Address by the Minister of Social Development of the Republic of South Africa, Dr. Zola Skweyiya, At the Caribbean Regional Diaspora Consultative Conference of the African Union 27 August 2007 Barbados

 The Right Honourable Prime Minister of Barbados;
The Right Honourable Prime Minister of St Vincent;
The Honourable Prime Minister of Guyana;
Honourable Ministers and Deputy Ministers from Across the Region;
Members of Parliament and Senators;
Your Excellencies, Ambassadors and High Commissioners;
Representatives of the African Union;
Distinguished Guests;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Friends and Comrades

Permit me first of all, to thank the government of Barbados and its people for allowing us to co-host the historic Bicentennial Global Dialogue in the context of African Diaspora Dialogue. This initiative is glorious and its partners, the African Union, CARICOM and the governments of Barbados and South Africa excitedly join the commemorative events to mark the 200 th anniversary of the abolishment of slave trade in the British Empire.

It is befitting that we join you in hosting this Conference in this city of Bridgetown, which was the main trans-shipment point for the heinous act of the slave trade. This Conference, gives us an opportunity
“to revisit the triangular trade of the slave era so as to make another significant step towards bringing closure to the lingering legacy of racism and underdevelopment across the Pan-African world. To do this, it is imperative that, from a background of many different spiritual traditions and intellectual views, we create - systematically and in very concrete terms - a new understanding of shared and sustainable development between Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas and Europe.”

These, your words Prime Minister, assist in locating the intended outcome of our gathering today.

It is our hope that the thrust of this conference provides the possibility that this Conference is recorded at the pinnacle of our affirmations towards a common destiny, when the African story is recited. We will utilise this opportunity to assert our existence and joint affirmation so as to determine and eliminate all illegitimate means of subordination of all peoples of the world, with an emphasis on the people of Africa. So as to eliminate, once and for all, all unjust material and immoral wealth accumulation by alien interests through inhumane ends.

Friends, our collaboration is a tacit demonstration of our quest to demonstrate in practice that the blood that binds the peoples of Africa and its Diaspora is thicker than water and enjoins us to a common purpose and duty. Indeed, it is our assertion that – True freedom, peace, stability and development is within our collective bounds of possibilities.

Amongst you my sense of propinquity suggests that I am still at home. This is particularly so, because Africa and the Caribbean have shared an enduring and a special bond of kinship, friendship, solidarity and comradeship for many centuries. It is quite obvious that our bond is very special and strategic, because our common origin is defined by a common soul which is intertwined and finds its source since the beginning of time. In President Leopold Sedar Senghor’s observations:
“…what binds us is beyond history, it is rooted in pre-history. It arises from geography, ethnology and hence from culture. It existed before Christianity and Islam, it is older than all colonisation. It is that community of culture which I call African-ness .”

Over the last few years, Africa’s political leadership has deliberated on an African Renaissance. The leadership has also affirmed the need for us as Africans to promote the 21 st Century as an African Century. Many of you may recallPresident Thabo Mbeki’s words in 2002 in Jamaica, when he urged us to talk about what we must do, as a collective, to achieve the goal of an African led African Renaissance. This leadership implies the participation of all Africans, both within and out of Africa.

This leadership also implies the strengthening of our own continental institutional and governance capacities. To this end, since its inception in 2001, our Continental body, the African Union (AU) has consciously sought to reverse the negative conditions faced by all Africans throughout the world. These negative conditions have for many centuries been imposed on Africans everywhere. This has typically characterised Africans as the underlings, the marginalised, and the wretched of the earth. History demands of us to change these social epilates that have imposed underdevelopment on us as a people. It is in this context that the AU in January this year took a decision to endorse South Africa as a host of the Africa-African Diaspora Summit which will take place in early 2008.

In pursuance of this mandate, and to ensure the legitimacy of the said diasporic discourse, South Africa has on behalf of the AU, embarked on a process of regional consultations with the African Diaspora in Latin America, the United Kingdom (UK), the United States of America (US) and now in the Caribbean. A similar conference is also scheduled for the Diaspora in Paris, early in September this year. The final these regional consultations will be hosted at the seat of the African Union in Addis Ababa later this year.

The purpose of these engagements is to connect with civil society, academia and Governments in the Diaspora as a build up to the Ministerial Conference to be hosted in South Africa in November 2007. This Ministerial conference will also act as the final preparatory meeting for the Declaration and Programme of Action which will be adopted by the 2008 Summit.

Your Excellencies, all this we do so as to ensure that the “entire process is people-driven and not leaders-driven.” It is our aim to ensure that the voice of the masses ultimately determines Africa’s destiny and rightful place. The Summit will represent a dream of African leaders which started in 1963 at the founding of the Organisation of African Unity: the dream of a Conference which should bring together, fraternally, the Heads of all the Independent States of Africa and its Diaspora.

The outcomes of our deliberations at this Conference will have a strong bearing on the issues and outcomes of the discussions among our Heads of State and Governments when they meet next year in South Africa. I look forward to seeing you, the Caribbean leaders there as you have a valuable contribution to make to our collective future.

This conference also comes as a follow-up to the South Africa-African Union-Caribbean- Diaspora Conference that Jamaica hosted in 2005. In that conference, we celebrated and re-affirmed our old historical and cultural bonds and the spiritual affinity between Africa and the Diaspora.

