South African History Online

Address of the president of the republic of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, to the summit meeting of the OAU heads of state and government

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, June 8 1998

Mr Chairman; Distinguished Heads of State and Government; Heads of
Delegation; Honourable Ministers; Ambassadors and Members of the Diplomatic
Corps; Ladies and Gentlemen:

In Tunis, among the ruins of historic Carthage, in the year of our liberation
from the yoke of apartheid, I had the singular honour to address our Summit, for
the first time.

Today, at the lower reaches of the Sahara, under whose majestic sands hides
much of our ancient African origins and the things that link the African North
and South, I have the honour to present my valediction to a conclave, which was
the midwife of our freedom, which has been our teacher as we have striven to
learn what we should do with that freedom.

you will pardon me if on this occasion, this old man, on foreseeing the birth
of a new century, borrows words from a departed freedom fighter who comes from
across the Atlantic, as an affirmation of the African affinity with all across
the globe who stand for human dignity and upliftment.

I refer here to the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda who, under the title, "A
Century Dying", wrote:

"The tree of our bitterness has come full leaf: and the fall of our century
will carry the foliage away:"

From this podium, and after a lifetime spent in struggle, we want to echo the
Chilean, and express our conviction that the fall of our century will carry away
the foliage of bitterness which has accumulated in our hearts, and to which
colonialism, neo-colonialism and white minority domination gave birth.

There is a complex of positions which those who come after us into the new
century and millennium must advance, so that those of us who are weighed down by
the burdens of age, can say, with conviction, that "the tree of or bitterness
has come full leaf" and that the autumn of our lives presages the African
spring.

As we were convinced when we established this Organisation 35 years ago, the
successor generation can and must reaffirm this, that our countries and peoples
are bound together by the reality of a common destiny for our Continent.

It must therefore deal in practical ways with the consequences of this
fundamental determination.

Among other things, it must win the war in terms of which victory we, as
African countries, would not allow ourselves to be sucked into a fight among the
powerless for power over one another.

None of us is a superstar and none can succeed without the success of the
other.

That common destiny requires that we should treat the question of peace and
stability on or Continent as a common challenge.

Accordingly, I believe that we must all accept that we cannot abuse the
concept of national sovereignty to deny the rest of the Continent the right and
duty to intervene when, behind those sovereign boundaries, people are being
slaughtered to protect tyranny.

In all instances, this takes place with no regard whatsoever to the fact that
the legitimacy of our governments derives from our commitment to serve the
interests of the people on the basis of mandates given by the people themselves.

In this context, we must frankly assess whether our "Central Organ for the
Prevention, Management and Resolution of Conflicts" is succeeding to meet the
hopes of our Organisation and peoples.

If it is not, a question which the current and most unfortunate conflict
between Ethiopia and Eritrea throws up, then we must seriously address the
question of what we need to do to ensure that the continent truly and
collectively, takes charge of its security and stability.

Again, none can gainsay the fact that our cooperation and integration is a
fundamental precondition of the economic success of each of our countries, as is
the pursuit of people-centred economic policies in each of our countries.

We must therefore build on the decisions we have taken about the African
Economic Community as well as the reality of the regional economic units we have
formed in various parts of our Continent.

Clearly, and as a matter or urgency, we must also find ways of acting
together with regard to our relations with such important institutions as the
World Bank, the IMF and the WTO.

Among the issues on our agenda with these institutions would be the African
debt, infrastructure development, capacity building and greater African
participation in the world economy.

The matter of the renegotiation of the Lome Convention with the European
Union is another issue which we must handle both seriously and with the
necessary sense of urgency.

The importance of the fact of African interdependence, and its practical
recognition by ourselves, found expression in the Africa Telecom `98 Forum held
in my country recently.

Our Ministers responsible for Telecommunications emerged out of this
conference with a concrete, practicable and exciting programme to move our
Continent onto the information super-highway.

I would like to commend this practical and realistic programme to this
Summit.

Your engagement in promoting it, as the political leaders of all our peoples,
is fundamental to the bending of the possibilities provided by modern
communication technology to link us as Africans, one to the other; further to
improve our contacts with the rest of the world; and, using this technology, to
deliver better services to the masses of our people cheaper and quicker.

Similarly, our Education Ministers have taken decisions to increase access by
our youth to one another's institutions of higher education. This is another
concrete initiative based on the fundamental concept of a common African destiny
which we, as the political leaders of our Continent, must support practically.

In this regard, I would like to reiterate our profound appreciation for the
support of UNESCO for this project.

We must also address the important question of exchanges among ourselves in
the areas of science, technology and engineering and all other academic
disciplines in general.

Among other things, we must attract back into the Continent the very many
talented intellectuals who left Africa's shores to look for opportunities in the
countries of the North, which offered them security and the possibility to
advance their professional careers.

Similarly, we must work systematically to build people-to-people relations
among our nations, to entrench the understanding that, as Africans, we are one
people who share a common destiny.

Our Continent is confronted by a whole variety of questions impinging on its
relations with the rest of the world.

Two of these concern the restructuring of the United Nations and the Summit
Meeting of Non-Aligned Countries scheduled to take place in my country from the
end of August.

With regard to both these issues, and others we may not have mentioned, we
must evolve the necessary and correct African positions to protect and advance
our interests.

We, ourselves, look forward to your inputs on these matters, so that we can
all act in a manner which truly represents and advances a genuine and beneficial
African agenda.

The current conjuncture presents our Continent with many exciting
possibilities.

What is clear is that we will not be able to exploit these possibilities
unless we ensure that the OAU, as an organisation, is able effectively to lead
our Continent. We recognise what has already been achieved, paying particular
homage to Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim, under whose guidance the
Organisation made tremendous advances. At the same time we remain aware of what
still needs to be done.

Accordingly, let all of us attend to its strengthening and effective
functioning with the necessary seriousness, understanding that without this
all-African organisation, we would, one and all, be severely limited in our
capacity to achieve the goals which each and everyone of us holds dear, and
which we all know are fundamental to the success of the African Renaissance.

Our common African culture allows me to say to those in this august Assembly,
who are younger than the veterans such as Robert Mugabe, Sam Nujoma, Abdou Diouf
and myself that we charge you with the responsibility to lead our peoples and
Continent into the new world of the next century - which must be an African
Century -during which all our people will be freed of the bitterness born of the
marginalisation and degradation of our proud Continent of Africa.

Let all of us repeat and commit ourselves to the perspective represented by
the clarion call; The struggle continues and victory is certain!

Our future as the ordinary masses of Africa is in your hands!

Thank you

Issued by: Government Communications (GCIS)