Mr Chairman
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, your Excellency Dr Alzubedi
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
I want to thank my honourable brother, the ambassador and the embassy staff, the government and the peoples of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for inviting me to join you as you mark the historic revolution of exactly forty years ago. Your journey towards freedom was not easy. But, more so, your current history with the global political superpowers has been challenging to put it mildly and yet it has seen distinct diplomatic and other successes.
Your journey that has culminated in this gathering started “at 02h00 on 1 September, exactly 40 years ago when Radio Benghazi announced the overthrow of the Libyan monarchy. This event captured the imagination of the Libyan peoples in the same way as it captured the attention of oppressed peoples all over the world. The heroic columns of the revolutionary army were led by a colonel who - it must be noted - never promoted himself to rank of full army general despite his remarkable rise to power.
This event had followed the seminal moment when, on 1 January 1959, another man of destiny, Fidel Castro, led the 26 July movement in its removal of the corrupt and discredited Batista regime from power. These events fundamentally altered the shape of global geopolitics for many decades, running right through, and beyond, the Cold War. These events have a fascinating resonance in the events when Libya was ruled by Carthage, Rome and the Ottomans.
When Nelson Mandela delivered his inaugural speech as the President of a democratic and free South Africa at the summit meeting of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Heads of State and Government in Tunisia in 1994, he decried the destruction of Carthage by the Romans. He referred to Carthage as the epitome of human civilisation and went on to say, “during this long interregnum, the children of Africa were carted away as slaves. Leading them to be singled out as the “outstanding example of the beneficiaries of charity”.
We are here, as leaders of a free South Africa, to join the Libyan people in the festivities to mark the 40th anniversary of the great Al-Fateh Revolution. We are here to say that, much like the Romans failed to destroy the spirit of Carthage, they, and others who followed, have failed to destroy the Libyan people’s insatiable appetite for “freedom, social justice, and unity”.
We share so many things that are mutual between our two peoples. We are both located on the African continent, we were both oppressed and exploited by people who did not think that we also deserved a life of liberty and freedom, we are currently working together through the African Union, which is chaired by yourselves. We are doing jointly and severally everything in our power to bring Africa back from the brink, after years of colonial domination, rank unfairness and the current global slump which began in developed countries.
We are together, based on our economic strength, taking bold steps to prevent a repeat of a situation where Africa will be viewed as “the outstanding example of the beneficiaries of charity”. We are committed to helping Africa to stand on its own two feet, and not holding out begging bowls to the rich countries of the world.
We are here, brothers and sisters, to rededicate ourselves to the values that have driven our respective liberation struggles. Most importantly, though, we are here so that we too shall retain our solemn pledge to honour the dignity and the freedom of our own people who, for too long, were denied emancipation by those who had imposed themselves on us.
Your country played a crucial role in the isolation and the eventual demise of apartheid. You ensured this through your work in the OAU and the United Nations. Indeed you were an essential part of the achievement of the noble goal of the total liberation of Africa minus, of course, Western Sahara, which to this day remains a thorny issue. Your indefatigable efforts inspired all of us in the liberation movement in this country, to the extent that, to quote Nelson Mandela again, “neither Carthage nor Africa had been destroyed’ and we are here to make bold our conviction that the “long interregnum of humiliation (is) over”.
We do not need to repeat the mistakes that are often committed by people when they are victorious. In fact, Milan Kundera, himself a revolutionary, was correct when he warned us that we must always strive to ensure that memory emerges triumphant over forgetting. We need to utilise our freedom better to improve the lives of our people.
We need to look at strengthening our bilateral relations whilst at the same time increasing the volume of trade between our two countries. There is, for instance, huge potential for collaboration in the field of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas. This field is firmly located in the area to which my party has deployed me. I am therefore urging the embassy to work with my department further to explore these areas.
I will engage with the South African industry players who are involved in this field so as to look concretely for areas of cooperation as well as to gain an understanding of what it is that has caused us to move too slowly in this area which holds out so much promise. The same can be said regarding collaboration between our electricity utilities which, for instance, can reap benefits from hydro-electrical possibilities.
It cannot be justified that we continue to rely on other people for our own economic well being. Economic diplomacy is now the watchword in international relations. It is a train we dare not miss as we continue strengthening our diplomatic relations. Neo colonialism invariably is the beneficiary when we ignore this important facet of modern diplomacy.
Both our countries are endowed with natural resources. We have to use and exploit these, yet in sustainable ways; to feed our children, to clothe them, to send them to schools which can offer the best education, to do the same with post secondary cooperation and ultimately to put our people into jobs that can sustain them, while they live in a social and economic environment, with housing and services that are adequate and dignified.
These are the noble goals and dreams that drove your country to stage a glorious revolution. It is also the same idealism and revolutionary spirit that motivated the liberation movement here, in its long, bloody and protracted struggle against the abominable system of apartheid.
Our own struggle, my dear brothers and sisters, had four firm pillars upon which it rested. The pillar that realistically talks to this important occasion is international solidarity and support. This is particularly important as we are now grappling with a skewed global political and financial system that favours the developed countries of the north; in many respects, a new and global form of apartheid.
We also have the same problem that, despite the commitments in the millennium development goals, we are still sitting with a time bomb of abject poverty, underdevelopment and unemployment in many parts of our continent. We clearly need to work together even more and better at both bilateral and multilateral levels to create a new global order to which we have always aspired.
Our two leaders participated and worked well together at the recent Pittsburgh summit meeting of the G20, and the same should surely happen as we continue to work together through the OAU and other structures of the Unite Nations (UN) for a better world. We seek nothing less than a global order marked by equity and dignity. To this attainable end, I have no doubt that our mutual Co-operation will continue.
Thank you.
Issued by: Department of Energy
30 September 2009
Source: Department of Energy (http://www.dme.gov.za/)
