Cape Town, May 31, 2001
Madame Speaker,\
Mr. President,\
Madame President,\
Ministers,\
Members of the South African Parliament,\
Ladies and Gentlemen,
MOLWENI DUMELA FANIBONANI
You have done me a great honour in inviting me to address your Parliament. This occasion is a source of pride for me; above all, it is a moment of deep emotion. For I well know that most of you here have suffered directly and personally from Apartheid. By locking human beings into categories, that murderous regime tore your people asunder and shocked the conscience of humanity. For seven years now, however, since those long-awaited elections of April 1994, you have all risen above your past and your origins, uniting together in the building of a new South Africa.
This new South Africa has its foundations in a constitution that recognises the rights and freedoms of all, without distinction of race, religion or creed. You have found the way to celebrate equality in diversity, as evidenced in your new flag: displaying the colours of all the opposition movements of yesterday. Today these are the colours of the "rainbow nation" which you now form together. You yourself, Madame Speaker, a woman of Indian origin in a multiracial and multicultural country, are the living embodiment of this diversity.
You have built this new South Africa by working together in a spirit of tolerance and reconciliation. Only by seeking the truth can one bind up the wounds of the past and build a pacific future. You, in South Africa, had the vision to confront your painful past, with its tale of violence and crime, with open eyes. You had the courage to demand recognition of the victims' sufferings and acknowledgement of their responsibility by those who trampled on human rights. You insisted on granting reparations to those in need of it, and forgiveness to those that asked for it. The work of the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" under the leadership of Archbishop Desmond Tutu helped restore dignity to the humiliated, hope to the hopeless, and confidence to your entire Nation.
This radical yet peaceful revolution which your country has just accomplished stands as a shining example for Africa - for an Africa still afflicted by many ills, but an Africa that can count on France in its struggle for democracy and development.
My country is a loyal and respectful friend of Africa
We are bound by ancient, yet ever-stronger ties
France and Africa share a common history stretching back over many centuries, in which bright spots mingle with passages of darkness. We do not intend to gloss over the period of our colonial domination, which was an era of torment for Africa, and which has left deep scars. And yet, not everything in this shared history deserves to be rejected. We must strive to preserve what was best in this common heritage: the intense exchanges of goods and between peoples, the strong bonds of co-operation, and friendship between countries equal in law and in dignity, between countries brought together in mutual respect.
France shares this friendship with South Africa also. The French have long appreciated the rich diversity of your country. In the 17th century, the French Huguenots who had taken refuge in the Low Countries after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, settled in South Africa at the invitation of the Governor of the Cape, and began to cultivate the land in this region. A century later, another Frenchman, the explorer François Le Vaillant, began circulating tales of Southern Africa in Europe, painting an attractive and more accurate picture of this part of the world.
Despite these ancient affinities, our ways then parted. This was the era of the colonial wars. Then came the Apartheid regime, against which many French people mobilised, myself included. France then gave its support to the process that put you on the road to reconciliation. When yesterday's enemies expressed the desire to talk, my country encouraged them. I can recall the meetings between white South African intellectuals and the leadership of the ANC in exile organised in Dakar, under the high patronage of President Abdou Diouf and the Fondation France-Libertés, in 1987, and then in France in 1988, at Marly-le-Roi. We all hoped the talks would be successful, but we never dreamed events would move so fast.
When you abolished Apartheid, the way was clear for our two countries to revive their natural friendship. In July 1994, the visit of President François Mitterrand, the first Head of State to visit a democratic South Africa, was a sign of France's fidelity to your country. My presence here today among you, after that of President Chirac, should be interpreted in the same spirit.
South Africa and France share the same goals for Africa: democracy and development.
Since taking office in 1997, one of the centrepieces of my Government's foreign policy has been to reach out to the whole of the African continent, beyond the confines of French-speaking Africa. The French Foreign Minister, Hubert Védrine, made a point of travelling to South Africa to explain these principles in October 1997. Our country had to adapt to the new realities of Africa, and in particular to the emergence of regional groupings distinct from the former colonial divisions. My country sees in South Africa a key regional power, conscious of the issues at stake in Africa, and possessing a wealth of resources and democratic experience.
It is by working together with you, France wishes to respond to the moral injunction that Nelson Mandela laid upon us all on the tenth anniversary of his release: "No one can rest in peace for as long as people remain bowed beneath the burden of hunger, disease, lack of education, for as long as millions of people continue to live in daily fear and insecurity."
France supports Africa in its fight against the scourges threatening it.
First among these scourges is war.
Africa was long divided by colonial rivalries, and then by the opposing Cold War blocs. Today it remains the theatre of incessant armed conflict. It is a tale of death and violence, of millions of Africans forced to leave their homes; a tale of land left untended and reverting to wilderness, of death from hunger, of deep-rooted hatreds… War is leaving Africa exhausted. Africa needs peace.
