Date: 05/03/2007

Source: The Presidency

Title: Mlambo-Ngcuka: Sustaining Africa's Democratic Momentum International conference



Address by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka at the International Conference on Sustaining Africa's Democratic Momentum, Sandton Convention Centre


Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Professor Alpha Oumar Konare
Retired Heads of State
Chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission, South Africa, Dr Brigalia Bam
Secretary General of International IDEA, Mr Vidar Helgesen
Mayor of Johannesburg, Councillor Amos Masondo
Distinguished Members of the Cabinet of the Republic of South Africa
Honourable Members of Parliament from South Africa
Members of the Diplomatic Corps
Distinguished participants and delegates
Ladies and gentlemen

On behalf of our President, His Excellency, Thabo Mbeki, who could not join us as he is en route to Ghana's 50th Independent celebrations, the Government and the People of South Africa, and indeed in my own name, I wish to welcome you and thank you for holding this important conference in our beautiful and warm country, South Africa. Namkelekile Yonwabani!

We trust you will have a pleasant stay with us, be able to do your work, see our country and still have time to achieve the common purpose of strengthening ties and networking among yourselves and with our people.

Allow me, first and foremost, to thank our three host organisations, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of South Africa, the African Union Commission and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) for organising such a critically important conference. You chose an important theme, "Sustaining Africa's Democratic Momentum", which shows that this conference is truly meant to benefit our country and the continent.

We are also privileged to welcome you and so many of our brothers and sisters from our continent, Latin America, Asia, and other parts of the world, who have travelled long distances to participate in this International Conference, which is taking place in the context of our collective desire to promote South-South co-operation and experience sharing in democracy, governance and development.

Nothing could be more important to all of us as developing countries and as ex-colonies than to walk together in our quest to consolidate and deepen the quality of our democracy. This is indeed a new area for us the people of the South to discuss democracy amongst ourselves.

This historic conference takes place at the time when the entire continent is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the independence of Ghana, which obtained its independence in 1957. This was an event that changed the history of Africa forever. We salute Kwame Nkrumah and the people of Ghana for being pace-setters in the struggle for the emancipation and independence of Africa; for they broke the mould!

Madame Chairperson, I welcome your idea of convening a conference of this nature to help us reflect on what each country can offer to enrich our domestic experiences by drawing from the global democratic experience and practice. This conference will serve also to highlight the important role played by the ordinary people in building democracy; for democracy itself is about the people and it is for the people. Indeed for us in Africa, it is a cherished moment when we get to do some introspection even about our leadership as Africans.

Like many other nations our people believe in Ubuntu, meaning that "a person is a person because of other persons". Put differently, I am because you are. We believe our fortunes as a nation are intimately interconnected with the fortunes of our neighbours, our continent and indeed all of humanity; and that is therefore on the basis both of moral responsibility and collective interest that we continue to actively contribute in the building of a better Africa in a better world.

In 1994 we adopted the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) as a programme of action for the post apartheid upliftment of the country. The RDP has six important pillars, that is:

* Providing basic needs, (for example, water, energy, roads, housing, schools, clinics, sanitation and ICT).
* Building the economy (which is now growing at more than 5% of GDP); this to be understood in the context of the economy we inherited that was at the very brink of collapse. We therefore had to turn it around and make it work for all our people.
* Developing human resources (inferior education was a cornerstone of Apartheid).
* Building a democratic state (non-racist and non-sexist; the challenge was to move from a racist regime to uniting a country that was divided into small pseudo states, and to ensure allegiance to one Constitution).
* Peace and stability (out of long battles within ourselves and aggression towards neighbours).
* Contributing to a better Africa and a better world.

Our Constitution and most of our Legislation has been in support of this thrust. This event is a reminder of the six pillars of the RDP. With hindsight we also should have tackled what Madiba called 'the RDP of the soul'. These are matters of values and morals. Even though most of us continued to be informed by the RDP, we have expanded on the economic pillar to create a balanced macro-economic framework and we are pursuing micro-reforms under the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative (AsgiSA).

