Publication: Office of Presidency Issued: Date: 2007-04-02 Reporter: Office of Presidency

Mbeki Address at the Opening of Fighting Corruption Forum
 

Office of the Presidency

2 April 2007

 
In September 2000, our country joined the rest of the international community of nations to adopt the United Nations Millennium Declaration and its eight Millennium Development Goals. We agreed to "spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected".

In this context, we too recognise the fact that while globalisation has created immense opportunities for growth and the accumulation of wealth for some *1, it has produced socio-economic conditions that make it difficult for many countries on our continent to meet their Millennium Development Goals. In this regard, the historic Millennium Summit Declaration proclaimed that:

We believe that the central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalisation becomes a positive force for all the world's people. For, while globalisation offers great opportunities, at present its benefits are very unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly distributed. We recognise that developing countries and countries with economies in transition face special difficulties in responding to this central challenge. Thus, only through broad and sustained efforts to create a shared future, based upon our common humanity in all its diversity, can globalisation be made fully inclusive and equitable.

Globalisation, unfettered and unchecked, creates an environment in which the wealthy and the powerful can prey on the vulnerable in all countries, but especially those of the South. Today and for the remainder of the time this Forum engage in discussion, we need to remind ourselves that corruption worsens this painful reality, and fundamentally hinders the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals.

Our own people have assumed that we agreed to the MDGs because we are determined to eradicate poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment, and that, consequently, we are equally committed to creating a non-racial, a non-sexist, prosperous and democratic society, in which the wealth created and generated is more equitably distributed especially to favour the poor, while guaranteeing the possibility to create more wealth *2.

Accordingly, they will be entitled to ask of us what progress we have made towards the realisation of the MDGs, and what we have done to fight corruption, which they, God's bits of wood, know from their experience undermines the possibility to realise these Goals.


They have a right to hold us accountable for any lack of progress with respect to the MDGs. They will be correct to inquire from us what we have agreed to do collectively to deliver on our vision of a corruption free world.

They will be correct to ask whether we are not continuing on an unproductive path as we devote an inordinate amount of time to the task to apportion blame for corruption *3, in many respects relying solely on perception projected as a scientific measure of corruption.

In his novel, Wizard Of The Crow, Ngugi wa Thiong'o writes of a Ruler and his three sycophantic ministers who had undergone plastic surgery to enlarge, respectively, their eyes, ears and tongue - the better to see, hear and denounce dissent. For his birthday one of the Ministers suggests the Marching To Heaven project - the building of a tower tall enough for the Ruler to be able regularly and easily to consult the God-on-high.

The government then tried to persuade the Global Bank to provide loans to fund the Marching To Heaven project. However, this initiative, which the Bank would otherwise have funded and earned its returns, suffered a setback because of opposition by the poor - and in particular by a group of militant women.

Reflecting on one of the central themes of the novel, Ngugi says that there is a way in which the West tries to imply that corruption, longing, starvation are peculiarly African - something to do with the biological character of the African. Of the developed world he says:

They wash their hands of what is happening, as if they have never had anything to do with the corruption, with massacres, with backwardness. My concern is with these colonial distortions. There are elements which are indigenous, but they are also external. You can't understand one without the other. The tendency is to leave out one of the elements in the equation. But an equation without all its elements is no longer an equation.

And therein lies a particular complexity and a shared complicity. The global discourse on corruption and anti-corruption must begin with the recognition that corruption distorts human values and fundamental freedoms in all countries *4. Everywhere it undermines democracy and good governance, accountability and transparency. It also seriously compromises the beneficial operation of economic markets, globally.

Corruption is a multifaceted, systemic and institutional global phenomenon involving all sectors of human society. It takes a variety of forms including theft, fraud, bribery, extortion, nepotism, patronage, and the laundering of illicit proceeds.

Corruption exists in both developed and developing countries and destroys the positive value systems of all societies and institutions. It replaces the concept and practice of human solidarity with the unfettered pursuit of individual gain, grafted onto the imperatives prescribed by free market ideology.

It emasculates development and democracy and undermines the fight against poverty by diverting key resources away from programmes designed to improve the quality of life especially of the poor, globally.

In many instances, the response to corruption has been to blame *5 either the bribe givers or the bribe takers rather than to understand its structural character as well as how it has embedded itself in relationships among individuals and organisations in both the developed and developing world.

Its measurement has become the subject of a sophisticated statistical modelling of perceptions rather than the greater effort we need to understand the concrete circumstances of its social origin, as well as achieve the systematic and sustained computation of the frequency and occurrences of specific forms and types of corruption.

The perceptions I have just mentioned shape the understanding of the powerful and influence the manner in which resources have been committed to poor countries, and donor assistance provided.

We have an obligation properly to understand and to fight corruption in all its forms and manifestations, as we seek to create a new world order that will be responsive to the needs and aspirations of the poor billions we represent.

The obvious need for us to respect our obligation to account to the people will require that we deal with all these issues honestly. We will also have to do this because our decisions will have to give real meaning to the corruption-free social compact we seek to create.

Accordingly, we need to seize the opportunity provided by this Global Forum constructively to strengthen the foundation we all need to carry out our historic task to rid our world of the ravages of poverty, disease and underdevelopment.

As we engage in the global fight against corruption, let us also be fully conscious of the need to work on all the varied tracks and affirm a clear role for the responsive democratic state in the fight to eradicate poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment.

As an affirmation of our resolve to defeat corruption and its outcomes, we must work together to deal with market related and market induced inequalities. We must provide equality of opportunity to all our citizens. We must work to develop social cohesion. We must promote peace and stability in our countries, as well as regionally and globally.

Again as an affirmation of our determined opposition to corruption, we must promote sustainable growth and development, as well as ecological and environmental sustainability. We must address the glaring unequal division of wealth at the global, regional and national levels.

All this we must do with the necessary sense of urgency and a common resolve to act together to end the circumstance that billions across the globe are still condemned to lead lives that are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

On behalf of our government, the people of South Africa, and in my own name *6, I wish the Global Forum against Corruption success in its deliberations.

Thank you.

With acknowledgement to the Office of the Presidency.


*1       Accumulation of wealth for some among us.


*2      An ideal reality is one where the capable create more wealth and distribute some of it to those less capable and more poor.

In South Africa the actual reality is where the capable create more wealth and distribute most of it to those less capable, but more wealthy. The poor get something, but not a lot.


*3      It is almost impossible to devote an inordinate amount of time to the task of apportioning blame for corruption.


*4      Like charity, fighting corruption starts at home.


*5      In certain instances, the response to corruption has been to blame the Fishers of Corrupt Men.


*6      To be a member of the Fishers of Corrupt Men, one has to first catch at least one.

So far Thabo has been busy making the work of the Fishers of Corrupt Men harder and those of the Corrupt Men easier.

I think that all indications are that Thabo is a member of the Corrupt Men.

In fact, Thabo would rather the United Kingdom's Serious Fraud Office treat South Africa like Saudi Arabia, one of the most corrupt countries in the second world.