It gives me great pleasure and privilege to welcome you all to this, the Second Mapungubwe Dialogues, held appropriately to coincide with the First Edition of the Diaspora Week.
We gather today not merely as heirs to a sacred struggle and trustees of a historical mission. This moment — the Second Mapungubwe Dialogues and the inaugural Diaspora Week — is a clarion call to memory, mobilisation and to a movement. It is a summons to reawaken the spirit of Pan African resistance and solidarity that once bound our ancestors from Mapungubwe to the plantations of the Caribbean; from the mines of Kimberley to the American South; from the streets of Soweto to the hills of Haiti.
For centuries, our people were scattered by chains but not broken by them. They were dispossessed of land, but not of dignity. They were enslaved by empire but never conquered in spirit. Today, as we assemble under the banner of the African Union and its Sixth Region, we affirm that the DNA of Africa remains embedded in every community of the African Diaspora — in Brazil, in Jamaica, in the United States, in Europe, in the Caribbean, and across the islands of the Indian Ocean.
This is why Diaspora Week is not a ceremonial observance. It is a political awakening. It is a declaration that the unfinished business of liberation — the business of justice, equality, dignity, reparations, restitution, and self-determination — remains the mandate of our generation.
Mapungubwe Dialogues, which we are utilising as a vehicle to promote the Diaspora Week, is DIRCO’s initiative of creating a platform for dialogue and reflection on the challenges and opportunities facing Africans on the Continent and in the Diaspora. The Dialogues bring together the Diplomatic Corps, AU organs, private sector, civil society, and think tanks to exchange wisdom for the betterment of our Continent.
As you will recall, DIRCO launched the inaugural Mapungubwe Dialogues in 2023, focusing on Agenda 2063 — our collective vision of The Africa We Want.
For this First Diaspora Week, we have decided on the theme: Promoting Socio-Economic and Cultural Rights as Forms of Reparatory Justice, in line with the African Union’s 2025 Theme of the Year, Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations.
DIRCO consciously decided to host this Week to demonstrate South Africa’s unwavering commitment to the advancement of strong cooperation between the AU and its Sixth Region — the Diaspora.
South Africa has long advocated for strengthening relations between Africans on the Continent and those in the Diaspora. When we hosted the Global African Diaspora Summit in 2012, we adopted a historic Declaration that remains alive in our collective memory — a roadmap on trade, investment, cultural exchange, and political advocacy.
Those resolutions were not simply administrative milestones — they were commitments to a global African renaissance.
The Diaspora Week, therefore, is not an isolated initiative; it is a direct response to the clarion call made by our Heads of State and Government during the 38th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly in February 2025, in Addis Ababa — a call to make 2025 the Year of Justice and Reparations for Africans on the Continent and in the Diaspora.
We must remember the lessons of Mapungubwe — a Kingdom of wisdom, wealth, and trade that connected ancient Africa to the world long before colonial intrusion. The people of Mapungubwe remind us that African civilisation predates Western conquest, that Africa was not discovered — it was interrupted. The word “Mapungubwe” itself means Wisdom, and today we invoke that wisdom to reclaim the stolen chapters of our history and to rewrite the terms of our future.
The theme before us — Promoting Socio-Economic and Cultural Rights as Forms of Reparatory Justice — is profoundly relevant amid a world marked by a poly-crisis that includes amongst others conflict, inequality, and ecological crisis. The genocidal war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, and parts of our own Continent remind us that global governance in its current form has failed the test of humanity. The weaponisation of trade and technology by powerful states is deepening dependency and widening inequality.
But where others see crisis, Africa must see opportunity. In the fractures of the global order, there is space for a new alignment — one led by the Global South, with Africa and its Diaspora at the centre.
Let us therefore see reparations not merely as compensation for past crimes, but as reconstruction for a new world order — a world anchored in fairness, dignity, justice accountability and equality. Reparations must mean the restoration of our agency over our minerals, our markets, our culture, and our narratives.
As Africans we have suffered irreparable damages through centuries of slave trade, colonialism, and Apartheid. Our founding fathers— from Nkrumah to Nyerere, from Cabral to Lumumba — built the foundations of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) as a shield against exploitation and a voice for justice.
The 2003 AU Decision to recognise the Diaspora as the Sixth Region was a historic act of moral restitution — affirming that Africa’s body cannot be whole without its far-flung limbs. The Diaspora is not an appendix to Africa — it is her heartbeat abroad. Through the AU’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC), our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora have become integral to our pursuit of unity and self-reliance.
The theme of today, therefore, is not a slogan. It is a revolutionary summons for Africans everywhere to use our collective institutions — from the AU and CARICOM to GRULAC and the United Nations — as platforms to demand systemic, institutional and financial justice, not a symbolic apology. We must move from words to architecture:
- The reform of the UN Security Council, so Africa is no longer spoken about but spoken to.
- The reform of the global financial system, so that the IMF and World Bank become instruments of equity, not engines of extraction.
- The restructuring of trade and debt regimes, so that the burden of history does not continue to crush the promise of tomorrow.
Only through a just global governance system can Africans on the Continent and in the Diaspora fully realise their socio-economic and cultural rights.
