TUESDAY, 14 MARCH 2006 __

                    PROCEEDINGS OF JOINT SITTING

                                ____

Members of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces assembled in the Chamber of the National Assembly at 14:05.

The Speaker of the National Assembly took the Chair and requested members to observe a moment of silence for prayers or meditation.

WELCOMING OF THEIR ROYAL HIGHNESSES PRINCE PHILIPPE AND PRINCESS MATHILDE OF BELGIUM AND THEIR ACCOMPANYING DELEGATION

The SPEAKER: Hon members, Mr President, before we proceed with the business of the day, I have the honour of recognising the presence in the House of their Royal Highnesses Prince Philippe and Princess Mathilde of the Kingdom of Belgium and the delegation accompanying them. [Applause.]

  ADDRESS BY MR KOFI ANNAN, SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS

The SPEAKER: Hon members, Mr President, we are honoured to have amongst us today His Excellency the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan, whom we have invited to address this Joint Sitting of Parliament on the occasion of his visit to South Africa. May I take this opportunity to welcome you to Parliament, Mr Annan. I now call on the hon D J Sithole to introduce His Excellency the Secretary-General of the United Nations. [Applause.]

        WELCOMING OF SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS

Mr D J SITHOLE: Thank you, Madam Speaker. His Excellency the Secretary- General of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan, and Ms Annan, His Excellency the President of South Africa, Mr Thabo Mbeki, hon Ministers, Members of Parliament, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it is an honour for me to welcome you to our Parliament today.

We feel privileged to host such an eminent son of Africa who has done so much to make the world a better place. We see your visit to our country as a sign of the important relationship between South Africa and the United Nations. That we are able to welcome you to this, the Parliament of the democratic South Africa, is in itself, a vindication of the noble goals and objectives that the United Nations stands for.

The United Nations was at the forefront of the campaign to end apartheid. Through the various resolutions passed and other actions by the world body, the United Nations displayed its commitment to the emancipation of the oppressed and the upliftment of those living in conditions of bondage. It was also a display of the international community’s yearning for the spread of democracy, the protection of human rights, the respect for human dignity and the importance of equality for all before the law.

Mr Secretary-General, it is therefore no coincidence that the new South Africa was founded on ideals similar to those that informed the creation of the United Nations. Our Constitution is based on the recognition of the values of human dignity, nonracialism, nonsexism and the rule of law. Through our Bill of Rights we have enshrined these values.

We have also gone further to institutionalise a number of state institutions to support our democracy. These are the Public Protector, the Human Rights Commission, the Commission on Gender Equality, the Auditor- General, the Electoral Commission and the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities.

We see the United Nations as an indispensable part of the global architecture of governance and multilateralism. It is through multilateralism that the voice of all – the strong and the weak – can be heard. The interdependence that characterises the world today means that it is only by working together that states can find solutions to today’s problems. It is also through multilateralism that the positive aspects of globalisation can be harnessed for the betterment of all.

Therefore we believe that the United Nations shall remain at the centre of a multilateral system. In order for the United Nations to remain strong and address the challenges facing the world today, it is also important that it be reformed and strengthened. The world has seen dramatic changes since 1945, when the United Nations was founded.

As parliamentarians we follow with keen interest the ongoing debates on the reform of the United Nations. We are pleased that the 2005 World Summit also recognised the need for the United Nations to strengthen its co- operation with parliaments, including through the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

We wish to congratulate you, Mr Secretary-General, on the work that you have done to recognise the important contribution that parliaments can make to the work of the United Nations. Our world body, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, now enjoys observer status in the General Assembly. We hope that both parliaments and the United Nations will continue working together to strengthen this relationship.

In our country we have the honour of hosting the Pan-African Parliament, an important organ of the African Union. The Pan-African Parliament is a sign of the commitment by our leaders to the renewal of Africa and to the creation of conditions of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights and the promotion of development. We believe that through the Pan- African Parliament we as parliamentarians can bring a unique perspective and contribute to finding solutions to Africa’s pressing challenges.

