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 Do
not be alarmed. The speech is not as long as it seems, although
the translation will take more of our time. I was trying to
figure out the impression that I would have upon arrival at this
parliament. What could I, and what should I, say that would
deserve your interest and your attention, since you have so
kindly gathered here to listen to my words.
What I
bring here with me, assisted by some data, is therefore just the
work of my imagination. Like a love letter addressed to a
sweetheart thousands of miles away, even though you don’t know
how she feels, what she wants to hear, and not even what her
face looks like.
For me
a speech is just an honest and intimate conversation. That is
why I got into the habit of talking to, or establishing a
dialogue with, my interlocutors, looking at their faces and
trying to persuade them of what I am saying.
If at
any time I put aside the paper to add a few things that cross my
mind while inspired by some ideas, I hope that those who do not
have earphones, the organizers, or the people in charge of
seeing to the solemnity and efficiency of this event will
understand.
I
think about this country and I think about its history. I see in
my mind all kinds of developments, events, facts, data,
realities that reflect the enormous responsibility and the
colossal historical task implicit in creating the new South
Africa that you aspire to.
I hope
that my presence here will leave, as the sole essential memory,
our fervent and sincere wishes to support the enormous efforts
that you are making in order to heal the deep wounds that for
many centuries have remained open.
This
promising country, which was yesterday the target of isolation
and universal condemnation, can tomorrow be an example of
fraternity and justice. The timely presence, at the precise
moment, of a leader of exceptional human and political qualities
makes it possible. That man was there, in the dark corners of a
jail. He was much more than a political prisoner, sentenced for
life; he was a prophet of politics who is today acknowledged
even by those who hated and ruthlessly punished him in the past.
Nelson
Mandela will not go down in history for the 27 consecutive years
that he had lived imprisoned without ever renouncing his ideas.
He will go down in history because he was able to draw from his
soul all poison accumulated by such an unjust punishment. He
will be remembered for his generosity and for his wisdom at the
time of an already uncontainable victory, when he knew how to
lead so brilliantly his self-sacrificing and heroic people,
aware that the new South Africa would never be built on
foundations of hatred and revenge.
There
are still today two South Africas, which ought not be called the
“White” one and the “Black” one; that terminology should
forever be dropped if a multiracial and united country is to be
created. I would rather put it this way: two South Africas —
the rich and the poor — one and the other. One where an
average family receives 12 times the income of the other; one
where the children who die before their first year of life are
13 per 1,000 and the other where those who die are 57 per 1,000;
one in which life expectancy is 73 years, the other in which it
is only 56 years; one where 100 percent of the people know how
to read and write, another where illiteracy is more than 50
percent; one with almost full employment, another where 45
percent are unemployed; one where 12 percent of the population
own almost 90 percent of the land, the other where almost 80
percent of the inhabitants own less than 10 percent of it; one
that has accumulated almost all the technical and managerial
knowledge, the other doomed to inexperience and ignorance; one
that enjoys well-being and freedom, the other having been able
to conquer freedom but without well-being.
Such a
dreadful legacy cannot be changed overnight. There is absolutely
nothing to be gained by disrupting the production system or
wasting the considerable material and technical wealth, as well
as the productive experience created by the workers’ noble
hands under a criminal and unjust system that was virtual
slavery. Perhaps one of the most difficult tasks of human
society is to carry forward social change in an orderly, gradual
and peaceful way, so that such wealth could contribute to the
optimal benefit of the South African people. In the opinion of
this daring guest, whom you have invited here to say a few words,
that is the greatest challenge that South Africa is facing today.
I
reject demagogy. I would never say a word here to incite
discontent, much less to win applause or to please the ears of
millions of South Africans who are rightly hurting today because
the paradise of equal opportunities for all and the justice that
they dreamed of during the long years of struggle have not yet
been attained in their country.
There
are many nations with similar social and economic problems that
are the result of conquest, colonization and an unbearable
disparity in the distribution of wealth; but in no place other
than here has the struggle for respect for human dignity kindled
so much hope. The contradiction between hopes, possibilities and
priorities is not only a South African domestic affair, but
something that is being debated, and that will still continue to
be debated, amongst the honest theoreticians of many countries.
The
system of conquest, colonization, slavery, extermination of the
indigenous populations and looting of their natural resources in
past centuries has had dreadful consequences for the
overwhelming majority of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin
America.
Seventy
million Indians were exterminated in the whole of the American
hemisphere due to the ruthless exploitation, slave labor,
imported diseases or the sharp edge of the conquerors’ swords.
