Remarks by Minister Dlamini Zuma and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Commencement of 8th South Africa – United Kingdom Bilateral Forum, Presidential Guesthouse, Pretoria, Tuesday 8 July 2008

Remarks by Minister Dlamini Zuma

The Right Honourable David Miliband, Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom
Honourable South African and British Ministers
Excellencies High Commissioners Paul Boateng and Lindiwe Mabuza
Distinguished members of both delegations
Ladies and gentlemen of the media

Mr Foreign Secretary, allow me to welcome you to South Africa on the first working visit that you have undertaken to South Africa and I understand that you have already been at work for the past two days and I hope that has given you a glimpse into the South African society and its complexities and that you also have a pretty good idea of the challenges that we are facing as a government but also as a people.

To us, the UK commitment and yourself to developmental issues was really manifested during your tenure as Secretary for the Environment and Rural Affairs.  We therefore welcome your appointment and look forward to working with you in this new position to address mutual objectives for peace, development, and also for a better life for people in both our countries.

Since its inception the Bilateral Forum has indeed proven to be an important vehicle for the consolidation and expansion of the longstanding and multifaceted relations between South Africa and the UK.  The UK is a valued friend and partner to South Africa and counts amongst one of the major trading partners with total trading figures having risen from US$48 billion in 2004 to US$68 billion in 2007 and our own exports have risen from US$21 billion to US$27 billion in 2007 and off course, the UK is also the largest foreign investor in South Africa and a leading source of finance and technological skills.  South Africa does receive a substantive amount of Official Development Assistance (ODA) from the UK – approximately US$4 billion and the UK continues with the selfless effort to promote development and reduce poverty in Africa generally.  We are looking forward to continued co-operation in these important areas, not only in South Africa but also on the continent.

With almost half a million tourists arriving in South Africa from the UK each year, you are the most important source of foreign tourists outside Africa.  We trust that a mutually beneficial solution will be found to prevent the implementation (inaudible) which I have no doubt will have an impact on the flow of people to and from the UK and South Africa.  But I think it will be in the best interests of both our countries and peoples if we can prevent this.

Today, we will continue to discuss our co-operation and concrete progress in a wide range of sectors including health, environment and sustainable development, science and technology, trade and industry, sports and culture, investment, education, defence, migration and the combating of transnational crime.  This is just a reflection of the width and depth of our excellent continued and growing relations. 

With this bilateral forum it is indeed imperative that we deliberate extensively on the advancement of the African agenda as well.  There is encouraging news from many parts in Africa of democracy, economic expansion, and poverty reduction but by the same token, in some countries, there are still problems and we hope to discuss all of this in a friendly but very frank atmosphere.  In fact, the benefits of democracy and economic stabilisation are becoming increasingly visible with the last few years in some the countries compared to the last thirty years.  But off course, as I say, in some specific cases progress seems to be lacking and we would like the UK and the European Union to work with the Africans to try and assist where assistance is needed to ensure that the rest of the continent has a positive economic growth, democracy and indeed its people can look towards a better life.

Ladies and gentlemen, Foreign Secretary, during our deliberations we will therefore focus on concretely and actively promoting the interests of our two countries but also the interests of our continent and as a member of the G-8 which happens to be meeting in Japan this week, we hope that the G-8 will pay some attention to the challenges that Africa is facing particularly the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).  Africa seems the only continent that is not going to be able to attain the MDGs by 2015.  But we think we can still change this if all of us – the developing and developed countries – work together to pay some special attention to those areas.  We do not think it is an insurmountable problem but for that to happen there must be both the political will which should be matched with financial assistance and special resources that Africa would need so I hope that the UK will be leading the charge to change this situation.

South Africa values the ongoing and constructive commitment of the UK to Africa and we are encouraged that, apart from the bilateral forum, some of the visiting Ministers have also had opportunities to meet with our different departments and have had constructive meetings.  We trust this will lead to an even closer co-operation as well as a more focused and concrete programme.  We are also aware that a group of young people have accompanied you to South Africa and have had interesting discussions with there peers in South Africa.  And off course, this is an important development because relations have to be grounded towards the people.  Governments come and go but if there is people to people co-operation then that relationship will definitely be sustained whether we are there or not.  So, we look forward to hearing from these young people during our meeting to see how they view the challenges and the solutions because off course, the future is the hands of young people so they must have an interest, not only in identifying the challenges but also in working out solutions.

With those few words, it is a pleasure to welcome you and your delegation to South Africa.

Remarks by Foreign Secretary David Miliband

Thank you very much for that introduction.

Thank you very much for your warm welcome.  To our High Commissioners and Ministers, all of us in the British delegation are delighted to be here.  You are more than blessed to live in an interesting country and it is a country that inspires and engages our minds and our hearts and we want to work with you in a shared enterprise.