We are looking at both growing and sharing the benefits of growth as a country that still has extreme inequalities between rich and poor. We are expanding on Human Resource which is our biggest challenge. We have to fix public education and acquire critical skills within a short space of time. In this regard, we have expanded access to education. Building a democratic state and commitment to democratic elections are an important means of showing the quality of our democracy. Passing our Constitution was our biggest achievement, now we must live by it. Further, as part of the RDP we continue to make our modest but determined contribution in global affairs.

The whole of Africa and the international community stood with us during the difficult years as we fought against the system of Apartheid. We owe our emancipation from apartheid in no small major to the unwavering support and solidarity extended to us by all the peoples of Africa and beyond. In that sense our victory over the system of White minority domination is an African victory.

This, I believe, imposes an obligation on us to use this gift of freedom, which is in itself an important contribution to Africa's Renaissance, to advance the cause of the Peoples of our continent. Together we owe to our people the obligation to give substance to the freedom we have. The biggest obligation we now have is to break the cycle of poverty and give our people back their dignity in full; empower our women; nurture our children and pass on a brighter future to them. Today must be better than yesterday, and tomorrow better than today.

Your Excellencies, distinguished participants,

In South Africa we believe in capacity of African Union (AU) to lead us in this direction. These are shared tasks. We need all our nations to lead and the international community to support us and not to lead us. When our people vote and embrace democratic governments there must be a link between the vote and improved quality of life of the people.

As responsible citizens of the world, members of the United Nations (UN) and AU, we are also called upon actively to work with others, to support one another in the different home grown peace-building efforts and democratisation in places such as Burundi, Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia and Cote d'Ivoire. In the same vein we in South African are very proud of the role that Africa played in supporting the democratisation of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Our own IEC made us proud. When we work together with an affected country the result can be re-sounding. When we stand together we are formidable.

Today we were happy to learn of the breakthrough in Cote d'Ivoire.

South Africa joined the UN Security Council in 2007 and in that position we see our task as bringing greater alignment to the work of the Security Council and that of the AU, especially the Peace and Security Council and those bodies outlined in Chapter 8 of the UN Charter which deals with regional organisations. As I said earlier, we are conscious of what the world has done for us, and thus we too are determined to contribute what we can to the making of a better world for all. Similarly, we stand ready to work with Africa and its key institutions to reclaim the 21st Century as the African Century.

We are ready to disabuse prophets of doom, especially those outside of our continent, who continue to perceive Africa as 'the dark continent', torn between interminable conflict, unable to solve its problems, and condemned it to the netherworld.

Here, I recount the words of President Thabo Mbeki when addressing the Corporate Council on "Attracting Capital to Africa" Summit in 1997 in Virginia, United States of America, saying "those who have eyes to see let them see. The African Renaissance is upon us. As we peer through the looking glass darkly, this may not be obvious. But it is upon us." Then he went on to recount some of key successes recorded by Africa over the last few years. Indeed we are very proud of those successes for they give us the strength to move forward.

We are seeing concerted efforts to mainstream inclusive politics and to empower women and minorities. For example, in relation to women empowerment, we have seen African women rising to take their rightful place in the public spheres: more than 48% women representation in Parliament in Rwanda; more than 30% women representation in South Africa and Mozambique; and one female Head of State for the first time in the history of Africa, Her Excellency Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson, President of Liberia. Recently in Mauritius we saw women representation making a giant leap from a paltry five to 17 percent in 2005. While cognisant that electoral systems and frameworks are key determinants of the extent to which women can participate in political and public life in Africa, it is encouraging to note the various initiatives and measures being put in place to advance the cause of women, some under the auspices of the African Union and others at regional and national levels, such as women quotas or reserved seats in the latter case.

