Botswana is a role
model for African renewal
We just
completed a three-day visit to one of our neighbouring countries, the
Republic of Botswana. Although we have been to Botswana in the past, this
was our first State Visit.
Accordingly, this visit was very important to accelerate
the implementation of the many important matters that our two countries
have been dealing with jointly, for a number of years. In this regard,
we signed an agreement to establish a Joint Permanent Commission for Co-operation,
which will be a critical instrument for the consolidation, deepening and
expansion of our already excellent bilateral relations.
Our visit also afforded us the opportunity formally
to thank the government and people of Botswana for the sacrifices they
made as they acted in solidarity with us during our struggle to defeat
the apartheid regime. None of us dare forget the fact that citizens of
Botswana lost their lives as they refused to be intimidated by the apartheid
regime into withdrawing their support for our struggle.
As we indicated in our address at the National Assembly
of Botswana, we all have a duty and responsibility to tell the untold
story of the many contributions made, and the heroism demonstrated by
the people of Botswana especially during the challenging last two decades
of our struggle. Our own people need to understand this history, fully
to appreciate the value we attach to the further improvement of our excellent
bilateral relations.
In addition to the Government, the other political leaders
of Botswana, as well as the ordinary people, received us with great warmth
and open friendship. This was amply demonstrated in the four areas of
the country we visited - Gaborone, Orapa, Maun and Moremi National Park.
Among other things, in expression of the depth of this
friendship, Botswana' s national parliament honoured our country and people
in a very special way. We became the very first foreign visitor in the
history of that country to address the National Assembly.
While we were in Gaborone, we were also privileged to
join the Mediation Team of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue to implement a
UN Security Council resolution on the DRC. This consisted in handing over
to the Facilitator of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, Sir Ketumile Masire,
documents containing the final agreements reached by the representatives
of the Congolese people, including the Interim Constitution, which will
enable them to establish the inclusive transitional government that will
prepare the DRC for its democratic elections.
Accordingly, Sir Ketumile announced that he would shortly
convene, in South Africa, the last session of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue
(ICD), during which all the component parts of the ICD would formally
sign the comprehensive agreement for the establishment of peace and democracy
in the DRC.
This handover ceremony was highly symbolic in two respects.
It confirmed the continuing commitment of the government and people of
Botswana to Africa's struggle for peace and democracy, as they demonstrated
in our case. It was also fitting that it was to Sir Ketumile Masire that
we had to report, given that he led Botswana as its President, during
the most difficult period of our struggle.
Secondly, the agreements defining the future of the
DRC, a product of the work led by Sir Ketumile as Facilitator of the ICD,
communicated the message that even as the threat of war hung over Iraq
and the world, Africa was making a bold statement proclaiming peace in
the DRC and the entire region of the Great Lakes.
Fortuitously, as all this was taking place in Gaborone,
Botswana, steps were being taken in the Cote d'Ivoire, in West Africa,
finally to establish an inclusive government of national unity, to bring
peace to that country by implementing the agreement reached by the various
Ivorian parties at Marcoussis, France.
Once more, the message coming out of Africa is that
we are determined to find peaceful solutions to the problems we face,
however difficult the challenge.
The Botswana we visited also serves as a good example
of the Africa we seek to build - a continent of peace, stability and development.
We visited a country whose democracy is entrenched and durable. All of
us as Africans have something to learn from Botswana, concerning what
we should do to transform our countries into enduring democracies dedicated
to development, peace and stability.
Botswana communicates a critical message to all of us
that democracy, peace, stability and development are all interdependent.
Their entrenchment would inevitably bring about prosperity, no matter
how long it would take. Each of these elements re-enforces the others.
Yet, despite their achievements, the Batswana have remained
humble. This we appreciate. For our programme of African renewal to proceed
with due speed, we need such role models so that we, as Africans, can
point to our own, as good examples to be emulated.
Clearly, it is important that we celebrate these achievements
so that we are able to use their accumulated experiences to assist all
of us to meet the aspirations of our peoples for a better life for themselves.
