Mbeki: National Press Club Luncheon, Washington (transcript)

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB LUNCHEON WITH SOUTH AFRICAN PRESIDENT THABO MBEKI, 27 June 2001

TOPIC: South Africa's Millennium Recovery Program
MODERATOR: John Aubuchon, "Newsnight Maryland," Maryland Public Television; Vice President of the National Press Club
LOCATION: The National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Honorable Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa. (Applause.)

PRESIDENT MBEKI: Thank you very much. Thank you very much, vice president. Let me first of all say it's a great privilege and a pleasure for us to be here at the National Press Club. I must say, it's somewhat intimidating. What our ambassador has told me about the National Press Club, it's a very prestigious place. It seemed that I wasn't quite sure that I would be adequate to the task of talking to you.

The vice president, I heard him say that up to about five minutes ago, he had sixty questions. So what I think I'll try and do is to be very brief in these introductory remarks in order to allow as much time as is possible for the questions.

But let me say, in the first instance, we are in the United States on a working visit at the invitation of President Bush. We had felt that we needed to get together to look at some of the challenges facing South Africa, facing Africa, to discuss what the United States might do to help us to meet those challenges.

I am very happy indeed to say that we were very, very well- received at the White House yesterday by the president, vice president, other members of the Cabinet, and had the occasion to reaffirm the further strengthening of the bilateral relations between South Africa and the United States. I am mentioning that in particular, vice president, because I noticed in some speculation in the past that if this new administration would not have the sort of focus on these questions as the previous administration. And our own experience is, I would say, the opposite. We are very, very encouraged, indeed, that the structures of coordination between South Africa and the United States government will indeed be strengthened, and we'll be looking at ways of making those more effective.

We were also very honored yesterday to have dinner with the Corporate Council on Africa. And all of us in our delegation are very, very pleased at the attendance there, particularly of the business leadership that attended that gathering last night. And it seemed to communicate to us also the message therefore that apart from the government, the corporate leadership in this country is also interested in helping us to meet the challenges that we face.

So we will leave this country this afternoon strengthened by the knowledge that we have those strong bonds, which actually are critical to the success of the things we've got to address both in South Africa and in the rest of our continent. And the principal challenge, a principal challenge we have to face in South Africa is the challenge of poverty; the challenge also of bridging the racial divides that we inherited from our past, and therefore, producing this non-racial South Africa that is visualized in our national constitution. These are major challenges that require larger volumes of investment in the South African economy; economic growth that creates new jobs, particularly because of the high levels of unemployment in the country; process of development that must impact positively in terms of reducing levels of poverty and, therefore, generally raising quality of life of the millions of our people. And I must say again that the involvement of yourselves, of this country, in all of its elements and sections, in terms of that process of the rebuilding of South Africa we believe is critical to the successes that we must achieve.

We, in the first five years of our government, we paid a lot of attention, naturally, to the question of policy; what policies shall we have to replace the apartheid policies of the past. And that included legislation. So a lot of that work has been done; the policy positions approved, the laws passed.

And it's my belief that really what we need to do now is to pay a lot of attention to matters of implementation, the translation of policy into something actual, whether we're talking about integrated schools, whether we're talking about housing for people, and water and roads and electricity and health, and all of these things, that we need to give this a very, very hard push in order -- indeed to change the lives of the people for the better. And that work is proceeding, and I believe that we are making progress in a situation in which we have a democratic system, which I believe has become very established, where the democratic processes and the institutions of the country are functioning well.

Another matter, of course, which is of concern to us as South Africans is our own region of Southern Africa. And here you have two conflicts which we are working with other African countries to help to resolve. I'm talking in particular about the question of Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the matters to which we pay quite a lot of attention to see what we can do to assist with regard to ensuring peace and democracy in these countries.