We believe more needs to be done to bring about the total empowerment of women, to help them participate meaningfully and effectively in politics. We need to deal with "institutional masculinity" that surrounds parliamentary procedures and processes these days, namely a situation where men largely determine the political arena and the agenda according to their norms, values and lifestyle. As women we need to do three key things towards self-empowerment and politics:

* learn the rules that apply to parliamentary functioning
* apply the rules to bring about the required change
* change the rules to effectively address the concerns of women.

Economic Developments in Africa

On the economic front, Africa has also fared well, with a number of countries, especially the oil–exporting regions, such as Sudan and Angola, recording more than 10 percent growth rate per annum, due to increase in output and higher oil prices. The same good news is shared by commodity exporting countries, such as South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia, which have benefited from higher world prices in platinum, iron, copper, and gold. But we can and must do even better.

This good news can also partly be ascribed to better macro-economic management and regulatory systems that are prevalent in some of these countries. I believe we still need to do more to prevent irresponsible exploitation of our natural resources so that the resource sector on our continent is in the best interest of Africa for it makes a mockery of our democracy if after having free and fair elections through thick and thin, we then fail to use our power to rule in a manner that is in the best interest of our people and economic justice: a manner that make us custodians of our peoples’ aspirations and their protectors.

We must guard against any intended and unintended plundering of Africa and the entire developing world. Together, as developing countries, we have the bulk of natural resources that the world needs yet many of our nations, under governments that we elected democratically, are poor despite of these resources and even because of these resources. We can compromise economic justice by commission or omission; that we have to watch. It is something we have to address to give our hard-won democracies meaning and currency.

Challenges facing Africa

Africa remains the only continent where most of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) are most unlikely to be met, yet we need development the more. We are battling on many fronts, including the burden of diseases, HIV and AIDS being one of our biggest challenges.

In connection with HIV and AIDS in Africa we have to focus on creating an HIV and AIDS free Africa. We must dare to dream it and work for it. This is a campaign of Africa with no AIDS that we must all join with words and deeds; including you and me who are not particularly young, we all have a role to play. If we are infected we must never infect anyone else and must never re-infect ourselves. If we are not yet infected our revolutionary task is to stay negative. Those are two simple choices towards an AIDS free Africa. The rest of the posturing on this question pales into insignificance.

Our civil societies are weak and resource-stripped: we need our civil societies to be stronger; we need civil societies which are not speaking for Western non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and donors, for this way, they lose direction. We also need to grow our African private sector, raise the capacity of our private sector in the whole continent, so that we do not wholly depend on multi-nationals and a middle class that is only drawn from the civil service. An indigenous African private sector is quite crucial if our democracy is to grow qualitatively. The challenges facing our continent are many. Having had a cursory look at your agenda, I noted that the issues you intend tackling are many and most relevant.

I am most encouraged to note that members of the African Forum for Former Heads of State and Government are participating in this August meeting to make contributions informed by their immense experiences as African leaders. We also note with delight that civil society, political party networks, parliamentary networks, and electoral authorities are in attendance. This blend of experience and competence will in my view go a long way to help us reflect, in a meaningful and objective way, on Africa's challenges as we seek to define the road towards African Renaissance and reclaiming the 21st Century as Africa’s own.

We have put behind us the notions of democracy and human rights as peculiarly "Western" concepts. The journey towards our renaissance may be long, tedious, and bendy, but in my view the road map we have is clear.

This reminds me of the very words of our founding father and former President of South Africa, Madiba, in his book Long Walk to Freedom, when he says and I quote: "I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended."

I want to end by reminding ourselves of the wise words of Mahatma Ghandi and call upon us all to let his seven social sins ring true always, and they are:

* politics without principle
* wealth without work
* pleasure without conscience
* knowledge without character
* commerce without morality
* science without humanity
* worship without sacrifice.

With these few words, Madame Chairperson, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentleman, I wish to now declare this historic conference officially opened.

I thank you most kindly for your attention.

Issued by: The Presidency
5 March 2007