Jacob Zuma
President of South Africa
Speech transcribed and edited for client publication by Civitatis International.
I must, from the onset, state that, while poverty is a global phenomenon, my presentation will be biased more towards Africa, given the fact that the continent remains the poorest and the most marginalized and requires special attention.
But I think, to be fair, before getting into my remarks, given the fact that the African representation here is very limited, I may comment on and respond to one or two remarks that were made in many of the inputs yesterday.
One of these was, I think, a very clear remark made against the challenge and the demand that we are making from the continent of Africa regarding the cancellation of debt; I think the remark made was that this cannot be done because African countries are corrupt: of course one example of a country was singled out as indicating this problem. I think it is proper and fair for us to respond to this because there is a perception we feel from Africa that at times one country is almost like all others in the continent; we all end up painted with the same brush because of what has happened in one country or the other. In fact, in some cases, we have the view that people think that South Africa is Africa, that Africa is South Africa in any country you talk about in Africa; and we believe it is an unfair judgement of the continent, very unfair. Because you then take a collective decision almost to give a collective punishment. Because one country that you happen to be aware of or that you have researched then represents the general trend of what is happening on the continent. We think it is unfair.
Of course, the country that was singled out, I think, was Nigeria, but in our own efforts today, Nigeria is one of the countries that we are working together with to try to deal with the problems of the continent. Nigeria is one of the countries that has voluntarily joined up to a peer review mechanism that we’ve established, that opens countries to be reviewed by eminent persons in the continent, which indicates the willingness and commitment of Nigeria to deal with the problem. After all, Nigeria as you know, was freed in the early 1960s, (I think it was 1960); a process of military coups which took decades (and I’ll deal with that issue later when I talk about the cold war). I’m making these remarks because I want to contextualize my remarks even if I repeat what has been said here, to say it as Africans. You are dealing with a government today that is trying to deal with the legacy of many decades in an attempt to bring about democracy, but also which has declared war against corruption. But corruption is huge, they found it there: they are trying to deal with it, collectively with other African countries. And if representatives from the North don’t see that and they still paint us with the same brush, we do have a difficulty, because that, in a sense, characterizes the manner in which we have been judged. I think it was also Ambassador Zaragoza who posed the question yesterday: “Who owns Africa?” I think it is a pertinent question to pose. At times you’ll say Africa is rich in mineral resources, everything; but do we own those things as Africans? We don’t. That’s a reality. If anything, many of those resources have been taken out of Africa. Some countries added to their richness by exploiting and plundering African resources. What did we say to that? Some countries that attempted to nationalize, probably a few decades ago, in an attempt to address the issue, were ostracized, sanctioned, told those policies were wrong. They are now opening up to privatization and to market forces; it is not helping to address poverty. That’s the reality of Africa. To us it’s not a theoretical issue, it’s a question of life and death. You know Africa experienced slavery when millions of able-bodied men and women left Africa to labour and toil in other continents. A scar that will never be forgotten by generations to come. We are in fact looking at the brain drain from Africa today, almost a repeat of that process in a sophisticated manner, because Africa has been starved through many factors that I will indicate. One speaker said yesterday (and I think it was again the ambassador) that specific conditions set by the donors giving loans under certain conditions, and one of them is “streamline your staff”, therefore nurses and teachers are put out of work, and leave Africa instead of looking after their people. I believe there is a context in which we need to look at the problems that affect the continent of Africa. We believe they must be taken into account.
I wanted to make these remarks at the beginning to contextualize what I’m going to say.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this very important conference takes place at a time when the world has undergone some major changes, upheavals and transformations during the last century and continues to face pressing developmental challenges, as we have heard yesterday, in this conference. It is our view that there are strategies in place that have been debated and agreed on the question. What remains a challenge to all of us is the implementation of those strategies. This is the critical issue that we need to face squarely. Leaders have attended conferences in the UN and the G8 presenting the African case, but in the majority of cases they came back with empty promises. And that is a reality. With the dawn of the new Millennium, humanity was full of expectations in 2000 and we all believed that we were on the eve of a new world order, which was to usher in absolute peace and the end of extreme poverty and under-development. Education, health, the empowerment of women, and sustainable development were some of the main issues put on the agenda for all the world’s nations.
