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My dear friends and fellow South Africans,

Like millions of other Africans, I was riveted by President Barack Obama's
speech to Ghana's parliament recently. I do not need to add to the endless
commentary on the President's soaring rhetoric: it is beautiful. There is no
other leader in the world today who can speak to people, especially young
people, so directly and inspirationally.

Yet shorn of its elegant cadences, Obama's speech in Accra contained a
simple prosaic message: Africa must do for itself what others cannot. If any
of Obama's predecessors had given the same speech, he may well have been
given short shrift. The Southern charm of a Bill Clinton or the
shoot-from-the-hip "give it to them straight" parlance of a George W. Bush
would simply have not been able to communicate the same message - well, not
without a few pot shots being taken at Air Force One.

Only an American president whose African grandfather who experienced the
humiliation of racist British imperialism could say to us as candidly as
Obama did: the main problem is not our colonial legacy but what we have done
and failed to. In simple terms, Obama's speech was a tract for self-help and
self-reliance.

As a blogger on the Huffington Post observed, "No American president has
ever spoken so candidly on African soil about the real roots of Africa's
development malaise, which lie in the "big man" syndrome of
patronage-drenched ethnic politics, contempt for the rule of law, and wanton
abuse of human rights. "

Obama said: "It is easy to point fingers, and to pin the blame for these
problems on others. Yes, a colonial map that made little sense bred
conflict, and the West has often approached Africa as a patron, rather than
a partner. But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the
Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are
enlisted as combatants.

In my father's life, it was partly tribalism and patronage in an independent
Kenya that for a long stretch derailed his career, and we know that this
kind of corruption is a daily fact of life for far too many."

Yes, our forefathers had to make some difficult and humiliating adjustments
to the colonial rule. The transfer from green pastures to squalid urban
hostels in South Africa caused irreparable damage to the traditional ways of
life. Yet, at the same time, it spurred in the African people previously
untapped energy, ebullience and adaptability. Obama's speech was a call for
us to assume individual and collective responsibility for our own destinies.
He was telling us, as Kennedy once told the American people: "ask not what
your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country".

It was this philosophy of self-help and self-reliance which inspired me when
I founded Inkatha. I don't see people as a problem to be handled by
government like an anonymous statistic. I see people who have problems
needing to be helped by government: a hand up, not a hand out. This way I
have always promoted measures to resuscitate rural agriculture and resisted
the development of a dependency culture based on grants.

Another related problem is corruption, which Obama also spoke crisply about.
Corruption, by example, is rampant among grain distributors in areas
suffering scarcity. According to a recent report, SA has seen a 200 percent
increase in the wheat prices in the past year, which is, in part,
attributable to pervasive price-fixing amongst the bread and diary sectors.
Government must redouble its efforts to root out industry collusion, which
is threatening the country's food security. I contend, if we cannot
guarantee food security for all our people, the state has failed.

And it is only by the creation of small, medium and micro enterprises can we
slay the poverty dragon and create eighty percent of the new jobs needed to
lift South Africa's poorest six million above the breadline. We have always
believed that self-help and self-reliance is the key to survival and to
establishing socio-economic stability not only in words but also in deeds.

Nor could Obama have been more forthright in identifying bad governance -
corruption, lawlessness, the widespread abuse of human rights, and purely
superficial deference to democratic norms - as the bane of Africa's quest
for development and dignity. It is to our often superficial deference to
democratic norms which I will now turn.

Under Mr Mandela, Mr Mbeki, Mr Motlanthe and now Mr Zuma our post-apartheid
governments have made giant strides in the delivery of much-needed public
goods, values and services to their hitherto marginalised constituents. By
so doing, the post-apartheid state has largely legitimised itself in the
eyes of the people.

In a fundamental sense, the South African state has progressively sought to
become constitutional and anchored on the rule of law. And our civil society
organisations and the political opposition have, much to the annoyance of
those in power, been trying hard to put this state on the road to becoming a
genuine civic society where the rights and freedom of individuals reign
supreme.

On the whole, the democratising South African state has been caught between
substantive and procedural democracy, perilously edging towards the latter.
Several factors have been responsible for this trajectory. These include, in
my view, the enduring institutional framework of the apartheid state, the
nature of our elite-pacted democratic transition and the legacy of poor,
unemployed and largely unemployable underclasses whose primary preoccupation
is with sheer survival rather than with the nuances of political
participation. These factors have given the ruling party a free hand to
pursue an institutional approach towards our shared democratic goals. It is
therefore not the institutions themselves but their day-to-day functioning
which betrays the lack of substance in our much touted democracy.

Executive accountability, Parliament's oversight role, state ethics, service
delivery, policy development and public debate have all been hindered by
obsolete ideology, stodgy political correctness and an empty rhetoric of
self-congratulation.

The consequences have been as devastating as they have been far- reaching.
The prospect of a vibrant multi-party democracy has receded as the reality
of a one-party state has settled in. The very prevailing mores and values -
the distinction between us and them - which our democratic order sought to
supersede now appear to have been further entrenched. Race, not individual
achievement and merit, once again dominates government policy, economic
entitlement and public discourse. Collectivism, corporatism and
interventionism have all curtailed individual liberty. Concepts such as
vigilance, creativity, hard work and commitment have inevitably suffered. We
will therefore do well to heed Obama's message in this regard.

I still like to think however that South Africa, with our relatively
peaceful transition, a toolkit of conflict resolution and a few lessons
learned in Zimbabwe, will continue to be shorthand for an idea or "ideal".
We have built a reasonably liberal democracy, with (largely) repeated free
and fair elections, media freedom, a pluralistic civil society, and
responsible governance. South Africa, despite our modest means, bears the
yoke of continental leadership. Our fingerprints are all over NEPAD and a
host of other ambitious regional initiatives. It is a heavy yoke but it is
also a rewarding responsibility. There is so much to do with it, so much to
achieve.

Yours sincerely,

Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP