Hon Speaker and hon Members of Parliament, Kofi Annan, the former United Nations Secretary-General, declared that "good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development".
According to the United Nations Development Programme, the generic principles that enshrine good governance are democracy, effective public sector institutions, the rule of law, a strong and popular people's participation in decision-making and management of public resources for the benefit of all.
The uprisings in what was later to be dubbed the Arab Spring echoed the absence of all these factors in the Middle East and North African states. Many of these states lacked popular democratic participation of the people in electing their leaders into powerful political positions, the role being taken by army generals or the royal elite.
In some instances, the role of the public sector was relegated to servicing the ruling and middle classes of the concerned countries rather than working for the collective development of all the people.
Many of the countries opened their doors to imperial plunder by their former colonies because of their precolonial history. The result of this, given this scramble for survival and human development, were foreign financed civil wars or stage-managed elections in order to remove the unelected and corrupt classes throughout the region, every decade, since the 1930s.
The absence of strong popular participation by the people through their own mass formations resulted in the silent crushing of any political dissent and the exile of agitators of democracy, as was the case in Egypt and Algeria.
The political conservatism in this region was also supported by a regional block of the Arab League, which offered inter-regional solidarity as it relates to their class interests, economic and political needs and isolation, which was in most instances at the whim and demand of the United States and the European Union countries. Most of these economies, with an abundance of oil reserves, became the outposts of energy. Hungry Western and Northern economies also served as protectorates for Israel against all those who sought to create a collective Arab state and liberate, in particular, the people of Palestine from its occupation. They, like thirsty nomads, swallowed every neoliberal prescription from the International Monetary Fund, IMF, and the World Bank as they privatised key sectors of industry and opened their markets to foreign plunder.
The region will forever remain the jewel of the North and the West as long as its location allows both powers the will to continue with their global domination.
Who would have known that what was initially a random killing of a young educated vendor, Khaled Said, by hired thugs on the payroll of Egyptian police mid last year, would have triggered public protests and ultimately the overthrow of long-serving dictators in Egypt and Tunisia, and sustained mass pressure in Syria, Jordan, Morocco and Bahrain?
The opening of the Facebook account, aptly titled, "We are all Khaled Said", by Wael Ghonim, a Google executive based in Dubai, suddenly erupted into massive political interests and action in both Tunisia and Egypt, and ultimately the entire Middle East and North Africa were covered with unrest. This reaction was not merely a revenge for Said's death or adventure to realise what many had professed on the social network. Many of the protestors were responding to the failure of economic policies and the global economic crisis. There were also collective victims of unrepentant power mongers who sought to hand over power from generation to generation.
Although they identified themselves with Khaled, they also borrowed the past civil and anticolonial war battle cries for change. They were also determined in their calls for democracy, liberty and economic freedom.
Although we have seen three heads of state being crushed, two by popular uprisings and one through intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Nato, forces in Libya, others such as Morocco, Jordan and Bahrain are holding on for dear life to power, assisted openly by the United States, France and Britain.
It is well known that the three countries' foreign policies are aimed at defending any government that seeks to protect its own political and economic interests. That is why, for instance, Mubarak and Ben Ali were not removed five or ten years earlier, when they assumed office, but stayed in office because they were protected by those who protected their economic and political interests.
Unlike governments whose economic and political power are threatened, such as in Chile with Allende, Guatemala's with Arbeniz, Haiti's Aristide and several others, including Cuba's Castro and Venezuela's Chavez, many people from the Western and Northern powers insisted on removing all these people when they threatened economic or political stability in those regions.
We saw, for instance, the rise of Suharto in Indonesia, the rise of Pinochet in Chile, army generals in Argentina and various other dictatorships that were facilitated by Western and Northern powers. This became the case even in the intervention of Nato forces with regard to the Middle East and North Africa.
Whilst police killed thousands of protesters in Egypt, Morocco or Bahrain, in Libya the so-called armed rebels or so-called armed civil protestors were assisted by Nato forces in order to find Gaddafi dead or alive. This is consistent, in our view, with the foreign policies of both the North and the West in ensuring that they only protect those who are willing and able to protect their economic hold in those particular regions.