In tackling the question of how best to deal with the challenges of global poverty and under-development we need to remind ourselves what 191 states pledged to achieve by 2015 in the UN millennium declaration. They pledged among other things – and this is not a debate, it is an agreement – to reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger, and those without drinking water. It also undertook to halve the number of people whose income is less than 1 dollar a day. To ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling and to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary schools. To reduce child mortality by 2/3 and begin to reverse the spread of HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
As we enter the fifth year of the new millennium declaration we have to pause and ask questions: are we on the road to fulfilling the commitments we made to the poor of the world? Did we meet the hopes and aspirations of the people to usher in a period of peace and progress? Our own country, which is in its tenth year of freedom and democracy, has over the years attempted to deliver on the goals of the new millennium declaration of 2000, and the guidelines and targets set by the world summit on sustainable development, which was hosted in South Africa in 2002.
We believe we have made substantial progress in expanding access to basic services such as housing, electricity, education, health care, clean water and sanitation. But there is still a lot to be achieved to close the gap between the first and second economies, the rich and the poor. We are also aware of the fact that South Africa is an integral part of the African continent. Our development efforts are therefore taking place against the overall objective of achieving renewal of the African continent socially, politically and economically. But I think it is important to bear in mind that, within this context, some of the African countries are not in a position to do what South Africa can do. Because they have limited resources, other countries cannot even attempt to meet the challenges of the Millennium declaration and that’s a reality, a reality that the world should accept and it must therefore say: what can we do to help? To create the institutional framework for newer structures, that have been established under the constitutive act of our continental body, the African Union, including the pan African parliament, the African Peace and Security Council, and the social economic blueprint – the new partnership for African development, NEPAD. The following programmes have been prioritised by NEPAD. The response and prevention of transmissible diseases, such as HIV and AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, information and communication technologies, debt cancellation, market access for African goods and services.
Another crucial programme of the African Union is the African peer review mechanism, which demonstrates the seriousness with which Africa takes the promotion of good economic and political governance. These are the instruments through which Africa seeks to achieve sustainable development and prosperity through partnerships with our development partners in a spirit of equality and mutual benefit and not charity in this highly competitive era of globalisation. I’d like to emphasize that while Africa faces many challenges there is also a lot of progress that has been made already. On governance, Africa has democratic governments in power, more now than ever before in its history, and that’s the reality. Significant steps have been made in conflict resolution in many countries, the desire for peace in order to stimulate development is stronger now than at other times. On the economic front, many African countries have now developed much more stable macro economic policies as well as more sustainable trade regimes, and the result has been a relative improvement in African economic performance since the early 1990s.
What we seek the support for? To help us in the efforts we are making. For example, we are dealing with the conflicts in the continent in a new way for the first time, but of course because the continent is poor, the resources become a problem. Just to talk about one example, in Burundi we now have the independent electoral commission, and the donor countries have promised that their money to deal with that, but they have no money to operate. So the timetable we have put forward for democratic elections is certainly going to be undermined by the fact that there are no resources for it. So the resources become the problem that might slip back into conflict, which we succeeded in overcoming.
However, like other developing regions, Africa has also been affected adversely by globalisation, initially viewed as a process that would assist the achievement of the world’s development goals. It has profoundly affected all the aspects of human life, principally through developments in the areas of international trade, investment, capital flows and advances in information and communication technologies.
The process should under normal circumstances be a powerful and dynamic force strengthening co-operation and accelerating growth and development. However, the globalisation process has proven to be uneven and unpredictable and resulted in the increased marginalisation of a large number of developing countries, especially the least developed countries and particularly in the areas of finance, trade and technology transfer.
According to different studies conducted by the international bodies that monitor globalisation around 1.2 billion people in the world today live on less than 1 dollar a day. In Africa alone, this figure translates to about 315 million people. While foreign direct investment flows to developing countries have increased in absolute terms, the African share is declining. In 2003 the continent received less than 3% of the world’s foreign investments. As global trade expands, Africa’s share continues to decline: in 2002, Africa produced only 2% of global exports as compared to 6% in 1980. African exporters face a number of barriers to selling their products in the northern markets. Key among these are the agricultural subsidies granted to farmers in the developed countries. It is therefore not surprising that the first four of the 50 least developed countries are found in Africa.
