The Premier of Mpumalanga province, Mr DD Mabuza
The Speaker of the Mpumalanga legislature and Vice-President of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Africa Region, Mr SW Lubisi
Honourable members of the member states' parliaments
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
I would like to welcome you all to South Africa and, in particular, Mpumalanga, which boasts some of the most breathtaking natural beauty in the world. I hope that, as part of your visit to our country, you will set some time aside to take in some of the tourist attractions within this province.
The timing and choice of venue for this conference are particularly interesting.
First, the timing: The conference takes place just 16 days after the closure of the 16th 2010 FIFA World Cup. The world cup was an event that transformed not only the image of South Africa but also the image of Africa. It is amazing what a global sporting event can do for the image of a continent!
Second, the venue: You meet at one of our 10 impressive world cup stadiums.
1. Democracy in South Africa
To be where we are today, we as a country had to meet and deal with significant challenges. Not so long ago, South Africa was ruled by a racist government whose policies were aimed at benefiting a small white minority.
Because of an unwavering quest for freedom, our people, through their various political organisational forms, waged relentless grassroots struggles, which eventually led to the end of apartheid and ushered in a democratic state. Members of the commonwealth played a significant role in that struggle.
Members of the commonwealth spearheaded international action against the apartheid regime. Members of the Commonwealth imposed cultural and sporting sanctions against apartheid South Africa at the Gleneagles Summit of 1977.
At a crucial time in our history, in 1986, a Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group co-chaired by Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo and Australia's Malcolm Fraser visited PW Botha, and then Nelson Mandela who was still in detention on Robben Island. The Eminent Persons Group was in the vanguard of the international train that helped us achieve freedom and democracy.
Since returning to the Commonwealth we have been keen participants in Commonwealth affairs, hosting the big event, the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, in Durban in 1999.
2. The Commonwealth's global challenges
South Africa has had a long and emotional connection with the commonwealth. The emotional side is deeply bound up in the trinity at the heart of the commonwealth, those three things that tie us together: language, learning and law.
In particular, I have had a long involvement with the learning side of the Commonwealth; South Africa hosted the 16th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) in Cape Town in 2006 while I was Minister of Education.
Education is a Commonwealth priority. Indeed, the commonwealth's infrastructure for cooperation is better developed in education than any other sector. Yet the Commonwealth needs to work harder.
Commonwealth countries need to work actively, intentionally and proactively to address gender equity. In most contemporary contexts, this calls for special support for education for women and girls, who have often been deprived of opportunities for personal development through learning.
Admittedly, gender discrimination is often deeply embedded in social and cultural attitudes and practices that are slow to change. The commitment to address gender discrimination must be escalated in prominence and must be inserted into dedicated programmes that the African region of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association should review at their triennial meetings.
The commonwealth's most pressing current global challenges are climate change and poverty. Poverty and climate change are intimately interlinked.
We cannot eliminate poverty without increasing the use of energy. As developing countries take their peoples out of poverty, there has been a strong growth in greenhouse gas emissions. We cannot stop development in the developing world, but we can control the emission of greenhouse gasses.
In South Africa, in government, in business and in our universities we have prioritised global change science and technology because of its centrality for sustainable development locally, continentally and internationally.
Rising temperatures, new precipitation patterns and other changes are already affecting many aspects of human society and the natural world. Climate change is transforming ecosystems on an extraordinary scale and at an extraordinary pace.
The climate system, as part of a broader earth system, is complex and there are many areas where it is imperative for fundamental understanding to be substantially improved.
International cooperation and international benchmarking provide important platforms for understanding and promoting the contribution of universities to economic development.
One of the major sources of economic growth and job creation, which is often overlooked by developing countries, is international cooperation in renewable energy technologies. Not only does this new industry present opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it also presents new job opportunities.
All African commonwealth countries face a huge problem, youth unemployment. Youth unemployment in South Africa is very high. It is also very unevenly distributed. It is concentrated among young, unskilled blacks.
The best contribution that government can make to solve the unemployment problem is to improve the quality of general education.