I think that it is not melodramatic to say that people will look back on these few years as quite decisive in shaping the British – South Africa relationship for the next few decades and I say that for a particular reason – the struggle you lead and many people of Paul Boateng’s generation tried to support was a defining struggle.  For people of my generation we watched and in our teenage years we tried to play a small part in helping but there is a new struggle which was foreshadowed by your leaders and by yourself – the second liberation struggle if you like which is to build a society of equal opportunity, a society of genuine empowerment, a society marked by its internationalism and we want to be with you in that second struggle and the baton has to be passed on in a way that makes the most of what our two societies have to offer and the first thing I want to say to you and your Ministerial colleagues is that the government that I and my colleagues represent here is shaped by, I think, very similar values to those of your own government.  We are proud to talk about equality of opportunity, we are proud to talk of genuine empowerment, we are proud to talk of our own internationalism, we try to practise what we preach in our own country but we also try to practise what we preach in our foreign policy and I think it is an important part of this bilateral dialogue in a way which marks it out of some of the other relationships we have with other countries.

The dialogue we have with South Africa is not just a foreign policy dialogue.  It is a foreign policy dialogue between foreign ministers but it is also a dialogue between representatives of our departments who have shared values and shared interests in health, trade promotion, the department of international development and business enterprise – we at a particularly important point in the global trade talks and we are totally committed to the idea that this has to be a genuine development round but I also say that this trade round doesn’t just face a test which is important for the prosperity of the people of the world.  The success of the trade round is critical to people’s confidence in the multilateral system and those of us who believe in this system know that success in the trade round can have positive effects for the trade round and the work we have to do in other areas – climate change, working against nuclear proliferation.  Failure in the trade round will send a very bad signal about the ability of the multilateral system to work across a whole range of areas.

I saw for myself fin Alexandra township the challenges of migration you face and we face this too so there is a shared challenge we have to deal with.

We have a lot in common in the sports arena.  I wish we shared the winner’s podium more often.

On the foreign policy front, I was very proud to visit the Peace Mission Training Centre on Sunday 6 July which is an emblem of co-operation between the South African Ministry of Defence and ours because the work that South Africa is doing, for instance in Burundi, is an example of internationalism and hard and soft power.  We are also very committed, through our foreign policy, to African development – economic, social, political development. 

I also want to reiterate the UK government’s commitment to the United Nations reform as an emblem of the reform of internationalism because we know that whether you are in the United Nations or the World Bank, International Monetary Fund or other international institutions shaped for the second half of the 20th century they need to be reformed for the 21st century and an important part of that reform relates to representation and we are absolutely clear in our commitment for a permanent seat for an African country.  In foreign policy, you highlighted the MDGs – this is something the Prime Minister is championing at the G-8.  Last year, one of the first things he did after taking up office was to point out the stark fact that although we were halfway towards 2015, we were not halfway towards the 2015 targets in terms of progress on the MDGs.  This is something he is very committed to. 

I hope that in all of these areas, we will today get practical deliverables out of the discussions we will be having.  That will make a difference to our own people.  I also say this in respect to climate change which was one of my former responsibilities.  Your Minister is with your President in Japan but I think one of the things I have learnt from working with your South African colleagues in my year and a half as environment secretary is that climate change is not just an environmental issue – it is an economic issue, a security issue, a political issue and so I hope we can forge greater common understanding in this area as well.  Our injunction to our colleagues should be frank, clear and engaging as you have described so that these discussions do conclude with a real agenda that we can take forward.

There are two other things I would like to say about how we turn deliverables into action: one of the striking things about each of our two countries is that we are each leading players in our own regional organisations - you as a leading player in the AU and the UK as a leading player in the European Union.  I think this is really important and a relatively new facet to our relationship because the bilateral UK-SA relationship needs to catalyse a stronger, in our view, EU-AU relationship on issues to do with energy, trade and peacekeeping.  From our side the EU is a vital player and from your side the AU has aspirations, as do you of the AU, to develop as a leading player in Africa.  So I hope we will think of this in a continental context and not just in the bilateral context.

The final thing I would like to say about deliverables in that I have been in and around government now for a much shorter term than compared to Minister Dlamini Zuma, but my experience has been that if you want change, you need more than just government working for it. You need business and civil society to engage and that is why I think it is significant that today we not just have young representatives of civil society but a breadth of representation from civil society.  There are people in the UK from climate change organisations, trade unions, peace institutes and from academia and I am very much looking forward to their contributions.

Thank you very much indeed.

Issued by Department of Foreign Affairs
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8 July 2008