Date: 19/08/2010
Source: The office of Thabo Mbeki
Title: SA: Mbeki: Address by former President of South Africa, at the Black Management Forum Southern Africa Young Professionals Development Summit, Cape Town

Director of ceremonies,
Leaders of the BMF Young Professionals,
Distinguished participants at this Development Summit,
Ladies and gentlemen:

First of all I would like to thank you for your kind invitation to me to attend and address this important Development Summit Meeting.

As Young Professionals you occupy an important place in all the countries of our region and have the possibility to choose whether you focus exclusively on your personal advancement or do so as you use your training and considerable talents to help change our societies and Africa for the better.

I must confess that I accepted your kind invitation because of various interactions I have had with some of our young professionals. These taught me the humbling and inspiring lesson that we have among us fellow South Africans who, though they live comfortable lives, are acutely aware of their obligations to the larger community of the poor who sacrificed everything to enable them to acquire their professional qualifications.

These young professionals told me that although they have gained the possibility to make a good living as members of the higher echelons in our social hierarchy, they are determined to define a role for themselves as activists in the continuing struggle to achieve the renaissance of Africa.

Last year I was also privileged to spend a day in Zanzibar with young Tanzanians, many of them young professionals, members of Vijana Wa Chama Cha Mapinduzi, the Youth League of the ruling party in Tanzania.

These, too, spoke exactly like their South African counterparts, to whom I have referred.

I therefore came here today convinced that the participants at this Development Summit share the sentiments expressed by the young professionals of South Africa and Tanzania, and would use the possibility provided by this meeting to define what you as young professionals should do to position yourselves as activists in the continuing struggle to achieve the renaissance of Africa.

I am convinced that the agenda you have set for this Summit will enable you to achieve this objective, and therefore I look forward with great expectation to the outcome of your deliberations.

It is reported that once when US President George H.W. Bush - i.e. Bush Senior - was urged to address the bigger picture about America's future, beyond the immediate and the short-term, he responded in a dismissive manner: "Oh, the vision thing." This translated into the unspoken words - ‘I don't do the vision thing.'

It may be that at the time, President George H.W. Bush and the United States did not need the vision thing. But I am certain that we cannot say this about ourselves today and tomorrow.

Some years before President Bush spoke in a disparaging manner about ‘the vision thing', one of our most eminent national leaders, Chief Albert Luthuli, had drawn attention to the need for our people to sustain themselves in struggle by embracing an inspiring vision about our country's future.

A truly Christian man, he cited the words in the Book of Proverbs (Proverbs 29:18) - "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

In this context, when he delivered his Lecture in Oslo in 1961, after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, he said about ‘the vision thing':

"All Africa has this single aim: our goal is a united Africa in which the standards of life and liberty are constantly expanding; in which the...legacy of illiteracy and disease is swept aside; in which the dignity of man is rescued from beneath the heels of colonialism which have trampled it. This goal, pursued by millions of our people with revolutionary zeal, by means of books, representations, demonstrations, and in some places armed force provoked by the adamancy of white rule, carries the only real promise of peace in Africa. Whatever means have been used, the efforts have gone to end alien rule and race oppression."

Thirty eight years later, speaking at the launch of the African Renaissance Institute in Pretoria on October 11 1999, again focused on the common African agenda as Chief Luthuli was, I said:

"The tasks of the African Renaissance...include:

• the establishment of democratic political systems to ensure the accomplishment of the goal that "the people shall govern";
• ensuring that these systems take into account African specifics so that, while being truly democratic and protecting human rights, they are nevertheless designed in ways which really ensure that political and, therefore, peaceful means can be used to address the competing interests of different social groups in each country;
• establishing the institutions and procedures which would enable the continent collectively to deal with questions of democracy, peace and stability;
• achieving sustainable economic development that results in the continuous improvement of the standards of living and the quality of life of the masses of the people;
• qualitatively changing Africa's place in the world economy so that it is free of the yoke of the international debt burden and no longer a supplier of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods;
• ensuring the emancipation of the women of Africa;
• successfully confronting the scourge of HIV/AIDS;
• the rediscovery of Africa's creative past to recapture the peoples' cultures, encourage artistic creativity and restore popular involvement in both accessing and advancing science and technology; and,
• strengthening the genuine independence of African countries and continent in their relations with the major powers and enhancing their role in the determination of the global system of governance in all fields, including politics, the economy, security, information and intellectual property, the environment and science and technology."