There is another matter with which you'd be more familiar. I think it's more reported upon than these other matters, which is the question of Zimbabwe. We are working also with the -- we've been working with the Zimbabwe government on this matter to try to help them to resolve these problems, very many problems that they confront. In particular of concern to us as South Africans, we are divided by a river, and during the dry months sometimes it doesn't even have water, so people can cross; they're not afraid of crocodiles catching them. So it's been of critical concern to us in South Africa that we should do whatever we can to ensure that Zimbabwe doesn't deteriorate and collapse, because all that would happen is that we would inherit that problem. So what is it that we do to engage this issue so that we, as I say, assist in the solution of the problems there. The latest position is that there's been agreement that a committee of five foreign ministers would work, including the foreign minister of Zimbabwe, would work together to address all of these questions, to assist, so the rest of the world assists in finding solutions.

The third challenge is a challenge that the vice president mentioned. We've been of the view that the political situation has evolved on the African continent in such a manner that there is a pool of leaders on the continent who understand and say to themselves that we cannot continue, we cannot continue with a lot of the things that happened in the past on the African continent. That we cannot continue to sustain an image of the African continent informed -- an image informed by what is happening on the continent, an image of conflict, of wars, of refugees, military governments, dictatorship, absence of human rights, general regression, further entrenchment of poverty, and all of these things, general marginalization of the continent from the rest of the world. That we needed to change these things.

And so we have indeed, as the vice president said, been working with a number of African countries to elaborate an African recovery program to say what is it that we do in the first instance as Africans, to say that let there be peace, let there be democracy, let there be human rights, and let's find a way ourselves as Africans of addressing these issues, and let's attend to matters of corruption, of bad governance and so on, so that indeed we can then begin to make an impact on the development of the peoples of the continent.

So I must say that we have been greatly, greatly encouraged by the response, vice president, of the leadership generally of the developed world. The G-8, the G-8 are meeting in Genoa, in Italy, next month. And they have got this matter of this African recovery program on the agenda. We'll be attending that meeting to discuss the matter with them.

And so the support for the recovery program indeed as you mentioned, prime minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair, indeed President Bush, the other members of the G-8, the Nordic countries, the members of the EU and so on, everybody has committed themselves to this. So we will be taking some detailed program to them later, next month, so that we say how do we, all of us, respond to a program for African recovery that indeed would have been elaborated by the Africans themselves and for which the Africans must take responsibility, who must make sure that if we say there should be peace and no conflict, that we as Africans actually produce that result.

But critically important is our saying at the beginning, for success in that regard is this continuing support, from this country, from all sections of the United States, from the developed world in general, because we must indeed, I think, turn the corner so that we end a situation in which there's one part of the world, the African continent, in a sense there's a kind of a void; and people talk about development and growth in the Asia Pacific region and in South America and even Central Europe and so on; where the one place in the world which continues to communicate negative messages -- about AIDS, about the health of the people of the continent -- is Africa. That we can turn the corner. And certainly the peoples of the African continent are saying that we have the capacity to do this and must do it.

And I think that what all of us did, what all of us did to ensure the end of apartheid in South Africa and to help to produce this new South Africa out a situation of desperation -- a situation that many, many people around the world felt was irretrievably lost -- I think the victory that all of us achieved in South Africa has also inspired the rest of the people of the continent to say that if we could solve, as we have, this particular challenge of South Africa, there is no particular reason why we can't solve the problems that face the rest of the continent. But as I was saying, for success in that regard, we need your assistance.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

MR. AUBUCHON: As you suggested, Mr. President, many of the questions deal with the issues on which you touched in your remarks, and perhaps we can provide some opportunity for amplification.

You referred to troubles in the neighborhood of South Africa. South Africa, indeed, has an enviable position of having a maturing democracy, but the unenviable task of living and leading in a troubled neighborhood. This questioner, along those lines, says, "As far as I know, there has been no public statement or at least not one that has been widely reported, of President Mbeki on the current violence in Zimbabwe. Would he take this opportunity to comment on the civil unrest there?" And may I expand that to reflect another question's concern about what South Africa can do to additionally to help reverse this slide into, as the questioner puts it, one-man rule?

