SPEECH BY FORMER PRESIDENT FW DE KLERK TO THE SALDARRIAGA CONCHA FOUNDATION, BOGOTA, May 29 2013

SOUTH AFRICA: BUILDING PEACE, PROSPERITY AND JUSTICE IN A POST-CONFLICT SOCIETY

Much is spoken about the resolution of conflicts.

Relatively little attention is given to the equally challenging process of ensuring the success of post-conflict societies.

I would like to share with you some of South Africa's experiences since the wonderful day 19 years ago when we ended centuries of conflict and established our non-racial constitutional democracy.

However, it will first be necessary for me to tell you something about the origins of our conflict and the manner in which we were able to resolve it.

To start with, it is important to understand that the geographic entity that we call South Africa is a fairly new - and largely artificial - creation. In fact, South Africa as we know it today was constituted a little more than a single lifetime ago in 1910.

The 19th century in southern Africa was dominated by the conquest by the British Empire of the three dominant peoples of the region - the Xhosa, the Zulus and the Afrikaners.

In 1806 - during the Napoleonic wars - the British took over the Dutch colony of the Cape of Good Hope. Many of the Dutch settlers - including my own ancestors - had been in the Cape since the 17th century. They now called themselves Afrikaners - or Africans - and they resented British rule. They trekked into the interior where they established the republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

The British soon became involved in a series of wars on the colony's eastern frontier against the Xhosa people who were slowly migrating down the eastern coast of southern Africa. The wars were so bitter that, in 1856, the Xhosas killed their cattle and destroyed their crops in the belief that their ancestors would rise from the ocean and drive the British into the sea. By 1879 the power of the Xhosas - who are the people of Nelson Mandela - had finally been broken.

From the 1830s the British also began to colonize an area further up the east coast called Natal. By the 1870s they had established a thriving colony with extensive sugar plantations. They imported thousands of labourers from their empire in India to work in the cane fields. It was this community that later included Mahatma Gandhi.

However, the British settlers in Natal feared the power of the Zulu Kingdom to their north and brazenly sought a pretext for war. In 1878 they presented the Zulu King, 2 Cetshwayo, with an ultimatum that he could not honorably accept. The British army invaded Zululand in 1878 - and to amazement of the world, suffered a serious defeat at the battle of Isandlwana - where more than 1 300 imperial troops were killed.

Inevitably, the British regrouped and finally broke the power of the Zulu kingdom at the battle of Ulundi in 1879.

In 1867 diamonds were discovered in the interior of the country - and 19 years later the greatest gold discovery in history was made in the Transvaal Republic. Settlers and miners rushed into southern Africa from all parts of the British Empire - and of the world.

The two Afrikaner republics -the Transvaal and the Orange Free State - now stood in the way of further British expansion. The resulting tensions led in 1899 to the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War. It was the biggest war that Britain fought between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War and in the end involved the deployment of more than 450 000 imperial troops. By 1902 the Afrikaners were defeated - but only after their farms had been destroyed and 28 000 of their women and children had died in British concentration camps.

So, at the beginning of the 20th century the British found themselves in control of an untidy assortment of territories in Southern Africa. What were they going to do with these troublesome and expensive possessions - which one observer quipped that they had acquired in a "fit of absent-mindedness"? Why not create a union or federation between them as the British had recently done with their colonies in Canada and Australia? A National Convention was held and on 31 May 1910 the Union of South Africa was born.

The traditional homelands of the Xhosa, Zulus and other black nations - where a considerable majority of black population lived - were included in the borders of the Union. However, the new constitution made little or no provision for the protection of their rights and concentrated instead on ensuring the economic, cultural and political interests of the white groups.

For the subsequent 50 years South African politics was dominated by the continuing struggle between the two white communities - between Afrikaner nationalists on the one hand, and mainly English-speaking whites who favoured participation in the British Empire and Commonwealth, on the other.

