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SPEECH BY MAYOR: "PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY: THE FOUNDATION OF DEVELOPMENT"
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SPEECH BY HELEN ZILLE
MAYOR OF CAPE TOWN
MICROSOFT GOVERNMENT LEADERS’ FORUM
ARABELLA SHERATON HOTEL
CAPE TOWN INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION CENTRE CAPE TOWN, WESTERN CAPE, SOUTH AFRICA SUNDAY 9 JULY 2006 – 18H30
“Personal responsibility: the foundation of development”
Release: Embargoed until 18h30
Introduction
It is my pleasure and privilege to welcome you to Cape Town and to South Africa.
We are here, within sight of the mountain and the sea, the majestic features for which our city is best known.
But look to the many unique communities that live between, and you will learn from whence our city draws its inspiration and spirit.
For more than three hundred and fifty years, Cape Town has been a crossroads between Europe and Africa, between the cultures and commodities of the world’s great continents -- not merely as a place where the paths of others have crossed -- but as a point from which South Africans have made their own significant contributions down the centuries.
Christianity, Judaism and Islam and have coexisted here with traditional belief systems. A new language, new forms of music and new peoples were born on these fertile shores.
The ethnic and racial diversity that has only recently become a feature of life in other cities around the world has long been a part of Cape Town’s character.
And yet this has also been a deeply divided city, a city whose boundaries were sharpened and fortified by apartheid. The scars of that experience are still physically visible on Cape Town’s landscape. They are part of our collective psyche too.
Today, Cape Town struggles with divisions of wealth as well as race.
Millions of Capetonians are isolated from economic opportunities and decent public services. The poor bear the brunt of crime, disease, and underdeveloped infrastructure—though these problems also touch the lives of every household in the city.
In many ways, Cape Town is a microcosm of Africa and much of the developing world. We face many of the same challenges as other cities across this, and other, continents.
But we also have some distinct advantages.
One is our relatively well-developed network of infrastructure and institutions—at times overwhelmed by demand, but still coping.
Another advantage is our tradition of democratic politics.
Before apartheid, Cape Town enjoyed the beginnings of a multi-racial franchise. Later, many of the most important events in the resistance to apartheid occurred here.
And recently, Cape Town became the first city in South Africa in which the party that governs nationally and provincially, was replaced, peacefully through the ballot box, by a coalition of several opposition parties in local government elections. This too, is an important milestone in the consolidation of democracy in our country.
The third advantage is Cape Town’s cosmopolitan outlook. Ours is a truly international city, rooted in Africa but open to the rest of the world.
We welcome new ideas, and new people. We borrow freely, and yet remain true to ourselves. Cape Town may be a provincial city, but we have a global mindset. And we are also known for our culture of telling it as it is, ignoring the constraints of political correctness.
It is because of these advantages, some of which we share with other cities, that we believe we have a real hope of getting it right—of solving the riddle of development that continues to haunt our continent.
That is why the presence of the Microsoft Government Leaders’ Forum is so important to us. It is a vote of confidence in our future—and a chance to make a difference.
What doesn’t work
As we approach the challenges of development, we already have a good idea of what doesn’t work. And we have to be honest with ourselves about this.
We know the bitter truth -- that the history of post-colonialism on our continent is littered with failed policies and ideologies.
With the best of intentions, many of the same mistakes have been made over and over again.
One mistake has been to use the authority and reach of the state in an attempt to drive economic development.
This has had the effect of undermining private enterprise, and creating systems in which political patronage and graft, became some of the main means of achieving influence and wealth.
Another mistake has been to reinforce the collective racial and ethnic identities that were emphasised by colonial administrations.
Not only has this led to conflict in many countries, but it has also created a culture both of collective deprivation -- and entitlement -- an approach that discourages and even punishes individual enterprise and progress.
Yet another mistake has been the failure to focus on broad-based and sustainable growth to tackle poverty. State engineered redistribution has made little impact on mass poverty anywhere. On the contrary this has usually led to economic decline and the enrichment of an elite few who promote themselves as proxies for the poor.
Here in South Africa, we have learnt many lessons and are trying to avoid the same mistakes.
We are seeking to combine growth and redistribution, private and public enterprise.
We are aiming to achieve a non-racial society, the fulfillment of our former President, Nelson Mandela’s vision of a Rainbow Nation.
We have adopted a liberal Constitution and enacted many dozens of laws to give effect to its ideals.
But we are learning that there are limits to what the law can do.
There is no substitute for a rapidly expanding economy that provides new job opportunities; and an efficient public service that provides the means for individuals to seize those opportunities, particularly through quality education, health-care and security. We still fall far short, but I believe we know where we should be heading.
Yet we are still often tempted by short-cuts.
Perhaps because the challenges we face are so daunting, we tell ourselves that if we invent a new acronym, or write a new empowerment charter, we can avoid some of the back-breaking work that sustained progress will requires.
And, indeed, we have moved forward in some areas, such as economic growth.
But we have moved backward in other areas, such as the battle against HIV/Aids.
