Date: 24/03/2004
Source: Department of Provincial and Local Government
Title: S Mufamadi: Opening of "SA: Ten Years After Apartheid" Conference
REMARKS BY MR FS MUFAMADI, MINISTER FOR PROVINCIAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT, ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: "SOUTH AFRICA: TEN YEARS AFTER APARTHEID" HOSTED BY THE AFRICA INSTITUTE OF SOUTH AFRICA, 24 March 2004
Programme Director
H. E. Dr Salim Ahmed Salim
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentleman.
I have the privilege and pleasure of joining Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, the Mayor of the City of Tshwane, in welcoming you to this important conference. Present as delegates to the conference, are our friends and comrades from other parts of our continent, brothers and sisters from the African Diaspora, as well as friends and comrades from other continents like Latin America, Europe and Asia. Indeed, it will be something of a superfluity for me to ask you to feel at home. For, ten years after the demise of Apartheid, South Africa has in many ways become the type of society for which many of you went into the trenches, along with us.
Your visit to our shores takes place at a time when we are standing on the threshold of the second decade of freedom. Many of my compatriots from different sectors of South African society as well as my cabinet colleagues, will join you at different stages of this conference. They will share with you, their insights into what has been happening in this country since the 27th of April 1994. They will tell you that in this country, we have been working to find a strategy to concentrate the national mind on what government and the people must do together to overcome the legacy of Apartheid and to create a better society. They will tell you that whereas Apartheid used race as a fulcrum for political mobilization in order to produce inegalitarian social conditions, we are busy constructing a polity, which derives its normative content in a search for a better life for all. You are no doubt aware that we have sought to project this outlook into the regional domain as well as into the global sphere.
As you drove into the city of Tshwane, you will have noticed election posters with the faces of party leaders staring and smiling at you. We have chosen this milestone - the ten years of democracy - to let our people give themselves a licence to exercise control over their own future by allowing the possibility that we may presently be at a turning point. Not only do we, as the government of the day, acknowledge the achievements we made but also, we readily accept that we have not accomplished everything we sought to accomplish. We also listen very carefully to what our opponents have to say, and I must say, with due respect, that all of them still have to advance alternative policy perspectives sound enough the persuade us to rethink our strategic approach. The dialogue between us and our people has so far pointed to the likelihood that we shall have to reaffirm our strategic path of choice and develop a repertoire of tactics for sustaining and deepening the developmental momentum.
It is our fervent hope that this conference will help shape such new directions of contemplation as our situation may require.
For too long our continent has occupied in the hierarchy of the world order, a position, which is not propitious to the realisation of economic development and prosperity. The aftermath of the Cold War saw a discursive reconstruction of the world order and its presentation as an unalloyed benefit. It is alleged that under globalisation, all nations of the world stand to benefit from co-operation. The daily life experiences of the people in the post-colonial world, especially in Africa, point to the continuing division between the theoretic explanations of globalisation and its cultural, political and economic effects. Needless-to-say, there is a crying need for a critical theorisation of the contemporary world order, and for an identification of anchorages from which we, the victims of contemporary world politics, could start reinventing the future.
Having diagnosed the problem in the way that I have just outlined, Africa's political leadership conceptualised its own vision about the goals to which state policy should be directed. This includes the mobilization of resources and the deployment of such, towards altering the terms on which our continent is currently integrated into the global political economy. This perspective finds expression both in the Constitutive Act of the African Union and the New Partnership for African Development.
These initiatives of the African political class were sometimes attacked by people of my type (i.e. intellectuals) on the grounds that they were based on top down approaches. Certainly, there is an obvious need to create conditions for the historical formation of world order from below. African political leaders have gone on record acknowledging that we must draw on the capacity of all our people in order to build a continent which can be an oasis of stability, peace and prosperity.
For their realisation, conditions, which are visualised in the Constitutive Act of the AU and NEPAD, need a continent - wide political mobilisation. Such political mobilisation must be underpinned by the organised efforts of a rich stronghouse of intellectuals who see themselves as organic intellectuals of the African revolution. This imposes an obligation on all of us, to transcend the fictitiousness inherent in the attempts to essentialise the dichotomy between civil society and the state. We need to emphasise complimentarity between us and to avoid a form of competition, which risks a perverse outcome: a mutual enfeeblement of both civil society and the state.