PRESIDENT MBEKI: As I was saying, we are close neighbors with Zimbabwe. We are across each other's borders. I have twice -- twice I have spoken in Zimbabwe in the presence of President Mugabe, about the situation in Zimbabwe, and have said that we believe that the violence there is wrong. We believe that lack of observance of the rule of law is wrong; that there is an important and urgent land question in Zimbabwe that must be resolved, but that that question must be resolved in a manner consistent with the interests of all Zimbabweans, black and white.

I've addressed all of these questions publicly twice in Zimbabwe. I agree -- (chuckles) -- that people in the room won't know that, because that wasn't reported. I've addressed this matter any number of times in South Africa. I addressed the nation on it. I addressed parliament on it, and so on along the same lines.

But let me deal very briefly with some of the problems the country faces. There's a serious problem of mal-distribution of land in Zimbabwe. It's a result of the colonization process. This matter was addressed when Zimbabwe was -- they were negotiating the Zimbabwe constitution in London in 1979. Recognized as an urgent problem that needed to be solved, and various decisions taken between the British government, with the assistance at the time of the U.S. administration and the negotiations at Lancaster House as to how to resolve this question. The reality of the matter is that whatever the reasons -- we don't have time to go into those now -- insufficient progress was made with regard to dealing with this issue.

It continues to be recognized as an urgent matter. The situation which we are now is that we -- the secretary-general of the United Nation, working with the UN Development Program, UNDP, we all agreed that they would handle this matter -- in particular, the liaison between the Zimbabwe government and the donor countries that would assist in the resolution of this question, is an urgent question that must be addressed, but must be addressed legally, as I said in Zimbabwe twice, in the presence of President Mugabe in public, not in private meetings, in a lawful way, in a manner that does not result in conflict and so on.

Hopefully, this committee that I talked about of seven foreign minister who are going to be engaged in the Zimbabwe questions will also come back and deal with this question in all the detail that it needs so as to move the country towards its resolution.

You'll also remember that last year, there were parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe. We intervened in those elections to try and encourage the holding of free and fair elections, spoke to the opposition party about what it, the opposition party, thought was needed to ensure that those elections were free and fair, and they indicated what they wanted. We spoke to the ruling party to say this is what the opposition party is saying; you need both of us -- both of you to address these particular conditions. Interacted quite regularly with the Zimbabwe government with regard to the deployment of police and this kind of thing to ensure that the situation of peace and stability and order, so that people could vote freely. The South African National Parliament sent in a group of parliamentarians, a multi-party team, to observe. And indeed, when they were there they interacted with the government also in instances where they felt that levels of violence did not allow for the holding of free and fair elections.

I am mentioning only some, Vice President, of the interventions that we need to make. And the leader -- the leaders of the opposition parties have indeed, even in the recent past, in the last three weeks, said they would like to appeal to us to continue to engage the Zimbabwe question, including the Zimbabwe government in a matter that we've been doing. And we want to do that so that we can find solutions to these problems -- economic, some of them economic, and indeed, as you were saying with regard to the political process, to assist, encourage a process of free, democratic elections when they come, when they hold will be holding presidential elections. Last year we did intervene in the case of the parliamentary elections last year, and we'll continue to do that.

MR. AUBUCHON: Before we leave the subject of troubled neighborhoods, a questioner wishes to know what concrete steps South Africa and the United States are considering to take for implementation of the Lusaka protocol in Angola?

PRESIDENT MBEKI: Well, I think we need to recognize that in the first instance, the matter of the Lusaka protocol really rests with the Angolans. We have been in contact ourselves with the Angolan government, indeed, to say that, to say that it is necessary that matter be addressed. Recently, beginning of May, President dos Santos made a statement calling on UNITA to return to implement Lusaka protocol. It's a position that we supported, the position taken by the Angolan government, and have, indeed, ourselves been in contact with UNITA to encourage them indeed to respond to that. So really, briefly, therefore what I'm saying is that we would remain engaged with the partners and the players and the secretary-general of the United Nations on this matter to encourage a return to the Lusaka protocol. And in the end, it can only be encouragement and, hopefully, it might produce the result that I think all of us want.