You, young professionals, constitute an important echelon of the leadership of our region. Like the rest of our contemporary leadership, you have a task to help elaborate a vision of where our countries and peoples should aim to be 20 or 30 years from today, and certainly by the end of the 21st century.

Again as these young professionals you occupy the privileged position that you, and only you, are the bridge between the past and the future. You constitute the link between the past represented by my generation, which is on its way out, and the future you have a task to define.

Because of this, you carry a special and unique responsibility with regard to what should happen to ‘the vision thing'. In this context I would like to advise that you should take seriously the Biblical Proverb which Chief Luthuli elected to quote - "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

I am certain that you are familiar with the famous lines in the well-known poem by the Irish poet, W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming, which say:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

These poetic words warn of what happens when societies unravel because of the absence of the glue provided by a common vision which gives hope to all citizens about a better future for all. They address directly the importance of ‘the vision thing'.

I believe that one of the tasks you must carry out, both as young Africans and as young African professionals, is to make an assessment of whether the African vision of which Chief Luthuli spoke in 1961 and the related African vision I presented in 1999, truly capture your own dreams, as our new leaders, about the African society you would like to build.

If this vision is wrong because it is outdated, please say so and put another vision in its place. But under no circumstances should you say - ‘We do not do the vision thing!'

Whatever the results of your labours, you must also take this fully on board that the vision you espouse will not transform itself into reality of its own accord, nor are there others waiting somewhere in the wings to whom you would or could delegate the responsibility to turn such vision into a material force for progressive change.

You must know this that you must occupy your positions as frontline combatants for the renewal of Africa as would be defined by the vision you would have elaborated, the change agents that would turn the vision into reality.

Accordingly the challenge is that you both articulate a clear vision of the kind of Africa you envisage and elaborate a perspective on what you should do to give birth to the Africa towards which you aspire.

In this context, as I was working on this Address, I received some comments from a couple of Young Professionals which I would like to cite. They said:

"Beyond speaking about vision, more work has to be done in providing ideas about how to move towards a common vision. Often we make the mistake that young people should be able to grasp these concepts but forget that the diversity that exists in our experiences and backgrounds sometimes affects our ability to be united in moving towards (a common) vision...
"(Without mentoring and guidance) we run the risk of theorising without ever executing, leading to our generation being defined as a thinking generation in a world that requires action."

Of course I do not know what you think about these views but I hope you will give yourselves time to reflect on the challenges posed by your fellow Young Professionals, these being:

- what should you do as Young Professionals to evolve a common vision; and,
- what should you do to combine theory and practice?

In this regard I would like to cite the words of US President Lyndon B. Johnson, LBJ, when he spoke on June 4, 1965, on the issue of the civil rights of the African American population. This is what he said:

"Freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.

"You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

"Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.

"This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity, but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and equality as a result."

When LBJ said correctly, "This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights", he placed a challenge at the feet of his fellow Americans, that each and everyone should position themselves as combatants in what he accurately characterised as ‘the next and the most profound stage of the battle'.

You too, young inheritors of the legacy of freedom that constituted but one battle won, have an obligation to determine what you should do consistent with the vision which LBJ projected - ‘We seek not just freedom but human ability, not just liberation as a right and a theory but liberation as a fact and liberation as a result.'

I trust that when you ask yourselves the question, which you should - who are we? - you would answer: we are Africans and we are young African professionals.

That answer contains the seed or the organising principle to the answers this Development Summit must provide concerning the issues you elected to discuss - leadership, economic development, climate change and education and skills development.

As Africans I would like to believe that you feel it in your innermost being that you are Proudly African!

I say this because I know that in all the countries in our region of which you are nationals, there is much which causes you dissatisfaction and, on occasion, despair. I know that many things happen which impose on you a deep sense of shame as Africans.