Chairperson and esteemed delegates, allow me once more to thank the AFRICA INSTITUTE OF SOUTH AFRICA. We owe you a special debt of gratitude for envisioning this occasion. A sincere word of thanks to all of you, the participants, for your willingness to give so lavishly of your intellect and your insights. Your contribution will add immensely to our capacity to propel our country and our continent, towards the pinnacle of democracy and prosperity.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Provincial and Local Government
24 March 2004
Source: Department of Provincial and Local Government (http://www.dplg.gov.za/)
Source: Department of Provincial and Local Government
Title: S Mufamadi: Opening of "SA: Ten Years After Apartheid" Conference
REMARKS BY MR FS MUFAMADI, MINISTER FOR PROVINCIAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT, ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: "SOUTH AFRICA: TEN YEARS AFTER APARTHEID" HOSTED BY THE AFRICA INSTITUTE OF SOUTH AFRICA, 24 March 2004
Programme Director
H. E. Dr Salim Ahmed Salim
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentleman.
I have the privilege and pleasure of joining Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, the Mayor of the City of Tshwane, in welcoming you to this important conference. Present as delegates to the conference, are our friends and comrades from other parts of our continent, brothers and sisters from the African Diaspora, as well as friends and comrades from other continents like Latin America, Europe and Asia. Indeed, it will be something of a superfluity for me to ask you to feel at home. For, ten years after the demise of Apartheid, South Africa has in many ways become the type of society for which many of you went into the trenches, along with us.
Your visit to our shores takes place at a time when we are standing on the threshold of the second decade of freedom. Many of my compatriots from different sectors of South African society as well as my cabinet colleagues, will join you at different stages of this conference. They will share with you, their insights into what has been happening in this country since the 27th of April 1994. They will tell you that in this country, we have been working to find a strategy to concentrate the national mind on what government and the people must do together to overcome the legacy of Apartheid and to create a better society. They will tell you that whereas Apartheid used race as a fulcrum for political mobilization in order to produce inegalitarian social conditions, we are busy constructing a polity, which derives its normative content in a search for a better life for all. You are no doubt aware that we have sought to project this outlook into the regional domain as well as into the global sphere.
As you drove into the city of Tshwane, you will have noticed election posters with the faces of party leaders staring and smiling at you. We have chosen this milestone - the ten years of democracy - to let our people give themselves a licence to exercise control over their own future by allowing the possibility that we may presently be at a turning point. Not only do we, as the government of the day, acknowledge the achievements we made but also, we readily accept that we have not accomplished everything we sought to accomplish. We also listen very carefully to what our opponents have to say, and I must say, with due respect, that all of them still have to advance alternative policy perspectives sound enough the persuade us to rethink our strategic approach. The dialogue between us and our people has so far pointed to the likelihood that we shall have to reaffirm our strategic path of choice and develop a repertoire of tactics for sustaining and deepening the developmental momentum.
It is our fervent hope that this conference will help shape such new directions of contemplation as our situation may require.
For too long our continent has occupied in the hierarchy of the world order, a position, which is not propitious to the realisation of economic development and prosperity. The aftermath of the Cold War saw a discursive reconstruction of the world order and its presentation as an unalloyed benefit. It is alleged that under globalisation, all nations of the world stand to benefit from co-operation. The daily life experiences of the people in the post-colonial world, especially in Africa, point to the continuing division between the theoretic explanations of globalisation and its cultural, political and economic effects. Needless-to-say, there is a crying need for a critical theorisation of the contemporary world order, and for an identification of anchorages from which we, the victims of contemporary world politics, could start reinventing the future.
Having diagnosed the problem in the way that I have just outlined, Africa's political leadership conceptualised its own vision about the goals to which state policy should be directed. This includes the mobilization of resources and the deployment of such, towards altering the terms on which our continent is currently integrated into the global political economy. This perspective finds expression both in the Constitutive Act of the African Union and the New Partnership for African Development.
These initiatives of the African political class were sometimes attacked by people of my type (i.e. intellectuals) on the grounds that they were based on top down approaches. Certainly, there is an obvious need to create conditions for the historical formation of world order from below. African political leaders have gone on record acknowledging that we must draw on the capacity of all our people in order to build a continent which can be an oasis of stability, peace and prosperity.
For their realisation, conditions, which are visualised in the Constitutive Act of the AU and NEPAD, need a continent - wide political mobilisation. Such political mobilisation must be underpinned by the organised efforts of a rich stronghouse of intellectuals who see themselves as organic intellectuals of the African revolution. This imposes an obligation on all of us, to transcend the fictitiousness inherent in the attempts to essentialise the dichotomy between civil society and the state. We need to emphasise complimentarity between us and to avoid a form of competition, which risks a perverse outcome: a mutual enfeeblement of both civil society and the state.
Chairperson and esteemed delegates, allow me once more to thank the AFRICA INSTITUTE OF SOUTH AFRICA. We owe you a special debt of gratitude for envisioning this occasion. A sincere word of thanks to all of you, the participants, for your willingness to give so lavishly of your intellect and your insights. Your contribution will add immensely to our capacity to propel our country and our continent, towards the pinnacle of democracy and prosperity.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Provincial and Local Government
24 March 2004
Source: Department of Provincial and Local Government (http://www.dplg.gov.za/)
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