We also need to use African success stories to demonstrate
what Africans have achieved in the face of tremendous obstacles. We must
do this to prove African pessimists wrong about our continent, and inspire
the millions of our people to have confidence in their own ability successfully
to prosecute the new struggle for Africa's Renaissance. We asked President
Mogae and the people of Botswana to do something else. For us fully to
use Botswana as a good example of democracy, peace, stability and development,
the Batswana should, themselves, record their history and the challenges
they had to face as they built and consolidated democracy. Naturally,
nobody can do this better than the Batswana themselves. We are certain
they would do this with the humility and absence of arrogance that are
such an attractive feature of the national character of the Batswana.
As we continue with our work of the regeneration of
our continent, we should not be shy to give an objective and dispassionate
account of what has worked and what has not worked on our continent. We
must do this so that we use the available African experience to move forward,
and indeed proceed with the necessary speed radically to improve the lives
of all our people in each and every country on the continent.
For us to progress, we need to use the practical examples
of initiatives and programmes that have worked on our continent. This
is the best way in which we will reclaim our dignity and pride as Africans.
It is also from these positions that we would be best able to access the
relevant experience of others outside our continent, much of which will
also help us to achieve our objectives.
By learning from our good and bad history, since the
earliest days of African independence, we will help ourselves to achieve
the noble objectives of walking tall amongst our fellow human beings and
occupy our pride of place amongst the nations of the world. This is precisely
what the NEPAD Peer Review Mechanism will help us to do.
The struggle for national liberation is a struggle for
national self-determination. The independence struggles we all waged to
rid our continent of colonialism and white minority domination were struggles
for self-determination. These were struggles that both expressed our sovereign
national will and sought to create the conditions in which we would use
that sovereign national will freely to determine our future.
Our continuing efforts to achieve the rebirth of our
continent, through the African Union and its socio-economic programme,
NEPAD, constitute the contemporary expression of our age-old struggle
for self-determination. They demand that we must decide what we want to
do about and with ourselves.
They demand that we must be convinced of our capacity
to achieve the renewal of our continent, shedding all manifestations of
inferiority and self-doubt. They demand that we must take all necessary
measures to rely on our own intellectual and material resources to realise
the goals we have set ourselves. They require that we should have the
courage to be our own severe judges about what is right and wrong, and
refuse to accept that our benchmarks, to measure our success, are set
by others.
As a movement we know what this means. Throughout the
91 years of our existence, we have taken our own decisions about what
to do for our country. Even as we mobilised the rest of the world to support
our struggle, we decided how we would conduct that struggle, including
during the period of negotiations, relying in the first instance on our
own strength and willingness to sacrifice for our own liberation.
Without this expression in struggle, of our right to
self-determination, we would not be where we are today. None but ourselves
could achieve the "miracle" that some have spoken of. None but
ourselves can achieve the goals of reconstruction and development and
the creation of a non-racial and non-sexist society that we have set ourselves.
There are some in the world who say they accept Africa's
right to determine her future. In this context, they welcome NEPAD as
an overdue effort of the people's of Africa to take responsibility for
solving their problems. This is precisely how support for Africa's struggle
to exercise her right to self-determination should be expressed.
However, in practice such support is qualified by all
manner of conditions. Some make the statement daily and boldly, that they
will support our exercise of the right to self-determination, provided
that we do what they tell us. In other words they make the statement that
we are free to enjoy this right, on condition that we accept that they
have the authority to decide for us what our future shall be.
The difficulty we face in declining such authority is
that those who assert it are much richer and more powerful than us. Accordingly,
we need their support to achieve what we have determined is right for
us.
The other problem is that many among us have convinced
themselves that those who claim superiority over us, are in fact our superiors.
Accordingly, fully to exercise our right to self-determination as Africans,
we have to engage in a process among ourselves to defeat the insult that
there are others better placed than Africans to determine Africa's destiny.
The reality is that if we accept this, we will condemn
ourselves to the poverty, underdevelopment and global marginalisation
from which we are battling to extricate our continent and ourselves.
Herein lies the critical importance of learning from
ourselves about what we need to do about ourselves. Our indigenous African
successes communicate the message that we can succeed. These successes
provide us with the school that should teach us what we need to do to
determine our future.
To learn from Africa's experience, such as the experience
of Botswana, and entrench the culture of African self-reliance, is to
take the only available road to Africa's renewal. This is the road of
loyalty to, and the exercise of our right to self-determination. As South
Africans, we are privileged to have Botswana as our neighbour.
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