Twelve
million Africans were violently taken from their villages, from
their homes and transported to the new continent, all shackled
in chains, to work as slaves on the plantations; and that does
not include the many millions who drowned or died during the
crossing.
Actually,
apartheid was universal, and it lasted for centuries. For our
hemisphere, the slaves were the first to revolt, in one way or
another, against colonial domination in the very early stages of
the 16th century. Major revolts in Jamaica, Barbados and other
countries took place in the first decades of the 18th century,
long before the revolt of the U.S. slaves. The slaves in Haiti
created the first republic in Latin America. Some years later
heroic and massive slave revolts also took place in Cuba. The
African slaves were the ones who pointed the way to freedom on
that continent. In the course of history many crimes have been
committed by the Christian and civilized West, as they like to
call themselves, and those who created and applied the apartheid
system in South Africa, who must carry the full burden of the
guilt.
The
political miracle of unity, reconciliation and peace under the
leadership of Nelson Mandela will perhaps become an
unprecedented example in history.
It
could be said that there were never so many who wished so much
for so few. You, South African citizens and leaders of all
parties and of all ethnic origins, are those few for whom all
the inhabitants of this planet wish so much and from whom all of
us expect so much, from a political and human point of view.
One
idea may lead to another: from the new South Africa, the hopes
for a new Africa. Economically, South Africa is, from the
industrial, agricultural, technological and scientific points of
view, the most developed country on the African continent. Its
mineral and energy resources are boundless, in many cases
exceeding those in all other countries in the world. Today South
Africa produces 50 percent of the electricity of this continent,
85 percent of the steel and 97 percent of the coal. It
transports 69 percent of all rail cargo; it has 32 percent of
all the motor vehicles and 45 percent of the paved roads. The
rest of Africa is also immensely rich in natural resources.
There is the enormous potential and virgin talent of its
children, their extraordinary courage and intelligence, their
capacity to assimilate the most complex know-ledge in science
and technology. We know this very well because we have been with
them; we had the privilege of fighting, together with them, for
freedom or for peaceful reconstruction.
Cuba
is just a small island next to a very powerful neighbor, but
26,294 professionals and technicians graduated in our education
centers and 5,850 students coming from different African
countries have been trained there. A total of 80,524 Cuban
civilians, among them 24,714 doctors, dentists, nurses and
health workers, together with tens of thousands of teachers,
engineers and other professionals and skilled workers, have
cooperated by rendering international services of different
kinds in Africa. In over 30 years, 381,432 soldiers and officers
have been on duty or have fought together with African soldiers
and officers on this continent for national independence or
against foreign aggression. It is a figure that rises to 461,956
in a brief historical period. From the African land in which
they worked and fought, voluntarily and selflessly, they
returned to Cuba with only the remains of their fallen comrades
and the honor of having fulfilled their duty.
That
is why we know and value the human qualities of the children of
Africa much more than those who for centuries colonized and
exploited this continent.
With
deep, tearing pain we witness today their fratricidal wars and
their economic underdevelopment, their poverty, their famines,
their lack of hospitals and schools, the lack of communications.
With astonishment we note that Manhattan or Tokyo have more
telephones than the whole of Africa together.
The
deserts are expanding, the forests disappear, and the soil is
subject to erosion. And something awful: old and new diseases
— malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, Ebola, parasites
and treatable infectious diseases — are all decimating its
population. Infant mortality shows record-high indexes when
compared with those of the rest of the world; also the rate of
mothers who die during childbirth; and in some countries, life
expectancy is beginning to decrease.
The
awful HIV is expanding in geometrical proportions. When I say
that whole nations in Africa are at risk of disappearing, it is
not an overstatement, and you know it. Each infected person
would have to pay $10,000 a year in medication only to survive,
while the health budgets can hardly allocate $10 to spend on
each person’s health. At present prices, $250 billion would
have to be invested each year in Africa only to fight AIDS.
Owing to this, nine out of every 10 persons dying from AIDS in
the world die in Africa.
Can
the world contemplate this catastrophe with indifference? Can
humanity, with its amazing scientific advances, confront this
situation or not? Why go on talking to us about macroeconomic
indexes and other eternal lies, prescriptions and more
prescriptions of the IMF and the World Trade Organization, about
the miraculous virtues of the blind law of the market and the
wonders of neoliberal globalization? Why is it that these
realities are not taken for what they are? Why not seek other
formulas and admit that humankind is able to organize our lives
and our destiny in a more rational and humane manner?
