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 Do not be alarmed. The speech is not as long as it seems,
although the translation will take more of our time. I was trying to
figure out the impression that I would have upon arrival at this
parliament. What could I, and what should I, say that would deserve your
interest and your attention, since you have so kindly gathered here to
listen to my words.
What I bring here with me, assisted by some data, is
therefore just the work of my imagination. Like a love letter addressed to
a sweetheart thousands of miles away, even though you don’t know how she
feels, what she wants to hear, and not even what her face looks like.
For me a speech is just an honest and intimate
conversation. That is why I got into the habit of talking to, or
establishing a dialogue with, my interlocutors, looking at their faces and
trying to persuade them of what I am saying.
If at any time I put aside the paper to add a few
things that cross my mind while inspired by some ideas, I hope that those
who do not have earphones, the organizers, or the people in charge of
seeing to the solemnity and efficiency of this event will understand.
I think about this country and I think about its
history. I see in my mind all kinds of developments, events, facts, data,
realities that reflect the enormous responsibility and the colossal
historical task implicit in creating the new South Africa that you aspire
to.
I hope that my presence here will leave, as the sole
essential memory, our fervent and sincere wishes to support the enormous
efforts that you are making in order to heal the deep wounds that for many
centuries have remained open.
This promising country, which was yesterday the target
of isolation and universal condemnation, can tomorrow be an example of
fraternity and justice. The timely presence, at the precise moment, of a
leader of exceptional human and political qualities makes it possible.
That man was there, in the dark corners of a jail. He was much more than a
political prisoner, sentenced for life; he was a prophet of politics who
is today acknowledged even by those who hated and ruthlessly punished him
in the past.
Nelson Mandela will not go down in history for the 27
consecutive years that he had lived imprisoned without ever renouncing his
ideas. He will go down in history because he was able to draw from his
soul all poison accumulated by such an unjust punishment. He will be
remembered for his generosity and for his wisdom at the time of an already
uncontainable victory, when he knew how to lead so brilliantly his
self-sacrificing and heroic people, aware that the new South Africa would
never be built on foundations of hatred and revenge.
There are still today two South
Africas, which ought not be called the
“White” one and the “Black” one; that terminology should forever
be dropped if a multiracial and united country is to be created. I would
rather put it this way: two South Africas — the rich and the poor —
one and the other. One where an average family receives 12 times the
income of the other; one where the children who die before their first
year of life are 13 per 1,000 and the other where those who die are 57 per
1,000; one in which life expectancy is 73 years, the other in which it is
only 56 years; one where 100 percent of the people know how to read and
write, another where illiteracy is more than 50 percent; one with almost
full employment, another where 45 percent are unemployed; one where 12
percent of the population own almost 90 percent of the land, the other
where almost 80 percent of the inhabitants own less than 10 percent of it;
one that has accumulated almost all the technical and managerial
knowledge, the other doomed to inexperience and ignorance; one that enjoys
well-being and freedom, the other having been able to conquer freedom but
without well-being.
Such a dreadful legacy cannot be changed overnight.
There is absolutely nothing to be gained by disrupting the production
system or wasting the considerable material and technical wealth, as well
as the productive experience created by the workers’ noble hands under a
criminal and unjust system that was virtual slavery. Perhaps one of the
most difficult tasks of human society is to carry forward social change in
an orderly, gradual and peaceful way, so that such wealth could contribute
to the optimal benefit of the South African people. In the opinion of this
daring guest, whom you have invited here to say a few words, that is the
greatest challenge that South Africa is facing today.
I reject demagogy. I would never say a word here to incite discontent,
much less to win applause or to please the ears of millions of South
Africans who are rightly hurting today because the paradise of equal
opportunities for all and the justice that they dreamed of during the long
years of struggle have not yet been attained in their country.
There are many nations with similar social and economic
problems that are the result of conquest, colonization and an unbearable
disparity in the distribution of wealth; but in no place other than here
has the struggle for respect for human dignity kindled so much hope. The
contradiction between hopes, possibilities and priorities is not only a
South African domestic affair, but something that is being debated, and
that will still continue to be debated, amongst the honest theoreticians
of many countries.
The system of conquest, colonization, slavery, extermination of the
indigenous populations and looting of their natural resources in past
centuries has had dreadful consequences for the overwhelming majority of
the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Seventy million Indians were exterminated in the whole
of the American hemisphere due to the ruthless exploitation, slave labor,
imported diseases or the sharp edge of the conquerors’ swords.
