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OLIVER TAMBO INAUGURAL LECTURE

"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?"

For the title of this lecture I have borrowed the words used by Cain when the Lord asked him - "where is Abel thy brother?" As you will remember, Cain answered - "I know not. Am I my brother's keeper?"

It would seem to me that the tragedies that confront us every day in all parts of the world, and especially in Oliver Tambo's own Continent of Africa, every day present us with the challenge to answer the question - am I my brother's and my sister's keeper!

Oliver Tambo was a wonderful human being. I am certain that the thought would never have occurred to him that he could be anything except his brother's and his sister's keeper.

For decades a loyal activist of the African National Congress, he rose to the high position of President of the organisation.

He was elected to this position because his colleagues recognised the priceless contribution he brought to our struggle to end the system of apartheid and transform our country into a non-racial and non-sexist democracy.

We can say of him without fear of contradiction that he was a scholar, an intellectual, a teacher, an immensely cultured person with no trace whatsoever of arrogance and self-importance, a rare leader of people.

He brought to the struggle he waged for the liberation of his people a passionate opposition to racism, sexism and all forms of discrimination, honesty, a fearless devotion to principle, respect for all human beings regardless of their station in life and a deep-seated instinct to protect all life, including the life of the smallest of insects.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Georgetown University for the honour you have accorded him, his family and our people by instituting this series of lectures named after him. I feel especially privileged and honoured that you have given me the opportunity, which should have gone to others more deserving than I, to deliver the first of the Oliver Tambo Lectures.

In a tribute to the late Prime Minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, delivered at the Riverside Church in New York in 1987, Oliver Tambo said:

"Nothing could ever persuade Olof Palme that he must reconcile himself to the inevitability of world war, the permanence of want among millions of human beings and the oppression of people on any grounds, such as those of race, colour, sex, religion or nationality." Earlier still, in 1955, he had said:

"The colonial peoples need liberation, freedom, independence. But we who fight for freedom fight also for peace (so) that our children may grow up in a world of prosperity and international friendship."

The burden of our message today is that, as Oliver Tambo said, nations and governments must refuse to reconcile themselves to the inevitability of war, the permanence of want among billions of people and the oppression of people on any grounds.

Let all our children grow up in a world of prosperity and international friendship!

The immediate past Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Michel Camdessus, spoke at this University on February 2nd this year.

Among other things, he made the important observation that:

"The post-World War generations are the first in history to find themselves in the position of being called upon to influence global affairs, not from a position of military conquest or imperial power, but through voluntary international co-operation. The challenge is to find mechanisms for managing the international economy that do not compromise the sovereignty of national governments, that help the smooth and effective working of markets, that ensure international financial stability but that offer solutions to problems which now transcend the boundaries of the nation-state."

There are many in the modern world who are using their particular skills and technical capacities to search for the mechanisms for managing the international economy of which Michel Camdessus spoke.

Correctly, he himself recognised the fact that technical constructions are a necessary but not a sufficient condition on which to base our common response to the possibility we have to influence global affairs.

For his part Michel Camdessus therefore recalled what he had learnt in his youth from the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chadrin.

Accordingly he spoke of "the wonderful words of Teilhard in The Divine Milieu on the Christian perfection of the human effort, of the effort of all people striving to improve the human condition and to advance together the unity of the world."

Going on to talk about the process of globalisation in this context, he said:

"Globalisation....should be seen as the best chance we have of improving the human condition throughout the world. This view of globalisation is one that goes beyond trade, beyond capital mobility and the wonders of instantaneous electronic communication and business, beyond even the freedom of people and ideas to move around the world. It is a concept that can be embraced, of course, from the perspective of enlightened self-interest by individuals and nations. But in this University, I know that I will be understood clearly when I say that it must be seen also as an invitation to enhance our sense of international responsibility and solidarity, our sense of world citizenship to make the best for humankind out of this 'unifying process of the Universe'....The basis for action, then, will be for you to identify those universal values on which all the people of the world could 'coincide' and 'join forces' to face together the challenges of our time."

I have quoted Mr Camdessus at some length because I am convinced that his observations are important to what I mentioned at the beginning, namely, the challenge to answer the question thrown up by the human tragedies that confront us every day - am I my brother's and my sister's keeper!

Surely, such a process as we may engage in "to identify those universal values on which all the people of the world could 'coincide' and 'join forces' to face together the challenges of our time", could not but lead to the answer - yes, I am my brother's and my sister's keeper!