I mention the Pan-African Parliament because I am mindful of your commitment, Mr Secretary-General, to the strengthening of this regional organisation and its processes. You have done a lot during your time as Secretary-General to ensure that regional organisations play their role in the quest for peace and stability all over the world.

Mr Secretary-General, allow me to say again how honoured we are to have you in our midst today. You are an example of outstanding leadership, humility and grace. In your eight years at the helm of the United Nations, you have traversed the world, spreading a message of hope in an increasingly uncertain world.

You have done a lot to lobby and campaign for concrete action to fight the underdevelopment and poverty that still afflict many in the world. You have regularly pricked the conscience of those in positions of power and responsibility, by constantly reminding them that the world possesses the resources needed to uplift the people living in abject poverty. You have constantly drawn our attention – the strong and the weak – to our responsibility, to display the necessary will to change the status quo.

Mr Secretary-General, I invite you to address this Joint Sitting of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces of South Africa. I thank you. [Applause.]

The SPEAKER: Well, after Mr Sithole tried to usurp the powers of the Chair . . . [Laughter.] His Excellency the Secretary-General of the United Nations will now address the Joint Sitting. [Applause.]

ADDRESS BY MR KOFI ANNAN, THE SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS

Mr KOFI ANNAN: Thank you very much. Madam Speaker of the National Assembly, Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, Mr President, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, my wife Nane and I are delighted to be back in South Africa, which was the first member state of the United Nations that I visited when I became Secretary-General in 1997. [Applause.]

By inviting me to address this Joint Session of the South African Parliament, you have paid me a second great honour and not only to me personally, but also to the United Nations. Two years ago you awarded me the Order of the Companions of Oliver Tambo. I thank you again for that. [Applause.] It is indeed an honour to be called a companion of such a truly great man, one who worked tirelessly for freedom and justice and played a decisive role in the struggle against apartheid.

In one week’s time you will celebrate Human Rights Day, which commemorates those who sacrificed themselves in that struggle, particularly the 69 killed and 180 wounded in Sharpeville on 21 March 1960. South Africa, and indeed all of Africa, has come a long way since then.

The African peoples have successfully asserted their right to independence and become the largest group of member states in the United Nations. Your own struggle against apartheid was the longest and the bitterest. All of Africa, and the United Nations itself, was with you in that ordeal. The whole world rejoiced in 1999 when at last you emerged as a truly multiracial, independent state.

Yet, even as our countries emerged, one by one, from the struggle for independence and against apartheid, they had to embark on another, no less arduous, struggle for unity, peace and development. In that struggle too there have been victories, but there have also been many setbacks and disappointments. Whatever our pride in some of the specific achievements, much remains to be done.

Indeed, last September the leaders of the whole world acknowledged this. They said, in the Outcome Document of the United Nations World Summit, that Africa was the only continent not on track to meet any of the goals of the Millennium Declaration that were set for 2015. And President Mbeki drew attention to that statement in his speech to the summit. Africa continues, as we say in the United Nations, to face a major challenge.

We all know the mountains of human misery behind those polite words: . . . the grinding poverty and back-breaking toil; the hunger and thirst that force proud parents to give their children polluted water to drink; the millions who die of TB, malaria and Aids, and other preventable diseases; the violence and humiliation inflicted on women by men, and on citizens by gangsters, warlords and corrupt officials; the misappropriation of natural resources; the ravages of ethnic and social conflict.

It is easy to blame these ills on the past and on outsiders – the depredations of imperialism and the slave trade, the imbalance of power and wealth in a flagrantly unjust world. But that cannot absolve us, the Africans of today, from our own responsibility to ourselves and to our children.

The truth is that development in Africa requires a new approach, and the good news is that South Africa is pointing the way. Firstly, you are pointing the way by what you are doing at home. South Africa today reminds all of us of the remarkable African capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation, despite the pain of racial discrimination and oppression. [Applause.]