What I am suggesting, nevertheless, is that you should understand and convince yourselves that whatever it is that has happened, which visits on you dissatisfaction, shame and despair, does not represent what is truly African, as would be espoused by the masses of the African people, the ultimate determinants of what it means to be an African.

It is these proud and dignified masses we count in the hundreds of millions, who define the African soul and identity, the masses who are your mothers and fathers, among whom you belong, who sacrificed everything to ensure that you become the professionals you are, and whom you must commit to serve, selflessly.

As professionals, capable of marketing your skills everywhere in the world during this age of globalisation, you have the possibility to detach yourselves from these masses who are your mothers and fathers, and constitute the country of your birth.

You can, consciously, decide to set yourselves apart from these ordinary Africans, concentrate on earning the incomes that will be and are your due, pursue the corresponding life styles, and therefore join those whose predatory and selfish actions impose on you a feeling of dissatisfaction, shame and despair.

I am suggesting that rather than take this demeaning and humiliating route, you should make an oath of affirmation - I am an African, and I am proudly African!

In this context you would therefore have to answer for yourselves the question - what does it mean to be an African!

I would like to suggest that for an answer to that question, please listen to the words and pleas of the ordinary Africans who constitute your people and mine - the wretched of the earth, les damnés de la terre, to whom you owe the obligation to help end their misery!

But, of course, you also have a real, second and no less important identity as professionals!

Earlier I said of you that ‘you, young professionals, constitute an important echelon of the leadership of our region.'

I said this recognising the fact that your skills, as trained professionals, place you in a critically important position as managers of the processes which define the advance from the old to the new, from the inherited legacy of colonial and white minority tyranny, to the new world striving to be born, of self-governing and successful African communities.

Inherently, this places you in a position of leadership which no one can contest, from South Africa in the South to the DRC and Tanzania in the north-west and north-east of the SADC region, respectively.

You must therefore answer the question - what should you do to discharge this role of leadership?

I take it as given that among us we agree that it is a sine qua non of our objective to achieve the further advance of our region and Africa, that we train, develop and retain within Africa the leadership echelon represented by the managers who constitute the delegates at this Development Summit.

Among other things, this means that we recognise the reality that Africa will not achieve her renaissance if she does not develop and retain this cadre of leaders.

This echelon in our leadership, the managers - the mandarins in ancient Chinese state management, who were highly qualified professional civil servants - constitute a distinct social sector which we must encourage our governments and people in general to recognise as a distinct, particular and important segment of society.

I trust that you will agree with me that we have to come as close as possible and as a whole, necessary to the recognition and institutionalisation of the managerial echelon and function to what ancient China did, when it accorded a special place of honour, respect and integrity to the mandarins.

This means that we must recognise and accept the effective manager as a mandarin because of his or her competence to serve as a manager, based on defined parameters of what constitutes a qualified manager.

It also means that our societies must put in place ways and means to ensure the accountability of the mandarins to society as a whole, to ensure that they act not in their selfish professional and personal interest, but to meet the objectives of the sector and society they serve.

This raises important and difficult socio-political questions.

Specifically, in the context of this Development Summit, and what I have said, the question must arise as to whether the managerial stratum represented here constitutes a social echelon that is distinct and exists in, and for itself.

Does it have interests that are unique to itself, separate from its employers, the government and the state in all their spheres, the corporate owners of both private and state corporations, and the community owned non-governmental organisations, especially those involved in socio-economic development!

The answer to this question will also have to take into account that in all the contexts we have mentioned, there must surely be a requirement that the managers, the mandarins, must work everyday to achieve objectives that would ensure the success of the institutions they lead, as what, in the public sector, is characterised as Accounting Officers.

Taking all this into account, I would suggest that as the African mandarins:

• you should continue to combine in your professional organisations to provide the possibility for you to advance your skills as mandarins;
• you should combine to assert your unique interests as such mandarins, ready to live only on your salaries, which in their quantum must represent your special status as a unique and qualified echelon of the African professionals;
• you must insist that those who employ you must present you with a vision of what needs to be achieved, consistent with the realisation of the goal of the renaissance of Africa;
• you must insist that you must be provided with legally guaranteed performance contracts which would both define your tasks, which you would respect, and would protect you from arbitrary and illegal action; and,
• you should insist that the governments, states, corporations and other entities you serve as managers should provide the necessary legislative and administrative framework which would enable you, the mandarins, to perform your tasks without fear or favour, subject to the national legal regime, for the success of the entities you lead.