Higher Education in Africa has undergone major restructuring in recent years, the institutional effects of which are still being felt. New organisational arrangements, quality assurance procedures, financing processes, and new relationships between the state and the institutions have called for new responses and adjustments by the key stakeholders involved.
It has also been a time of expansion in the number of students throughout the African Commonwealth. Expansion required an expansion of funding. Yet state funding of higher education has been in decline until comparatively recently.
3. Science in Africa
South Africa has a special role to play in this regard.
South Africa is one of the leading economies on the African continent. Therefore, progress in our country is inextricably linked to that of the entire African continent. Accordingly, the South African government has ensured that its commitment to the rule of law, human rights and good governance governs its relations with other African states.
In this regard, our government has been instrumental in ensuring that African governments increasingly enhance their capacity to tackle their domestic challenges, in particular, those that have impaired our collective ability, as a continent, to determine of own destiny.
We did this with a view to changing the image of Africa as a continent that must, of necessity, rely on the sympathy and wisdom of others for its own development and survival.
Through our own multilateral instruments such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union and other regional and multilateral instruments, South Africa, together with other African states, has been able to:
- set up credible regional and continental bodies which are responsible for promoting and enforcing transparent and accountable governance on our continent
- foster greater and more meaningful economic cooperation among African states
- promote peace and political stability by significantly reducing the number of inter-state conflicts and
- continue dedicating a huge part of her national resources to enhancing Africa’s capacity to engage in meaningful scientific innovation.
As an example of scientific innovation, the South African government is leading the African bid to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
The Square Kilometre Array is essentially a radio telescope. A big component of the SKA will be an extensive array of 3 000 antennae. Half of them will be concentrated in a region just five kilometres in diameter and the rest will be distributed up to 3 000 kilometres radius.
A number of countries submitted bids to host the SKA and, after the initial selection process only Africa and Australia made the short list. We are working hard to ensure that Africa becomes the preferred destination for this project. Construction of Africa's SKA precursor telescope, MeerKAT has begun. First phase called KAT-7 is already being tested for astronomical purposes.
The core is proposed for the Karoo region in the Northern Cape, South Africa, with possibly three antenna stations in Namibia, four in Botswana, one each in Mozambique, Mauritius, Madagascar, Kenya, Ghana and Zambia. Each station will have about 30 individual antennae.
The SKA will be the world's most powerful set of radio telescopes and will consolidate Africa's position as the astronomy hub of the world, given that South Africa also has the largest optical telescope in the Southern hemisphere, Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) and the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) telescope which is in Namibia.
We have received unanimous support from various important stakeholders in our country, but are particularly pleased by the support we have received from the African Ministerial Conference on Science and Technology held in Cairo recently.
The SKA project enjoys the support of all countries involved in radio astronomy such as the Netherlands, Germany, United States of America and Italy. Brazil has recently agreed to stimulate further interaction pertaining to the African SKA bid.
This bid has also created opportunities for studies in astronomy at the University of Nairobi in Kenya and the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo in Mozambique. Madagascar and Botswana are planning to do the same and Mauritius is enhancing its existing astronomy capacity.
The SKA will not just provide the African continent and its scientists and engineers with opportunities to develop capacity to enhance our continent's scientific and economic development. It will also go a long way towards helping our people strengthen their shared identity.
Projects like the SKA bid are giving African leaders the opportunity to change negative perceptions about Africa.
We are showing that Africa's contemporary intelligentsia can emulate their forebears, who built what is possibly the oldest solar observatory at Nabta Playa in southern Egypt, the pyramids of Giza and established scholarly institutions in Timbuktu, all of which have contributed immeasurably to modern scholarship.
4. In closing
Together with other multilateral instruments, the South African government views the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association as a crucial instrument through which Africa and the entire developing world can improve their governance systems and standards.
We also believe that meaningful engagement through multilateralism can contribute significantly to the building of a more humane world, where the colour of one’s skin, one’s creed, language, ethnic affiliation or geographic location will not impede their right to dignity.
It is our sincere belief that the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association can bring us closer to realising this and we urge you to pursue this vision with vigour and certainty.
In closing I take this opportunity to wish you great success in your deliberations. I officially declare this conference open.
