Honourable Mrs. Frene Ginwala, President of the National Assembly;
Honourable Mr. P. Lekota, President of the National Council of Provinces;
Members of the South African Parliament; Distinguished guests:
While I was flying to South Africa, I was told that this speech had to be written so that it could be translated and printed for those guests who would not have access to simultaneous translation. I tried to imagine what would be the impression that I would get once I arrived to Parliament, what I could and should say to you who so kindly gathered to listen to my words, that deserved your interest and attention. What I offer you, with the help of some information that I carry along, is simply the product of imagination, similar to a love letter sent from thousands of miles away to a bride without knowing her way of thinking, what she wants to hear, or what her face looks like. (Applause) In my view, a speech is an honest and intimate conversation. For this reason, I learned always to talk to my colleagues face to face, looking straight into their eyes to persuade them of what I am saying. (Laughs and applause.) If at any point in time I detract from this role to add a few things that come to mind as ideas begin to flow, I hope that those who do not have headphones will forgive me. I also hope that the organisers and those in charge of ensuring the efficiency and solemnity of this act will understand me. (Applause)
As you can see, everything has happened differently. Nobody has headphones. Instead, this will be a direct translation. (Points to the interpreter). We have to do this paragraph by paragraph, and idea by idea. However, interruptions will be minimal. This goes to show, once again, that one should not be discouraged by difficulties encountered, as everything has a solution. (Laughs and applause.)
I think about this country and its history. I find going through my mind all kinds of events, facts, occurrences and realities that reflect the heavy responsibility and the colossal historical task of creating the new South Africa that you have proposed to yourselves. I hope that my presence in South Africa leaves you at least with one essential recollection, namely, my fervent and sincere desire to support your tremendous efforts in healing the deep wounds that have been opened in this country throughout the centuries. This promising country, which yesterday was the object of isolation and global condemnation, tomorrow could become the example of brotherhood and justice. This is facilitated at this precise moment by the presence of a leader who has exceptional human and political qualities. This man was there, living in the dark corners of a prison. He was more than a simple political prisoner serving a life sentence; he was also a political prophet (Applause) who today is recognised even by those who yesterday hated him and did not hesitate to punish him mercilessly. (Applause)
Nelson Mandela will not be remembered in history for the 27 consecutive years he spent in prison without abandoning his ideas; (Applause) rather, he'll be remembered for being capable of removing from his soul all the poison that served to justify such an unjust punishment. (Utterances of "Yes" and Applause) He'll be remembered for his generosity and knowledge which, at the time of imminent victory, he relied upon to guide his subjugated and heroic people in a brilliant manner, knowing that the new South Africa could never be built on a foundation of hatred and revenge. (Applause.)
Today, there are still two South Africas, which I must not call black and white. Such terminology should be banned forever if the aim is to create a multiracial and united country. (Applause) I would rather say it in a different way: Two South Africas, one rich and the other poor (Applause), one and the other: One where an average family receives twelve times the income of the other. One where children who die before their first birthday represent 13 per thousand children, another where those who die represent 57 per thousand. One where life expectancy is 73 years old, another where it only reaches 56 years of age. One where 100% of the population can read and write, another where illiteracy is higher than 50 per cent. One where employment is abundant and almost reaching full capacity; another where 45% of the population is unemployed; one where 12% of the population owns almost 90% of the land; another where almost 80% of the population owns less than 10% of the land. (Utterances of "Yes" and applause) One South Africa which accumulated, and now enjoys, all the necessary administrative and technical knowledge and skills, another which was condemned to inexperience and ignorance. One that enjoys its well-being and freedom; another which has only been able to attain freedom without well-being. (Applause.)
This horrible inheritance is not going to be changed overnight. (Applause) Nothing is gained by disorganising the production structures or by misusing the vast material and technical wealth, as well as the productive efficiency created by the hands of noble workers, under an unjust and cruel system that is virtually slavery. Effecting social change in a orderly, gradual and peaceful manner so as to ensure that those riches are geared towards benefiting the South African people in the best possible way, is probably one of the most difficult tasks to carry out in human society. (Applause) It is, in the view of this intrepid visitor who you have invited to be here and say a few words, the greatest challenge facing South Africa today. (Utterances of "Yes".)
I despise demagoguery. I would never say a word to stir up unrest, much less to receive applause or to please the ears of millions of South Africans who suffer, and rightly so, because that paradise of equality of opportunity for all that they dreamt of during the years of struggle, has not yet been realised in this country. (Utterances of "Yes" and Applause.) There are many nations where there are similar economic and social problems - a product of conquest, colonisation, and an unbearable inequality in the distribution of wealth - but in no other nation has the struggle for the respect of human dignity awakened so many hopes. The contradiction between hopes, possibilities and priorities is not only an internal affair to South Africa; it is an issue that is debated and will continue to be debated among respected theoreticians in many countries.
