STATEMENT BY DEPUTY PRESIDENT MBEKI AT THE AFRICAN
                      RENAISSANCE CONFERENCE

                         Johannesburg September 28, 1998.

    Chairperson

    Distinguished participants

    First of all, let me thank those among us who had the courage and vision
to organise this Conference on a matter that is dear to all our hearts - the
reconstruction and development of our  Continent of Africa.

    I would also like to join the organisers in thanking everybody who is
attending the Conference and especially the distinguished delegates who have
come from outside our own country.

    Our appreciation must also go to the various organisations that have
joined hands to sponsor  the Conference, without whose generosity we would
not be here today.

    For me personally, it is a matter of great inspiration to see the
intelligentsia of our Continent  come together in this way, not as observers
seeking to out-compete one another in an orgy of  criticism and denunciation
of others, but with the serious intention to add to the strengthening of
the movement for Africa's Renaissance.

    I am certain that many of the delegates saw the article which appeared
in one of our Sunday  papers, yesterday, written by Guinness Ohazuruike,
commenting on this Conference.

    As you will recall, the article ends with the words:

    "For long our people have suffered untold hardship. For long our
collective destiny has been compromised by selfish rulers. This Conference
should not end up another academic talk-shop   irrelevant to the needs of
the common man. We want practical solutions to our problems. This is  our
chance."

    I would like to believe that all of us are meeting here today because we
are moved by the same  spirit of impatience reflected on this appeal and are
committed to addressing the needs of both  the common man and the common
woman, with special emphasis in the latter.

    Without overestimating what one two-day Conference can achieve, I am
nevertheless convinced that by convening as you have, you have taken all of
us an important step forward towards the   realisation of our common goal of
the renewal of our Continent.

    I take it also that our participation at this Conference constitutes an
undertaking by each one of us that we commit ourselves to stay the course as
genuine activists for the rebirth of our   Continent.

    As you know, there are and will be many with loud voices who will seek
to discourage you, to  pour scorn on all your efforts, to pretend that the
deep seated problems we are all confronted with, many of them the result of
the activities of those who have appointed themselves superior judges over
our efforts, can be solved overnight.

    Because of their hatred for the forces of genuine change on our
Continent, and their  determination to defeat us, you will have seen these
judges virtually approve of a coup d'etat in  Lesotho against an elected
government, proclaim criminal arson and looting in Lesotho as an  heroic act
of resistance, denounce a humane approach by the region's armed forces which
  minimised the loss of life, and prostitute the truth in the process, with
gay abandon.

    Our strength, however, derives from the fact that in as much as we did
not owe our liberation as  a Continent from colonialism and apartheid to
these superior judges, so we will not owe our  emancipation from the deadly
clutches of neo-colonialism and the other ills which afflict our  Continent
to these eminent persons.

    Accordingly, it is not their view which should determine our direction
and pace of march, but our own sovereign perspective of what is good and
necessary for us to achieve the new birth of Africa.

    A few days ago, I had the privilege to meet a delegation of a section of
the leadership of the  Afrikaner youth of our country to hear their views
about the future of our country.

    During the course of that meeting, they made a statement as pregnant
with hope as it was elegant in its rendition. Here is what they said:

    "Yesterday is a foreign country - tomorrow belongs to us!"

    Of course they were speaking of South Africa. They spoke of how our
country's transition to  democracy had brought them their own freedom; of
how their acceptance of themselves as  equal citizens with their black
compatriots defined apartheid South Africa and its legacy as  foreign to
themselves; of how South Africa, reborn, constitutes their own heritage.

    We ourselves would not have erred if we followed these young Afrikaners
and repeated after  them that "yesterday is a foreign country - tomorrow
belongs to us!"

    By taking that position we would be saying that we must make foreign to
Africa the  disempowerment of the masses of our people. To borrow a slogan
from the South African  liberation movement, we would accordingly proclaim
that - the people shall govern!

    By taking that position, we would be saying that we want to see an
African Continent in which the people participate in systems of governance
in which they are truly able to determine their  destiny and put behind us
the notions of democracy and human rights as peculiarly "Western" concepts.