An
avoidable and deep economic crisis, perhaps the worst in history,
is threatening all of us today. In the world, which has become
an enormous casino, speculative operations with a value of $1.5
trillion, which bear no relation to any real economy, are
carried out every day. Never before has world economic history
seen a phenomenon similar to this one.
The
shares on the stock exchange markets of the United States have
been escalating to the point of absurdity. It was only an
historical privilege, associated with a set of factors that made
it possible for a wealthy nation to become the world issuer of
reserve currency from the reserve banks in every country. Their
treasury bonds are the last safe haven for those fearful
investors confronting any economic crisis.
When I
said that the shares on the stock exchange markets have been
escalating to the point of absurdity, I should have said: The
prices of the shares on the stock exchange markets of the United
States have been escalating to the point of absurdity.
The
dollar stopped having gold backing when that country
unilaterally suppressed the exchange rates established in
Bretton Woods. As in the dreams of alchemists in the middle ages,
paper has been turned into gold. Ever since then the value of
the reserve world currency has simply become a matter of
confidence. Wars like the one in Vietnam, at the cost of $500
billion, paved the way for this enormous deceit. To that should
be added the colossal rearmament, which raised the public debt
of the United States from $700 billion to $2.5 trillion in only
eight years.
So
money became a fiction. The values no longer had a real and
material basis. Nine trillion dollars were purchased by U.S.
investors in recent years through the simple mechanism of the
unbridled multiplication of the stock prices in their markets.
Thus, we find the colossal growth of transnational corporate
investments in the world and in their own country. At the same
time as they have had unrestrained growth in domestic
consumption, they have been artificially feeding an economy that
seemed to grow and grow without inflation and without crisis.
Sooner or later the world would have to pay the price.
The
most prosperous nations of Southeast Asia have been ruined.
Japan, the second most significant world economy, can no longer
stop a recession. The yen keeps losing value. The yuan is being
sustained with great sacrifice by China, whose high growth will
be reduced this year to less than eight percent, a figure
dangerously close to the tolerable limit for a country that is
conducting a speedy, radical reform and extraordinary
rationalization of the labor force in its productive enterprises.
The Asian crisis is coming back. The economic catastrophe in
Russia is emerging with the greatest economic and social failure
in history — trying to build capitalism in that country. All
this is despite the enormous financial assistance and the
recommendations and recipes supplied by the best minds in the
West. Perhaps, at this moment, the greatest political risk lies
in the situation created in a state that owns thousands of
nuclear warheads, a state in which the operators of the
strategic missiles have not been paid their salaries for five
months.
The
stock exchanges of Latin America have lost over 40 percent of
their share value in only a few months; in Russia they have lost
75 percent. This phenomenon tends to spread and become universal.
The basic commodities of many countries, such as copper, nickel,
aluminum, petroleum and many others, have lately been decreasing
in price by 50 percent.
The
stock exchange of the United States is already shaking. As you
know, they just had what they call a “Black Tuesday.” I don’t
know why they call it “black.” Actually it is has been “white
Tuesday.” No one knows when and how the general panic will be
unleashed. Could anyone, at this point, be certain that there
will not be a repetition of the 1929 crash? It is just that
between then and now there is an enormous difference. In 1929
there were not $1.5 trillion involved in speculative operations
and only three percent of the U.S. population had shares in the
stock exchange. Today, 50 percent of the population of the
United States has its savings and its pension funds invested in
shares in those stock exchanges. This is not a fabrication of
mine. It is not a fantasy — just read the news. If you wish,
add to this the fact that the new world order is destroying,
faster than before, the natural environment in which we, the six
billion inhabitants of the planet, live at present, and on which
10 billion inhabitants will have to live in another 50 years.
I have
discharged my duty. I have just told you what crossed my mind at
an altitude of 10,000 meters. Please don’t ask me about
solutions. I am not a prophet. I only know that great crises
have always delivered great solutions.
I
trust the minds of peoples and of humankind. I trust the need of
humanity to survive. I trust that you, distinguished and patient
members of this parliament, will think about this subject. I
trust that you will understand that this is not a matter of
ideology, race, color, personal income or social class. It is
rather, for all of us sailing in the same boat, a matter of life
or death. Let us be more generous, more jointly responsible,
more humane. Let South Africa become a model of a more just,
more humane, future world. If you can achieve it, all of us will
be able to.
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