US President, Barack Obama, issued various statements, including a declaration of war against Gaddafi and an ultimatum for his removal or resignation. The International Criminal Court, ICC, pronounced that they would prosecute him. Whereas in the case, for instance, of Mubarak, there is no mention of the ICC or expropriation of his wealth, which was in Britain, and of any external intervention in terms of his prosecution. These are the inconsistencies which we are talking about with regard to interventions and impositions of good governance in that particular area of the world.
One of the most interesting and striking examples is how the multinationals intervened actively to aid the rebels in Libya, whereas some of the formalised powers such as France openly assisted countries such as Egypt, Bahrain and Morocco to ensure that they quell the protests which were there in their particular countries.
Of course, people rose up because they were tired of dictators who stayed in office for 40 years, used the resources of their economies for their own personal accumulation, elected their own predecessors, quashed or crushed any popular movements, disrespected the law and ensured that no public institutions served the will of the people. Unlike in many instances in countries where civil societies are allowed to be heard, where NGOs can freely express themselves, where trade unions go to the streets and protest for wage demands or formal worker rights, where the bourgeoisie or the business people are allowed to go on investment strikes and where all these rights are enshrined, as in South Africa, these particular rights were not accorded. We applaud the revolts by people in those areas for having removed all those dictators.
We should completely condemn any external intervention, particularly by imperialist forces whose intentions are to protect their own interests, as was the case in Libya. South Africa's policy of nonintervention includes and encourages discussions or a discourse whereby all parties involved, in all those countries, engage and shape the future of their own countries.
What we see now, unfortunately, may be a case in which the forces that united behind Khaled Said may not be the actual benefactors of the democratic dispensation in Egypt, Tunisia and the entire Middle East. Those are some of the things in which we believe our government needs to play a role in ensuring that the actual people, such as the workers, the poor and the general populace in those countries, become the benefactors of a democratic dispensation, that those countries do not remain the outposts for Northern and Western powers as they continue with their global dominance.
Therefore, in our view, calls against authoritarianism and dictatorship, including calls for democracy and good governance, will become nothing for the peoples of that region if all these things that we said are still continuing.
What are the lessons for us? Firstly, there is a lesson in terms of our South African foreign policy. We have maintained a policy of nonintervention where there are conflicts and we have sought to export the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, Codesa, model of discussions amongst warring parties. When Britain's finger was itching to pull the trigger on Zimbabwe and that of France on Ivory Coast, we offered to mediate and negotiate and even presented a platform for democratic prosperity.
Where these were not ignored, years of facilitation ultimately yielded fruits, as was the case in Sudan. But in instances where the former colonisers lost their patience, they deployed skilled military interventions, as was the case with Ivory Coast and Libya.
Secondly, as a country we have to protect the institutions that insulate our sustained democracy. We have just held successful local government elections, wherein all citizens have the right to vote for their local representatives and institutions such as the Constitutional Court whose intentions are to protect and advance the interests of our democracy.
What we have seen in the past were portunistic attacks, for instance, on the ANC or any of its allies when they expressed politically objective objections to some of the rulings, for instance, of the courts. But today we hear people standing on the pulpits of the moral high ground, wanting to declare themselves as the sole criticisers of, for instance, Judge Mogoeng Mogoeng, whatever his strengths or weaknesses are. [Applause.] We are not afforded the opportunity and right to say what we think as it relates, for instance, to judges and magistrates and their judgement. Many of them have made far worse judgements compared to Judge Mogoeng Mogoeng. [Applause.] But here in South Africa, we have the right to do that.
As we have seen in all those Middle Eastern countries, and as the editorial of the New Left Review declared, and I quote:
Everything began with the death in despair of a pauperised vegetable vendor, in a small provincial town in the hinterland of Tunisia. Beneath the commotion now shaking the Arab world have been volcanic social pressures: polarisation of incomes, rising food prices, lack of dwellings, massive unemployment of educated and uneducated youth, amid a demographic pyramid without parallel in the world.
If we do not deal with the unemployment crisis amongst young people, we may see what is happening in the Middle East erupting in our own country. If young people remain without jobs, if the economic ownership and control of our country is untransformed, if the majority continues to be excluded - 6% of white males are still at the helm of our economy - we will see what is happening in the Middle East. Thank you very much. [Time expired.] [Applause.]