South Africa, 1998

Mr. President, may I take this

opportunity, as President of the Republic of South Africa

and as Chairperson of the Non-Aligned Movement, to

extend to you our sincere congratulations on your election

to the high post of President of the General Assembly.

You will be presiding over this august Assembly of

the nations of the world at a time when its deliberations and

decisions will be of the greatest consequence to the

continuous striving of humanity at last to achieve global

peace and prosperity.

The Non-Aligned Movement, as well as my own

country, which is a proud member of that Movement,

invests great trust in this Organization to discharge its

responsibilities to all nations, especially at this critical

period of its existence.

Quite appropriately, this fifty-third session of the

General Assembly will be remembered through the ages as

the moment at which we marked and celebrated the fiftieth

anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights. Born in the aftermath of the defeat of the

Nazi and fascist crime against humanity, this Declaration

held high the hope that all our societies would, in future, be

built on the foundations of the glorious vision spelt out in

each of its clauses.

For those who had to fight for their emancipation,

those such as ourselves, who, with United Nations help, had

to free ourselves from the criminal apartheid system, the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights served as the

vindication of the justice of our cause.

At the same time, it constituted a challenge to us

that our freedom, once achieved, should be dedicated to

the implementation of the perspectives contained in the

Declaration.

Today we celebrate the fact that this historic

document has survived a turbulent five decades, which

have seen some of the most extraordinary developments

in the evolution of human society.

These include the collapse of the colonial system,

the passing of a bipolar world, breathtaking advances in

science and technology and the achievement of the

complex process of globalization.

And yet, at the end of it all, the human beings who

are the subject of the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights continue to be afflicted by wars and violent

conflicts.

They have, as yet, not attained their freedom from

fear of death that would be brought about by the use of

weapons of mass destruction as well as conventional

arms.

Many are still unable to exercise the fundamental

and inalienable democratic rights that would enable them

to participate in the determination of the destiny of their

countries, nations, families and children and to protect

themselves from tyranny and dictatorship.

The very right to be human is denied every day to

hundreds of millions of people as a result of poverty and

the unavailability of basic necessities, such as food, jobs,

water and shelter, education, health care and a healthy

environment.

The failure to achieve the vision contained in the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights finds dramatic

expression in the contrast between wealth and poverty

which characterizes the divide between the countries of

the North and the countries of the South and within

individual countries in all hemispheres.

It is made especially poignant and challenging by the

fact that this coexistence of wealth and poverty, the

perpetuation of the practice of the resolution of inter-State

and intra-State conflicts by war and the denial of the

democratic right of many across the world, all result from

acts of commission and omission, particularly by those

who occupy positions of leadership in politics, in the

economy, and in other spheres of human activity.

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What I am trying to say is that all these social ills,

which constitute an offence against the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights, are not a preordained result

of the forces of nature or the product of a curse of the

deities.

They are the consequence of decisions which men and

women take or refuse to take, men and women all of whom

will not hesitate to pledge their devoted support for the

vision conveyed in the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights.

This Declaration was proclaimed as universal precisely

because the founders of this Organization and the nations

of the world that joined hands to fight the scourge of

fascism, including many that still had to achieve their own

emancipation, understood clearly that our human world was

an interdependent whole. Necessarily, the values of

happiness, justice, human dignity, peace and prosperity

have a universal application, because each people and every

individual is entitled to them. Similarly, no people can truly

say it is blessed with happiness, peace and prosperity where

others, as human as themselves, continue to be afflicted

with misery, conflict, terrorism and deprivation.

Thus can we say that the challenge posed by the next

50 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and

by the next century whose character it must help to fashion,

consists in whether humanity, and especially those who will

occupy positions of leadership, will have the courage to

ensure that at last we build a human world consistent with

the provisions of that historic Declaration and other human

rights instruments that have been adopted since 1948.

Immediately, a whole range of areas of conflict

confronts us, in Africa, Europe and Asia. All of us are

familiar with these, which range from the Democratic

Republic of the Congo, Angola and Sudan on my own

continent, to the Balkans in Europe and Afghanistan,

Tajikistan and Sri Lanka in Asia.

Clearly, this Organization, and especially the Security

Council, acting together with people of goodwill in the

countries and areas concerned, has a responsibility to act

decisively to contribute to the termination of these

destructive conflicts. Continuously, we have to fight to

defeat the primitive tendency towards the glorification of

arms, the adulation of force, born of the illusion that justice

can be guaranteed by the capacity to kill, or that disputes

are necessarily best resolved by resort to violent means.

As Africans, we are grateful to the Secretary-General

for the contribution he has made to help us find the way

towards ending violent strife on our continent. We have

taken heed of his report, which will reinforce our efforts

to banish war from our shores. I have not yet read the

report from page to page, but I will try to do so.

The very first resolution of the General Assembly,

adopted in January 1946, sought to address the challenge

of

“the elimination from national armaments of atomic

weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable

to mass destruction”. (resolution 1 (I), para. 5 (c))

We must face the fact that after countless initiatives

and resolutions, we still do not have concrete and

generally accepted proposals supported by a clear

commitment by the nuclear-weapon States to the speedy,

final and total elimination of nuclear weapons and

nuclear-weapon capabilities.

We take this opportunity to salute our sister

Republic of Brazil for its decision to accede to the Treaty

on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to urge

all others that have not yet done so to follow this

excellent example.

In an honest attempt to contribute to the definition

of the systematic and progressive steps required to

eliminate these weapons and the threat of annihilation

which they pose, South Africa, together with Brazil,

Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovenia and

Sweden, will be submitting a draft resolution to the First

Committee for consideration by the Assembly. It is

appropriately titled “Towards a nuclear-weapon-free

world: the need for a new agenda”.