The first need is to combat racism. This lies at the heart of the ethnic conflicts ravaging this continent. The xenophobia and intolerance that saps so many African societies today are sowing the seeds of further violence between brothers and neighbours. That is why I rejoice at the holding of the World Conference against Racism in Durban, next September, at the initiative of the United Nations.
South Africa is playing an exemplary role in working for peace. Exemplary in the way it has overcome its own hatreds in order to build a democratic society. Exemplary, too, in its role as mediator beyond its frontiers, seeking to check the proliferation of armed struggles. I am thinking here of your efforts in the Burundi crisis. Your country has also played a leading role in the signature of the Lusaka peace agreement on July 7, 1999. France has backed South Africa's efforts in the Security Council. The United Nations Mission in Congo will see South African and French troops working side-by-side to contribute to the restoration of peace in that country.
France's commitment to Africa remains at the service of peace. France condemned the four coups d'etat that occurred in French-speaking Africa in 1999, calling for a rapid return to peace and order, while taking care not to interfere in the internal affairs of these States. This desire to contribute to peace efforts has led France to help certain States to resolve by their own means the crises within which they had become embroiled. In the same spirit, France is working to reinforce Africa's own peacekeeping capabilities, via its "RECAMP" programme, and we are devoting a substantial proportion of our military co-operation effort to training, from which 5,000 African military personnel have benefited to date.
But there is a war that has spread right across the continent, and we must unite in mobilising our forces to wage it: I refer to the war against AIDS.
This virus is having a devastating impact on Africa, and it poses a serious threat of destabilisation. Today some 46 million people around the world are infected by HIV-AIDS. It has already caused 22 million deaths, leaving millions of orphans in its wake. In southern Africa, the epidemic has spread very swiftly in the last 10 years, especially in urban areas, where nearly 20 percent of pregnant women are contaminated. The conference organised by South Africa in Durban, in July 2000, brought home to the world the scale of this catastrophe. It is now up to political leaders to devise and implement a public health policy commensurate with the threat. This policy has its foundations in the universal right to life and health.
France is resolutely committed to the fight against HIV-AIDS, alongside the people of Africa. Three emergencies must be tackled. The first is access to treatment. Millions of sufferers go without treatment today due to lack of financial means. Yet the treatment exists. In France, new therapies have cut the mortality rate of AIDS victims by two-thirds. The scale of the epidemic demands that generic drugs be manufactured and sold for the poorest countries as a matter of general principle. I welcome the fact that the major pharmaceutical firms have finally acceded to this principle. The multilateral agreements on intellectual property should serve to reconcile freedom of industry and commerce with the economic and medical realities of the world we live in. There is now a vital need for international consensus on the principle of differential pricing for patented drugs, so that sufferers in all countries can enjoy access to the best available treatment.
The second emergency concerns hospital facilities. Without the capacity to screen patients, care for them and observe them, efforts to fight AIDS will be vain. Yet it is the worst-affected countries that lack efficient public health systems most cruelly. At the behest of its Health Minister, Dr. Bernard Kouchner, France therefore proposes a programme of hospital partnerships and twinning between European and French hospitals and hospitals in Africa. That is a practical, effective measure, a measure of solidarity.
The third emergency is to provide scientists and research workers with the means to progress. We must combine all our research efforts at the international level, in the face of a disease that knows no frontiers.
Beyond these three emergencies, France is campaigning for a global approach to this epidemic. A purely medical approach to HIV-AIDS will never succeed in circumscribing this human disaster, whose first victim is Africa. Social factors, too, play their part in the spread of the epidemic, such as poverty, access to education, and the state of preventive facilities and equipment. The fight against AIDS must therefore be treated as an international official aid priority. The goal set by the World Health Organisation is clear, namely to increase the number of people receiving treatment to 5 million in three years. That may seem a substantial figure. In actual fact, it is a minimum, representing only a quarter of the currently identified number of sufferers accounted for on the continent of Africa.
Human health demands solidarity on the part of the international community. France is convinced of that, and my country has translated this into an active policy of co-operation in public health matters. It already devotes more than 100 million francs a year to it. In addition, out of the 10 billion euro that the French Government plans to allocate to debt cancellation for the poorest countries, one billion euro will go to combating HIV-AIDS in the countries concerned. Finally, France stands ready to contribute 150 million euro over three years to the multilateral fund which will be set up to combat HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis - which hit the poorest countries hardest and which are a major obstacle to their development.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The mobilisation which France has called for on Africa's behalf goes beyond the question of AIDS. It must put an end to Africa's marginalisation on the international scene. Currently, a mere 1 percent of total foreign investment reaches the African continent. From a planetary standpoint, most of Africa's people are in a state of economic and social exclusion; the great flows of knowledge and information are leaving them on the sidelines. And the gap is widening. This is unacceptable, first because it is unjust, second because the resulting imbalances are a threat to international stability. The world cannot remain indifferent to Africa's fate. It is time for its immense resources to be exploited by itself, for itself. To promote this development we need to bring globalisation under control. That is the French position. It is also the point of view reflected in President Mbeki's Millennium Partnership for Africa Recovery Programme.
