movement.
 
It was in the media team of the National Reception Committee where he proved his mettle as a political communicator.
 
He was among those given the task of presenting to the nation and the world the released giants of our movement - Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi, Wilton Mkwayi, Andrew Mlangeni and Ahmed Kathrada.
 
He gave a voice to leaders who had been kept silent for decades.
 
It was this role that prepared him to join, and later head, the ANC’s Department of Information and Publicity.
 
Working at the headquarters of the movement, Ronnie cemented his reputation as an energetic, capable and resourceful spokesperson.
 
His voice, so recognisable to everyone who knew him, now became known to the nation.
 
Within a short space of time, he made the role his own, developing the skills, insights, networks and instincts that would make him the consummate communicator that so many of us came to know, trust, admire and appreciate.
 
With the advent of democracy, he applied all that he had learned on Robben Island, his experience in organising grassroots structures, the skills he had acquired in the underground, the finesse he had acquired in working at the ANC headquarters to the task of governance.
 
He was among the first cohort of public servants to serve in the democratic state, and was foremost among those who sought to forge a new ethic that placed the interests, needs and concerns of the people first.
 
He brought to this work his political consciousness and his tireless activism.
 
Ronnie was the quintessential internationalist.
 
This served him well at the Department of Foreign Affairs, where, with his penchant for diplomacy and his love of discovery, he would throw himself enthusiastically into any international mission.
 
Over the past few years, working in the Office of the Deputy President, he became an expert on South Sudan, Lesotho and Sri Lanka, just as he had become an expert before in so many other parts of the world. 
 
Those he interacted with in Lesotho respected and loved him dearly. His Majesty King Letsie III and Prime Minister Tom Thabane both of whom knew and respected Ronnie were saddened by the news of his death.
 
Even for a person who embraced life with such passion, there were a few things that particularly excited Ronnie.
 
One was communication.
 
He was constantly thinking of innovative ways to reach out to people, to spread the message.
 
His mind was never at rest.
 
Many a colleague had to endure a midnight call from Ronnie to discuss an idea that had just come to him.
 
Ronnie loved to give advice, whether solicited or not, whether welcome or not.
 
If the Deputy President wore scruffy shoes or boring suits, Ronnie felt that he had a responsibility to say so.
 
He loved to tease, to joke, to laugh, to embrace, to connect.
 
But what got Ronnie most excited and most animated was when he spoke to friends and colleagues about Audrey.
 
The work he did often took him away from home and afforded him precious little time for his family. Those who knew him know that much as he was kept away from his family it was Audrey and the children who occupied his heart.
 
It was their love and support that sustained him and from which he drew great joy, harmony and contentment.
 
And, as a result, it is to them that we – as a government, a movement and a country – owe so much.
 
Ronnie was the kind of revolutionary we all seek to be.
 
His extraordinary character was made up of virtues that are rarely found together. He stood out as a person of extraordinary energy and action; but he was not only that — he was also a person of ideas. All these amazing attributes were combined in him. He was a person of unquestionable integrity, a person of great honour, of absolute sincerity, a person in whose conduct not one stain can be found. He constituted, through his virtues, what can be called a truly model revolutionary.
 
That is why we say, when we think of his life, when we think of his commitment to the struggle, that he was a most extraordinary human, able to unite in his personality not only the characteristics of a person of action, but also of a person of ideas as to be counted among the best our movement has produced.
 
His commitment was unwavering.
 
Even at the most challenging of moments, when others doubted the possibility of success, when some were reluctant to confront difficult and dangerous tasks, Ronnie did not hesitate.
 
He was always at the front, ready to do what others did not.
 
He could not be tempted to betray the moral precepts with which he had been raised, nor the revolutionary morality that had become an essential part of his very being.
 
As the corrosive effects of power and authority took hold of many within the movement, Ronnie remained steadfast.
 
He remained honest, true to his word and true to himself.
 
Above all Ronnie was a loyal and disciplined cadre of the movement.
 
His discipline was expressed not in blind adherence to organisational authority but in an appreciation that the power of any revolutionary movement lies in the commitment of its leaders and members to serve the people.
 