We must also always be mindful of the historical background to this state of affairs in Africa. The continent has been plundered over many centuries, mainly from the period of colonialism to neo-colonialism. The origins of some of the instability and some of the conflicts plaguing Africa to these days, as well as and poverty, can be traced back to the period of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism during the during the Cold War. After independence, during the Cold War period, former colonial masters deliberately sought to remove genuine national leaders who had fought for liberation and to initiate and develop new elites who would be their allies in the Cold War. Now to us this is not just a theory. No country experienced what Congo experienced: for example, their first prime minister was murdered and Congo was plunged into chaos, from 1960 up to these days. And colonial masters boasted about and supported those who came into power for a long time.
The debt we are talking about was accumulated as part of the way of winning over those countries during the Cold War when the world was divided in two. And it is that background that we believe must be taken into account. There is a tendency to act as if Africa just woke up one day and realized that it had no money and went around creating debt. But this is not true. Africa did not develop for centuries, at one point we were subjects, we had no countries, we were a world stripped off our political rights, our economic rights, everything. Countries in Europe were speaking on our behalf. Even if you can do research, we cannot even defend ourselves, defend who we are, because Africa was undermined and I think it would be wrong not to take that into account. We do not really want to raise this matter out of modesty. Because we cannot go back, we must deal with the issues now and it is a well-known fact that when the developed north organizes conferences and decides to include Africa among them, we were not there.
It is crucial that we do not condemn them. Because debt is a modern form of enslaving Africa, a modern form of colonising Africa, a modern form of dehumanising Africa.
It is in this context that I believe this issue has to be addressed properly and I am very happy to hear that some are beginning to say that we should do something better. We are not coming here to ask for aid. We say, let us be partners. We have got a programme to deal with Africa in every respect. Let the developed world support that programme and you will be satisfied that it deals with infrastructures, with everything, and I am sure that with enough time it could deal seriously with the issues of how Africa is structured. If I go to Africa from one corner to the other, I’ve got to go to Europe. It is the quickest way to reach another country. We are surrounded by water but there is no navigation. It is a serious issue to consider.
I must, from the onset, state that, while poverty is a global phenomenon, my presentation will be biased more towards Africa, given the fact that the continent remains the poorest and the most marginalized and requires special attention.
But I think, to be fair, before getting into my remarks, given the fact that the African representation here is very limited, I may comment on and respond to one or two remarks that were made in many of the inputs yesterday.
One of these was, I think, a very clear remark made against the challenge and the demand that we are making from the continent of Africa regarding the cancellation of debt; I think the remark made was that this cannot be done because African countries are corrupt: of course one example of a country was singled out as indicating this problem. I think it is proper and fair for us to respond to this because there is a perception we feel from Africa that at times one country is almost like all others in the continent; we all end up painted with the same brush because of what has happened in one country or the other. In fact, in some cases, we have the view that people think that South Africa is Africa, that Africa is South Africa in any country you talk about in Africa; and we believe it is an unfair judgement of the continent, very unfair. Because you then take a collective decision almost to give a collective punishment. Because one country that you happen to be aware of or that you have researched then represents the general trend of what is happening on the continent. We think it is unfair.