    Thus would we assume a stance of opposition to dictatorship, whatever
form it may assume.

    Thus would we say that we must ensure that when elections are held,
these must be truly democratic, resulting in governments which the people
would accept as being genuinely representative of the will of the people.

    By this means, we would also create the mechanisms for the peaceful
resolution of conflicts within African society as well as the ways and means
by which we ensure that the competition  for scarce resources does not
result in a mutual slaughter of civil war and violent conflict.

    By saying all this, I am not suggesting that there is any one model of
democracy which we must copy. Necessarily, we have to take into account the
specific conditions in our countries to   find the organisational forms
which, while addressing those specific conditions, nevertheless still  live
up to the perspective that the people shall govern.

    As part of this, clearly we must also respond to what Nelson Mandela
said a week ago when he addressed the General Assembly of the United
Nations, that we must fight against and defeat what he described as the
deification of arms, the seemingly entrenched view that to kill another
person is a natural way of advancing one's cause or an obviously correct
manner by which to  resolve disputes.

    Once more we must make the point that the engagement of the women in
these processes by  which the people determine their destiny must be central
to our determination as to whether we  are succeeding or otherwise in the
struggle to make the masses of the people their own  liberators.

    Where we say that "yesterday is a foreign country - tomorrow belongs to
us!", we must make  the abuse of political power to gain material wealth by
those who exercise that power foreign to our Continent and systems of
governance.

    Thus, I believe that we cannot speak of an African Renaissance where we
permit that corruption  remains an endemic feature of the private and public
sectors on our Continent.

    Within this, we must necessarily include those who come with bags full
of money from  countries beyond our shores, who also participate in the
process of purchasing our souls so  that they win tenders and contracts or
gain special favours intended to improve their bottom lines.

    I am certain that none of us present here will dispute the fact that the
cancer of self-enrichment by corrupt means constitutes one of the factors
which accounts for the underdevelopment and  violent conflicts from which we
seek to escape.

    For example, many of us will be familiar with instances in which wars
have dragged on seemingly without end, because soldiers and their political
accomplices find the situation of  conflict profitable as it opens up
business opportunities for them to earn commissions on arms  purchases, to
open possibilities for criminal syndicates to loot and rob and to set
themselves up as private business people.

    Our vision of an African Renaissance must have as one of its central
aims the provision of a  better life for these masses of the people whom we
say must enjoy and exercise the right to  determine their future.

    That Renaissance must therefore address the critical question of
sustainable development which impacts positively on the standard of living
and the quality of life of the masses of our people.

    Our agenda for this Conference correctly includes a number of topics
which seek to address this question. Indeed, there is a huge volume of
literature which seeks to provide answers as to  what might be done to
achieve the goal of economic growth and social development.

    Even now, we can reel off the list of things that need to be done in
this regard, including human  resource development, the emancipation of
women, the building of a modern economic, social   and communication
infrastructure, the cancellation of Africa's foreign debt, an improvement in
terms of trade, an increase in domestic and foreign investment, the
expansion of development  assistance and better access for our products into
the markets of the developed world.

    I do not suppose that any among us would disagree with such a list. But
if we know what needs to be done, why, then, is not being done!

    I believe that what is at fault is not so much that we are at a loss as
to what to do to realise the goal of development, but that we have not
evolved the social movement with its leadership, which will ensure that we
do indeed make the necessary advances on this front. Again, the  democracy
of which we have spoken is an essential requirement for this social
movement, of which this movement is itself an inherent part.

    And yet we must also recognise the fact that we cannot win the struggle
for Africa's development outside of the context and framework of the world
economy.

    One of the results of the current international financial crisis has
been that it has made it necessary and possible for most thinking people to
question the prescriptions which have been proclaimed during the recent past
as the cure for all economic ills, including those which affect our
Continent.

    For us as Africans this is particularly important because our reality
has taught us that the much acclaimed beneficial effect of the process of
globalisation, if true, is by no means automatic.

    Much as many of our countries have tried to live up to the injunctions
handed down to us from on high to behave in particular ways, the results
have been very slow in coming.

