G Fraser-Moleketi: Closing remarks African Forum on Fighting
Corruption

2 March 2007

Your Excellency, Former President of Mauritius
Your Excellency, Deputy Prime Minister of Namibia
Commissioner Joiner
Ministers
Your Excellencies, Ambassadors and High Commissioners
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
All protocols observed

It is South Africa's honour to have hosted you here in Ekurhuleni. I do
trust that you have found this Forum worth your while, many of you have
travelled far, have had to rearrange you busy schedules and had to defer some
of your work back home to be present. I am certain this Forum has inspired and
invigorated you so that you can return to your capitals and places of work with
a renewed sense of purpose in the fight against corruption.

On behalf of my government, the African Union Commission and the United
Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) I thank you for your
participation. Your willingness to share your experiences and practices is
highly appreciated.

The Ekurhuleni Declaration is inspiring. It is an accurate reflection of the
collective will of all of us and those whom we represent. We are on the right
path towards liberating Africa from the shackles of corruption.

Allow me to thank all of you for making this Forum the success that it is.
The presentations, the discussions and debates and the overall engagement with
the topic have been of a calibre that is outstanding. And I want to
categorically state that those who think that we in Africa do not take the
issue of corruption in all its forms and manifestations are seriously
mistaken.

I want to thank Commissioner Joiner and her team for their contributions and
in particular for their assistance in drafting the Final Declaration. The
Deputy Prime Minister of Namibia who has been tireless in her work at this
Forum, thank you Deputy Prime Minister; and I want to thank UNECA and in
particular Professor Okey Onjeyekwe for their work and effort.

And I want to thank our colleagues from Algeria, Mozambique and Cameroon,
who have assisted us in the translation of the Final Declaration into French,
Arabic and Portuguese. If I am not mistaken this is a likely first in
multi-lateral co-operation where senior officials have taken direct
responsibility for working on the final text of a Declaration. Well done.

At the end of my address to you on the first day, using the words of Ben
Okri, I implored you to re-dream. As we engage more rigorously in our analysis
of corruption, let us as Africans imagine a world that exists without
corruption. As Ben Okri has said, "The worst realities of our age are
manufactured realities. It is therefore our task, as creative participants in
the universe, to re-dream our world. The fact of possessing imagination means
that everything can be re-dreamed. (http://www.thinkexist.com/quotes/ben_okri/).
In this way, let us exercise leadership and judgment in the building of a world
that rests on the principles of ubuntu. This is not impossibility, for as Okri
continues: "The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to
overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our
suffering."

At this Forum all of us have demonstrated an enormous capacity to re-dream
with a view to transforming our continent into one that is corruption free. You
have demonstrated this with vigour and an urgency that has been remarkable.

At this Forum we have collectively made a huge contribution to the
corruption/anti-corruption discourse. We have re-appropriated the discourse and
the language of the discourse. We have redefined the discourse and the actual
terrain of the discourse by going beyond the simple corrupter-corrupted
relationship. We have consciously eschewed current discourses which focus
solely on perceptions and blame. We have agreed that corruption is a global
phenomenon, it is rooted in history but its contemporary manifestations must be
located in an understanding of colonialism, neo-colonialism and globalisation.
We have suggested that in the era of globalisations, many states are vulnerable
to the power of trans-national corporations.

We have agreed that it is far more useful in developing a common
understanding of corruption to focus on the interface between politics and
economics. As we have argued throughout, a broader conception and definition of
corruption must recognise that corrupt practices take place in the interface
between the public sector, the private sector and even the civil society
sector.

One of the most significant contributions this Forum has made to the
discourse on corruption is our insistence on rooting our fight against all
forms of corruption in a value system that draws on traditional communal and
egalitarian values and on democratic values. Traditional African society was
forged on the basis of communal values. Ubuntu "I am what I am because of who
we all are", contrasts markedly with the values of rampant free market
capitalism under globalisation which emphasise individual wealth
acquisition.