However, with the independence of African colonies in the rest of Africa in the late 1950s and 1960s, the focus of domestic politics and international attention shifted to the constitutional position of black South Africans.

The National Party's response was to try to dismember the geographic entity that had been created in 1910 by granting independence to the black homelands.

However the territories allocated to the black national groups comprised less than 3 14% of the country - and were split into dozens of detached pieces. Four of the national states accepted ‘independence' - but the remaining six steadfastly refused to do so. Moreover, black South Africans still comprised a large majority in the socalled white areas.

By the mid-1980s the National Party government had accepted that its policies had failed to achieve just and equitable solutions and that it would have to accept fundamental change. We accepted that separate development was morally indefensible and had to be abandoned in exchange for a new vision of togetherness.

The question was, how could it dismount the tiger of white domination without being devoured? By 1985 the situation seemed to be hopeless.

The country was caught in a downward spiral of violence, international isolation and economic decline. There seemed to be no common ground between the National Party Government and the African National Congress- which represented most black South Africans. Most people thought that a cataclysmic racial war was inevitable.

Yet within a few years all of the major parties had reached agreement on a new nonracial constitution and in May 1994 President Mandela was inaugurated as the first President of South Africa's new constitutional democracy.

The factors that helped us to achieve a negotiated settlement included acceptance by all the main parties of the following realities:

• whether we liked one another or not, there could be no long-term solution that did not involve all the major parties and population groups of our country;
• our problems could be solved only through negotiation - that any attempt by any party to continue to impose its will on its opponents by force would simply lead to the destruction of the country and the economy;
• a successful outcome to our negotiations would often require genuine concessions and painful compromises;
• we would have to put the bitterness of the past behind us and we would have to search for genuine national reconciliation;
• we needed a strong Constitution that would provide the basic rules for our new society and guarantee the rights and security of all our people and communities.

However, ending the conflict is always only the first step.

The real test is to build a firm foundation for long-term peace, prosperity and justice.

Looking back over the past 19 years I believe that there are three key factors that can assure success in post-conflictsocieties.

• The first is the presence of a strong constitutional framework supported by effective civil society organizations.
• The second is the manner in which post-conflict societies deal with the past.
• The third is the degree to which the new society brings real social and economic benefits to all its people.

Our Constitution has been the main factor in ensuring the relative success of our new society.

The values on which it is based include human dignity, the achievement of equality and the enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms. They include non-racialism, non-sexism, the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law. It also makes provision for a genuine multiparty democracy that is based on openness, responsiveness and accountability.

The new South Africa is founded on the premise that no-one - no majority, no minority, no individual - should ever again be able to unjustly deprive anyone - whether a majority, a minority or an individual - of any fundamental right.

The foundation of our historic national accord was that henceforth relationships between the state and citizens would never again be governed by the arbitrary decisions of this or that group or party - but by the carefully crafted and nationally agreed principles of the Constitution.

However, our Constitution is also a transformative document. It rejects the idea that status quo should be maintained.

• It calls on South Africans to work for a society based on human dignity, equality and the enjoyment of fundamental rights for all.
• It empowers government to take steps to promote equality by advancing people who had been disadvantaged by unfair discrimination.
• It endorses the concept of land reform.

Thus it provides a framework for change, based on the rule of law and constitutional principles.

At the same time it protects the reasonable rights of all South Africans by accommodating the sometimes-competing aspirations and apprehensions of our remarkably diverse population. In so doing it strikes a balance

• between the need for equality on the one hand, and the need to avoid unfair discrimination on the other; 
• between the need to protect property rights on the one hand and the need to promote fair and balanced land reform on the other; and 
• between the need to nurture our rich heritage of cultural, linguistic and religious diversity, and the need to promote over-arching national unity.

The South African Constitution is much more than a legal document. In a very real sense it provides the foundation for our new nation. However, the Constitution on its own is not enough. It has worked well so far because it has been supported by an independent judiciary; free media and active and effective civil society organizations.

