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PRIORITIES FOR THE NEXT CENTURY

In his book The New World Order, the English thinker H.G. Wells writes:

"There will be no day of days when a new world order comes into being. Step by step and here and there, it will arrive, and even as it comes into being, it will develop fresh perspectives, discover unsuspected problems and go on to new adventures. No man, no group of men, will ever be singled out as its father or founder. For its maker will not be this man nor any man but Man, that being who is in some measure in everyone of us. World order will be, like science, like most inventions, a social product, of an innumerable number of personalities who will have lived fine lives, pouring their best into the collective achievement."

I trust that you will excuse some of the language of this quotation, which bears the sexist stamp of the age in which the author lived and wrote.

But with regard to the subject we are supposed to address tonight, we should start by stating our view that it would either reflect the wisdom of a fool, intellectual arrogance or perhaps a manifestation of megalomania to seek to set 'priorities for the next century'.

To borrow from H.G. Wells, we shall therefore say that those priorities will be established step by step and here and there, and even as they are set, they will force everyone to develop new perspectives, confront unsuspected problems and push all who will be alive then, to enter into an unpredictable world of new adventures.

But what can one such as I, who emerges from our collective and finite cognitive past and present, say about what the next century - with its infinite possible - might set for itself as its priorities?

Nevertheless, having accepted the challenge, we must take the plunge. We must dare to peer through opaque surfaces to see what social product will emerge from the efforts of an innumerable number of personalities who will have lived fine - and not so fine - lives into the collective achievement.

Our speculative comments today will focus on the issue of the future of governance with regard both to form and content.

Let us make bold to say that the next century will face a process of the reformation of governance driven by the pull of two seemingly contending forces at either end of a magnet - the one being the globalisation of governance and the other devolution of power to the citizen.

There can be no gainsaying the reality of the historical tendency towards a global village and a global neighbourhood. I believe that none can contest the view that this process is irreversible.

Spearheading this process is perhaps the globalisation of the economy, characterised by the transformation of our world into one marketplace as a result of the movement over all parts of our globe of capital, commodities, technology and economically active individuals.

No country in today's world can insulate itself from the impact of these processes, which result in the establishment of an intimate relationship between an institutional investor on Wall Street and a subsistence Zulu farmer in my own country, between the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC and a lowly civil servant in Bangladesh whose job is threatened by the institution of a structural adjustment programme.

Realisation has also grown of the epoch-making changes in international relations that attend the introduction of modern information and communication technology.

The world-wide reform in the telecommunications sector in recent years, leading to the privatisation of PTTs in many countries and therefore private sector investment in this sector, has further emphasised the global nature of this most modern sphere of economic activity.

This is a matter we shall come back to in the context of what we have described as the devolution of power to the citizen, as regards in particular the use of this information and communication technology to achieve two-way communication between the government and the governed.

Protection of the environment is yet another important matter we may cite which again emphasises the tendency towards the formation of a global neighbourhood.

Many of us present in this room can indicate a whole variety of examples which point to the same conclusion, including the life-threatening disease AIDS and other matters we have been discussing, such as the international narcotics crisis.

To come more precisely to the point we seek to make - the question must inevitably arise: How does humanity as a whole deal with this reality which clearly demands that there should be greater co-operation among the nations in a world which, daily, becomes ever more interdependent?

I believe that, in the light of this, it is inevitable that the century ahead of us will have to grapple with an accelerated process leading to the expansion of the system of global governance which, by definition, must result in the erosion of the spheres in the conduct of states and governments which are considered as falling within the inviolable area of domestic jurisdiction.

A number of immediate issues arise from this.

One of these, which is of particular relevance to the small and medium powers, is how that system of global governance should compensate them for the reduction of their sovereign powers.

Another is the process by which consensus will be arrived at on what the balance will be between international governance and the sovereignty of nations.

The gravity of this problem is exacerbated by the fact that in the real world in which we all live, the primary positive impulses towards the globalisation of human civilisation are seen as emanating from the wealthy nations that constitute the group, the 'major powers'.

The negative imperatives, such as the rapid spread of the AIDS epidemic, the production of narcotics, the demand for humanitarian assistance to refugees and the fight against poverty, become products of a developing world that is encircled by a fault-line that is structural in its nature.

The cold light of the exercise of power focuses on the banner headline: Can those whose contribution to the birth of the global neighbourhood consist in imposing on the global community the burden of aid and charity be equal co-determinants of what the world order of the new century should be?