Ultimately, we cannot have a strong and prosperous society unless we have many millions of strong and prosperous individuals who can contribute to the success of their communities.
And individuals cannot emerge and thrive without the opportunities -- the tools and the encouragement -- to take personal responsibility for their lives.
Personal responsibility and development
Taking personal responsibility does not have to mean standing on your own against the world.
Individuals need skills and training, with loans and capital, and with safety nets in case they fail.
Governments, institutions and aid agencies all have a very important role to play in development.
But they certainly cannot play the only role.
The goal must be to help individuals become agents of their own destiny, and to avoid becoming permanently trapped as victims of the past, perpetual targets of charity, no matter how compassionate.
In South Africa, we have built an enormous welfare state apparatus since 1994, extending billions of rands in grants, such as child support grants, to millions of poor people. In all, almost 25% of our population receive a state welfare grant of some kind.
These grants, appropriately, put money in the pockets of destitute families and serve to cushion the ravages of absolute poverty. But as the emerging evidence is also beginning to show, grants can also encourage young girls to have babies instead of finishing school -- just at a time when evidence from around the world, especially China, demonstrates that the education of girls is one of the greatest drivers of broad-based economic growth and empowerment.
In fighting the HIV/Aids pandemic, South Africans have put pressure on multinational pharmaceutical giants to lower their drug prices. We have marched in the streets to demand that our government provide anti-retroviral treatment in public hospitals.
That is absolutely good and right.
But we have shied away from telling people, firmly and directly, that it is their personal responsibility to manage their sexual behaviour; that unless we confront and change our prevailing sexual culture, each individual one of us, we will never beat the HI Virus.
It is, of course, far easier for leaders to address themselves to groups, to a collective, to the aspirations of the so-called “masses” rather than to confront their voters with the challenges they face as individuals.
The collective approach is comforting, because it makes us feel that we are all in this together, and that none of us will be left behind.
But we soon find that the collective approach also prevents most of us from getting ahead, save for a well-connected few.
We stop thinking of success as the result of individual effort, and start believing that success depends on your relationship to those in power.
I was once the Minister of education in the Western Cape, and I found that successful schools in poor communities were those in which teachers and staff were present, punctual and prepared for work every day.
In failing schools, children and staff arrived late or not at all, because parents, teachers and administrators failed to take responsibility and set standards and expectations.
I became convinced that if we could make sure that every school in South Africa simply started on time, and if every child could get their full entitlement of 200 days of committed teaching, we could significantly improve education without spending an extra cent.
That is the value of personal responsibility.
What leaders must do is show, by example, that people can indeed take control of their lives. And we can do this by becoming more accountable, by taking greater personal responsibility for our choices and behaviour. By subjecting ourselves to all the checks and balances of the open society, from a strong parliamentary opposition, to an independent judiciary and a critical media. By preventing too much power being concentrated in too few hands.
When we, as leaders, begin to take personal responsibility for our failures and successes, we destroy many of the old excuses.
We help ourselves and others acknowledge the burden of the past, without falling into the trap of blaming history for all the problems of the present and the future.
We also dispel the idea that all criticism is motivated by racial, colonial, or political prejudice. We make change for the better truly possible.
Conclusion
And so as we gather here today and in the next two days, let us share our own experiences.
Let us discuss the best models for development from around the world—but let us remember that they will not make a bit of difference if governments lack the capacity to implement them.
Let us discuss the potential of new technology for information and communication—but let us remember that technology is of little use if young people do not have the basic literacy and numeracy skills to apply it.
Let us talk about the prospect of new philanthropy, public and private—but let us remember that money is of little use if it cannot be spent properly.
The greatest contribution that global leaders can make to the cause of development in Cape Town, South Africa and Africa as a whole is to speak plainly about our problems and shortcomings — and also to speak boldly about our potential.
For we do have the ability to uplift ourselves, to turn this continent into a success story. But the answer is not going to come to us through the World Cup, or through the G-8 Africa Action Plan, or even through African initiatives such as Nepad.
These are all good things—but they are not enough.
We need to get the basics right first. And the most basic foundation of success is individual and personal responsibility—right across society.
I have been particularly inspired recently by Thomas Friedman’s brilliant analysis of a world increasingly “flattened” by the wonders of information technology.
He sums the situation up thus: “What is unique about this era is that it is not built around countries, and it is not built around companies. It is built around individuals. The new “new” thing about this era of globalization is that the dynamic agent is the individual. (and then he added to his American audience:)…. Be advised, it is not going to be a bunch of white Western individuals. It is going to be individuals of all colours of the rainbow.”
Whatever we do as leaders, whatever we provide, must be aimed at ensuring that our fellow human beings, especially the poor, have real opportunities to become such individuals.
There can be no better point than this with which to begin a global Leaders Conference here on the Southern tip of Africa
I thank you.
MEDIA LIAISON: ROBERT MACDONALD 084 977 9888
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On behalf of the City of Cape Town | |
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2006/07/09
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