    We must therefore insert ourselves into the international debate about
the issues of globalisation and its impact on the lives of the people and
make our voice heard about what we and the rest of the world should do
actually to achieve the development which is a fundamental  right of the
masses of our people.

    I believe that fundamental to everything we may say about these matters,
must be the  consideration that we have to attract into the African economy
the significant volumes of capital  without which the development we speak
of will not happen.

    I refer here to both domestic and foreign investors and to both private
and public sector sources of capital.

    The current international financial crisis has brought to the fore, very
sharply, the fact of the accumulation of vast quantities of especially
financial capital in the developed countries of the  North.

    The rapid movements of this capital, from one corner of the globe to the
other, in search of immediate profit have contributed greatly to the
problems which the world is experiencing today.

    On other occasions we have made the point that we are subjected to the
strange situation that the process of the further reproduction of wealth by
the countries of the North has led to the creation of poverty in the
countries of the South.

    There has to be something out of joint where wealth begats poverty!

    Surely, there must be a way whereby the surpluses accumulated within the
world economy become available also to the developing countries, including
and especially the countries of Africa, as long-term capital helping us to
address the socio-economic development objectives we have already indicated.

    It is in this context that it becomes absurd and totally unacceptable
that poor countries such as ours in Africa, as a consequence of their
foreign debt burden, become net exporters of capital,for the benefit of
areas of the world which may already be experiencing, to all intents and
purposes, a surplus of capital.

    Accordingly, we must be in the forefront in challenging the notion of
"the market" as the modern God, a supernatural phenomenon to whose dictates
everything human must bow in a spirit of powerlessness.

    In reality, the market is made up of people who take conscious decisions
in pursuit of deliberate understanding the regularities which govern the
process of the reproduction and expansion of wealth.

    Interventions have to be made into this market by other human beings in
pursuit of the measurable objectives of ending poverty and underdevelopment.

    The mere existence of such important organisations as the International
Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation emphasise
precisely this points that human  intervention in this market is already a
fact of life. It is the nature and purposes of that intervention that have
to be addressed.

    The new African world which the African Renaissance seeks to build is
one of democracy, peace and stability, sustainable development and a better
life for the people, non-racism and non-sexism, equality among the nations
and a just and democratic system of international   governance. None of this
will come about of its own. In as much as we liberated ourselves from
colonialism through struggle, so will it be that the African Renaissance
will be victorious only as  a result of a protracted struggle that we
ourselves must wage.

    Much, if not everything we have said about Africa's need for democracy,
peace, stability and development is obviously not new. It is not the
repetition of these objectives that will bring about  an African
Renaissance.


    It is what we do to bring about these objectives that will take us a
step forward in our quest for a  new and better African reality.

    I believe that whereas before, as Africans, we might have said all these
things are necessary, we have now arrived at the point where many on our
Continent firmly believe that they are now  possible.

    I am certain that is why we, too, have come together in this important
Conference, because we  are convinced that what we have known for a long
time as something that was desirable, has
    now become capable of realisation.

    Surely, the historic victory of our Continent over colonialism and
apartheid has something to do  with this. Without that victory an African
Renaissance was impossible. Having achieved that  success we created the
possibility to confront the challenge of the reconstruction and development
of our Continent anew.

    We do this, now, with the experience of over 30 years of independence
for many of our  countries. That experience is also our teacher. It provides
us with a wealth of knowledge  especially about what not to do.

    I know that there are many within our Continent who would say the
opposite - who seek to justify things that are wrong and unacceptable by
saying "this is the African way of doing things".

    Therefore when I speak of a wealth of knowledge about what we should not
do, I address myself to those on our Continent who are ready and willing to
repeat after the Afrikaner youth that   "yesterday is a foreign country -
tomorrow belongs to us!"

    I address myself to those who are ready and willing to be rebels against
tyranny, instability, corruption and backwardness. It would seem to me that
there are many throughout our  Continent who are ready and willing to be
such rebels. Whatever the limits, I believe that the spirit is abroad in all
Africa in favour of a sustained offensive against neo-colonialism and all
the degeneration that it represents.

    The challenge is to mobilise and galvanise the forces inside and outside
of government which are the bearers of this spirit, so that they engage in a
sustained national and continental offensive for the victory of the African
Renaissance.

