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Date
: 14/03/2006
Source: The Presidency
Title: Mbeki: Dinner in honour of UN Secretary-General
Toast remarks of the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki,
at the official dinner in honour of HE Kofi Annan,
Secretary-General of the United Nations, Tuynhuys, Cape Town
Your Excellency Mr Kofi Annan, esteemed Member of the Order of the
Companions of OR Tambo and Mme Nane Annan,
Honourable members of the delegation of the
Secretary-General,
Deputy President of our Republic Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka,
Honourable Ministers and Deputy Ministers, Your Excellencies
Ambassadors and High Commissioners,
Distinguished guests,
Comrades, ladies and gentlemen
The natural order of things permits that only a few human beings
ever have the possibility and responsibility to lead the global
family of nations.
Through the ages, many who have had this possibility have derived
their authority from the coldly brutal ability of their nations to
impose their will on the peoples of the world, because of their
irresistible economic and military power.
As Secretary-General of the United Nations, we and billions of
others throughout the world have, for many years, looked up to and
accepted you as our leader, ever ready to respond to your gentle
guidance as we engaged in daily struggle to define the road map
that would lead us to the creation of the humane societies for
which all human beings yearn.
We found it easy to accept your leadership because we knew that you
did not have the instruments of power that would oblige us to bend
to your will, against our will.
We respected your leadership because we knew that you would base
your own ability to be our guide on your respect for our own
dignity as sovereign human beings and states, and therefore our
ability to think for ourselves and act rationally in the interest
of all humanity.
We were confident that you would never relate to us as objects of
policies elaborated by the powerful, with our role being merely to
submit to the will of others who were superior to us because they
disposed of unbridled powers of coercion.
Esteemed Secretary-General, whenever you have spoken and acted as
our leader, we have understood that you sought to dare us to aspire
towards the creation of a better world. You sought to inspire us to
share your dream – the dream of a new world characterised by
the true political, economic and social liberation of all human
beings.
Your high position may not have made it possible for you to
petition the nations to treat your noble dreams, the powerful
substance of your moral leadership, honourably, by citing what the
Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, said in his moving poem entitled,
“He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”. The poem
reads:
“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden
and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night
and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your
feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my
dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread upon my
dreams.”
Had I the power to command you, Mr Secretary-General, I would
direct that you stand up now, in front of this eminent audience and
repeat after W B Yeats, for our nation and all nations to hear your
challenge:
“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths… I would spread
the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you
tread upon my dreams.”
Secretary-General, you assumed office on New Year’s Day,
1997. When you conclude your second term on 31 December this year,
you will have led the nations of the world during a decade that
encompassed the closing years of the second millennium and the 20th
century, and the opening years of the third millennium and the 21st
century.
Inevitably this transition could not but arouse expectations that
as we rang out the old, we also rang in the new. It was inevitable
that some would ask whether you, the Secretary-General of the
United Nations during this supposedly epoch-making transition, had
done anything to ring in the new!
But you also took office just over seven years after the collapse
of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a moment identified by the historians
as marking the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a new world
order.
Commenting on this event 10 years later, in 1999, the US
“Time” magazine said: “Who are we without the
wall? For decades, the ugly scar across the face of Berlin offered
a navigational beacon to the governments of the world. It reminded
them of who they were and who they were not, and differentiated
friend from foe…
“The tearing down of the wall was a dramatic, unplanned
historical triumph that closed the book on an era. It redefined,
mostly for the better, the way millions of people would live their
lives…
“But 10 years later, those who lived east of the wall are
left wondering what its demise really meant…For the most
part they have found that capitalism’s lavish banquet is laid
before a favoured few…
“Those who fought against communism…now find
themselves railing against the godless consumerism that capitalism
has brought in the wake of godless communism. Even among the
victors, the wall’s collapse has posed a troubling challenge:
it is a lot more difficult to define what we are, now that what we
are not is history.”
Caught in the great wash of these historic events, which did indeed
define the way we live, but which for billions was not better, we
looked to you, honoured Secretary-General, to lead us through what
were bound to be turbulent times.
Those among us who see every tomorrow as but the expression of a
petty pace in the evolution of human society, will not have
realised that you were called upon to lead the nations of the world
at a time of global turmoil and an inherent disequilibrium in the
structuring of human affairs. At such an historic moment, there
could not be a new imperium that could order the unfettered demons
to be gone, and be obeyed!
In a 4 December 2003 article in the “Los Angeles Times”
you said, “Today, the common ground we used to stand on no
longer seems solid. In seeking new common ground for our collective
efforts, we need to consider whether the United Nations itself is
well suited to the challenges ahead.”
Writing in the “Wall Street Journal” on 22 February
2005, you returned to this topic and said: “The UN cannot
expect to survive into the 21st century unless ordinary people
throughout the world feel that it does something for them –
helping to protect them against (both civil and international)
conflict, but also against poverty, hunger, disease and the erosion
of their natural environment. And in recent years, bitter
experience has taught us that a world in which whole countries are
left prey to misgovernment and destitution is not safe for anyone.
We must turn the tide against disease and hunger, as well as
against terrorism, the proliferation of deadly weapons and
crime…”
Earlier in 2001, in your Nobel Lecture, when you and the United
Nations were justly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, you said:
“We have entered the third millennium through a gate of fire.
If today, after the horror of 11 September, we see better, and we
see further, we will realise that humanity is indivisible. New
threats make no distinction between races, nations or regions. A
new security has entered every mind, regardless of wealth and
status. A deeper awareness of the bonds that bind us all – in
pain as in prosperity – has gripped young and old.
“In the early beginnings of the 21st century – a
century already violently disabused of any hopes that progress
towards global peace and prosperity is inevitable – this new
reality can no longer be ignored. It must be
confronted.”
In many ways, daily events underline the enormous pull of
centrifugal impulses in global human society, which communicate the
message that the human centre cannot hold, that things will fall
apart and that mere anarchy will be loosed upon the world.
As an African, part of a great Continent toiling towards its
renaissance, I am proud that a world leader, who is an African, UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, has had the courage to stand up
against the seeming blood-dimmed tide, to point humanity in another
and more humane direction – that, despite the representation
of phenomenon as essence, a deeper awareness of the bonds that bind
us all, in pain as in prosperity, has gripped young and old, and
that humanity is indivisible.
Our esteemed leader, Kofi Annan, a servant of the peoples of the
world and an African nevertheless, has spread this noble dream
under our feet, urging us to work towards its fulfilment. Whatever
we do next, we should tread softly because we tread upon his dream
and ours.
I am privileged to welcome the Secretary-General, his dear wife and
his delegation to our country and thank them for honouring us with
their visit. I welcome them on behalf of all our people, who will
never forget the enormous contribution made by the United Nations
to our struggle to achieve our liberation from the apartheid crime
against humanity.
We therefore welcome you, Mr Secretary-General, as a liberator into
the midst of an army of liberators, where you rightly belong.
Please consider this free South Africa as forever your home.
Comrades, ladies and gentlemen, please rise and join me in a toast
to the good health and continued success of the Secretary-General
of the United Nations and Mme Nane Annan, and the revitalisation of
the United Nations Organisation as a true representative of the
hopes and aspirations of “We, the people” of the
world.
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