MR. AUBUCHON: Two questioners, Mr. President, suggested that perhaps South Africa did not come to this subject with entirely clean hands because of the alleged involvement of South African mercenary companies, successors to Executive Outcomes in African civil wars and rebellions. The questioner wishes to know what is your government doing to contain those mercenary companies and their involvement?

PRESIDENT MBEKI: Well, we passed legislation -- this particular problem is a problem that arises from our past. Some of the people who had served in the apartheid army, once the democratic change came, didn't want to continue to serve in the new army of a democratic South Africa and, therefore, formed their own organizations and associations and operated from various parts of the African continent.

To deal with this question, we have passed legislation in South Africa prohibiting the involvement of South Africans in military conflicts anywhere, and that law certainly would be enforced. So it's illegal to do this. And to the extent that there might be some South Africans operating somewhere, they would not be operating out of South Africa and they would not be operating as South African entities.

But it's a kind of leftover -- it's a carryover of people who had been trained and prepared, mentally and otherwise, in a particular way, and clearly some of them did not feel that they fit into a democratic order and wanted to continue to do some other things. But it certainly is illegal and it's something that we clearly act against.

MR. AUBUCHON: You're, after you leave the National Press Club, to meet, before your departure, with Mr. Sharon. And a couple of questioners would like you to amplify on the role that South Africa can play in the Middle East crisis. A year ago, the Israelis rejected a peace plan by Mr. Mandela. Will you try to use the South African Truth and Reconciliation model in the Middle East, the questioner asks, will you propose that as a possible means of progress?

PRESIDENT MBEKI: We have been regularly in contact with both the Israeli government and the Palestinians now for some time, even when Yitzhak Rabin was still alive and prime minister, and have sustained that contact. Clearly, the United States government and others have been playing a more -- a bigger and more critical role, a more central role with regard to encouraging that peace process there. But as I say, we've been in contact with both sides quite regularly for quite some time now.

And what everybody wants to see happen now in Israel and Palestine is an end to the violence. It really does have to end, and we need to come back to a situation of calm, a situation in which, for instance, the Palestinians aren't allowed to participate in normal economic activity. These transfers, which are part of that arrangement of funds from Israel to the Palestinians, opening up of the airport and the freer movement, an end to the violence with those particular consequences. So that's one particular matter.

I discussed this particular question with Premier Sharon a few weeks ago, as well as Yasser Arafat, to see what they thought might happen. We'll discuss that question again, as well as, of course, the question of the return to negotiations. So as I say, talking to both sides and addressing these two particular matters, as you would know, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, left yesterday to go to the Middle East in pursuit of peace projects, and in particular, I think all of us are interested in the implementation of the recommendations of the Mitchell report. And so we need to see what it is that we can contribute to facilitate those processes. I think we are in the fortunate position that both sides in the conflict speak quite openly to us, and we are interested in peace in the Middle East, a secure stable peace which guarantees security for everybody. And we would want then to see what it is that what we can do to encourage that forward movement. Certainly there's -- I don't think we are at any stage toward the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission.

MR. AUBUCHON: On a related matter, what is your country's position, this questioner asks, on the non-aligned countries' draft resolution to equate Zionism with racism during the coming U.N. conference in your country?

PRESIDENT MBEKI: Well, there isn't such a non-aligned position. There isn't such a non-aligned position. There is, as you know, preparations for the U.N. conference on racism, xenophobia, and so on. It has been preceded by a number of regional conferences to prepare for this. The conference that brought together the Asian countries. It's in that conference that this matter of the situation in the Middle East arose. Not quite specifically in the form stated in the question. But that issue needs to be put on the agenda.

Now, as you know, we are hosting this conference at the request of the United Nations. And one of the things that we shall have to do as the host is to do a lot of shuttling among the contending voices in the conference to see whether we can, all of us, arrive at common positions. So these questions that are raised about the situation in the Middle East, other big question that's been raised is the question of reparations. There are people who are raising that question. So we have, as a host, to make sure that we try and bring everybody together so that they come to common position on this matter, on this particular matter.