Twelve million Africans were violently taken from their villages, from
their homes and transported to the new continent, all shackled in chains,
to work as slaves on the plantations; and that does not include the many
millions who drowned or died during the crossing.
Actually, apartheid was universal, and it lasted for
centuries. For our hemisphere, the slaves were the first to revolt, in one
way or another, against colonial domination in the very early stages of
the 16th century. Major revolts in Jamaica, Barbados and other countries
took place in the first decades of the 18th century, long before the
revolt of the U.S. slaves. The slaves in Haiti created the first republic
in Latin America. Some years later heroic and massive slave revolts also
took place in Cuba. The African slaves were the ones who pointed the way
to freedom on that continent. In the course of history many crimes have
been committed by the Christian and civilized West, as they like to call
themselves, and those who created and applied the apartheid system in
South Africa, who must carry the full burden of the guilt.
The political miracle of unity, reconciliation and peace under the
leadership of Nelson Mandela will perhaps become an unprecedented example
in history.
It could be said that there were never so many who
wished so much for so few. You, South African citizens and leaders of all
parties and of all ethnic origins, are those few for whom all the
inhabitants of this planet wish so much and from whom all of us expect so
much, from a political and human point of view.
One idea may lead to another: from the new South Africa, the hopes for a
new Africa. Economically, South Africa is, from the industrial,
agricultural, technological and scientific points of view, the most
developed country on the African continent. Its mineral and energy
resources are boundless, in many cases exceeding those in all other
countries in the world. Today South Africa produces 50 percent of the
electricity of this continent, 85 percent of the steel and 97 percent of
the coal. It transports 69 percent of all rail cargo; it has 32 percent of
all the motor vehicles and 45 percent of the paved roads. The rest of
Africa is also immensely rich in natural resources. There is the enormous
potential and virgin talent of its children, their extraordinary courage
and intelligence, their capacity to assimilate the most complex know-ledge
in science and technology. We know this very well because we have been
with them; we had the privilege of fighting, together with them, for
freedom or for peaceful reconstruction.
Cuba is just a small island next to a very powerful
neighbor, but 26,294 professionals and technicians graduated in our
education centers and 5,850 students coming from different African
countries have been trained there. A total of 80,524 Cuban civilians,
among them 24,714 doctors, dentists, nurses and health workers, together
with tens of thousands of teachers, engineers and other professionals and
skilled workers, have cooperated by rendering international services of
different kinds in Africa. In over 30 years, 381,432 soldiers and officers
have been on duty or have fought together with African soldiers and
officers on this continent for national independence or against foreign
aggression. It is a figure that rises to 461,956 in a brief historical
period. From the African land in which they worked and fought, voluntarily
and selflessly, they returned to Cuba with only the remains of their
fallen comrades and the honor of having fulfilled their duty.
That is why we know and value the human qualities of
the children of Africa much more than those who for centuries colonized
and exploited this continent.
With deep, tearing pain we witness today their
fratricidal wars and their economic underdevelopment, their poverty, their
famines, their lack of hospitals and schools, the lack of communications.
With astonishment we note that Manhattan or Tokyo have more telephones
than the whole of Africa together.
The deserts are expanding, the forests disappear, and
the soil is subject to erosion. And something awful: old and new diseases
— malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, Ebola, parasites and
treatable infectious diseases — are all decimating its population.
Infant mortality shows record-high indexes when compared with those of the
rest of the world; also the rate of mothers who die during childbirth; and
in some countries, life expectancy is beginning to decrease.
The awful HIV is expanding in geometrical proportions.
When I say that whole nations in Africa are at risk of disappearing, it is
not an overstatement, and you know it. Each infected person would have to
pay $10,000 a year in medication only to survive, while the health budgets
can hardly allocate $10 to spend on each person’s health. At present
prices, $250 billion would have to be invested each year in Africa only to
fight AIDS. Owing to this, nine out of every 10 persons dying from AIDS in
the world die in Africa.
Can the world contemplate this catastrophe with
indifference? Can humanity, with its amazing scientific advances, confront
this situation or not? Why go on talking to us about macroeconomic indexes
and other eternal lies, prescriptions and more prescriptions of the IMF
and the World Trade Organization, about the miraculous virtues of the
blind law of the market and the wonders of neoliberal globalization? Why
is it that these realities are not taken for what they are? Why not seek
other formulas and admit that humankind is able to organize our lives and
our destiny in a more rational and humane manner?