    This means that the workers and the peasants, business people, artisans
and intellectuals, religious groups, the women and the youth, sportspeople
and workers in the field of culture,writers and media workers, political
organisations and governments should all be engaged to constitute the mass
army for the renewal of our Continent.

    In this context, with regard to our own country, it is critically
important that we do not allow the revolutionary energies built up in the
struggle against apartheid to dissipate, with the masses of the people
disempowered and demobilised to a situation where they become passive
recipients of the good things of life from their rulers, objects rather than
subjects of change. It is equally important that these masses and their
organisations continue to sustain the feature  characteristic of our long
years of struggle against white minority domination, of international
solidarity and a commitment to contribute what we can to the making of a
better global society.

    I believe that a similar challenge faces the people of Nigeria whose
advance towards a  democratic order has created the possibility for this
important African country to set an agenda for itself against the repetition
of military rule, against corruption and the abuse of power, for a  system
of governance that successfully addresses the challenges of a multi-cultural
and multi-ethnic society and an suitable system of sharing resources, for a
path of economic  growth and development which benefits the people and
reinforces the independence of Nigeria.

    Any progress made on all these issues would be of great benefit not only
to Nigeria. It would also make an enormous contribution to the rebirth of
our Continent as a whole. It may be that Nigeria will not have another
opportunity soon to confront these issues as it has now. We can only hope
that the best within that society will not allow this moment to pass.

    The end of a decades-old neo-colonial regime in the then Zaire had
raised hopes that this equally important African country would itself seize
the possibility created by this historic  change to position itself as a
leading fighter for the renewal of our Continent, with important positive
results for the whole of Africa.

    Most regrettably, we now seem immersed in a situation of conflict which,
among other things, has brought back to the national agenda of that country
the enemy to progressive change  represented by ethnic divisions and
antagonisms.

    It is however clear that in the same way that we cannot avoid it,
neither can the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo do without that
process of fundamental transformation in the  interests of the people, which
constitutes the core of the vision of an African Renaissance.

    An enormous challenge faces all of us to do everything we can to
contribute to the recovery of African pride, the confidence in ourselves
that we can succeed as well as any other in building a   humane and
prosperous society.

    None of us can estimate or measure with any certainty the impact that
centuries of the denial of  our humanity and contempt for the colour black
by many around the world have had on ourselves as Africans.

    But clearly it cannot be that successive periods of slavery, colonialism
and neo-colonialism and the continuing marginalisation of our Continent
could not have had an effect on our psyche and therefore our ability to take
our destiny into our own hands.

    Among other things, what this means is that we must recall everything
that is good and inspiring in our past. Our arts should celebrate both our
humanity and our capabilities to free ourselves from backwardness and
subservience. They should say to us that if we dare to win, we will win!

    I am convinced that a great burden rests on the shoulders of Africa's
intelligentsia to help us to achieve these objectives. That is precisely why
this Conference is so important.

    From it a message should go out to all our intelligentsia, those who
work in Africa and those who have located themselves in the developed
countries of the North, that we have arrived at the  point where the
enormous brain power which our Continent possesses, must become a vital
instrument in helping us to secure our equitable space within a world
affected by a rapid  process of globalisation and from which we cannot
escape.

    In the end, what we are speaking of is the education, organisation and
energisation of new African patriots who, because to them yesterday is a
foreign country, who join in struggle to bring about an African Renaissance
in all its elements.

       As every revolution requires revolutionaries, so must the African
Renaissance have its militants and activists who will define the morrow that
belongs to them in a way which will help to restore   to us our dignity.

    The country in which you are meeting has a Government, political and
other social formations  and masses of the people who see themselves as part
of the motive forces for the victory of the   African Renaissance.

    Our first task therefore is to transform our society consistent with
this vision. Our second task is to join hands with all other like minded
forces on our Continent, convinced that the peoples of Africa share a common
destiny, convinced also that people of goodwill throughout the world will
join us in the sustained offensive which must result in the new century
going down in history as  the African Century.

    Yesterday is a foreign country - tomorrow belongs to us!

    Thank you.

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