S Ndebele: South African Trade and Investment conference gala
dinner

29 October 2007

I am pleased and honoured to address you this evening as we welcome you to
this our beautiful province. KwaZulu-Natal, you may have realised is country of
many, living as one. We are a melting pot of cultures from the Indian
subcontinent and other Asian countries. Here you will find people of European
origin living on the same soil with people of African origin. Together we are
building a KwaZulu-Natal for all.

We are already at the end of the first day of official business. We have set
the stage for further deliberations which will set this country, our province
and continent on the road to development and prosperity for all. We are holding
this conference at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Convention Centre, a venue which
pays tribute to the leader of our people who passed away in 1967, 40 years ago
this past July. As Africa's first winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960,
Inkosi Luthuli represented our collective ideals, dreams and values as all of
humanity in our quest for peace for all our people.

Inkosi Luthuli himself lived and died cherishing peace, a condition which we
know is necessary for any sustained development to take place. He said:

"In Africa, as our contribution to peace, we are resolved to end such evils
as oppression, white supremacy and racial discrimination, all of which are
incompatible with world peace and security. But now the revolutionary strings
of our continent are setting the past aside."

Of equal relevance to this conference and exhibition was Inkosi Luthuli's
commitment to breaking down superficial borders which are called national
boundaries and his recognition that the world would eventually become what is
known today as a "global village". He also recognised the rising threat of war
from those who deem themselves too powerful to be accountable.

"The world is now a neighbourhood, although unfortunately, people are not
sufficiently neighbourly. We suffer at the present time from an over-stress on
nationalism. Each such ultra-nationalist group seeks domination over others. I
would like to see a South Africa that takes a serious interest in establishing
peace and friendship in the world and not merely paying lip service to these
important needs of man."

He continued: "Humanity longs for the time when the great powers of the
world will become great at heart and curb their ambitions and pave the way for
the settling of their differences in a statesman-like manner and so remove the
threat of war." As Africans we want to build an Africa that is reconciled with
itself and with its Diaspora. We want to build an Africa which starts to use
its own resources to play a major role in the economic development of its
people and the protection of its natural resources.

The African Union Roadmap as outlined by Professor Konare details "priority
programmes" which cover practical ways of bridging the digital bridge, pushing
for equitable world trade, food security and self-sufficiency, generating
investment on the continent, and linking Africa with the Diaspora. That plan
also includes workable proposals for encouraging education, deepening peace
efforts, distributing clean water and fighting disease on the continent. This
is how Africa will reconcile itself with its past and work towards building a
better future.

We must however ask some uncomfortable questions about our past and its
obvious impact on our present circumstance. We must ask why it is that Africa
is home to the poorest and marginalised while we possess massive human and
natural resources? It is a fact that Africa accounts for 30 percent of the
total mineral reserves on earth, including 40 percent of world's gold and 60
percent of cobalt. South Africa alone accounts for 70 percent of the world's
platinum.

This continent is a leading coffee and coca with diamonds and oil in
numerous countries yet we account for just one percent of the world's Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) and barely two percent of global trade. As a result of
this, Africa's population lives on less than a US$ dollar per day on average.
Our people remain highly restricted to their countries with little freedom of
movement thus hampering knowledge sharing among different communities.

New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad)

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) represents the
collective vision of African leaders to eradicate poverty and uplift the living
standards of our people in the 21st century. The broad goals of Nepad
include:

* restoration of peace and security in Africa
* eradication of widespread poverty, severe under-development and acute
* income discrepancy between the rich and the poor
* promotion of accelerated growth and sustainable development
* halting the marginalisation of Africa in the globalisation process

It is said Africa will require $54 billion additional resources each year to
meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing by half by year 2015
the population of Africans trapped in core poverty. Our challenge today is not
to research further to find out the extent of our marginalisation and poverty.
We are must now do something about our condition. We are here to do precisely
that and place Africa back firmly on the world's development agenda and on the
path to irreversible and sustainable development. This must be the millennium
of Africa.

Africa is ultimately the responsibility of Africans themselves. Africa's
development begins with the quality of our human resources in areas such as
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and other skills central to a
globalising world and better healthcare, with priority attention to addressing
HIV/AIDS and other pandemic diseases. We will never be free until women are
free and economically developed.

The phenomena of globalisation and liberalisation do not mean that
governments of the world have little to do. On the contrary we believe that
this precisely calls for an interventionist state, one that intervenes on
behalf of its people. While we do this we must forge partnerships as the public
and private sector, creating sufficient space for the private sector to create
jobs. Ours must be to provide infrastructure and enabling environment for this
to happen. This is what we are doing in our investments in roads, the harbour,
airport and stadium among others.

Building a nation

For our part we are developing the rich cultural heritage of KwaZulu-Natal
as a tourist attraction because of its growth potential and its ability to
generate jobs. This includes Zulu cultural history showcased at places such as
eMakhosini, the Valley of the Kings; Satyagraha and the role of Mahatma Gandhi
as seen in the Heritage Route in Durban; and the commemoration of events from
the past such as the Bhambatha Uprising of 1906.

On 4 November this year, we will commemorate here in KwaDukuza,
KwaZulu-Natal, the 40th anniversary since the death of Inkosi Luthuli. Because
of the significance of Inkosi Luthuli's contribution to our country we
celebrated his life during various events throughout the year. As we said
earlier, Inkosi Luthuli was a community leader, an agriculturalist, a church
leader, a cultural leader, an international human rights leader all rolled into
one. It is for this reason that we said during the State of the Province in
February that we wanted to devolve our efforts at improving the lives of our
people by employing the Village as the smallest unit of our intervention.

At international gatherings such as these it is important to speak about the
state of the world, the state of the continent or the state of the province. We
heard President Thabo Mbeki earlier this year, in the tradition of many Heads
of State around the world, deliver the State of the Nation Address. During our
State of the Province Address we called for a State of the Village. The State
of the Village will looks in detail at the village; its level of education,
jobs, people with HIV, businesses etc, at the village level. Only when our
interventions are driven from the village can we start talking about what they
adopted in China, the one province/village, one product policy.

Conclusion

In concluding we must say that the future of Africa lies in our minds but
also in our hands. We must imagine and dream a brighter future, but we must
also act timeously and on a sustainable basis; to ensure our dreams are
realised. Only this way shall we in time speak of an Africa which stands at the
top of the world yet again.

Masisukume Sakhe.

Issued by: Office of the Premier, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government
29 October 2007