Of course, the country that was singled out, I think, was Nigeria, but in our own efforts today, Nigeria is one of the countries that we are working together with to try to deal with the problems of the continent. Nigeria is one of the countries that has voluntarily joined up to a peer review mechanism that we’ve established, that opens countries to be reviewed by eminent persons in the continent, which indicates the willingness and commitment of Nigeria to deal with the problem. After all, Nigeria as you know, was freed in the early 1960s, (I think it was 1960); a process of military coups which took decades (and I’ll deal with that issue later when I talk about the cold war). I’m making these remarks because I want to contextualize my remarks even if I repeat what has been said here, to say it as Africans. You are dealing with a government today that is trying to deal with the legacy of many decades in an attempt to bring about democracy, but also which has declared war against corruption. But corruption is huge, they found it there: they are trying to deal with it, collectively with other African countries. And if representatives from the North don’t see that and they still paint us with the same brush, we do have a difficulty, because that, in a sense, characterizes the manner in which we have been judged. I think it was also Ambassador Zaragoza who posed the question yesterday: “Who owns Africa?” I think it is a pertinent question to pose. At times you’ll say Africa is rich in mineral resources, everything; but do we own those things as Africans? We don’t. That’s a reality. If anything, many of those resources have been taken out of Africa. Some countries added to their richness by exploiting and plundering African resources. What did we say to that? Some countries that attempted to nationalize, probably a few decades ago, in an attempt to address the issue, were ostracized, sanctioned, told those policies were wrong. They are now opening up to privatization and to market forces; it is not helping to address poverty. That’s the reality of Africa. To us it’s not a theoretical issue, it’s a question of life and death. You know Africa experienced slavery when millions of able-bodied men and women left Africa to labour and toil in other continents. A scar that will never be forgotten by generations to come. We are in fact looking at the brain drain from Africa today, almost a repeat of that process in a sophisticated manner, because Africa has been starved through many factors that I will indicate. One speaker said yesterday (and I think it was again the ambassador) that specific conditions set by the donors giving loans under certain conditions, and one of them is “streamline your staff”, therefore nurses and teachers are put out of work, and leave Africa instead of looking after their people. I believe there is a context in which we need to look at the problems that affect the continent of Africa. We believe they must be taken into account.
I wanted to make these remarks at the beginning to contextualize what I’m going to say.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this very important conference takes place at a time when the world has undergone some major changes, upheavals and transformations during the last century and continues to face pressing developmental challenges, as we have heard yesterday, in this conference. It is our view that there are strategies in place that have been debated and agreed on the question. What remains a challenge to all of us is the implementation of those strategies. This is the critical issue that we need to face squarely. Leaders have attended conferences in the UN and the G8 presenting the African case, but in the majority of cases they came back with empty promises. And that is a reality. With the dawn of the new Millennium, humanity was full of expectations in 2000 and we all believed that we were on the eve of a new world order, which was to usher in absolute peace and the end of extreme poverty and under-development. Education, health, the empowerment of women, and sustainable development were some of the main issues put on the agenda for all the world’s nations.
In tackling the question of how best to deal with the challenges of global poverty and under-development we need to remind ourselves what 191 states pledged to achieve by 2015 in the UN millennium declaration. They pledged among other things – and this is not a debate, it is an agreement – to reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger, and those without drinking water. It also undertook to halve the number of people whose income is less than 1 dollar a day. To ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling and to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary schools. To reduce child mortality by 2/3 and begin to reverse the spread of HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
As we enter the fifth year of the new millennium declaration we have to pause and ask questions: are we on the road to fulfilling the commitments we made to the poor of the world? Did we meet the hopes and aspirations of the people to usher in a period of peace and progress? Our own country, which is in its tenth year of freedom and democracy, has over the years attempted to deliver on the goals of the new millennium declaration of 2000, and the guidelines and targets set by the world summit on sustainable development, which was hosted in South Africa in 2002.
We believe we have made substantial progress in expanding access to basic services such as housing, electricity, education, health care, clean water and sanitation. But there is still a lot to be achieved to close the gap between the first and second economies, the rich and the poor. We are also aware of the fact that South Africa is an integral part of the African continent. Our development efforts are therefore taking place against the overall objective of achieving renewal of the African continent socially, politically and economically. But I think it is important to bear in mind that, within this context, some of the African countries are not in a position to do what South Africa can do. Because they have limited resources, other countries cannot even attempt to meet the challenges of the Millennium declaration and that’s a reality, a reality that the world should accept and it must therefore say: what can we do to help? To create the institutional framework for newer structures, that have been established under the constitutive act of our continental body, the African Union, including the pan African parliament, the African Peace and Security Council, and the social economic blueprint – the new partnership for African development, NEPAD. The following programmes have been prioritised by NEPAD. The response and prevention of transmissible diseases, such as HIV and AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, information and communication technologies, debt cancellation, market access for African goods and services.