We also committed ourselves to a Plan of Action, which this Conference must take cognisance of as we deliberate on the various themes identified for discussion.

We must use these two days to assess what progress has been made to realise, in concrete terms, the goals we set in 2005.In this regard, we must learn from our successes and failures, so that we do not repeat what is wrong, but build on what has been proven to be right.

The aim we must assign to our efforts, which is not different from the aims which other nations have adopted for themselves, is: development through economic growth. By that I mean bringing each and every African to full worth and value, so that we are not passive recipients of aid and sympathy from others, but active agents in ensuring a better life for all Africans, wherever they may find themselves.

That means, as President Leopold Sedar Senghor said in 1963:

“We must do more. It is not enough that the Union of our weaknesses should appear to be a force. The important thing is that we transform each of our weaknesses into strengths.”

I am convinced that it would be harmful to Africa and to the success of our Pan - African enterprise if the Conference confined itself to preparing resolutions or declarations without also clearly defining the practical means to implement them. In this regard, we must not seek to reinvent the wheel.

Good work is already being done, both on the continent and by the Diaspora, to address the many problems that afflict Africans. What is needed is for us to build on these foundations, pool our skills and resources, enhance existing cooperation and improve our communication channels so that we work with purposeful unity towards the same goal.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this Conference is also taking place against the backdrop of the 9 th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government held in Accra, Ghana, in July 2007.

At that Summit, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa reflected that the “Summit Meeting was well attended, in part because it served as an occasion to celebrate the 50 th Anniversary of the independence of Ghana. But more fundamental, it was distinguished by the fact that it was scheduled to engage in a “Grand Debate on the African Union Government.” I believe the African Diaspora has a contribution to make to the Grand Debate. We are after all, discussing the future of your mother land, the cradle of humanity; and how we can work together to restore the pride and prosperity that once characterized the continent.

At Berlin in 1885, the European states with their anarchical economic development, and motivated by an arbitrary feeling for power, proceeded to divide Africa which was then regarded as a colony. But in July 2007, in Accra, the city of freedom, the qualified representatives, the authentic and worthy sons and daughters of the African people, met under the banner of their awareness of their common destiny.

They met this time to undertake, “legally and legitimately, the reunification of their States in a single and unique Charter.”

The Summit Meeting concluded with the adoption of the Accra Declaration, which did indeed specify the Continental Programme of Action to address the issue of a Union Government. The Accra Declaration said, amongst others, Africa's leaders are convinced

"of the need for common responses to the major challenges of globalisation facing Africa and boosting regional integration processes through an effective continental mechanism. They recognise[d] that opening up narrow domestic markets to greater trade and investment through freer movement of persons, goods, services and capital would accelerate growth thus, reducing excessive weaknesses of many of our Member of States, and that the envisaged Union Government should be built on common values that need to be identified and agreed upon as benchmarks. Given the critical importance of this matter, Africa's political leaders also acknowledge the importance of involving the African peoples in order to ensure that the African Union is a Union of peoples and not just a "Union of states and governments," as well as the African Diaspora in the processes of economic and political integration of our continent."

During the Accra Summit we also witnessed the launch of the Pan-African Infrastructure Investment Fund (PAIID). As President Mbeki observed, “this is the first time ever that Africa has combined to draw on its own financial resources to address its developmental challenges. The launch of PAIID therefore made the unequivocal statement that our Continent is determined to be its own liberator from poverty, underdevelopment and global marginalisation.”

The establishment of PAIID also provides a strong response that one of the things that Africa must do to bridge the gap between itself and the North is to rely on its own resources. For many of you the questions have been abound as to how is it feasible that a continent so well endowed with the richness of natural resources can yet be so poor. Twin evils of slavery and colonialism notwithstanding, our historic duty has always been to put at the centre of our development the desire and deliberateness to take into our own hands our destiny and create a shared legacy for growth, restoration of pride and dignity as part of a competing peoples of the world.

When we begin in earnest this task of transformation, when we set in motion the locomotive for change, when we confront our past, when we dig deep into the entrails of history and gore the evil that has handicapped us and produced a cursed people, then we would have begun to take seriously and bring meaning to what Frantz Fanon advises with banal simplicity but enduring profoundness, “Each generation must out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it”

The challenge now, is for Africans both within the Continent and in the Diaspora to act together in unity, and to courageously and diligently implement the Continental Directive spelt out in the Accra Declaration.

African unity will experience an enhanced growth from now on. It will be a continuous creation, an irreversible work which will bind together all future generations to the generation which strengthened the foundation stone of unity in Accra.

There is no doubt, in my mind, that our current generation will count among its assets the decisions which are to be made by this Conference and the value of an unconditional commitment which it will undertake to honour our Continent.

Our decisions in this Conference should make Africa strong, by enhancing and fortifying her unity with her Diaspora and act as a key to Africa’s Renaissance.

I will conclude with the words of Marcus Garvey, who in 1925, after being sentenced to five years in an Atlanta penitentiary, wrote:
“If I die in Atlanta, my work shall then only begin, but I shall live in the physical or spiritual to see the day of Africa’s glory. When I am dead, wrap the mantle of the red, black and green around me, for in the new life, I shall rise with God’s grace and lead the millions up the heights of triumph with the colours that you know well, look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for with God’s grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa, to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life”.

I thank you