South African History Online

Address to Foreign Correspondents association

Johannesburg, 26 November 1998

Dr Werner Vogt
Members of the Foreign Correspondents Association
Ladies
and gentlemen

A meeting with members of the Foreign Correspondents Association has become a
firm and much valued part of our annual calendar, I have noted, though, that in
some years I am given dinner and in others merely breakfast. I must have done
something right this year! Perhaps as people with your professional ears to the
ground you have ben alerted to my achievement in reaching the age of eighty
years!

As another year draws to a close, towards the end of the term of the first
democratic government's term, and on the eve of a transition to a new President,
there are natural pressures to engage in reviews of the past and speculation
about the future. Indeed these are important and necessary functions. However,
judging by what several newspapers said a few days ago about the shape of a
future cabinet, one may have to keep the proverbial pinch of salt close at hand
when unnamed sources become fortune tellers!

The principal danger of too great a preoccupation with what has happened and
what may develop, is that we can lose sight of important current developments.
With your permission therefore my emphasis will be less on the shape of things
to come and things past.

For the same reason, although I was kindly invited to use this opportunity,
if I so wished, to reflect on the role of the media and its relations with
government. I will not do so. My inclination is that we should eschew the
temptation to fill our pages with reflections on ourselves, lest we diminish the
primary value of the media as a mirror to society and government.

Having said that I would like to take this opportunity to put on record our
appreciation of your efforts to give the world a window onto South Africa's
transformation. That is said with particular feeling at the end of a year which
has brought home as never before the concrete reality of globalisation and the
imperatives of interdependence. Your work, we have no doubt, has contributed to
the understanding in the major centres of the world of the course we are
charting and of our determination to maintain it.

Ladies and gentlemen;

Interdependence is one of the themes on which I would like to reflect. This
is not so much as it affects relations between nations, peoples and regions,
though that has been an intense focus of my own activities during this past
year, but rather within our own society as it takes new shape.

Underlying our political transition was a consensus that could be taken as
the founding pact of the new nation we are building. It included the recognition
that we are one nation with one destiny, and that the differences amongst us,
political or otherwise are transcended by the need to survive and prosper
together. There was no other choice.

Such was the spirit that informed the establishment of our democracy and the
launch of such vital institutions as NEDLAC. Such was the climate that saw a
broad consensus on a programme of reconstruction and development in order to
transform our society.

It was therefore disturbing some two years ago to note the re-emergence of
the old fault-lines in our society, in how different sectors of our society
perceived what was happening and where we should be going as a nations. Since
then published opinion research has documented this divergence of perceptions.
Political leaders, rather than seeking the common ground defined by our founding
consensus, sharpened differences. The vigilance of opposition was not always
kept distinct from mere point-scoring or the defence of privilege. National
consensus in some important areas began to appear less as a point of departure
than an aspiration.

This climate was exacerbated by challenges such as how to deal with the
inhumanities in our past in a way that brings healing and reconciliation;
decisive steps to deal with the imbalances of the past; and how to turn round
the moral decay we inherited and which fans scourges such as crime, corruption
and poor civic responsibility.

I has always been our conviction that in most important respects, ordinary
South Africans are far in advance of their political leaders. Several
developments during the past month or so has vindicated this belief.

Sectoral alliances and partnerships in very many critical areas have risen to
the needs of the moment. It is no exaggeration to say that the number and
importance of these initiatives constitute a significant development. They give
expression to the recognition that there are indeed matters which stand above
the cut and thrust of politics.

The Summit on Rural Safety and Security forged a common approach between
farmers, government and our security services. It thereby made the security of
the farming community the practical concern of the nation as a whole. Across the
board, the assessment is that we are making real progress in this area.

The launch of the Partnership Against Aids every sector of civil society
accepted the responsibility for turning the tide of a disease that threatens our
nation with a crisis that could undo all our efforts.

The Morals Summit has mobilised our religious bodies and political
organisations in joint leadership of the efforts to regenerate the morality of
our society.

In doing so it has brought critical support to the government's programmes to
combat crime and root our corruption, fraud and the evasion of tax.

The Jobs Summit signalled the fact that the most powerful organised forces in
our society recognised their shared responsibility for harnessing the potential
of all South Africans to create opportunities for a better life.

To these events one could add the reception by the media and the public of
the results of the 1996 Census. They have been accepted as defining a common
reference point that sets out the legacy and challenges of social inequality and
deprivation.

One of the notable features of these developments has been that the centre
stage has been occupied by organisations and structures of civil society;
community organisations; business, big and small; trade unions; youth and
women's organisations; and religious communities.

This bodes well for our prospects of dealing with the problems which gave
rise to these responses, as well as others that some may think more likely to
bring division and tension rather than reconciliation.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has given the nation an interim
report which we must use to move further towards a common understanding of our
past.

There will naturally be debate around the decision of the Human Rights
Commission to investigate racism in the media. But we hope and are convinced
that the investigation can contribute to a common understanding of the extent to
which racism still plays a part in our national life.

We still face a difficult international economic environment, but it is now
common cause that we have weathered the global financial storm better than most
emerging economies, thanks to the strength of our fundamentals and the
consistent application of the right polices. Whatever downward fluctuation there
may be in the indicators, it is no idle statement to say that these are
exceptions to the rule.

Nor finally, is there any reason why the approaching elections should not
leave us, as did the first democratic elections of 1994, a stronger and more
united nation, ready to surpass the progress that has been made in these first
years of our freedom.

In this regard, we take encouragement from the gathering response of civil
servants and other members of the public, to the call to ensure that
registration is effective so that the voice of South Africa's people can be
clearly heard in next year's elections.

Ladies and gentlemen;

As you seek to give the world an account of what has ben achieved in these
first four years of South Africa freedom, and what may lie ahead, I hope that
you will find that my reflections today prove pertinent. I have no doubt that we
will all benefit from your perceptions and analysis.

I thank you.