But there isn't a non-aligned position on that. And certainly as a country, as a government, we wouldn't agree with a proposition like that. But in this instance we would be playing the role of host of the conference, and all points of view will be tabled because we have no way of prohibiting any point of view, but clearly we need to find a way of finding a consensus to address what is an important matter, racism in the world is an important matter, and to see whether, out of that conference, there can come some actions that would help to address this.

MR. AUBUCHON: Mr. President, a couple of questioners asked about what one called "the rampant crime in Johannesburg." And another says, "When will the crime wave end?" A questioner points out that a growing number of white South Africans are fleeing Johannesburg, either the country or to elsewhere in South Africa. What's the government going to do about it?

PRESIDENT MBEKI: Well, the issue of crime in South Africa has been, for a long time, a matter clearly of concern. And as this government, what we've done -- one of the things we've done is to strengthen the law enforcement agencies, the police. It's been a great weakness that where you don't have an instrument to fight crime, you're not very well going to succeed to fight it. A lot of work has gone on with regard to this, formation of special police units and so on, to deal with this question. And indeed, I'm sure that the impact of that on the question of crime will result in an improvement with regard to that.

It also means we have had to address also a range of other questions to deal with the criminal justice system as a whole. And so those steps will continue to be taken and then forced to ensure that we do indeed have that impact on levels of crime. We have launched also, or let me say begun, a program, which is a program of urban renewal. The first area where we launched the program is a locality, a township near Johannesburg, called Alexandra Township. It's an urban renewal program to ensure housing and facilities generally, generation of economic activity, improvement of the lives and conditions of the people and so on. And one of the reasons we chose this particular place, Alexandra Township, is because you would find, for instance, some months that the greatest number of murders that occur in the Johannesburg area occur only in Alexandra Township.

The situation was very different here in Washington. There are certain parts of the city where you have these concentrations of crime. It's true of big cities. And so it's not a Johannesburg-wide thing. It's particular concentrations in particular areas. And I'm saying that's the reason that we chose Alexandra Township as one of the areas where we focus for this particular purpose.

And I'm quite certain that we will make progress on this on what has, in fact, been -- it's an old problem. Crime in South Africa is an old problem, in part because the police focused more on fighting to defend the apartheid system rather than fight crime. It's an old problem. So it was allowed to grow and develop and so on. And it requires the kinds of actions that I'm talking about.

But as I say, you go everywhere in South Africa, you'd find these particular concentrations of crime. And in many instances it reflects the social and economic conditions of life of the people. As I say, in many respects, if you looked at the pockets of crime around the United States, you could see that that would be more or less the same thing that would be happening in South Africa.

MR. RYAN: As you might imagine, Mr. President, we have a large number of questions in two broad categories, one dealing with the AIDS crisis, another dealing with South Africa's economy. Let me first turn to the subject of AIDS. Perhaps the outset question, since the three-day conference in New York ends today, is why, since you were going to be in the United States anyway, did you skip the U.N. AIDS conference?

PRESIDENT MBEKI: Part of the problem, Vice President, is that one can't be at two places at the same time. And that's a real problem. No, we -- the U.N. AIDS conference, the Nonaligned Movement -- if we come back to the Nonaligned Movement -- had said that this should be held at summit level. The European Union said, no, it must be ministerial. And that view prevailed. It was a ministerial conference. And we composed a delegation, a very big, a very strong delegation of many staffs and very senior officials who are dealing with these matters every day. By the time they were speaking for our allotted time in New York, I was still in the air coming here. And in reality there's -- what the ministers said at the U.N. AIDS Conference is no different from what I would have said. So we participated very fully in this, in the drafting of the declaration and so on, and we are pleased with the outcome of the conference.