It must therefore be correct and go without saying that, together, we have an obligation "to enhance our sense of international responsibility and solidarity, our sense of world citizenship to make the best for humankind out of this 'unifying process of the Universe'."

We are all called upon to adopt and advance these positions precisely because of the reality that for the first time ever in human history, we have the possibility, as Michel Camdessus said, to influence global affairs through voluntary international co-operation.

I believe that President Clinton was responding to these imperatives when he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in September 1998.

On that occasion he said:

"The human cost of Asia's collapse is only now being fully felt. Recent press reports have described an entire generation working its way into the middle class over 25 years, then being plummeted into poverty within a matter of months. The stories are heartbreaking - doctors and nurses forced to live in the lobby of a closed hospital; middle class families who owned their homes, sent their children to college, travelled abroad, now living by selling their possessions. It is in our interest to help these nations and these people to recover. They will become once again our great markets and our great partners. It is also the right thing to do."

Indeed, it is the right thing to do!

For us who live within an ocean of entrenched poverty and the most disturbing human degradation, no words could be more inspiring than these, especially as they are said by the head of state of the most powerful country in the world.

Having heard them, we believed that we were entitled to conclude that this nation was beginning to reply - we are our brothers' and our sisters' keepers!

The scale and extent of poverty on our own Continent and other developing countries has been extensively documented. Such is its enormity that last year, at their meeting in our country, the Commonwealth Heads of Government characterised global poverty as a structural fault in the world economy.

According to the United Nations Development Programme 1999 Human Development Report, more than 80 countries have per capita incomes that are lower than they were a decade or more ago.

Since 1990, 55 countries, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have had declining per capita incomes.

The income gap between the fifth of the world's people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest was 74 to 1 in 1997, up from 60 to 1 in 1990 and 30 to 1 in 1960.

This richest fifth accounted for 86% of world GDP while the bottom fifth shared 1%.

The UNDP Report also contains such startling information as that the assets of the top three billionaires are more than the combined GDP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people.

In his Millennium Report entitled "We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century", the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan, states that:

"Nearly half the world's population still has to make do on less than $2 per day. Approximately 1.2 billion people - 500 million in South Asia and 300 million in Africa - struggle on less than $1. People living in Africa south of the Sahara are almost as poor today as they were 20 years ago."

And as Mr Annan observes, "with that kind of deprivation comes pain, powerlessness, despair and lack of fundamental freedom - all of which, in turn, perpetuate poverty."

I know that none of us present here need to be educated about the actual human meaning of the pain, powerlessness and despair of which Kofi Annan speaks.

I do not know this capital city at all. However, I am convinced that you will find here, also, the broken human beings, who are our brothers and sisters, whose lives have been devastated by poverty.

As with many of the poor of our world they have to live with malnutrition, poor habitats, exposure to disease, loss of self esteem, leading to substance abuse, interpersonal violence especially against women and children, the destruction of families and crime.

In our case, add also the frightening incidence of AIDS and the hopelessness imposed on us by the absence of such basic infrastructure as would provide for water, education and health delivery, as well as the inability, dictated by underdevelopment, to generate the capital required for growth and development.

The UNDP Report we have already cited makes the additional important observation that "fiscal pressures are cutting back on the supply of state-provided care services. Tax revenue declined in poor countries from 18% of GDP in the early 1980s to 16% in the 1990s. Public services deteriorated markedly - the result of economic stagnation, structural adjustment programmes or the dismantling of state services, especially in the
transition economies of Eastern Europe and the CIS."

The enormity of the problem of poverty of which we are speaking is difficult to convey in words, especially to those who have had the good fortune not to experience its pain or in other ways to touch, feel and smell it.

The English poet, John Donne, wrote in one of his Elegies:

"Language thou art too narrow, and too weak
To ease us now, great sorrows cannot speak.
If we could sigh out accents, and weep words...
Sad hearts, the less they seem, the more they are...
Not that they know not, feel not their estate,
But extreme sense hath made them desperate;"

When he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations, President Clinton reflected on this extreme sense that hath made them desperate.

He pointed out that:

"If citizens tire of waiting for democracy and free markets to deliver a better life for them, there is a real risk that democracy and free markets, instead of continuing to thrive together, will begin to shrivel together....We see around the world the international aggressors, the harbourers of terrorists, the drug lords....Nations that give people freedom are good neighbours; when nations turn away from freedom, they turn inward towards tension, hatred and hostility."

