South Africa, 1999

On behalf of our Government and

in my capacity as Chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, I

wish to extend our sincere congratulations to you,

Mr. Theo-Ben Gurirab, on your election as President of the

General Assembly. I would also like to thank you for the

kind remarks you made about my country as you assumed

your high position.

We have worked together for many decades. Thanks

in good measure to your statespersonship, as neighbours we

live together in peace and have joined hands as equals to

ensure the all-round fulfilment of both our peoples. These

experiences convince us that you will discharge your

responsibilities as President of the General Assembly in a

manner that will help humanity make our common world a

better place for all. We are pleased that you will be

working with the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, who has

demonstrated unquestionable commitment to the realization

of the attainment of the goals of the Organization.

The Charter of this Organization and the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights provide all of us with the

vision towards which we should strive. At the time these

documents were adopted, they reflected the international

determination to ensure that the catastrophe occasioned by

the rise of fascism and Nazism should never recur. We

recall them today because we believe that the time has

come for determined measures to be taken to ensure that

they inform what happens in the common world we all

share. The central message they contain is expressed in the

words of the preamble to the Declaration:

“the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter

reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in

the dignity and worth of the human person and in the

equal rights of men and women and have determined

to promote social progress and better standards of

life in larger freedom”.

We believe that the time has come for all of us to

ensure that we work together to reconstruct human society

in a manner consistent with this perspective. We further

believe that what we have said constitutes a particular and

historic challenge to those who occupy positions of

political leadership in the modern era, those who, like us,

will have the privilege of addressing this General

Assembly. Only time will tell whether we have the moral

and intellectual courage to rise to this challenge.

But this we feel we can say: that conditions exist in

the world today for us successfully to pursue the vision

contained in the United Nations documents to which I

have referred. What may be in short supply is the courage

of the politicians, as opposed to an abundance of good-

sounding rhetoric. What are these conditions of which we

speak? The cold war has come to an end. There is no

sign anywhere of an ideology-driven contest among

super-Powers which dictates that each should seek to

destroy the other in order to protect itself. It is true that

a number of countries still possess weapons of mass

destruction, especially nuclear weapons, which constitute

a threat. The only logical way to address this is

vigorously to sue for universal disarmament and the

destruction of such weapons.

Secondly, I believe it would be correct to say that

the overwhelming majority of countries in the world have

opted for democratic forms of government. Having

learned from their own experiences, the nations have

turned their backs on dictatorship. Of course, we cannot

say that such dictatorships do not exist or that no attempt

will be made in the future to establish them. But we can

make bold to say that these exceptions prove the rule,

rather than disprove the proposition we are trying to

advance.

The combination of these two factors should lead to

three conclusions, at least. The first is that there should be

no need on the part of any country to seek to establish

spheres of influence as a supposed necessary condition for

the advancement of its national interests.

Secondly, the very sustenance of democracy across

the globe requires that in every democratic country the

ordinary people should feel that they actually do enjoy the

right to determine their destiny. In other words, no

country should be required to restrict its exercise of this

8

right simply because some other more powerful country

dictates that this should be so.

Thirdly, these circumstances create the possibility for

a more democratic system of international governance, as

would be reflected by a correct restructuring of this very

Organization. In any case, the process of globalization

necessarily redefines the concept and the practice of

national sovereignty. The frontiers of that sovereignty are

being pushed back, especially as regards the smaller

countries of the world, such as our own. As this happens,

inevitably, so does it become necessary that a compensatory

movement take place towards the reinforcement of the

impact of these countries on the system of global

governance through the democratization of the system of

international relations.

The developments we have spoken of also suggest that

perhaps, and depending on what we all do, humanity has

never had as bright a prospect for durable world peace and

security as it does today. The mere spread of democracy

throughout the world speaks of a greater commitment

among the nations to the resolution of national and

international conflicts by peaceful means.

I am certain that when President Abdelaziz Bouteflika,

the current Chairperson of the Organization of African

Unity (OAU), addresses the Assembly, he will report on the

important decision recently taken at the Algiers summit of

the OAU to exclude from its ranks, with effect from the

next summit, all military regimes that may still exist on the

African continent. A further decision was taken to assist

such countries resolutely to move towards a democratic

system of government.

The developments on which we have commented

would suggest that the Organization has a responsibility to

focus especially on the objective contained in Article I,

paragraph 1, of its Charter, which says,

“to take effective collective measures for the

prevention and removal of threats to the peace ... and

to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity

with the principles of justice and international law,

adjustment or settlement of international disputes or

situations which might lead to a breach of the peace”.

This, we believe, imposes a solemn and supreme

responsibility on the United Nations to work for the

prevention of conflicts and to endeavour to resolve them so

that a durable peace can be established. Sometimes, our

response to conflicts has been to wait for them to develop

into violence, and even wars, and subsequently to

intervene through costly peacekeeping operations. These,

at times, serve to freeze those conflicts, perpetuate

polarization and make their timely resolution more

difficult.

Moreover, the requirement on the United Nations to

make such interventions to prevent the outbreak of

hostilities imposes an obligation on the United Nations

that it should be seen by Governments and peoples as a

truly even-handed interlocutor and peacemaker. It can

attain this only if it works genuinely to

“develop friendly relations among nations based on

respect for the principle of equal rights and self-

determination of peoples”,

as stated in Article I, paragraph 2, of its Charter.

