Mr Speaker, Mr President, Mr Deputy President, hon Ministers and hon members, our country has produced some truly great internationalists. No leader more personifies that internationalist spirit than Oliver Tambo. [Applause.] In a recollection of his legacy at the inaugural lecture of the Oliver Tambo Lecture Series in Glasgow in 2006, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, said:
South Africa's foreign policy rests on the foundation built by OR. He held the view that the struggle for national liberation is by definition a struggle for peace, and that peace is indivisible. For either there is peace everywhere or there is no peace anywhere.
[Applause.]
O R Tambo was the President of the ANC, yes, but in exile for all those years he was, I believe, the de facto President for South Africans. His ideas still guide us today in our international work. The presidents who have come after him in our organisation and our country have carried his internationalist vision into their work and into South Africa's foreign policy: "either there is peace everywhere or there is no peace anywhere."
We need peace in order to prosper. We need peace amongst nations to build our country, and we need friendship and solidarity with our global neighbours in order to grow and thrive. We are all in this together.
The world has grown smaller since information technology revolutionised our lives. Whereas we did not know much about what was happening in the far corners of the earth when I was a young girl, children today have the latest information directly and immediately on their mobile phones. We know more about the rest of the world and we know that the rest of the world is facing the same challenges that we are.
Consider the following headlines from recent weeks: "Protests hamper economy and tourism", "Wealth gap has widened since the recession between black and white", and "Generation jobless". These headlines could be about South Africa, but they are not. They are real headlines from other parts of the world.
The first, "Protests hamper economy and tourism" is about protests in a report from Turkey. The second, "Wealth gap has widened since the recession ..." is a New York Times article describing the wealth gap between white and black Americans. The third, "Generation jobless" is a headline from The Economist magazine and refers to the global rise in youth unemployment.
Problems of poverty, unemployment and inequality in South Africa are global problems and cannot be solved by us alone. [Applause.] There need to be global solutions to all our most pressing problems because each of us is affected by the other.
The Office of the Presidency is the apex office of the country and the government, and one of its strategic objectives is to support the President and the Deputy President in their work in the international arena. This is in recognition of the importance that international engagements play in the future development of our country. These engagements are both multilateral, between many nations working together, and bilateral, between two countries.
The first dates that go into the President's international diary are the many multilateral engagements our country participates in at international, continental and regional levels. In fact, many and most such multilateral meetings are mandatory on the President's international programme, including for example, the African Union summits, the UN General Assembly and the Southern African Development Community, SADC, heads of state summit, amongst others.
To resolve the problems that we as a country have identified as priorities, and for the world to move into a more virtuous circle of growth and development, we need to be engaged in all these multilateral discussions. We need to share our own experiences and learn from those who have solved similar problems.
Let us give an example, the burning issue of poverty in our global community. On 1 June this year, The Economist reported that:
Nearly one billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in the last 20 years. The world should do the same again.
It reports that China has been growing so fast that it is responsible for three quarters of that achievement: China pulled 680 million people out of misery in the period 1981 to 2010 and reduced the extreme poverty rate from 84% in 1980 to 10% now.
[Applause.]
The article argues that if developing countries can maintain good growth in their economies, if growth is a little faster and if income is more equal, importantly, extreme poverty could fall to as low as 1,5%. The article acknowledges, as do I, that there are a lot of ifs, but it is possible.
We need the peace that O R Tambo talked of and we also need growth and development to thrive as countries of the world. Nowhere is that more necessary than on our own continent.
I used an extract from the lecture delivered by Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who we all know is currently the Chair of the African Union Commission. She is carrying on the work of our past Presidents in establishing a well- functioning continental body that will deliver African countries from poverty and disease, and that will enable our continent to reach its vast potential. Hon Speaker and hon members, I cannot think of a better, more capable person to be assigned this task. The African Union was launched here in South Africa in 2002, after the Organization of African Unity, OAU, had done its job of freeing the continent from colonialism. Now the African Union must focus on the development and economic prosperity of our beloved and beautiful continent. In this regard the work of our Presidents, from O R Tambo to the present, has begun to bear fruit. The international work of our Presidency forms a constant thread taking forward the vision and ideals of our former Presidents, each building on the achievements of the one before him. [Applause.]
In a world of diplomacy there is no higher political engagement than President to President, and head of state to head of state. South Africa has relatively few bilateral - country to country - engagements at this level because of the importance that such engagements represent. Examples include, but not exclusively, the strategic partnership with China that the Deputy President talked about at head-of-state level, and the strategic partnership with Europe at the same level. These are our two largest trading partners and such strategic engagements signal to our international partners exactly how seriously we take our relationship with them, and the importance of these engagements to the sustainability of our own economy, and our prospects to grow and develop our people.
How do these engagements translate into benefits for our domestic priorities? The President recently visited Japan. Welcome home, Mr President. Japan is South Africa's third-largest trading partner and has invested approximately R192 billion in our country, which has resulted in some 150 000 South African jobs. As a result of the President's visit, Japanese businesses have reaffirmed that they are increasingly interested in expanding into Africa and using South Africa as a springboard. There looks to be massive growth in a range of investments resulting from this visit, including in agroprocessing, and in increasing the Japanese automotive parts production base here.
These are some of the tangible outcomes of the international work of the Presidency and the President in developing our country and combating our challenges.
Dr Dlamini-Zuma concluded her lecture in Glasgow in 2006 with the following words:
Today, in Glasgow among friends and colleagues of Oliver Tambo, we commit ourselves not to betray his international legacy, both in our efforts to rebuild our country into a nonracial, nonsexist and democratic society, but also in our efforts aimed at the creation of a better Africa in a better world.
Through our President and our Deputy President, the Office of the Presidency and the money we will appropriate for that Office, we will not betray O R Tambo's international legacy. We in the ANC will continue in our work to achieve his vision of a better world. I thank you. [Applause.]