Without that commitment, the movement is ineffective, the struggle is futile.
 
He understood this because he was steeped in the history, traditions and values of the African National Congress.
 
He knew the struggles that had been fought by those who came before him, he knew the sacrifices they had made, the difficult choices they had faced and the political debates that had raged.
 
The movement has benefited immensely from his talent as a seasoned organiser, a campaigner, a tireless worker, and a tough taskmaster.
 
From the earliest days of his political activism through to his years as a senior public servant, there were few who worked with him who could match his capacity for work.
 
Ronnie was a communicator not merely by profession, but by conviction, because he understood the revolutionary function of political communications.
 
For him it was a tool of conscientisation and mobilisation.
 
It was, for him, a means to inform, to persuade, to empower and to overcome ignorance, apathy and cynicism.
 
Ronnie taught us much about what it means to be a revolutionary.
 
But perhaps the most important thing that he taught us was that a revolutionary must, above all else, be driven by love – love of the people, of humanity, of freedom.
 
In Ronnie, we saw a revolutionary who embraces all that is good in people, who celebrates all that is wondrous and respects all that is cherished.
 
We saw a revolutionary who nurtures and nourishes, builds, heals and unites.
 
Having witnessed the destructive power of racial prejudice, Ronnie was a firm champion of non-racialism.
 
For him, non-racialism was fundamental to the struggle for a free and equal society.
 
It wasn’t a concession. It wasn’t an act of magnanimity.
 
It wasn’t an olive branch extended by the oppressed to the oppressor in the hope that it may reciprocated.
 
For him, non-racialism – like non-sexism – was an inviolable principle that he would defend, fight for and, if need be, for which he would give his life.
 
He took upon his shoulders the responsibility to liberate not only those who had suffered so severely at the hands of apartheid, but also those who had perpetuated the system and who had been its beneficiaries.
 
He understood that he had a role to play to liberate them from the false ideology of racial superiority, which brought great material reward but which eroded their own humanity.
 
He sought a country where all people would be free, where all people would be complete, fulfilled and at peace.
 
Ronnie loved his movement, the African National Congress.
 
It was not a merely sentimental attachment. 
 
Rather, it was founded on his belief that the African National Congress was engaged in the most noble of human endeavours.
 
The ANC represented – and fought tirelessly to advance – the ideals of solidarity, equality and freedom.
 
To Ronnie, the African National Congress was the custodian of the hopes and aspirations of the South African people.
 
He therefore devoted his life to building the movement as a more effective instrument in the hands of the people.
 
For him, the unity of the movement was paramount.
 
He had an abiding conviction that the ANC was capable of healing itself.
 
He was convinced that it could and would be united. He believed that even through our movement faces great challenges there is every reason to hope. His hope for our movement was based on the words of former ANC President Oliver Tambo when he said in 1980:
 
‘The need for the unity of the patriotic and democratic movement of our country has never been greater than it is today. Our unity has to be based on honesty among ourselves, the courage to face reality, adherence to what has been agreed upon, to principle.’ 
 
Ronnie has left us with an awesome responsibility, to prove ourselves worthy of his confidence.
 
He has left us with the responsibility to unite our movement and unite 
our nation.
 
As we bid farewell to Ronnie, as we reflect on the meaning of his life and his contribution, we are reminded of what Martin Luther King Jr said:
 
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
 
And indeed, it was at moments of greatest difficulty, during times fraught with conflict and peril, that Ronnie proved his worth.
 
Today, we lay to rest an outstanding revolutionary, a remarkable human being, a beloved friend, a husband, a father, a brother and an ANC member who was proud of his ANC membership.
 
Ronnie, my brother, my comrade we will pick up your spear where it has fallen.
 
We will complete the task to which you dedicated your life.
 
We will build a free, just, equal, non-racial, non-sexist, united and prosperous South Africa.
 
We will never forget the lesson that your life has taught us – that we are human through each other.
 
Hamba Kahle Mkhonto. Robala ka khotso Tau
 
May your beautiful soul rest in peace.
 
I thank you.