The system of conquest, colonisation, slavery, extermination of native populations, and the plundering of natural resources throughout the past centuries, have had terrible consequences for the overwhelming majority of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. (Applause.)
Seventy million indians were exterminated in the American continent through merciless exploitation, slavery, imported illnesses, or by the sharp-edged swords of the conquistadors. Twelve million Africans were forcibly removed from their villages and their homes, and transported to the new continent in shackles to work as slaves in the plantations. It should be noted that this figure does not include the millions of Africans who drowned or died during the crossings. In essence, apartheid was universal and lasted for centuries. (Applause.)
In our hemisphere, slaves were the first ones to stage an uprising, in one way or the other, against colonial domination, going as far back as the 16th century itself. Great uprisings in Jamaica, Barbados and other countries took place in the first decades of the 18th century, long before the uprising of North American colonists at the end of that same century. Slaves from Haiti created the first republic in Latin America. Years later, in Cuba, heroic and massive slave uprisings took place. Slaves of African origin marked the way to freedom in that continent. Many are the crimes throughout history that rest on the shoulders and conscience of the civilised and Christian West, as they like to call themselves. (Prolonged applause.) It is not just those who conceived and implemented the apartheid system in South Africa who need to feel the onus of the guilt. The political miracle of unity, reconciliation, and peace under the leadership of Nelson Mandela could perhaps become an example without precedent in history. (Applause.)
Recalling the meaning of a famous phrase, it could be said that never have so many people wished so much to so few people. It is from you, South African citizens and party leaders of all ethnic origins, who all of us, as inhabitants of this planet, expect so much at a political and human level.
One idea can give rise to another idea. From the new South Africa, the hope of a new Africa can emerge. Looked at economically, from the industrial, agricultural, technological and scientific points of view, South Africa is the most developed country on the African continent. Its energy and mineral resources are innumerable and in many of them, South Africa is very highly ranked world-wide. Today, South Africa produces 50% of the electricity of the entire continent, 85% of the steel and 97% of the coal. It accounts for the transport of 69% of all the railway freight, has 32% of all motorised vehicles, and 45% of all paved roads on the continent.
The rest of Africa is also very rich in natural resources. Those of us who have had the privilege to fight next to our African comrades, either for freedom or for a peaceful solution, know the great talent, both potential and untapped, of the children of Africa. We also know very well their extraordinary courage and intelligence, and their capacity to assimilate the most complex scientific and technical knowledge. (Prolonged applause.)
Cuba is a small island next to a very powerful neighbour. Nonetheless, 26,294 African professionals and technicians (Applause) have graduated from the learning centres in our country, while 5,850 have been trained. At the same time, 80,524 Cuban civilians, among them 24,714 medical doctors, dentists, nurses, and health technicians, together with tens of thousands of professors, teachers, engineers, and other qualified professionals and workers, have lent their internationalist services in Africa. (Applause.) Added to this, 381,432 soldiers and officers have been either on duty or have fought next to African soldiers and officers in this continent, for national independence or against external aggression for more than 30 years. (Prolonged applause.) This amounts to 461,956 internationalists in a very brief historical period.
From the African lands in which they worked and fought both voluntarily and selflessly, these internationalists only took back to Cuba the remains of their fallen comrades and the honour of having discharged their duty. (Applause.) We know, and therefore value, the humane qualities of the sons of Africa much more than those who colonised and exploited this continent for centuries. (Applause.) With deep and heart-rending sorrow, we think about your fratricidal wars, your economic underdevelopment, your poverty, your hunger, your lack of hospitals and schools, as well as your lack of communications. Astonishingly, we also know that Manhattan or Tokyo possess more telephones than those of all of Africa combined.
While we are faced with deserts that are expanding, forests that are disappearing, and soils that are being eroded, there is something else that is horrifying. Old and new illnesses, including malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, the Ebola virus, parasites, and curable infectious diseases continue to decimate the population of Africans countries. Rates for infant mortality and for mothers who die during childbirth are reaching record levels in comparison to the rest of the world. In some African countries, life expectancy is starting to be shortened.
The horrible HIV virus is spreading at exponential rates. I do not exaggerate, and you know that I do not, if I say that entire nations in Africa are at the risk of disappearing. Every infected person would need to pay ten thousand dollars in medicines each year only to survive, at a time when health budgets can only allocate 10 dollars to be spent on the health of each person. At current prices, it would be necessary to invest 250 billion dollars in Africa each year only to combat AIDS. It is for this reason that Africa accounts for 9 out of 10 people on this planet who die of AIDS. Can the world simply stand by with indifference at the sight of this catastrophe? Is man not capable of confronting this situation with the amazing scientific advances that are available today?