This country has enjoyed and is enjoying unprecedented levels of economic growth and prosperity, thanks, among other things, to your enterprise, inventiveness and hard work. We rejoice with the American people in this achievement. We are very conscious of the fact that this has also had a positive effect on the global economy.

In these circumstances, it must be easy for many in this country to adopt the slogan - I'm all right Jack!

But I believe that it is important that the United States should take to heart the comments made by the Independent Task Force on the Future International Financial Architecture, sponsored by the New York Council on Foreign Relations. In its report entitled "Safeguarding Prosperity in a Global Financial System", the Task Force says:

"The US economy is connected much more closely to the rest of the world than it was 20 or 30 years ago. The average share of exports and imports in our national output now stands at about 15 per cent - twice as high as in 1980 and three times as high as in 1960. Two-fifths of our exports go to developing countries. US firms active in global markets are more productive and more profitable than those that serve only domestic consumers. Exporting firms pay their workers better and have expanded jobs faster than firms that do not export. More than $2.5 trillion of US savings is invested abroad. Borrowing costs, including the monthly payments US households make for their home mortgages, are lower because of our participation in international capital markets."

Having noted that in the face of the Asian crisis, US "overall economic activity remained robust", the Task Force nevertheless warned:

"Our defence against crises should not be predicated on the assumption that crises will occur abroad only when the US economy is well positioned to absorb them....As Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan has aptly put it, the United States cannot expect to remain 'an oasis of prosperity' if the rest of the world is in financial chaos."

We would therefore make bold to say that the realities indicated by the Task Force should convey the message to the United States that, apart from this being the right thing to do, its enlightened self-interest, of which Michel Camdessus spoke, dictates that it should indeed be its brother's and its sister's keeper.

In his correct observations about the historic new possibilities to influence global affairs through voluntary international co-operation, Michel Camdessus did not mention the gross inequalities that exist among the nations of the world with respect to the capacity to exercise such influence.

I believe that it would not be a matter of dispute or the cause of acrimonious disputation among us that, in this regard, the US is more equal than others.

I know of no other period in human history where one country had as much direct and indirect global influence as the United States does today, reaching even into the most remote villages on our own Continent.

Necessarily, such a situation that is without precedent, must throw up many new questions for which there are no ready answers.

I would also venture to say that the very recognition of the fact that we are dealing with a situation without precedent will emerge slowly, creeping into the general public consciousness with deliberate speed.

Perhaps, it would therefore be too early to expect that this nation would, as a whole, be able to answer the question - what should the United States do with respect to the rest of the world, given the historically unique position it occupies in the global village!

Nevertheless, I have no doubt whatsoever that this question has to be posed and that answers will have to be provided by all of us.

I believe we would have made a good start if, having recognised that the process of globalisation constitutes an irreversible "unifying process of the Universe", we recognised also that this imposes on us, and this country, the obligation to enhance our sense of international responsibility and solidarity, to use Michel Camdessus' words.

I will not pretend, and none of us should, that it would be easy to come by and to cultivate that sense of international responsibility and solidarity, to find ways of expressing them and thus actually to 'make the best for humankind out of the unifying process of the Universe'.

After all, many of the people who have an obligation to make all this happen, being democratically elected, owe their very possibility to make it happen, to specific constituencies that are troubled by immediate problems of their own.

To these constituents, the Universe is a little understood entity, at times seen as being nothing more than a nuisance that is best ignored.

And yet the reality is that as the unifying process of the Universe advances, which it will continue to do at an accelerating pace, they will cause themselves a nuisance who decide to jump off.

Much advice, consistent with what has been described as the 'Washington consensus', has been given to us as Africans and the rest of the developing world, as to what we should do to ensure that we become part of the unifying process of the Universe.

In the October 26th, 1999 edition of Foreign Policy Magazine, the Editor, Moises Naim (Fads and Fashion in Economic Reforms: Washington Consensus or Washington Confusion?), says that the elements of this so-called consensus, as given in a book edited by John Williamson are:

* fiscal discipline;
* redirect public expenditure;
* tax reform;
* financial liberalisation;
* adopt a single, competitive exchange rate;
* trade liberalisation;
* eliminate barriers to foreign direct investment;
* privatise state owned enterprises;
* deregulate market entry and competition; and,
* ensure secure property rights.