The values of ubuntu and ujamaa inform our humanity, they tell us that we
are human by virtue of doing for others. This is the essence of our spirit of
fighting corruption. This is the spirit we must continue to encourage in all
sectors of our society. This is the spirit that is necessary for the creation
of a socially cohesive and inclusive Africa that is free of corruption. We all
agree we are defined by our relation to others, and that we must subscribe to
the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity. Then it
follows that we individually, collectively and as nation states must be judged
by what we do for others in the public and more importantly in the private
spheres.

We must reject the view that as individuals we are linked only by commercial
transactions, and that we are accountable to no one, and need to justify our
actions to nobody. In his book of essays, Morning Yet On Creation Day, Achebe
has embraced instead the idea at the heart of the African oral tradition: that
"art is, and always was, at the service of man. Our ancestors created their
myths and told their stories for a human purpose." For this reason, Achebe
believes that "any good story, any good novel, should have a message, should
have a purpose." And the story of this Forum is that we have purpose and
political will to root out and prevent corruption.

In Things Fall Apart, Achebe's first novel, he tells the story of an Ibo
village of the late 1800s and one of its great men, Okonkwo, who has achieved
much in his life. The order in the village is disrupted, with the appearance of
the white man in Africa and with the introduction of his religion. What ensues
is a clash of cultures and values, vested in the person of Okonkwo. And
traditional values are dealt crushing blows by powerful distorting forces with
the result that in the end, traditional society and its values Okonkwo is
unable to adapt to the changes that accompany colonialism. In the end, in
frustration, he kills an African employed by the British, and then commits
suicide, a sin against the tradition to which he is bound. In the book Achebe
achieves a very fine balance in reflecting on the human consequences of the
clash of two cultures. In showing Ibo society before and after the coming of
the colonisers, he avoids the temptation to present the past as idealised and
the present as ugly and unsatisfactory.

Achebe shows us that justice and fairness are matters of great importance in
traditional African societies. They have complex social institutions that
administer justice in fair and rational ways. But colonialism upset that
balance. And the colonisers on their so called civilising mission declared
local laws to be barbaric, and used this claim as an excuse to impose their own
laws. And things truly fall apart and the moral centre of traditional society
and the bonds of humanity are broken.

As we develop our economies and our countries, let us be mindful of our
deliberations at this Forum that we cannot have development at all costs. We
cannot develop by allowing a permissive environment for corruption to flourish.
Corruption is detrimental to long term sustainable development. Corruption
costs and grand corruptions costs even more. Corruption is inimical to
development; it perpetuates inequality, increases wealth and asset gaps between
rich and poor on national, regional, continental and global scales. It
reproduces conditions of underdevelopment and poverty. It is morally wrong and
offensive; it is illegal and it can no longer be tolerated. It must be
eradicated. And we collectively must dedicate ourselves to its eradication.

Now is the time to reclaim and reassert and introduce into the global
discourse the uniquely African perspective. It must emerge from our own
understanding of our traditions of fairness, justice and humanity. We can and
must do no less. Our next step is Global Forum V; we need to be there in our
numbers and in our willingness to carry this redefined discourse to the global
stage. We must demonstrate to the world the seriousness with which we have
deliberated and the seriousness with which we dedicate ourselves to fighting
corruption. And we need to enter that space determined to work in a
collaborative fashion with other nation states for in our collective wisdom we
have agreed, and rightly so that no nation is free of corruption, that it
benefits the few and harms the many. And we have agreed that we need inter
state co-operation on a number of fronts and in a number of spheres to be
effective in our fight against corruption. Let us continue to be seized by the
possibilities open to us.

We look forward to hosting you once again at Global Forum V where I am
certain Africa will have a huge impact on shaping both the debate and the
outcome of the Forum. I wish you a very safe trip home and thank you once
again.

Issued by: Department of Public Service and Administration
2 March 2007