If indeed we are seriously committed to these critical

objectives of peace and democracy in the world, then we

have no excuse to permit the further postponement of the

meaningful restructuring of the United Nations. If we

were honest with ourselves, we would admit that what is

blocking progress is the desire to accommodate what are

perceived as new power relations, to reinstitutionalize

relations of inequality within the United Nations in an

amended form. This is based on the thesis that the

institutionalization of such relations has precedence over

the Organization’s founding principle of respect for the

principle of equal rights among the nations.

In the situation of the cold war and the prevalence

of dictatorship in many countries, the politics of power

might have been seen as the only path to survival. The

management of the world today through the exercise of

such power, however modified, will itself subvert the

objectives of democracy and peace, spawning pretenders

to the throne at global, continental and regional levels.

Simultaneously as the United Nations focuses on the

critical question of the prevention of conflict, so must it

attend to such issues as the elimination of weapons of

mass destruction, the implementation of the ban on anti-

personnel mines, the removal of mines in those countries

which face this problem and the control of the

proliferation of small arms. Of course, none of these

proposals gainsay the need for the United Nations to act

with all necessary vigour to help end all existing conflicts

of which it is seized, including those in the Democratic

Republic of the Congo, Angola, Western Sahara, East

Timor, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Kosovo and others.

9

We started off with a quotation from the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights, which speaks of affirming

the dignity and worth of the human person, the promotion

of social progress and securing a better life for all. We

argued that conditions exist for movement towards the

realization of the objectives spelt out in the Declaration. It

is a matter of common cause among all of us that the levels

of poverty, ignorance and disease that continue to afflict

billions around the globe constitute a direct denial of the

dignity and worth of the human person to which we have

committed ourselves. I am certain that we would also agree

that the process of globalization has also been accompanied

by growing inequality within and among countries. We

have also seen how movements of short-term capital have

produced disastrous economic consequences in some

countries.

As with the challenges of peace and democracy, it is

our firm belief that sufficient resources exist within the

world economy actually to address the social progress and

the better life for all for which the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights calls. Further to this, science and technology

continue to develop in such a way that it is difficult to

believe that, taken together with the large concentrations of

capital that characterize the world economy, the means do

not exist within human society to make the required impact

on poverty, ignorance and disease. Indeed, it can be argued

quite rationally that international peace, democracy and

prosperity are a necessary condition for the further rapid

growth of the world economy, and with it the further

expansion of the corporations, both small and big, which

require global markets.

Similarly, the revolution in information and

communication technology, a critical driver of the process

of globalization, both enables and calls for higher levels of

education and standards of living among the billions who

constitute the human population. However, it is clear that

there is no automatic or inherent mechanism within the

operation of the markets to enable both capital and

technology to make the sort of impact we are talking about

on all countries of the globe. When we say this we should

not be taken to mean that we are contemptuous of all that

has been said about what each country needs to do to create

the conditions conducive to investment and technology

transfers. Nor should it be taken to mean that we are

reopening the debate about the role of markets in the

allocation of resources. What we are saying is that the

functioning of the markets does not and cannot exclude

conscious interventions being made, both to increase

economic opportunities and to raise the standards of living

and the life possibilities of many in the world denied their

human dignity by the scourge of poverty.

In his interesting book Living on Thin Air, the

British author Charles Leadbeater, writes:

“The new (knowledge driven) economy needs a

mobilizing vision and institutions fashioned to make

it real. Bit by bit, our institutions are changing

through reform, reorganisation and restructuring —

but the process is much too slow, haphazard and

piecemeal — it must become more conscious,

imaginative and radical.”

Once more, the matter turns on the will of the

political leaders actually to discover among themselves

the moral and intellectual courage to do what is correct

and necessary. What is correct and necessary also requires

that in this field as well, which affects socio-economic

matters, we should review the functioning of all

multilateral institutions, including those that belong within

the United Nations family. This should be done to ensure

that these too reflect the very necessary imperative of the

democratization of the international system of governance.

The United Nations documents to which we referred

earlier give us a starting point. Accordingly, we believe

that there is no need for anyone among us to rediscover

a new vision that would inform our actions to build a new

world which affirms the dignity and worth of the human

person. What is necessary is that we match the beliefs we

profess with the necessary action.

We speak of action that will practically address the

related issues of peace, democracy and development.

I am certain that such a practical programme of

action would meet the aspirations not only of the

members of the Organization of African Unity and the

Non-Aligned Movement, of which we are a member. It

would also respond to the most deep-seated feelings of

the peoples of the developed North, who can have no

interest in conflict, oppression and poverty, even if these

occur beyond the borders of their own countries.

It also goes without saying that the democratic

systems in which we operate would also require that,

through committed advocacy, we should secure the

support of the electors for what should be a programme

of action of the United Nations for the twenty-first

century.

10

The evolution of human society has presented the

world leaders who will stand at this rostrum with new

possibilities to move our globe a giant step forward towards

a new actuality, of which the poor and the powerless dream

every day. We will be betraying those millions if we do not

act to turn their dream into reality. Let future generations

not say that because of the force of inertia we failed to act.