(John Williamson, ed: Latin American Adjustment: How much has Happened. Washington DC, Institute for
International Economics, 1990.)

Many African countries have tried and are trying to live up to these prescriptions, naturally with varying degrees of success.

We too, having assessed what we inherited from the apartheid system and having determined what we needed to do to bring about growth and development, have embarked on our own process of reform which addresses many of these injunctions.

In the article to which we have referred, Moises Naim writes: "The adoption of the Washington Consensus, it was promised (and expected), would bring tons of foreign money. The IMF and the World Bank would open their coffers. Foreign investors, eager to benefit from the prosperity that the new policies would bring to reforming countries would also contribute to the financial bonanza."

He comments ruefully: "Not many emerging markets are ending the decade with foreign money, hot, warm or cold, overflowing into their economies. On the contrary, the decade is ending with a boom in Wall Street that makes investors wary of sending their hot money abroad. Internet stocks are providing the high risk and high rewards once supplied by the allure of emerging markets, only they do it with a higher credit rating. Moreover, investors' appetites for emerging markets have, at least temporarily, abated as a result of the many crashes that have affected these countries."

As far as our own Continent is concerned, add also the fact that wars, military coups and instability within countries cannot but contribute to the dampening of investors' appetites.

The end result of all this is the further entrenchment of both Afro-pessimism and poverty, the very things that the implementation of the prescriptions was, in our case, intended to address.

This pessimism occurs despite the many heroic efforts the governments and peoples of Africa have made and are making to correct past wrongs, encompassing the introduction of democratic systems in many countries, the struggle to rebuild Nigeria after many years of military rule and despoliation, the battle to create a new non-racial and non-sexist society in South Africa and the sustained effort in many countries to introduce new economic and social policies consistent with many elements of the so-called Washington Consensus.

Some of the participants in the Task Force to which we have referred comment that they sense that "the crises of the 1990s provide a crucial test of the consistency of free and open global capital markets with the interests of individual nations, particularly small emerging economies....(The) globalisation of markets means that autonomy for 'domestic' monetary policy, or for domestic 'macro-policy' generally, is fading, certainly for smaller, inherently more internationally exposed nations."

Yet another participant, further expanding on these observations, makes the following interesting comments about the report of the Task Force:

"I feel obliged...to point out the bias that permeates the report. The people who participated in the Task Force, myself included, occupy positions at the centre of the global capitalist system. This colours their views and interests, and the report reflects it. The system is tilted in favour of the centre, namely, the owners and providers of capital, and the economies at the periphery are at a disadvantage. The global financial crisis has exacerbated the difference. The report does not give sufficient weight to the need to create a more level playing field."

To illustrate the imbalance between the centre and the periphery, the Report of the Task Force itself states that:

"At year-end 1997, there were more than 50 developing countries with entire banking systems that were smaller than the credit union for World Bank and IMF employees, and 30 more that were smaller than a medium-sized ($4 billion in assets) metropolitan savings and loan, the same kind of institution that would probably be advised to avoid engagement in international markets because it is too small....A 1 per cent shift in the international (not the total) portfolios of G-7 institutional investors would amount to roughly $60 billion."

Undoubtedly, many of the countries mentioned here would be in Africa.

In an earlier paragraph, the Report states that the average daily turnover in global foreign exchange markets is now roughly $1.5 trillion, while the global over-the-counter derivatives market is larger than $70 trillion (in notional value).

What these figures indicate are two important conclusions.

The first of these is many of our countries, including all those on our Continent, do not have and are unlikely to have in the foreseeable future, the strength themselves to determine on their own what should happen to their economies.

The more they get integrated into the world economy, the further will this capacity be reduced, making them more dependent on the rest of the world economy with regard to meeting the challenge of ending poverty within their countries.

The second conclusion is that, relative to the needs of these countries, including our own, the world economy disposes of sufficient capital resources whose injection into our countries as long term investment, would succeed to take us to the 'take-off stage' once spoken of in textbooks on development economics.

The achievement of that take-off stage would, in principle at least, create the material base for each of these countries, probably organised into regional associations, themselves to address the urgent challenge of the elimination of poverty on a sustainable basis.

It is one of the great ironies of the modern age that modern technology has the possibility to produce the most beneficial results specifically in the poor countries worst positioned to attract this technology on their own.