Your robust economy, stable democracy, support for the rule of law and, perhaps most importantly, your fully inclusive Constitution, have made South Africa a beacon of tolerance, peaceful co-existence, and mutual respect between people of different races, languages and traditions.

Your rainbow nation shines in the very shape and composition of this Assembly. As I look around this Chamber, I am impressed not only by the variety of races and colours that are represented, but also by the number of women. [Applause.] You put the General Assembly of the United Nations to shame. [Applause.] But this should not surprise me since I understand, Madam Speaker, that all your predecessors have been from the same gender as you and that this was the first parliament in the world to adopt a specific budget process for empowering women and dealing with gender issues. [Applause.]

Secondly, you are pointing the way by what you are doing in your subregional neighbourhood, both through the Southern African Development Community and by your vitally important peacemaking and peacekeeping contributions in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

This is very important because no country today can be unaffected by events in its neighbourhood, and it is the responsibility of the stronger countries in each neighbourhood to lend a hand to the weaker without seeking to impose their domination. [Applause.] When any country gets caught up in a downward spiral of poverty, misgovernment and conflict, this is bound to be a problem for its neighbours. And the best neighbours are those who play a constructive part in helping to halt and reverse the spiral before it leads to a complete meltdown.

Thirdly, you are pointing the way through your leading role in Africa as a whole. Economically, South Africa is now the biggest foreign investor in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. It has also played a leading role in forming the New Partnership for African’s Development – a new paradigm based on African ownership of development strategy and a partnership with the international community based on equality and mutual respect.

Politically, this country has taken the lead in transforming the Organization of African Unity into the African Union. It has helped to establish the Union’s peer review mechanism, which over time should ensure a steady improvement of African standards of government; and it has taken a leading role in the work of the Union’s Peace and Security Council, which is enabling Africans to help resolve each other’s conflict.

Thus the African Union has become an essential partner of the United Nations in its work for peace and development. Particularly important is the broad co-operation and partnership between the AU and the UN. Examples of these are President Mbeki’s key peacemaking role in Cote d’Ivoire, in close co-operation with the UN peacekeeping mission, with myself, and our joint efforts to make peace and protect the population of Darfur and on the border between Sudan and Chad.

Finally, Madam Speaker, South Africa is pointing the way by what it is doing in the wider world. In his speech to the World Summit last September, President Mbeki referred to “the widely disparate conditions of existence and interest” as well as “the gross imbalance of power’’, which define the relationship among the members of the United Nations. He identified these as the main reasons why we have not yet achieved the security consensus that we must reach if we are to maintain peace in the world on a basis of agreement and collective, action rather than the unilateral application of power.

I agree. The imbalance must be redressed. But the imbalance itself means that those seeking to redress it do not have the leverage to impose their will on the rest of the world. Only with a good strategy and wise leadership can they make progress towards their goal.

Economically, it is important that the developing countries help themselves and each other, and that as far as possible they present a united front in negotiations with the industrialised world.

Here South Africa is showing the way, in alliance with new giants in other parts of the developing world – China, India, Brazil – by forging a new global geography of trade and investment.

While these countries attract massive investment from the global North, they in turn have become major investors in their own regions – as I indicated earlier about South Africa’s economic role on the African continent. And they are leading the battle within the World Trade Organization on behalf of all developing countries – the battle for free access to Northern markets and for a global market, where developing countries can compete on equal terms instead of having to face subsidised products from the North.

South Africa has also hosted many important global conferences, including the twelfth summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1998, the World Conference Against Racism in 2001 and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 – all of which it was my privilege to attend. South Africa is thus, especially in this crucial year in the life of the United Nations, in every way a suitable country to be chairing the Group of 77, the group that brings together all those countries, more than two thirds of the UN’s membership, which, despite great variations among them, share an interest in seeking to redress the imbalance of power in the world.

While the Group of 77 deals primarily with economic and social issues, it is also in alliance with the Non-Aligned Movement, playing an increasingly significant political role. And here too South Africa’s leadership and example can be very important.