Another crucial programme of the African Union is the African peer review mechanism, which demonstrates the seriousness with which Africa takes the promotion of good economic and political governance. These are the instruments through which Africa seeks to achieve sustainable development and prosperity through partnerships with our development partners in a spirit of equality and mutual benefit and not charity in this highly competitive era of globalisation. I’d like to emphasize that while Africa faces many challenges there is also a lot of progress that has been made already. On governance, Africa has democratic governments in power, more now than ever before in its history, and that’s the reality. Significant steps have been made in conflict resolution in many countries, the desire for peace in order to stimulate development is stronger now than at other times. On the economic front, many African countries have now developed much more stable macro economic policies as well as more sustainable trade regimes, and the result has been a relative improvement in African economic performance since the early 1990s.
What we seek the support for? To help us in the efforts we are making. For example, we are dealing with the conflicts in the continent in a new way for the first time, but of course because the continent is poor, the resources become a problem. Just to talk about one example, in Burundi we now have the independent electoral commission, and the donor countries have promised that their money to deal with that, but they have no money to operate. So the timetable we have put forward for democratic elections is certainly going to be undermined by the fact that there are no resources for it. So the resources become the problem that might slip back into conflict, which we succeeded in overcoming.
However, like other developing regions, Africa has also been affected adversely by globalisation, initially viewed as a process that would assist the achievement of the world’s development goals. It has profoundly affected all the aspects of human life, principally through developments in the areas of international trade, investment, capital flows and advances in information and communication technologies.
The process should under normal circumstances be a powerful and dynamic force strengthening co-operation and accelerating growth and development. However, the globalisation process has proven to be uneven and unpredictable and resulted in the increased marginalisation of a large number of developing countries, especially the least developed countries and particularly in the areas of finance, trade and technology transfer.
According to different studies conducted by the international bodies that monitor globalisation around 1.2 billion people in the world today live on less than 1 dollar a day. In Africa alone, this figure translates to about 315 million people. While foreign direct investment flows to developing countries have increased in absolute terms, the African share is declining. In 2003 the continent received less than 3% of the world’s foreign investments. As global trade expands, Africa’s share continues to decline: in 2002, Africa produced only 2% of global exports as compared to 6% in 1980. African exporters face a number of barriers to selling their products in the northern markets. Key among these are the agricultural subsidies granted to farmers in the developed countries. It is therefore not surprising that the first four of the 50 least developed countries are found in Africa.
We must also always be mindful of the historical background to this state of affairs in Africa. The continent has been plundered over many centuries, mainly from the period of colonialism to neo-colonialism. The origins of some of the instability and some of the conflicts plaguing Africa to these days, as well as and poverty, can be traced back to the period of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism during the during the Cold War. After independence, during the Cold War period, former colonial masters deliberately sought to remove genuine national leaders who had fought for liberation and to initiate and develop new elites who would be their allies in the Cold War. Now to us this is not just a theory. No country experienced what Congo experienced: for example, their first prime minister was murdered and Congo was plunged into chaos, from 1960 up to these days. And colonial masters boasted about and supported those who came into power for a long time.
The debt we are talking about was accumulated as part of the way of winning over those countries during the Cold War when the world was divided in two. And it is that background that we believe must be taken into account. There is a tendency to act as if Africa just woke up one day and realized that it had no money and went around creating debt. But this is not true. Africa did not develop for centuries, at one point we were subjects, we had no countries, we were a world stripped off our political rights, our economic rights, everything. Countries in Europe were speaking on our behalf. Even if you can do research, we cannot even defend ourselves, defend who we are, because Africa was undermined and I think it would be wrong not to take that into account. We do not really want to raise this matter out of modesty. Because we cannot go back, we must deal with the issues now and it is a well-known fact that when the developed north organizes conferences and decides to include Africa among them, we were not there.
It is crucial that we do not condemn them. Because debt is a modern form of enslaving Africa, a modern form of colonising Africa, a modern form of dehumanising Africa.
It is in this context that I believe this issue has to be addressed properly and I am very happy to hear that some are beginning to say that we should do something better. We are not coming here to ask for aid. We say, let us be partners. We have got a programme to deal with Africa in every respect. Let the developed world support that programme and you will be satisfied that it deals with infrastructures, with everything, and I am sure that with enough time it could deal seriously with the issues of how Africa is structured. If I go to Africa from one corner to the other, I’ve got to go to Europe. It is the quickest way to reach another country. We are surrounded by water but there is no navigation. It is a serious issue to consider.