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ADDRESS DELIVERED BY HIS
EXCELLENCY PRESIDENT R.G. MUGABE AT THE UNITED NATIONS MILLENNIUM SUMMIT, NEW
YORK, SEPTEMBER 8, 2000
Co-chairpersons of the Millennium summit, Distinguished delegates, We are gathered here to observe the New Millennium whose arrival we have been privileged to witness. I want to begin by asking whether this passage of time is a marker of qualitative change in the human condition and contact or whether it is human change in qualitative terms. Has the passage of time transported us all into a new commonwealth of diverse yet truly united peoples of the world living in one village? Are all the peoples of the world truly in the 21st Century by the way they live? Sadly, most of us in Africa and the developing world are stuck in problems dating back to the days of slavery and colonialism. We remain burdened with the unfinished business of the 20th century, including even the problem the "colourline". In Zimbabwe, and only because of the colourline arising from British colonialism, 70 percent of the best arable land is owned by less than one percent of the population who happen to be white, while the black majority are congested on barren land. We have sought to redress this inequity through a land reform and resettlement programme that will effect economic and social justice and this in terms of our constitution and laws. But what has been the response from former imperialist quarters? Their response has been staggering beyond description. My country, my Government, my Party and my own person have been labelled "land grabbers", demonised, reviled and threatened with sanctions in the face of accusations of reverse-racism. W.B. Du Bois must be turning in his grave for having thought the problem of the "colourline" would disappear with the 20th century. But our conscience of course remains clear. We will not go back. We shall continue to effect economic and social justice for all our people without fear or favour. Mr President, our world has shrunk into a global village, and time, place and distance continue to shrink inexorably by the day. The biggest challenge for us still relates not only to cyberspace, nor to the great super highway responsible for shrinking our world, but demands of us an answer to the age-old question, "who is my neighbour?" Whichever part of the globe we find ourselves in, the question should be asked whether the man, the woman, the country, the region and the continent on my doorstep is neighbourly and whether the culture or civilisation of my neighbour truly coincides and blends with mine to enable us to have peaceful and friendly co-existence. The question my compatriots and I face in Zimbabwe, as put to us by our peasants, is whether a globalised environment will enable them to have a patch of land to till and whether the ugly anomaly which history gave them in respect of land ownership shall be resolved in order to enlarge their own freedom so they can begin to be like the rest of mankind. They ask why a predatory political economy that the United Nations rejected and helped fight in the 1960s, throughout the 70s and in the 80s now has once again found so many globalised protectors. They want to understand why a system which is at the centre of poverty; at the centre of race relations; at the centre of denying developing countries their sense of sovereignty and democracy, is made to appear so right, so just, and fair. We are either makers of a new world based on new democratic principles of economic and social justice, or we remain in the old world with some conquering nations still set on old agendas of shrinking the rights of smaller nations as they enlarge their own conquests, sanctifying this under the cover of good governance, transparency, anti-corruption, democracy, human rights and digital technology. We anticipate the risk of importing the spirit and contradictions of the Victorian era of slavery and colonialism into the new millennium and the New World Order. We also risk accepting the hypocrisy hidden in the demand for the democratic reform of national governments and institutions in developing countries while doing nothing to reform the undemocratic structures and practices of international bodies such as the Bretton Woods institutions and indeed the United Nations itself. Co-Chairpersons, if the new millennium, like the last, remains an age of hegemonic empires and conquerors doing the same old things in new technological ways; remains the age of the master race; of the master economy and master state, then I am afraid we in developing countries will have to stand up as a matter of principle and say, "no, not again!" The time has come for the practise of political and economic dominance of poor nations by the rich to give way to the birth of a new inter-dependent world that recognises and respects the diversity and dignity of all cultures and civilisations. In this connection, I am pleased that the United Nations has declared 2001 as the "Year of Dialogue between Civilisations." I thank you. The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