South Africa and France share a critical, demanding approach to globalisation.
Globalisation is the reality with which we have to live today. Market opening, free movement of capital, and the unprecedented speed at which information flows today have created a global growth dynamic. This is a reality, but an ambivalent one. It brings freer exchanges of goods and people, yet it carries within it the threat of uniformity. It is releasing initiatives, while sharpening inequalities. And yet globalisation will be what people make of it. It is a fact, not an end in itself. That is why it is up to governments to lay down and abide by "ground rules" designed to steer globalisation in the direction of law and justice. For only such rules can provide a response to the economic inequalities and trade imbalances between North and South.
The world economy needs a stable framework.
The recent economic and financial crises have demonstrated that, without rules, the market economy cannot function properly. Great progress has been made, but much remains to be done in the field of international financial rules. One of the end-purposes of the great institutions of multilateral co-operation established after 1945 was, and remains, the integration of the least-developed countries into the world economy. The IMF and the World Bank, along with the regional institutions, must now work in harness to ensure they act in a globally coherent manner.
The world needs a more harmonious distribution of wealth.
Reducing world poverty is an absolute priority. In the first place, this entails alleviating the debt burden of the poorest countries, this being the paramount obstacle to their development. A start was made on debt reduction, and in some cases even cancellation, in 1996, at the initiative of France within the G7 framework. We must pursue this process, so as to allow these countries to focus on their social priorities, namely food, health and education.
France is contributing to this more harmonious distribution of wealth through its official development assistance programmes. These will total 33.5 billion francs in 2001, and 60 percent of that figure will go to your continent. This ranks France first among the G7 countries in terms of the percentage of its Gross National Product it devotes to ODA. Each year it allocates one billion francs to institution-building in the countries of Africa. France is thus helping to consolidate the advance of democracy and the rule of law, without which development cannot live up to its promises in full.
The world needs fair trade as a condition of sustainable development.
A half-century after the Havana Charter and the creation of the GATT, the world's nations set up a World Trade Organisation. France and the European Union are calling for the next WTO conference to give priority to the economic integration of the developing countries, most of which are African. Similarly, France wants the forthcoming multilateral trade round to be christened "the development round." The WTO should devise means to ensure a peaceable and balanced dialogue among its members, so as to establish an international framework for investment and competition, along with common rules for the protection of the environment and human health.
It is by laying the foundations of sustainable development today that we can discharge our collective responsibilities towards future generations. I am thinking in particular here of the need to abide by the commitments made since the Rio Summit in 1992.
Finally, the world needs cultural diversity, and it is vital to preserve this diversity.
The proliferation of sources of information, the greater circulation of ideas and the spread of digital networks hold out tremendous promise. But already there is a perceptible risk in many countries that a single form of culture, seen as entertainment, communicated in a single language, will come to dominate. The African continent remained outside the main channels of distribution for longer than elsewhere, and it may therefore appear to be better-protected against the risk of cultural uniformity. South Africa, however, can see how quickly young people embrace the standards of international culture, and understands the long-term risk of dilution of its historical and cultural identity. Where Africa's cultural heritage once was pillaged, now it is threatened by new forms of colonisation. Yet it is an integral part of the cultural heritage of all humanity. After all, Africa is the cradle of mankind. It is vital to preserve this heritage, enrich it, and pass it on to future generations.
The true meaning of globalisation lies in its capacity to create a community of destiny among the peoples of the world. If we can provide this continent's greatest asset, its youth, with a reason for living today, then I feel sure that tomorrow they will want to build a democratic and prosperous Africa, open to the world and at peace with itself.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
After long decades of war, plague and famine, Europe arose again between the 14th and 16th centuries, to the point where people have spoken of a "Renaissance". My wish is to see the contours of a new Renaissance emerging on the continent of Africa, in keeping with a vision which I know to be dear to the heart of President Mbeki. The model put forward by the Republic of South Africa, which reconciles so great a linguistic, ethnic, cultural and religious diversity within its territory, is an invaluable source of inspiration for this continent, and for the world beyond it. Rebirth, for your people, entails a confrontation between "ubuntu", the traditional collective moral code based on acceptance of the "other", respect, compassion, hospitality, dignity and responsibility, and reality. Those virtues will stand your people in good stead as they tackle the challenges awaiting South Africa.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Standing before you in this Parliament, the heartbeat of a great democracy, I want to express my admiration, my friendship and confidence in the representatives of a nation whose southern lands bear the predestined name of "Good Hope".
FIABONGA ENKOSI