What is the point of telling us about macroeconomic indicators and other forms of eternal deceit, such as the recipes and prescriptions from the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation? Why tell us of the miraculous properties of the blind laws of the market and of the wonders of neo-liberal globalisation? (Applause.) Why aren't these stark realities accepted once and for all? Why aren't other formulae found and why isn't it recognised that man is capable of organising his life and his destiny in a more rational and humane way? (Applause.)
An unavoidable and deep economic crisis, perhaps the worst in history, is threatening all of us today. The world, which has become an enormous gambling house, is seeing everyday speculation in the range of $1.5 trillion which has absolutely no relation, nothing to do with the real economy. (Utterances of "Yes" and applause.) Never before did world economic history see anything like this. The value of stocks in the US stock market has been rising to absurd levels. It was only historical privilege, associated with a set of factors, which made it possible for the wealthy nations to be the only ones in the world to issue the reserve currencies of every central bank in every country. The dollar stopped having gold backing when that country suppressed the exchange rate established at Bretton-Woods. As was the dream of so many alchemists in the Middle Ages, paper was converted into gold. Ever since then, the value of the reserve world currency has simply become a matter of confidence. It should be said that wars like that in Vietnam, which was waged at a cost of $500 billion, paved the way for this enormous deceit. To that we should add the colossal build-up without taxes, which raised the US public debt from $700 billion to $2.5 trillion in only eight years.
Money became a fiction. Values no longer had a real and material basis. In recent years, American investors purchased $9 trillion through the simple mechanism of unbridled multiplication of the stock prices in their market. We find this colossal growth of trans-national corporations' investments in the world or even in their own country, the US, at the same time that they have had unrestrained growth of domestic consumption. This has been artificially feeding an economy that seems to grow and grow without inflation and without crises. However, sooner or later, the world will have to pay the price.
The most prosperous nations of south-east Asia have been ruined. Japan, the second world economy, can no longer stop recession. The yen keeps losing value; the yuan is being sustained not without great sacrifices by China, whose high growth will be reduced to less than 8 per cent this year - a figure dangerously close to the tolerable limit for a country that has conducted an accelerated radical reform and an extraordinary rationalisation of its labour force in its productive enterprises.
The Asian crisis is coming back. The economic catastrophe that is emerging in Russia, when that country is trying to build capitalism, is the greatest social and economic failure in history. (Applause.) All that despite enormous economic assistance and the recommendations and advice given to them by the best minds in the West. (Laughs.) And there is still another danger. At this moment, the major political danger is that a situation has been created in which a state with thousands of nuclear warheads has not paid the operators of the strategic missiles their salaries for five months. (Laughs and applause.)
The stock markets in Latin America have lost, in only a few months, more than 40 per cent of the value of their stocks. The ones in Russia have lost 75 per cent of their value. And this phenomenon tends to expand everywhere. The basic commodities of many countries, such as copper, nickel, aluminium, petroleum, and many others, have lately lost 50 per cent of their prices. The US stock market has begun to shake. As you very well know, they have just had what they call a black Monday. I don't know why they call it black, (Applause) since it actually was a white Monday. (Applause.)
No one knows exactly when and how general panic will be unleashed. Can anyone at this point be certain that there won't be a repetition of the 1929 crash? Neither Rubin, nor Greenspan, nor Camdessus, nor anyone can assure it. The tentativeness worries everyone, including the most eminent economic analysts. It's just that between that time and now, there is an enormous difference. In 1929, there was no $1.5 trillion involved in speculative transactions and only 3 per cent of Americans had shares in the stock market. Today, however, 50 per cent of the American population have their savings and their retirement funds invested in those stock markets. It's not a fabrication of mine. Neither is it a fantasy. Just read the newspapers.
Add to that, if you so desire, that the new world order is destroying in an accelerated fashion the world in which we live, we the 6 billion people living on this planet now. This is the same world that should provide a living for the 10 billion people that we will be in only 50 years' time.
I have discharged my duty. I have just described for you what crossed my mind at 10,000 metres' altitude. (Laughs and applause.) You should not ask me for solutions. I am not a prophet. I only know that great crises have always delivered great solutions. (Applause.) I have confidence in the intelligence of people and of man. I have confidence in the need for humanity to survive. I trust that you, distinguished and patient members of this Parliament, will meditate on this subject. I am confident that you understand that this is not a matter of ideology, race, colour, personal income, or social category. Rather, it is for all of us who are sailing in the same boat, a matter of life or death.
Let there be more generosity, more co-operation, and more humanity. Let South Africa become a model of a more just and more humane future. (Applause.) If you can do it, we will all be able to do it. (Applause and utterances of Fidel! Fidel! Fidel!)
Thank you very much (Standing ovations.)