K Annan: Joint Sitting of South African Parliament

14 March 2006

Madame Speaker of the National Assembly,
Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP),
Mr President,
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen

I am delighted to be back in South Africa, which was the first Member State
of the UN that I visited on becoming Secretary-General in 1997. By inviting me
to address this joint sitting of the South African Parliament you have paid a
second great honour to the UN and to me personally. Two years ago you awarded
me the Order of the Companions of Oliver Tambo. I thank you again for that. It
is indeed an honour to be called a companion of such a truly great man, one who
worked tirelessly for freedom and justice and played a decisive role in the
struggle against apartheid.

Madam Speaker,
In one week’s time you will celebrate Human Rights Day, which commemorates
those who sacrificed themselves in that struggle – particularly the 69 killed
and 180 wounded in Sharpeville on 21 March 1960.

South Africa and indeed all of Africa, has come a long way since then.
African people have successfully asserted their right to independence and
become the largest group of member states in the UN. Your own struggle against
apartheid was the longest and bitterest. All Africa and the UN itself, was with
you in that ordeal. The whole world rejoiced in 1994, when you at last emerged
victorious.

Yet even as our countries emerged, one by one, from the struggle for
independence and against apartheid, they had to embark on another, no less
arduous, struggle for unity, peace and development. In that struggle, too,
there have been victories but there have also been setbacks and
disappointments.

Whatever our pride in some specific achievements, much remains to be done.
Indeed, last September the leaders of the whole world acknowledged this. They
said, in the Outcome Document of the UN World Summit, that Africa is “the only
continent not on track to meet any of the goals of the Millennium Declaration
by 2015” – and President Mbeki drew attention to that statement in his speech
to the Summit. Africa continues, as we say in the UN, to face a major
challenge.

We all know the mountains of human misery behind those polite words: the
grinding poverty and back-breaking toil; the hunger and thirst that force proud
parents to give their children polluted water to drink; the millions who die of
Tuberculosis (TB), malaria, AIDS and other preventable diseases; the violence
and humiliation inflicted on women by men and on citizens by gangsters,
warlords and corrupt officials; the misappropriation of natural resources; the
ravages of ethnic and social conflict.

It is easy to blame these ills on the past and on outsiders – the
depredations of imperialism and the slave trade, the imbalance of power and
wealth in a flagrantly unjust world. But that cannot absolve us, the Africans
of today, from our own responsibility to ourselves and to our children.
The truth is that development in Africa requires a new approach and the good
news is that South Africa is pointing the way. First, you are pointing the way
by what you are doing at home. South Africa today reminds us all of the
remarkable African capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation, despite the
pain of racial discrimination and oppression.

Your robust economy, stable democracy, support for the rule of law and
perhaps most important – your fully inclusive constitution have made South
Africa a beacon of tolerance, peaceful co-existence and mutual respect between
people of different races, languages and traditions

Your “rainbow nation” shines out in the very shape and composition of this
assembly. As I look around this chamber I am impressed not only by the variety
of races and colours that are represented but also by the number of women. You
put the General Assembly of the UN to shame! But this should not surprise me,
since I understand, Madam Speaker, that all your predecessors have been from
the same gender as you and that this was the first parliament in the world to
adopt a specific budget process for empowering women and dealing with gender
issues.

Secondly, you are pointing the way by what you are doing in your
sub-regional neighbourhood – both through the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) and by your vitally important peacemaking and peacekeeping
contributions in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

This is very important, because no country today can be unaffected by events
in its neighbourhood and it is the responsibility of the stronger countries in
each neighbourhood to lend a hand to the weaker, without seeking to impose
their domination. When any country gets caught in a downward spiral of poverty,
misgovernment and conflict, this is bound to be a problem for its neighbours.
And the best neighbours are those who play a constructive part in helping to
halt and reverse the spiral before it leads to a complete meltdown.

Thirdly, you are pointing the way through your leading role in Africa as a
whole. Economically, South Africa is now the biggest foreign investor in the
rest of sub-Saharan Africa. It has also played a leading role in forming the
New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) – a new paradigm based on
African ownership of development strategy and a partnership with the
international community based on equality and mutual respect.

Politically, this country has taken the lead in transforming the
Organisation of African Unity into the African Union (AU). It has helped
establish the Union’s peer review mechanism, which over time should ensure a
steady improvement in African standards of government and it has taken a
leading role in the work of the Union’s Peace and Security Council, which is
enabling Africans to help resolve each others’ conflicts.

Thus the AU has become an essential partner of the UN in its work for peace
and development. Particularly important is the broad co-operation and
partnership between the AU and the UN. Examples of this just now are President
Mbeki’s key peacemaking role in Cote d’Ivoire, in close co-operation with the
UN peacekeeping mission and our joint efforts to make peace and protect the
population in Darfur and on the border between Sudan and Chad.