None among us would doubt that a revolution in education and health can be brought about by the use of modern communication and information technology, for instance, enabling the provision of distance education and tele-medicine in poor countries.

The capacity also exists as well as the practical experience that would enable the development of the people and the institutions that would be required for the accelerated growth and development of the developing world on the basis of enhanced resource and technology transfers from the rich to the poor.

Like Michel Camdessus, I am striving to communicate the message that, for the first time in human history, humanity has the means, driven by a common sense of world citizenship, to make the best for humankind out of the unifying process of the Universe.

Like him, I am of the view that we have a responsibility to endow "public opinion with a global consciousness." Mr Camdessus has said:

"A new kind of citizenship must be created, not simply a vague cosmopolitanism, but a genuine citizenship at all levels: local, regional, national and global. How can it be achieved? By making global solidarity more than just an adjunct of national policies. The global solidarity required does not simply mean offering something superfluous; it means dealing with vested interests, certain lifestyles and models of consumption, and the entrenched power structures in countries."

President Clinton made the same point last December when he addressed a luncheon held in honour of Ministers attending the meeting of the WTO in Seattle and said:

"I think we have to acknowledge a responsibility, particularly those of us in the wealthier countries, to make sure that we are working harder to see that the benefits of the global economy are more widely shared among and within countries - that it truly works for ordinary people who are doing the work for the rest of us."

If we did not know this already, we can see from Hard Times by Charles Dickens how difficult it is to deal with the vested interests of which Michel Camdessus speaks.

Writing of the captains of industry of his day, the millers based at Coketown, Dickens says:

"Surely there were never such fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of Coketown were made....They were ruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke....Whenever a Coketowner felt he was ill-used - that is to say, whenever he was not left entirely alone, and it was proposed to hold him accountable for the consequences of any of his acts - he was sure to come out with the awful menace, that he would 'sooner pitch his property into the Atlantic.' This had terrified the Home Secretary within an inch of his life, on several occasions. However, the Coketowners were so patriotic after all, that they never had pitched their property into the Atlantic yet, but, on the contrary, had been kind enough to take mighty good care of it."

Writing in Financial Times of the weekend of April 8th and 9th this year, Michael Prowse says:

"Vigorous market competition helps create human individuals of a particular sort: homo economicus, or egoistic, maximising man. Thus although sold as politically neutral, markets in fact encourage the spread of western materialistic values."

"(Various) costs may be worth paying in order to reap the many benefits of faster economic growth. But the protesters in Seattle and elsewhere are surely justified in complaining that those charged with making global economic decisions often fail to take into account the many adverse side-effects of market capitalism..."

"By default the world is now opting for a version of capitalism in which the profit motive is largely unrestrained. To be blunt, it is choosing an American flavour of capitalism."

"This evolved in an individualistic climate that is unique to the US and for which there are neither historical nor geographical parallels. We should not stigmatise as Luddite or reactionary those who query the universal validity of this social model. They have a case that deserves a reasoned reply."

The story has been told of the fall of the British garrison in Singapore during the Second World War, at that time the strongest British fortification in the East.

Expecting a seaward attack, the British had their guns pointed towards the sea. When they attacked, the Japanese came over land by bicycle and on foot and the Singapore garrison collapsed, its heavy defences useless against a lightly armed infantry.

Will it happen again that we, who deserve a reasoned reply, meet a stony silence because those who man the garrisons of wealthy societies are confident that they have pointed their guns in the right direction!

Surely the lesson has to be re-learnt and taken to heart that, once more, if the cries of the poor of the world are not heard, they will come by bicycle and on foot, leading to the disaster which President Clinton rightly fears, that instead of continuing to thrive together, we begin to shrivel together.

In his poem, Ode to the West Wind, Percy Bysshe Shelley writes:

"O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence driven multitudes:...
Be through my lips to unwakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

It may be that the protesters who besieged the negotiators at Seattle were, in their way, our own West Wind. What they said, if they spoke for the pestilence-stricken multitudes, yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, was indeed that since Winter was already upon these multitudes, Spring was not far behind.

Oliver Tambo would rejoice in his place of everlasting rest if the cries of his brothers and sisters, the people he loved, yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, the voices of the children he wanted to grow up in a world of prosperity and international friendship, are being heard at last.

Thank you.

Issued by the Office of the Presidency