Even before the end of apartheid has been secured, the struggle against it helped to shape the debate at the United Nations and in the wider world. It taught us never to underestimate the importance of human rights, since apartheid was so clearly the very antithesis of the values set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Today, the kind of things South Africa is doing at home, and is promoting on the wider African scene, may show us the best way for developing countries in general to respond to today’s world.

In his valedictory address to a Joint Sitting of this Parliament nearly two years ago, Nelson Mandela said: The memory of a history of division and hate, injustice and suffering, inhumanity of person against person should inspire us to celebrate our own demonstration of the capacity of human beings to progress, to go forward, to improve, to do better.

Indeed, my dear friends, I believe it has inspired you, and you in turn have inspired Africa and the world.

Your Truth and Reconciliation Commission has given the world an idea and a mechanism, which many other countries have used, or are now using, to confront an ugly national past. You have shown that a nation need not be imprisoned by its history; that even people whose communities have been in bitter conflict and have endured or committed the worst injustices can work together to build a common future.

I believe this example can serve not only other individual countries, but also the world as a whole, which today is seething with resentment based on past and present injustice, and with misunderstandings based on differences of culture and belief. Perhaps the most important task of the United Nations today is to help its member states overcome those resentments and misunderstandings, both between communities within their borders, and between different regions of the world. In that task, we have much to learn from South Africa.

As F W De Klerk said in his 1993 Nobel lecture: Peace is a frame of mind in which countries, communities, parties and individuals seek to resolve their differences through agreements, through negotiations and compromise instead of threats, compulsion and violence. South Africa’s particular wisdom, derived from its history of overcoming resentment and mistrust, can be used to convince other countries that injustices and misunderstandings are not cured by confrontation or threats, since these only strengthen the determination of the powerful to keep power in their own hands. South Africa can teach all of us that, on the contrary, the way to better balance lies in dialogue and the establishment of mutual trust. Only in such an atmosphere can the weak win the attention and respect of the strong.

South Africa can teach its fellow developing countries to make good use of the United Nations, which is a natural forum for a global dialogue leading to better trust and understanding between rich and poor, between weak and strong, and so to a more balanced and inclusive way of taking decisions that affect the fate of all humanity.

South Africa, as a guide and spokesman for the developing world, is already playing a decisive role in the tough negotiations to implement the commitments made at last year’s World Summit – commitments from both developing and developed countries to advance the Millennium Development Goals; commitments to forge new institutions for peace-building and the promotion of human rights, and a new global strategy against terrorism; commitments to strengthen the United Nations itself, including by means of continued efforts to achieve a decision on Security Council reform, so that our organisation can be more efficient and effective in bringing help to those who need it, namely the hungry, the sick, and the victims of disasters, both natural and man-made.

That is why I look forward to continuing to work closely with you, President Mbeki, and South Africa, in my remaining time as Secretary- General. [Applause.] That is why I know my successors in this post will continue to look to South Africa for advice, for support and for leadership among the nations of the world.

Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika. [God bless Africa.] [Applause.] Thank you, Madam Speaker. [Applause.]

                           VOTE OF THANKS

The SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Secretary-General. The hon Themba will propose a vote of thanks on our behalf.

Ms M P THEMBA: Madam Speaker, President of the Republic of South Africa and Deputy President, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, hon members, distinguished guests and distinguished citizens of South Africa, Secretary- General of the UN, Mr Kofi Annan, it is an immeasurable honour to convey our appreciation to His Excellency, the Secretary-General, for addressing this tribunal of our people.

We appreciate your stewardship of the UN and the reform you initiated to make the UN a truly international institution in the service of humanity. We wish to assure His Excellency that his sterling endeavours are not in vain and will inspire progressive humanity to persist in earnest until the UN serves the interest of humanity, the developed world and the developing world. [Applause.]

Once more, we extend warm words of appreciation to His Excellency for addressing the representatives of the people. I thank you, Madam Speaker. [Applause.]

The Speaker of the National Assembly adjourned the Joint Sitting at 14:36.