• Our courts have maintained their independence and have not hesitated to rule against government action and legislation that is unconstitutional;
• Our media have rigorously investigated allegations of corruption and misgovernment and have ensured the continuation of robust and informed debate on national issues; and 
• Our civil society organizations have continued to mobilize successfully in support of citizens'rights and social causes.

All these are important factors in ensuring the success of post-conflict societies.

The second factor that I believe is crucially important for post-conflict societies is the manner in which they deal with their divided past.

As George Orwell observed: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." We South Africans continue to be divided by fundamentally different perceptions of our past.

Although our Truth and Reconciliation Commission is regarded as a model for other post-conflict societies there is still controversy about how well it worked for us.

I originally supported the Commission because I thought that it was essential that South Africans from all our political parties and from all our communities should reach some kind of acceptable consensus about the past.

Unfortunately our Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not really succeed in its primary goal of promoting national reconciliation. Its greatest flaw was that it did not include representatives from all the parties that were involved in the conflict. There were no commissioners who could speak for the majority of our white and coloured communities - or for the National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party -two of the main parties to the conflict.

Reconciliation cannot take place if there is no consensus - and consensus is not possible if all sides are not properly represented in the process.

The other great weakness of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was that it did not have the right mandate. Its principal purpose was to establish the truth about the political conflict that the country experienced between 1960 and 1994. However, South Africa was relatively lucky in terms of the levels of violence that it experienced during this period - particularly when compared with other transitional societies. During the 34-year period approximately 23 500 people died as a result of political conflict.

Of these only 3 500 were killed in legal or illegal operations of the security forces. The overwhelming majority of deaths arose from the conflict before 1994 between the ANC and the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party - primarily for control of South Africa's most populous province, KwaZulu-Natal.

The real issue was not 34 years of political conflict - but the history of more than 300 years of colonial rule, white domination and apartheid. That should have been the topic of discussion.

Finally, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's methodology was wrong. The objective should not have been to impose the historic version of one side of the struggle on the rest of society: it should have been to emerge with a version of history that would be broadly acceptable to all our main parties and communities.

It is almost as important to negotiate the past as it is to negotiate the future. The difference is that it is generally much easier to reach agreement about the future than it is to reach agreement about the past.

And yet it is essential. Representatives of all the parties involved in our conflicted history should, perhaps, have been locked in a conclave until they finally emerged with a common history.

Our inability to reach agreement about the past has been one of the greatest failures of our post-conflict society. The past still intervenes like an unseen barrier in virtually all our national discourses and provides the fuel for continuing recrimination, guilt and polarisation. It has also resulted in the historical marginalization of anyone, of any people and of any party who do not share the historic narrative of the ruling coalition.

At the same time, there is no doubt that the Commission did a great deal of very good work. It succeeded in establishing the truth about many gross violations of human rights; its hearings often had a cathartic effect on those involved; only the most callous observers could fail to be moved by the testimony of victims from all sides of the political spectrum or horrified by the evidence of many of the perpetrators.

The third factor that I believe determines the success of post-conflict societies is the degree to which they work for all the people involved.

The new South Africa has a checkered record when it comes to delivery.

In some respects we have done very wellsince 1994.7 We have experienced 19 years of economic growth - interrupted only briefly by the global economic crisis of 2008.

• During this period, the ANC government implemented sound macro-economic policies that helped ensure steady growth rates rising to 5% in 2004 -2005. They also helped to protect us from the worst consequences of the 2008 economic crisis.
• We have the 23rd largest economy in the world. We produce 29% of the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa with only 6% of its population.
• Our public debt is less than 36% of GDP - and external debt is only 16% of GDP.
• Tourism now contributes almost 9% of GDP -more than mining.
• Automobile production - at 7% of GDP - is two and a half times bigger than agriculture. In 2008 we produced 600 000 vehicles.