So let me just go a little bit beyond this. This morning we woke up very early and went to Philadelphia to visit a research establishment of Merck pharmaceutical company. I've spoken some time before last year to the chairman and CEO, Raymond Gilmartin, about work they were doing in Merck -- at Merck -- on this question. And so we thought that we should go there and have a look and see and listen to the scientists and see what they were doing about this. And actually they communicated a very interesting story, a very encouraging story, of work that they are doing to develop a vaccine, AIDS vaccine, and generally in their description of it, saying that what it really targets -- aims to do -- is to strengthen the immune system so that the immune system can then fight the virus itself. And they have clearly from what they've said made a lot of progress in this direction. Work is continuing. This is by no means concluded. But it was very, very encouraging to hear that.

And some press people there who asked this kind of question. And so I think that you see part of the problem with regard to this matter as it's affected us has been what I would describe as misreporting. So I said in front of all the scientists -- I said, You can ask the scientists, and they will say that there is such a condition as immune deficiency -- the immune system has become deficient. And that deficiency gets acquired from somewhere, including a virus. But it's in ordinary medical textbooks that the immune system can get compromised by a whole variety of things, not only a virus.

And so in our response to AIDS, which is what we have been saying in the South African government, in our response to AIDS, we've got to take a comprehensive approach. There is an Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. That immune deficiency generated by all sorts of things: malnutrition, impact of other diseases and so on which wear down the immune system. And so as a government we have got to say what is it that we do with regard to nutrition? What do we do with regard to clean water? What do we do with regard generally to improving the health conditions of the people? And what do we do to respond specifically to the HIV question as well? But a more comprehensive approach, so that we take care of the impact of disease as it affects our people -- bad levels of malnutrition, great outbreak of cholera just now because of the absence of clean water. What do we do about all of these things, so that we address the condition of the human more comprehensively, including HIV/AIDS? And indeed I was very pleased that the chairman and CEO of Merck then said himself that they indeed are very interested to engage these broader questions with the South African government, because indeed the health of human beings is not something that you address merely with drugs and medicine. Good food, clean water, all of these things are very important to the health of a person. So that's the approach that we would continue to pursue.

MR. AUBUCHON: Just to give you perhaps the opportunity to state even more explicitly some of what you have just shared with us, the link between the HIV virus and AIDS -- do you personally accept that the HIV virus and its transmission is the primary means of spreading the AIDS disease?

PRESIDENT MBEKI: Well, I don't know. That's what the scientists say. I don't think my personal belief is relevant to a scientific fact. But you see the point I'm making is that if you look at the health condition of a patient -- here's a patient who comes into hospital suffering from TB who comes from particular life conditions, what you've got to do, it seems to me, is to respond by you've got to treat the TB. You have got to see what other things that you do to create the conditions so that this person doesn't suffer from TB again. If the person who's suffering has got HIV, you've got to say, What is it that we do to respond to that.

A comprehensive response -- see, am not quite sure -- let me say, as a government we've got to respond like that. Now, I don't know what the implication of the question that was put is. To say -- if we say immune deficiency is caused primarily by HIV, and therefore primarily attend to HIV and give a subsidiary position to the rest, it would be a difficult situation, a difficult position to sustain. I'm really basically saying we've got to respond to a human body in a comprehensive manner, and that includes this issue of HIV.

MR. AUBUCHON: Should part of that comprehensive manner include using generic versions of the antiretroviral drugs in South Africa? And what is your position now on expanded use of those drugs?

PRESIDENT MBEKI: Well, with regard to generic drugs, we -- generally -- we have been very concerned about the question of affordable drugs and medicines. The bulk of our population is poor, and health is a critical matter for a population like that, because you can see a very widespread incidence of diseases of poverty, to which we have got to respond. Therefore the affordability of drugs and medicines is indeed an important matter, which is why we -- our parliament approved the legislation which became contentious and ended up in the courts. Fortunately that particular matter has been resolved with the pharmaceutical companies, so that indeed we can address this matter. So that would be the general position from which we would proceed, that it is indeed important that there should be affordable drugs and medicines for all of the conditions of illness that affect the people. And that would therefore affect and relate also to the antiretroviral drugs.