Can the piper have equal influence on the choice of the tune he or she plays as she or he who pays the piper?

The current debate about the restructuring of the United Nations (UN) must therefore be contextualised in a manner that extends beyond the mere fact of the expansion of the membership of the world body from 51 countries in 1945 to 184 in 1994. It must address more than the changes that have taken place in the last 50 years in the balance of economic power and the influence of major powers in world economics, politics and security.

It must address also the impact of the diminution of the powers of the small nations of the world which, if not properly handled, will lead to a new imperialism which, in its turn, will evoke the resistance of the new disenfranchised.

This is particularly so in the light of the fact that the expansion of the membership of the UN to which we have referred was accompanied by the prospect of and the actual or seeming empowerment of those who had previously been excluded from the international exercise of power. This led, for instance, to the emergence of tension between the UN General Assembly on the one hand and the Security Council on the other.

The same tension exists today between the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Trade Organisation.

It was at the heart of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) negotiations earlier this year when it had to be decided whether the continued existence of the nuclear weapons stockpiles was to be determined exclusively by those who own these weapons.

The question that arose and still remains on the agenda is whether this matter of life and death should not be decided jointly by the nations of the world, on an equal basis - thus giving a preponderant vote on this issue to those who have no power to deploy these weapons of mass destruction but nevertheless represent the majority of human life in our universe.

The objective processes towards the birth of the global village dictate that to those that have power more power will be given.

On the other hand, the search for a stable world order demands that we institute a deliberate process to empower those who are thus disempowered. This has to be a conscious and deliberate act, predicated on the containment of the consequence of the powerful centripetal force that draws all of us towards a world centre dominated by the powerful, which, because of its concentration of power in particular hands, will inevitably produce a similarly powerful counter-active and centrifugal force.

This, surely, must be one of the priority items on the agenda of the new century!

But we have also spoken of the devolution of power to the citizen.

Surely, there can be no greater contradiction than this: that power should increasingly concentrate in the hands of an international consortium and, at the same time, begin to locate in the hands of the proverbial 'man in the street'!

Once more there can be no gainsaying the fact that, continuously, the citizenry is being activated to take charge of its destiny. Sometimes the assertion is made that this constitutes popular revulsion against the sterility of politics as a profession and the pursuit of personal interests by the politician as a professional. It is said that the perception of the electorate is that the delegate they elect is driven by the same impulses as any other professional, the impulses of self-advancement and the management of the constituency of such a professional in the self-interest of the latter. Furthermore, the elected delegate cannot but become hostage to the forces that lead the drive towards the concentration of power which result in the evolution towards the global governance which we have been discussing.

In the context of the subtraction or elimination of the revolutionary option in old, established democracies, peaceful struggle among representatives of different parties soon enough expresses itself as, at best, competition among interviewees for an advertised post or, at worst, a charade intended to mislead the innocent.

Matters are not improved by the situation in which the sovereignty of parliament is constrained by binding constitutions which thus give certainty to the citizens that the social framework in which they work and live will not fundamentally change, regardless of the party in power, and that if a serious effort is made radically to transform that framework, it is they, the citizens, who in any case will be asked or forced to decide the issue.

All chance then becomes incremental, focused on the step.

Apart from anything else, this provides the means for the citizen to intervene in the determination of his or her destiny and to do so on an informed basis.

Thus we have a coincident of the creation both of the political circumstances which enable popular participation and the means to take advantage of this opening.

And so, both theoretically and in actual practice, the issue of the role and place of civil society in governance is now firmly on the agenda.

The question that the next century will have to resolve is what the relationship should be between the three elements of the citizen and civil society, national government and the system of global governance.

But of this we can be certain: that having reclaimed its sovereign space, the citizenry is quite unlikely to slip back into a state of slumber, delegating its reclaimed powers to the governors.

At the same time, we are, of course, not speaking of a situation of anarchy, in which the citizen considers the democratic state to be an illegitimate institution, an entity superfluous to their needs and an expression of the limitation of their freedom and sovereignty. This is so because, in its own interests, the citizenry will, among other things, continue to delegate to the state the right to use force, to order relations both among the citizens and between nations.

But, at the same time, the citizens will seek to prescribe the limits and context of the use of that force, for example to protect the fundamental human rights of the individual, including the dignity of that individual, both within the nation and within the context of international relations.