Earlier this year, history turned a corner when the Chagos Archipelago was formally returned to the Republic of Mauritius — a moment that resonated far beyond the Indian Ocean. This was not merely a diplomatic event; it was the first tangible act of reparatory justice in our lifetime — a living example of the African Union’s 2025 Theme: Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations. For more than half a century, the Chagossian people were exiled from their ancestral home to make way for foreign military bases — their suffering symbolised the unfinished work of decolonisation. Their return marks the beginning of the reversal of that injustice, and a signal that the world can no longer ignore Africa’s legal, moral, and historical claims. The precedent it sets is profound: it affirms that colonial dispossession is not a matter of history but of accountability; that the theft of land, labour, and sovereignty demands restoration, not remembrance alone. Going forward, we must mobilise collectively — governments, civil society, and the Diaspora — to transform this victory into a continental movement. The same persistence that freed Chagos must now be channelled toward the restitution of looted artefacts, the cancellation of odious debts, and the repair of the socio-economic scars left by slavery and colonialism. The lesson of Chagos is clear: reparations are not impossible — they are inevitable when Africa speaks with one voice and acts with one purpose.
This year also marks the 70th Anniversary of the Bandung Conference of 1955, where the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia gathered to proclaim the enduring principles of sovereignty, equality, mutual respect, non-alignment, and solidarity among peoples oppressed by colonialism and imperialism. Bandung was not just a meeting — it was the birth of a worldview: that the liberation of one nation was inseparable from the liberation of all. Seventy years later, those principles stand not as relics, but as rescue lines in a fragmented world. In an age once again defined by war, economic coercion, and geopolitical division, the Bandung Spirit reminds us that true independence requires economic emancipation, cultural self-definition, and moral courage. The call of 1955 is now the command of 2025: to rebuild a just world order where the voices of the Global South shape, not shadow, global governance. The task before us is to reimagine Bandung — not as nostalgia, but as a living doctrine of collective self-reliance and reparatory justice, binding Africa and its Diaspora together in the struggle for dignity, equality, and peace.
Furthermore, the successful implementation of Agenda 2063, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development requires that the pledges made at global forums — especially the Financing for Development Conferences — be honoured, not forgotten. Reparatory justice is not about charity. It is about equity — about converting historical debt into developmental investment.
The Diaspora must be at the centre of this transformation. Diaspora capital, knowledge networks, and cultural power must be mobilised as the sixth engine of African development — alongside our mineral wealth, our human potential, and our political unity.
I am therefore looking forward to the concrete proposals that will emerge from our discussions over the coming days — proposals that will transform dialogue into diplomacy, and reflection into restitution.
We meet here today in the OR Tambo Building — a living monument to one of democratic South Africa’s Founding Fathers and father of our democratic foreign policy who carried the torch of our struggle across oceans and decades. This month we commemorate his birthday on 27 October. OR Tambo was more than a freedom fighter — he was a diplomat of conscience. In exile, he transformed the moral isolation of apartheid South Africa into a global cause of justice. His diplomacy was not driven by expedience but by principle, not by alliances of convenience but by solidarity of conviction.
He taught us that the world is not changed by power alone, but by patience, perseverance, persuasion, steadfastness and principled courage. Those are the very qualities required of us today as we navigate a divided world — to stand firm on the side of justice for Palestine, for Western Sahara, for Haiti, and for every African-descended community still denied their full humanity.
Ubuntu, Respect, Solidarity, Equality, Pan-Africanism, and Unity — these remain the moral architecture of South Africa’s foreign policy. And it is upon these foundations that we must now build the house of reparatory justice.
It is no coincidence that South Africa’s G20 Presidency in 2025 is guided by the theme Solidarity, Equality, and Sustainability. These are not abstract ideals — they are the distilled essence of our Pan-African philosophy.
Our Presidency follows on from Indonesia, India, and Brazil — nations of the Global South who share our vision of a rebalanced world. It is the 1st time that it being held on African soil. However we striving to ensure that this G20 is not just held on our soil but G20 is an African G20 where our outcomes of the G20 Leaders’ Summit this November advances a shared agenda ensuring that addresses our issues such as: debt justice, the cost of capital , illicit financial flows fairer taxation , financing for development climate financing, technology transfer, and fair trade for the developing world.
As I conclude I wish to express my heartfelt appreciation to Ambassador Haddadi, my dear sister and comrade, for her presence and wisdom; to Freedom Park for hosting the next two days of our commemorations; and to the Ambassadors from GRULAC and Africa.
But beyond gratitude, I must end with a challenge: If not us, who? If not now, when? If we do not tell our story, it will be told by others — and edited to our erasure.
Let the Diaspora Week not end as a conference but begin as a movement. Let it echo through schools, embassies, parliaments, and churches across the world — that the children of Africa demand not pity but partnership; not slogans but systems; not rhetoric but restitution.
Let us celebrate our connection and our oneness as Africans — for if we do not, no one will. Let us remember Mapungubwe, honour OR Tambo, and summon the spirit of our ancestors who crossed seas in chains but dreamed of freedom across generations.
I wish you all a successful Diaspora Week and an outcome that will take forward the African Union Theme beyond 2025.
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