I was mentioning earlier an agreement that we have with one of the U.S. pharmaceutical companies -- I think I'm not supposed to advertise, so I won't mention their name. And they fortunately agreed with us to supply the South African public health system with a drug for a period of two years, and that would save the South African public health system $50 million a year, just for that one drug. And then having agreed they were going to give us this drug and then work in South Africa with this drug, and then see whether to expand that program into the rest of the southern Africa, a question arose about the need to maintain proper checking -- oversight of the patient who is taking this drug because of side effects. Therefore it is very necessary there is very close supervision of the people taking these drugs. And what they then found, this particular company, that actually the South African public health system did not have the capacity to dispense the drug because it couldn't maintain that monitoring of every patient. So they took a second decision, to say that in addition to the drug free of charge for two years, we will assist you to equip your public hospitals with the necessary equipment so that they can do this monitoring of patients. And because this monitoring facility was not there, we clearly did not have the people trained to dispense. So they took a third position: that they would assist us in terms of paying for the training and so on of these people.

So that decision -- it was an original -- a very good decision about here is a drug free of charge for two years -- it had these implications. The reason I am mentioning all of this is therefore that it's I think generally admitted certainly among scientists that the antiretroviral drugs taken over a long period of time require that kind of monitoring. This is complicated medicine. And therefore you require this capacity. It is part of the reason that pharmaceutical companies when we agreed with them to -- that they would drop the case -- the agreement with them is that they would then work with the South African government among other things to build that capacity which would enable these drugs to be dispensed. So we worked across the board.

So, yes, indeed, affordable medicines, generics, availability generally of drugs, including antiretrovirals. But also the capacity to dispense these drugs, to be able to do them in the way they are prescribed, so that you don't prescribe in a manner which produces a negative result whereas you had wanted a positive result. But because we don't have this capacity you produce that.

So it's a complex issue I think which goes across the board like that, and we would want to be attending to it in that manner.

MR. AUBUCHON: I want to give you a chance to talk a little bit about South Africa's economic efforts, but we are running near the end of our allotted hour. And before preceding further, I would like to take this opportunity to present you with this certificate of appreciation on behalf of the National Press Club. Thank you so much for agreeing to be with us today. (Applause.) And this coveted National Press Club mug -- (laughter) -- which I'm sure you will find a use for. (Applause.)

On the economy, Mr. President, a couple of questioners posed different sides of the same coin. One says little attention has been given to South Africa's economic success -- lowering interest rates for example by 100 percent. Another, on the other hand, says the current income per capita in South Africa is about $3,200 and asks how you intend to raise that. The other questioner wants to know how you are going to sustain your momentum.

PRESIDENT MBEKI: Well, a critical matter with regard to the South African economy is indeed achieving these higher rates of growth. And central to that is generating larger volumes of investment into the South African economy. And we're talking here substantially of private sector investment. We -- and therefore we have been doing all sorts of things with regards to the opening up of the economy and so on to create precisely the kind of climate which encourages private investment. We will be starting quite soon a process of engagement with quite a lot of large corporations in South Africa to look in detail with them at what they might be doing with regard to those investment programs.

There is of course the continuing program with regards to what is described as a restructuring of our status, which includes in part privatization. And that clearly will attract larger volumes of investment also into the economy -- the public, in terms of their public accounts too. Similarly, we are trying to move as much of those resources out of the current expenditure into capital expenditure.

So I think a combination of all of these things will make an impact on this particular issue of raising the rates of investment in the economy, which is critical to achieving the rates of growth beyond the rates we have now, and therefore raising those per capita levels of income.

Thank you very much.

MR. AUBUCHON: The Honorable Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa, I would like to thank you so much for coming today. I would also like to thank National Press Club staff members Melinda Cooke, Pat Nelson, Jo Ann Booze, Melanie Abdow Dermott and Howard Rothman for organizing today's luncheon. Also thanks to the NPC library for its research.

Please, ladies and gentlemen, remain seated until President Mbeki and his party have left the ballroom. Thank you, Mr. President. (Applause.)

Source: Federal News Service, http://www.fnsg.com