We have also made remarkable social progress in many areas:

• The percentage of the population living in absolute poverty has declined from 31% in 1995 to 23% in 2008 -largely because of social grants.
• More than three quarters of the population now has access to drinkable water, electricity and sanitation compared with only half in 1994;
• more than three million housing units have been built - enough to house almost a quarter of the population - with another million units in the pipeline;
• the black middle class has grown rapidly and is now considerably larger than its white counterpart.
• Between 2001 and 2011 the percentage of people living in the lowest four Living Standards categories diminished from 52.6% to just 24.4%.
• During the same period per capita social spending more than doubled and had a significant impact on living standards - but not on income levels.

This improvement is ascribed almost entirely to the enormous increase in social transfers in the past 10 years. This includes the provision of children's allowances, disability payments and pensions to more than 16 million people - more than 30% of the population. State transfers now comprise the largest income component for the bottom 30% of the population.

The problem is that such transfers are unsustainable - and hold the danger of creating a permanent dependency culture.

In other respects we have failed to achieve the vision that we set for our society in 1994. We have done particularly badly in the areas of education, unemployment and inequality.

South Africa is today an even more unequal society than it was in 1994 and, according to the World Bank, is now the second most unequal country in the world after Namibia. Inequality has also increased within all our population groups.8 Whites are still the most privileged community in terms of income, education and employment levels. Nevertheless, the situation is changing. In 1995 whites accounted for 69% of those in the top earnings decile. By 2012 their share had diminished to less than 40%.

Apart from these social factors, one of the principal causes of inequality is the failure of our education system. Our children fare very badly in numeracy and literacy tests compared with children from even the poorest countries in Africa. Despite the expenditure of more than US $1 600 per child per year, 60% of our school children leave school without a school-leaving qualification. Those who pass the schoolleaving exam do so with an average mark of less than 40%. Only the 13% of the original age cohort who obtained university entrance emerged from the education system with reasonable qualifications.

Unemployment - exacerbated by poor education - is the other principal reason for our failure to promote equality. Unemployment levels are far more serious than official figure of 25.2%. If the two million workers who have given up their search for jobs are included, the expanded unemployment rate climbs to over 36% - and among black South Africans it is more than 40%. Unemployment is caused primarily by rigid labour legislation and by militant trade union demands for wage settlements that regularly outstrip inflation and productivity increases.

The good news is that government is increasingly aware of these problems and is adopting realistic plans to address them.

Its National Development Plan presents a vision of a future South Africa that includes • Constitutional democracy;

• Unity in diversity;
• High quality education;
• Health and social services providing security to all those in need;
• Sustainable and equitable economic growth;
• Fair employment for all;
• An environment in which business can invest, profit and contribute to national goals;
• An effective state and public service;
• Mutual respect and human solidarity; and 
• A South Africa that contributes to Africa and to the world.

Among its proposals, the National Development Plan makes provision for an enormous infrastructure development programme during the next 15 years that will require more than US $500 billion investment. The plan makes provision for the upgrading of South Africa's aging power generation; transportation; telecommunication; municipal; education and health infrastructures.

However, once again, we have learned that government cannot solve all the problems by itself. It needs the active engagement of business, labour, civil society 9 organizations and religious groups if it wishes to improve the lives of the poorest segments of our society.

In retrospect, I believe that

• our post-conflict society has done well in maintaining a strong constitutional framework for continuing development and transformation.
• We have done badly in our efforts to deal with our divided past. And
• we have a mixed record when it comes to delivering real social and economic benefits to all our people.
• Continuing success will depend on the ability of all formations of society - including government, business and civil society -to work together to achieve the vision that is contained in our Constitution.

Perhaps the main lesson that can be learned from our post-conflict society is that the process of searching for peace, prosperity and justice never ends.

There is never a moment when complex societies like ours can rest on their laurels and imagine that they have solved their problems.

It is an on-going and never-ending struggle.

Issued by the FW de Klerk Foundation, May 30 2013

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