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.
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