Heading for Better South Africa and Better World

Heading for Better South Africa and Better World

South African President Thabo Mbeki, who will attend the
Asian-African Summit to be held in Jakarta from April 22 to April
23, as a cohost along with Indonesia, has become a prominent
leader not only in his own country but also in the world. Below
are excerpts taken from his speeches on different occasions.

Since time immemorial, the overwhelming majority of our people
had known nothing but despair. They knew, as an incontestable
fact that tomorrow would not be better than yesterday; it was
also fixed and given that the following day would be even worse.
But then, April 27, 1994 came and things changed radically and
irrevocably for all South Africans.

For the black African majority, a new dawn suddenly broke.
Still, after they had cast their votes, they walked away from the
polling booths with nothing in their stomachs and pockets and
returned to their run-down shacks, their children listless from
bunger while thugs prowled the unlit dirt road of the shantytown,
ready to pounce on their victims with no mercy.

Yet, on that day, they had a spring in their step because they
knew that the dawn proclaimed the coming of a new day. Though
their hands carried the emptiness to which generation of
deprivation had accustomed them, their hearts and minds were
tilled with a new-found sense of hope -but also an attendant
feeling of dread, lest that hope turn out to be but a mere
mirage, an illusion created of an intensely felt wish.

The experience of many decades had taught us to understand
that the poor black community of our country valued a just peace
as deeply as they valued their lives. It had taught us that their
sense of pride as human beings made it impossible for them to
join in a mass slaughter of other human beings, even to satisfy
the base instincts of vengeance and retaliation to settle scores.

Over many decades, we had seen that the masses would always
refuse to become racists simply because they were subjected to
cruel racists rule. When a hero in their midst, comrade Chris
Hani, was murdered in cold blood, they refused to fulfill the
poets prophesy that the blood-dimmed tide would be loosed to
drown the ceremony of innocence.

They stood in the lines to the ballot booths alongside those
who had been their oppressors and never uttered a single word of
anger; nor did they jostle the white person next to them because
they felt that their time to be the new masters had come. Blacks
and whites stood together, acting together voluntarily for the
first time in our history, together to give birth to a new
interest of all our people.

When the leadership of the black African majority said to them
that - despite the fact that their children, their brothers and
sisters, and their mothers and fathers had been slaughtered in
Boipatong and elsewhere on the many killing fields in our country
- as leaders, they were obliged to pursue a peaceful process to a
just peace, the masses agreed and urged that the dialogue chamber
should bring forth the gift of a just peace to the nation.

It was for these reasons that they had fought, ready to
sacrifice their lives -, for the just peace and the sense of hope
they saw as necessary conditions for their survival. Those among
us who are fond of threatening violence to promote their causes
should learn this, that our people are ready and willing to
sacrifice themselves once again to defend the peace and keep
alive the sense of hope that enables them to behave in
mysteriously miraculous ways.

The transfer of the burden of despair became part of the
reality that the new democratic order had to address. It became
part of what had to be done to achieve what President Mandela had
foretold when he spoke about the expansion of the frontiers of
human fulfillment and the continuous extension of the frontiers
of freedom.

Almost 10 years since its liberation from white minority rule,
our country still faces many challenges. Many of our people are
unemployed. Many of our people continue to live in poverty.
Violence, in all its form, continues to plague the people,
especially those who are poor and live in socially depressed
communities.

In his 1994, State of the Nation Addressed, President Mandela
said: "We have learned the lesson that our blemishes speak of
what all humanity should not do."

The point we have sought to make in referring to the
challenges we continue to face to is that the blemishes of which
Mandela spoke continue to disfigure our society.

Africa

South Africa has made a number of interventions that have
generally contributed to peace, stability and security in several
countries on the continent and beyond. These include Angola,
Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho (1994,
1998), Rwanda, Burundi. Madagascar, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia/Eritrea
and Sudan.

South Africa became the first chair of the new organization,
the African Union (AU) at the Durban Summit in July 2001, at
which the New Partnership fro Africa's Development (NEPAD) was
launched as the union's socio-economic program.

One of the most important challenges for the future of the
organization is to ensure that the integral organs of the new AU
system, particularly the commission, the Pan-African parliament,
the peace and security council, the economic, social and cultural
council, and the African Central Bank are put into effect, an
that an institutional culture is encourages whereby the rule-
bound structures are effectively used by African states to
advance the development of the continent.

South Africa has, since 2001, sought a sustained engagement
with the G-8 to keep Africa and the concerns of the South on the
agenda of the grouping's annual deliberations.

South Africa has promoted an understanding that the
international financial architecture should promote economic
advancement of developing countries, not impede it.

In its capacity as chair of the development committee of the
World Bank, South Africa has made an important contribution to
translating the monetary consensus on financing for development
and the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD)
declaration into an international implementation framework based
on constructing cooperation and mutual accountability between
developing and developed countries.

UN reform challenges

There is a worldwide concern about what role the United
Nations would play in the resolution of the Iraq, Israel and
Palestine conflicts.

Dramatic of spontaneous events have provided answers to this
concern. However, such events have raised vital and disturbing
questions about the very future of the United Nations.

Central among these is the questions as to whether the United
Nations has a future as a strong and effective multilateral
organization, enjoying the confidence of the peoples of the world
and capable of addressing matters that are of concern to all
humanity.

It will be extremely difficult to resolve this issue if the
United Nations' role in the world conflicts without answering the
question about the future of the UN as a legitimate expression of
the collective will of the peoples of the world.

Important shifts in the global balance of power and global
objectives have taken place since the UN was established 50 years
ago. Yet this organization has not changed substantially in terms
of its structure and more of operations to reflect these changes.
This has served as a recipe for an inevitable crisis, a disaster
waiting to occur.

Global poverty and underdevelopment are the principle issues
that face the United Nations. Billions across the globe expect
the General Assembly to address this challenge in a meaningful
manner. The poor of the world expect an end to violence and war
everywhere.

Multilateral institutions are going through a stage of great
confusion and redefinition. How can we ensure that the Security
Council's decisions have the legitimacy and support of the
majority of the United Nations? As long as the Security Council
is dominated by the victors of the Second World War, obviously we
do not have a representative body.

What we say today may not be heard because we do not have the
strength to ensure that our voices are heard. Tomorrow, we may be
obliged to say, "No more water, the fire next time." As the fires
burn, the United Nations will die, consumed by the flames. Will
the hopes of the world's poor also die, as they did at Cancun,
Mexico, not so long ago?

We must act together to say through our words and actions - as
individual countries and as the United Nations - that there will
be water next time, not fire.

Country Profile: South Africa

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Independent and Original Thinker