An avoidable and deep economic crisis, perhaps the
worst in history, is threatening all of us today. In the world, which has
become an enormous casino, speculative operations with a value of $1.5
trillion, which bear no relation to any real economy, are carried out
every day. Never before has world economic history seen a phenomenon
similar to this one.
The shares on the stock exchange markets of the United
States have been escalating to the point of absurdity. It was only an
historical privilege, associated with a set of factors that made it
possible for a wealthy nation to become the world issuer of reserve
currency from the reserve banks in every country. Their treasury bonds are
the last safe haven for those fearful investors confronting any economic
crisis.
When I said that the shares on the stock exchange
markets have been escalating to the point of absurdity, I should have
said: The prices of the shares on the stock exchange markets of the United
States have been escalating to the point of absurdity.
The dollar stopped having gold backing when that
country unilaterally suppressed the exchange rates established in Bretton
Woods. As in the dreams of alchemists in the middle ages, paper has been
turned into gold. Ever since then the value of the reserve world currency
has simply become a matter of confidence. Wars like the one in Vietnam, at
the cost of $500 billion, paved the way for this enormous deceit. To that
should be added the colossal rearmament, which raised the public debt of
the United States from $700 billion to $2.5 trillion in only eight years.
So money became a fiction. The values no longer had a
real and material basis. Nine trillion dollars were purchased by U.S.
investors in recent years through the simple mechanism of the unbridled
multiplication of the stock prices in their markets. Thus, we find the
colossal growth of transnational corporate investments in the world and in
their own country. At the same time as they have had unrestrained growth
in domestic consumption, they have been artificially feeding an economy
that seemed to grow and grow without inflation and without crisis. Sooner
or later the world would have to pay the price.
The most prosperous nations of Southeast Asia have been
ruined. Japan, the second most significant world economy, can no longer
stop a recession. The yen keeps losing value. The yuan is being sustained
with great sacrifice by China, whose high growth will be reduced this year
to less than eight percent, a figure dangerously close to the tolerable
limit for a country that is conducting a speedy, radical reform and
extraordinary rationalization of the labor force in its productive
enterprises. The Asian crisis is coming back. The economic catastrophe in
Russia is emerging with the greatest economic and social failure in
history — trying to build capitalism in that country. All this is
despite the enormous financial assistance and the recommendations and
recipes supplied by the best minds in the West. Perhaps, at this moment,
the greatest political risk lies in the situation created in a state that
owns thousands of nuclear warheads, a state in which the operators of the
strategic missiles have not been paid their salaries for five months.
The stock exchanges of Latin America have lost over 40
percent of their share value in only a few months; in Russia they have
lost 75 percent. This phenomenon tends to spread and become universal. The
basic commodities of many countries, such as copper, nickel, aluminum,
petroleum and many others, have lately been decreasing in price by 50
percent.
The stock exchange of the United States is already
shaking. As you know, they just had what they call a “Black Tuesday.”
I don’t know why they call it “black.” Actually it is has been
“white Tuesday.” No one knows when and how the general panic will be
unleashed. Could anyone, at this point, be certain that there will not be
a repetition of the 1929 crash? It is just that between then and now there
is an enormous difference. In 1929 there were not $1.5 trillion involved
in speculative operations and only three percent of the U.S. population
had shares in the stock exchange. Today, 50 percent of the population of
the United States has its savings and its pension funds invested in shares
in those stock exchanges. This is not a fabrication of mine. It is not a
fantasy — just read the news. If you wish, add to this the fact that the
new world order is destroying, faster than before, the natural environment
in which we, the six billion inhabitants of the planet, live at present,
and on which 10 billion inhabitants will have to live in another 50 years.
I have discharged my duty. I have just told you what
crossed my mind at an altitude of 10,000 meters. Please don’t ask me
about solutions. I am not a prophet. I only know that great crises have
always delivered great solutions.
I trust the minds of peoples and of humankind. I trust
the need of humanity to survive. I trust that you, distinguished and
patient members of this parliament, will think about this subject. I trust
that you will understand that this is not a matter of ideology, race,
color, personal income or social class. It is rather, for all of us
sailing in the same boat, a matter of life or death. Let us be more
generous, more jointly responsible, more humane. Let South Africa become a
model of a more just, more humane, future world. If you can achieve it,
all of us will be able to.
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Republic of Cuba
