Chair, the agenda of the debate on the Inter-Parliamentary Union speaks of parliaments and people bridging the gap. In South Africa, the gap we speak about, and our biggest hindrance, is perhaps the ghost of our colonial past, which manifests itself in many different ways.
In yesterday's Portfolio Committee on International Relations and Co- operation seminar, Dr S Zondi from the Institute for Global Dialogue, IGD, pointed out that the way Brazil managed to deal with its colonial past was to significantly reduce poverty. It seems we can do what we like, but until poverty is reduced to where this becomes noticeable, nothing will change in our attitudes, perceptions and behaviour. Business was, of course, the key to Brazil's success and Zondi expressed the view that business and government, working together, could put apartheid in the dustbin, where it belongs, if they wanted to. He also attributed China's reduced poverty to the fact that government and business work together - a hurdle South Africa must still get over.
Growth in South Africa generates growth in all of sub-Saharan Africa and increased exports to SADC could generate 150 000 jobs by 2020. The mutuality of interest in business and government working together in the SADC region and beyond is indisputable. The need for diplomacy in Africa to deal with deep-seated negative perceptions about South Africa and South Africans is acknowledged generally. With this in mind, Zondi's view that South Africa completely misses the enormous opportunity it has to engage in diplomacy by failing to reach the large numbers of people from other countries that reside in or visit South Africa is relevant in bridging this gap.
In bridging the gap, both Parliament and people will need to embrace today's digital world. The German Bundestag has stated that Internet services have closed the gap between its parliament and citizens. Youth in even the poorest area in South Africa have access to cell phones and the Internet and 4 million South Africans are active on Facebook, growing at 4% per month. Social networking, as it evolves, is a major medium of communication and the so-called Arab Spring is a classic example.
I have run out of time. Of course, the political, economic and social situation globally is a topic that two minutes could never do justice to. Thank you.