Finally, Madam Speaker, South Africa is pointing the way by what it is doing
in the wider world. In his speech to the World Summit last September, President
Mbeki referred to “the widely disparate conditions of existence and interests
as well as the gross imbalance of power”, which define the relationship among
the Member States of the UN. He identified these as the main reason why we have
not yet achieved the security consensus that we must reach, if we are to
maintain peace in the world on a basis of agreement and collective action
rather than the unilateral application of power.
I agree. The imbalance must be redressed. But the imbalance itself means that
those seeking to redress it do not have the leverage to impose their will on
the rest of the world. Only with a good strategy and wise leadership can they
make progress towards their goal.

Economically, it is important that the developing countries help themselves
and each other and that as far as possible they present a united front in
negotiations with the industrialised world. Here South Africa is showing the
way, in alliance with the new economic giants in other parts of the developing
world – China, India, Brazil, by forging a new global geography of trade and
investment.

While these countries attract massive investment from the global North, they
in turn have become major investors in their own regions. And they are leading
the battle within the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on behalf of all
developing countries – the battle for free access to Northern markets and for a
global market where developing countries can compete on equal terms, instead of
having to face subsidised Northern products.

South Africa has also hosted many important global conferences, including
the 12th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1998, the World Conference
Against Racism in 2001 and the World Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002
– all of which it was my privilege to attend. South Africa is thus, especially
in this crucial year in the life of the UN, in every way a suitable country to
be chairing the Group of 77, the group that brings together all those countries
– more than two thirds of the UN’s membership – which, despite the great
variations among them, share an interest in seeing the imbalance of power in
the world redressed.

While the Group of 77 deals primarily with economic and social issues, it is
also, in alliance with the Non-Aligned Movement, playing an increasingly
significant political role. And here too South Africa’s leadership and example
can be very important.

Even before victory over apartheid had been secured, the struggle against it
helped to shape the debate at the UN and in the wider world. It taught us never
to underestimate the importance of human rights, since apartheid was so clearly
the very antithesis of the values set out in the Universal Declaration.

Today, the kind of things South Africa is doing at home and promoting on the
wider African scene may show us the best way for developing countries in
general to respond to today’s world. In his valedictory address to a joint
session of this Parliament, nearly two years ago, Nelson Mandela said: "The
memory of a history of division and hate, injustice and suffering, inhumanity
of person against person should inspire us to celebrate our own demonstration
of the capacity of human beings to progress, to go forward, to improve, to do
better."

Indeed, my dear friends, I believe it has inspired you, and you in turn have
inspired Africa and the world. Your Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)
has given the world an idea and a mechanism, which many other countries have
used or are now using, to confront an ugly national past.

You have shown that a nation need not be imprisoned by its history, that
even people whose communities have been in bitter conflict and have endured or
committed the worst injustice, can work together to build a common future.

I believe this example can serve not only other individual nations but also
the world as a whole, which today is seething with resentment based on past and
present injustice and with misunderstandings based on differences of culture
and belief.
Perhaps the most important task of the UN today is to help its member states
overcome those resentments and misunderstandings, both between communities
within their borders and between different regions of the world. In that task,
we have much to learn from South Africa.

As FW de Klerk said, in his 1993 Nobel Lecture, peace “is a frame of mind in
which countries, communities, parties and individuals seek to resolve their
differences through agreements, through negotiation and compromise, instead of
threats, compulsion and violence”.

South Africa’s particular wisdom, derived from its own history of overcoming
resentment and mistrust, can be used to convince other countries that
injustices and misunderstandings are not cured by confrontation or threats,
since these only strengthen the determination of the powerful to keep power in
their own hands.

South Africa can teach all of us that, on the contrary, the way to a better
balance lies through dialogue and the establishment of mutual trust. Only in
such an atmosphere can the weak win attention and respect from the strong.
South Africa can teach its fellow developing countries to make good use of the
UN, which is the natural forum for a global dialogue leading to better trust
and understanding between rich and poor, between weak and strong, and so to a
more balanced and inclusive way of taking decisions that affect the fate of all
humanity.

South Africa, as guide and spokesman for the developing world, is already
playing a decisive role in the tough negotiations to implement the commitments
made at last year’s World Summit – commitments from both developing and donor
countries to advance the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); commitments to
forge new institutions for peace building and the promotion of human rights,
and a new global strategy against terrorism; commitments to strengthen the UN
itself – including by continued efforts to achieve a decision on Security
Council reform – so that our Organisation can be more efficient and effective
in bringing help to those who need it: the hungry, the sick, and the victims of
disasters both natural and man-made.

That is why I look forward to continuing to work closely with you President
Mbeki and South Africa in my remaining time as Secretary-General and why I know
my successors in that post will continue to look to South Africa for advice,
for support and for leadership among the nations of the world.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Nkosi sikelel'i Afrika!

Issued by: UN Secretary-General
14 March 2006