I call with all humility on all Members of the United

Nations seriously to consider this important draft

resolution and to give it their support. We must ask the

question, which might sound naive to those who have

elaborated sophisticated arguments to justify their refusal

to eliminate these terrible and terrifying weapons of mass

destruction — why do they need them, anyway?

In reality, no rational answer can be advanced to

explain in a satisfactory manner what, in the end, is the

consequence of cold-war inertia and an attachment to the

use of the threat of brute force to assert the primacy of

some States over others.

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Urgent steps are also required to arrive at a just and

permanent peace in the Middle East on the basis of the

realization of the legitimate aspirations of the people of

Palestine and respect for the independence and security of

all the States of this important region. We also look

forward to the resolution of the outstanding issues of

Western Sahara and East Timor, convinced that it is

possible to take these matters off the world agenda on the

basis of settlements that meet the interests of all the peoples

concerned.

Similarly, we would like to salute the bold steps taken

by the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, this

supremely important country of Africa, to enable it to

return to democratic rule and a system of governance

directed at serving the interests of all its people.

Together we are also faced with the scourges of drug

abuse and the illicit traffic in narcotics, organized

transnational crime and international terrorism. We strongly

support the measures adopted or being discussed by the

United Nations to deal with these challenges and commit

our country and Government to cooperate fully in all

regional and international initiatives to ensure that the

peoples of the world, including our own, are spared the

destructive impact of these crimes.

The world is gripped by an economic crisis, which, as

President Clinton said in this city only a week ago, has

plunged millions into sudden poverty and disrupted and

disoriented the lives of ordinary people, and brought deep

personal disappointment to tens of millions of people

around the world.

President Clinton also said:

“Recent press reports have described an entire

generation working its way into the middle class for

over 25 years, then being plummeted into poverty

within a matter of months. The stories are

heartbreaking — doctors and nurses forced to live in

the lobby of a closed hospital; middle-class families

who owned their own homes, sent their children to

college, travelled abroad, now living by selling their

possessions.”

President Clinton said that “fast-moving currents” in

the world economy

“have brought or aggravated problems in Russia and

Asia. They threaten emerging economies from Latin

America to South Africa”,

and he spoke of sacrificing lives in the name of economic

theory.

He further recognized that with a quarter of the

world’s population in declining growth, the United States,

in Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan’s

words,

“ cannot forever be an oasis of prosperity.' Growth

at home depends upon growth abroad”.

I have quoted the President of the United States at

such length both because he is correct and because he is

the leader of the most powerful country in the world.

Accordingly, we would like to believe that with the

problem facing all humanity, and especially the poor,

having thus been recognized, courage will not desert the

powerful when it comes to determining the correct course

to be taken, and following this course, addressing the

challenge that has been identified.

The tragedy President Clinton describes goes far

beyond the sudden impoverishment of the middle class to

which he correctly refers. Poverty has been and is the

condition of the daily existence of even larger numbers of

ordinary working people. Paradoxically, the challenge of

poverty around the globe has been brought into sharp

focus by the destructive fast movements of currents of

wealth from one part of the world to another.

Put starkly, we have a situation in which the further

accumulation of wealth, rather than contributing to the

improvement of the quality of life of all humanity, is

generating poverty at a frighteningly accelerated pace.

The imperative to act on this urgent, life-and-death

matter can no longer be ignored. The central challenge to

ensure that the countries of the South gain access to the

productive resources that have accumulated within the

world economy should not be avoided by seeking to

apportion as much blame as possible to the poor.

Clearly, all relevant matters will have to be

addressed, including such issues as greater inflows of

long-term capital; terms of trade; debt cancellation;

technology transfers; human resource development; the

emancipation of women and the development of the

young; the elimination of poverty; the HIV/AIDS

epidemic; environmental protection; and the strengthening

of financial and other institutions relevant to sustained

economic growth and development.

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Fortunately, it is no longer in dispute that serious work

will also have to be done to restructure the multilateral

financial and economic institutions so that they address the

problems of the modern world economy and become

responsive to the urgent needs of the poor of the world.

Similarly, this very Organization, including its

important Security Council, must itself go through its own

process of reformation so that it serves the interests of the

peoples of the world, in keeping with the purposes for

which it was established.

The issues we have mentioned were discussed in a

comprehensive manner at the Twelfth Summit Conference

of the Non-Aligned Movement held in the city of Durban,

South Africa, earlier this month.

I am privileged to commend the decisions of that

important meeting to the General Assembly and the United

Nations as a whole, including the Durban Declaration,

which the Summit adopted unanimously. I am certain that

the decisions adopted by the Non-Aligned Movement will

greatly assist this Organization in its work and further

enhance the contribution of the countries of the South to the

solution of the problems that face the nations of the world,

both rich and poor.

This is probably the last time I will have the honour

to stand at this rostrum to address the General Assembly.

Born as the First World War came to a close, and departing

from public life as the world marks half a century of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I have reached that

part of the long walk when the opportunity is granted, as it

should be to all men and women, to retire to some rest and

tranquillity in the village of my birth.

As I sit in Qunu, my village, and grow as ancient as

its hills, I will continue to entertain the hope that there has

emerged a cadre of leaders in my own country and region,

on my continent and in the world, which will not allow that

any should be denied their freedom, as we were; that any

should be turned into refugees, as we were; that any should

be condemned to go hungry, as we were; that any should

be stripped of their human dignity, as we were.

I will continue to hope that Africa’s renaissance will

strike deep roots and blossom forever, without regard to the

changing seasons. Were all these hopes to translate into a

realizable dream and not a nightmare to torment the soul of

the aged, then will I, indeed, have peace and tranquillity.

Then would history and the billions throughout the world

proclaim that it was right that we dreamt and that we

toiled to give life to a workable dream.