Hence we speak here even of the intervention in matters of war and peace by the sovereign citizen, unencumbered by the sometimes self-fulfilling strategic game plans of army generals and grand geopolitical scenarios drawn up by politicians and their strategic advisers.

All this bears on the injection by civil society, into the conduct of human affairs, of the concept of a people-centred society. In such a society the process of governance is itself governed by an ethical framework which the people would seek to enforce. And the people will enforce it by the use of their sovereign mass power outside the specific framework prescribed by the party-political system which characterises conditions of democracy and, as an expression of the democracy, must make for the greater participation of the developing world in the system of global governance and therefore the rewriting of the international agenda.

The next century should therefore witness a process of governance that is more responsive to the concerns of all humanity and not only of those who occupy the areas of our globe which, today, have the power to dominate the process of the composition of that agenda.

Consequently, the issues which, at the end of this millennium, define the underdevelopment of the developing world will have to be part of the real content that fashions the priorities of the next century.

Central to those issues is, of course, the scourge of poverty which continues to afflict extremely large numbers of people on our own continent of Africa as well as other parts of the world. That seemingly endemic poverty stands in direct opposition to the process of the improvement of the human condition, which is an attendant part of the tendency towards the creation of the global neighbourhood.

Out of it are born the destructive conflicts to which my own continent has been prone, the political instability, the refugee populations and population migration, and the growing impoverishment, all of which have led to the growth of what has been described as afro-pessimism.

The point we seek to emphasise is that among the priorities of the next century, during which the welfare of one nation will increasingly become dependent on the welfare of another, must surely be the issue of radically improving the condition of the destitute masses of the world.

The growing system of global governance should itself be an important instrument to address this issue, given that it would precisely be poverty, strife and instability that would threaten the functioning of a universe characterised by interdependence.

What the new century will have to address in this regard is sustainable economic growth and development among the disadvantaged of the world, so that they too become part of the world market, contributing to the expansion of the process of globalisation rather than diminishing its reach or threatening its very actualisation.

This means that among the high priorities of the agenda of the new century will have to be included the issue of the shift of resources to the poor for purposes of sustainable development and an abandonment of the notion that the challenge of poverty can be addressed by means of dispensing aid and giving alms to the poor and deprived.

This would also address directly the important question of violent conflict within multicultural and multi-ethnic states, which, we are convinced, is fed by a scrabble for scarce resources. Where any group feels that it is politically disempowered and therefore discriminated against with regard to access to these resources, it is not difficult for leaders to agitate people on an ethnic basis, even to the point where the contending groups take up arms against one another.

Much of what we have said tonight is of direct relevance to our own experience and future as the new democratic Republic of South Africa. In that sense it is not speculative, but is a direct derivative of the new directions which we, as a democratic country, must take.

The birth of our new democracy at what is clearly a turning point in the evolution of human society has given us the exciting possibility, in a manner of speaking, to write on a clean slate.

It certainly would not do that in giving up our sovereign right we lose any capacity to influence the processes impacting on non-proliferation, disarmament, peaceful uses of nuclear energy and technology transfers. It was for these reasons that we intervened as vigorously as we could during the New York NPT negotiations earlier this year to ensure that these matters are in future addressed jointly by those who are armed and the rest of us who are unarmed and disarmed.

Within our own country, our new democracy defines itself in part by the manner in which it devolves power to the citizen. Consequently, we have had to alter the manner in which both the executive and the legislature take decisions, to ensure the greatest possible participation of the citizenry in the decision-making process. This we can say: that as a consequence ours is a citizenry in constant discussion of what its future should be.

This is not to question the legitimacy of the elected representatives and therefore the delegation of power to them by the electorate, but to respond to the tendency towards the empowerment of the citizen, which requires that the governed must have the possibility, in real terms, to determine their future.

As we draft our new Constitution, a process in which we are currently engaged, this is one of the major questions we have to answer: How should that Constitution be framed so that it gives power to the people in the new conditions of the exercise of that power, while maintaining the integrity of the overall system of national governance?

Let us conclude by beginning again: There will be no day of days when a new world order comes into being. Step by step and here and there, it will arrive, and even as it comes into being, it will develop fresh perspectives, discover unsuspected problems and go on to new adventures.

We make bold to say that some of those new adventures will consist in what we have sought to describe - the formation of a new system of governance marked by a dynamic interaction between an empowered citizenry, national government that will have been impacted upon by the erosion and diffusion of its powers, and the enhancement of global governance.

What it is that 'slouches towards Bethlehem to be born' remains to be seen.

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