Underlying everything I have said is the proposition that it is possible and necessary for Africa to develop a professional management corps, whose actions would be rules-based, while allowing for initiative/enterprise.

The new, post-colonial African state, in many cases constituted in an arbitrary manner, reflecting the dictates of the imperialist and colonialist scramble for Africa, continues to pose the challenge of answering what on the face of it seems a simple question, but is not - who is a citizen?

From its foundation, our Continent, through the Organisation of African Unity, took the correct decision that arbitrary and irrational as the African state boundaries are, it would best serve the interests of the peoples of Africa, and our Continent's stability, that we learn to live as nation states within the colonial boundaries we inherited at independence.

This emphasises the point that the post-colonial state should be accepted by all citizens as their real home, with no citizen feeling marginalised, especially on the basis that she or he was tolerated as a citizen within a state which otherwise belongs to ethnic or other groups different from his or her own.

This puts on the agenda the concept of a state of the people as a whole, as opposed to the notions of states defined by the domination of particular classes, and states defined by one national group, while containing significant national minorities.

Thus the state would serve as the common unifying factor, unaffected by the ups and downs of the fortunes of various disparate political formations which continually engage in an electoral and other struggle for power.

Again this underlines the point that you, the young professionals who constitute a vital stratum of the African leadership, closely linked to the task of the management or mismanagement of change in Africa, have a responsibility to help answer the various unanswered questions posed by what I have said, such as, for instance, what role you should play to construct the kind of nation state I have mentioned.

I am certain that you, more than me, have the native intelligence and the new knowledge correctly to answer these questions.

When you answer these questions, as I am certain you will in time do, you will affirm the assertion I have made that you constitute an important echelon in our collective leadership, which, linking yesterday, today and tomorrow, will play a decisive role in determining whether Africa achieves her long-delayed renaissance.

To achieve that renaissance means to disrupt and dislodge the deeply entrenched logic of the colonial and apartheid political economy which continues to inform much of the contemporary reality of many African countries, including our own.

As Young Professionals you must for instance help Africa to break free from the paradigm of being an exporter of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods; help in the struggle to transform our educational systems so that they produce graduates with the skills required for modern socio-economic development; help in the effort to ensure that Africa takes her rightful place as an equal partner with all other continents in terms of determining the future of humanity.

It rests in your hands to settle the practical question whether Africa will claim the 21st century.

Our detractors are convinced that we, as Africans, cannot achieve this historic objective.

However I am certain that today and tomorrow, at this seminal Development Summit Meeting, given the enormous and collective intellectual power gathered here, there is no need for Southern Africa and the Continent as a whole to look elsewhere to find answers to the questions I have posed, and many others besides.

I wish the Summit success, convinced that it will succeed to communicate to all the peoples of Southern Africa a message of hope that we will act together to ensure that our peoples stay on course to achieve all the noble objectives we have set ourselves, having contributed to the elaboration of a realistic vision of hope for all our people.

I am certain that at the base of all the decisions you will take, as an important echelon of our continental leadership, will be the understanding that:

Where there is no vision, the people perish!

I am also certain that you will also heed the advice proffered by the young professionals I cited who said: "Beyond speaking about vision, more work has to be done in providing ideas about how to move towards a common vision".

In a strange musical invention for its time, Beethoven included in his instrumental 9th Symphony a chorale which required that a choir should, as part of the Symphony, sing a song whose lyrics are drawn from Schiller's poem, Ode to Joy. It is said that because of this, Beethoven once said that ‘‘humanity may perish, but the 9th will live forever."

Similarly, thanks to your decisions and actions and the uniting vision of hope you will communicate, the Africans will not die but will live forever to celebrate the renaissance of our Continent, Africa. Thank you.