“Remembering Kader Asmal” - Address at the University of Johannesburg
Soweto, South Africa, 17th November 2014
It is a great honour to be here with you today in Soweto, a place which was, for so much of my lifetime, shorthand for the gross unfairness and inequality of the old South Africa. It is truly wonderful to be here and I want to thank you for the invitation to come and speak to you at the Soweto Campus of the University of Johannesburg.
I must express my sincere thanks to the Vice Chancellor, Professor Rensburg for welcoming me to this marvellous campus. I would also like to thank Doctor Mekgwe, Executive Director for Internationalisation, and Professor Landsberg, as well as their staff, for their assistance in organising today’s address. Additionally I would like to thank Doctor Manyaka for his efforts in coordinating the logistics and other matters. And I would like to express my thanks to the student leaders at the campus who have supported the efforts of the university staff to make today’s event happen.
The great novelist V.S. Naipaul is, as a grandson of an Indian immigrant born in Trinidad, an astute observer of the wider post-colonial conversation to which Ireland, like South Africa, has contributed a distinctive voice. In his powerful novel set in Africa,A Bend in the River, he opens by stating:
“The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”
This is a bleak and challenging statement, written in the late 1970s, when there was much to feel bleak about here on this continent and especially in South Africa. At one level Naipaul is of course right, the world is what it is. But perhaps the key point – and I can think of nowhere better than Soweto to make this observation – is that people can change this: we can change our world; we can shape it and make it better, more equal and more just.
Men and women, here in Soweto and in towns and villages all over this country, many of which like Sharpeville are burnt into our moral memory, fought for a free South Africa, a fairer, a more equitable, a more just South Africa. They, to use Naipaul’s idiom, did not allow themselves to be treated as nothing; they stood up for their personal worth, their rights and their dignity, often paying a heavy price.
I think therefore that it is highly appropriate here in this historic place, which has borne witness to some of the most challenging and significant events in recent South African history, to reflect on 20 years of democracy and freedom and the decades of struggle that preceded it.
Such reflection also has relevance and great significance for Ireland, as we observe a decade of commemoration, marking the events from 1911-1921, that included the First World War – a war which brought death and destruction to Europe and Africa –, and our own struggle for self-determination, leading to the emergence of an independent Ireland, just over 90 years ago.
The story of the Irish and their contribution to South Africa is as rich as it is complex – it is a human story of sacrifice and contradiction. Today, there are more than 30,000 Irish citizens living in South Africa, some of whom are recent arrivals. There are many more who can trace their ancestry back much further. It is a story of colonised and coloniser, of those seeking riches and those providing succour and education to all. It is a story of struggle and of the fight for freedom in Ireland and South Africa.
In 1814, the Cape Colony was ceded by the Dutch to the British and this period saw the earliest Irish arrivals as part either of the colonial administration or army. Ireland itself had been formally joined to the United Kingdom in 1801 though in effect having been ruled, at least in part, as a colony since the 12th century.
The history of the Irish in South Africa might well have been different had The Neptune, been allowed to disembark in Table Bay in 1849. The ship was carrying some 300 prisoners, many of whom were Irish political prisoners who had taken part in a failed rebellion against British rule the previous year. The intention had been to establish a penal colony in the Cape. However, following a furious campaign by residents of the Cape, the plan was abandoned and, instead, The Neptune sailed on to Van Diemen’s Land, or Tasmania.
A rather different cohort of Irish men and women was to make their mark in this country. It has often been said that our missionaries have been Ambassadors for Ireland long before Ireland became an independent state. This is especially true in Africa. Wherever they have been, in addition to providing for spiritual needs, they have built schools and clinics in some of the most challenging of environments.
The first Irish missionary whose action in South Africa has been documented was Bishop Patrick Griffith, a Jesuit originally from Limerick, the county of my birth, who arrived in Cape Town in 1838. The following year, he purchased the site on which St Mary’s Cathedral now stands. From there, Irish missionaries moved to other parts of the Western Cape and to Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape. With the discovery of gold and diamonds there was further expansion to Johannesburg and Kimberley.
Today, there are still large numbers of Irish priests and nuns all over South Africa. Most were here throughout the years of struggle, when they continued to provide healthcare and education in some of the most disadvantaged and oppressed communities. Descendants of Irish immigrants have also played a significant role in the religious life of South Africa and in the struggle against apartheid. Foremost of these is the late Archbishop of Durban, Denis Hurley, who in another connection of sorts, lived on Robben Island as a young boy, where his father was stationed as lighthouse keeper.
The discovery of gold and diamonds saw a new wave of immigration to South Africa and it should be no surprise that some 6,000 Irish came to seek their fortunes here. That number included many who would go on to campaign for Irish independence from Britain, including Arthur Griffith and John McBride.
During the Anglo-Boer wars, there was much sympathy from Irish nationalists for the Boer cause, with many seeing the Boer campaign as a proxy for their own campaign for home rule for Ireland. Two units of an Irish Brigade, numbering about 600 men, fought with the Boer armies. At the same time, underlining the complexities of the period, a much greater number of Irish, some 30,000, were fighting in the British Army.
Later, relations between our nations were friendly in the first half of the 20th century. The iniquities of the apartheid system introduced in 1948 did not have an immediate impact on Irish attitudes towards South Africa. But opinions began to harden, especially after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. The Rivonia trial in 1963 and 1964 led to a campaign in Ireland for the release of political prisoners in South Africa. The shift in attitudes took on real momentum in 1964, with the foundation of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement by my good friend, the late Kader Asmal.
Professor Asmal made a huge contribution to human rights in Ireland, North and South. He played an important part in the formation of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland and he was one of the founders of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties in 1976. He was a professor of law for 27 years at Trinity College in Dublin, specialising in human rights, international law, and labour law.
Kader, with his wife Louise, was at the heart of the struggle against apartheid and he galvanised opinion in Ireland. They garnered support from across the political spectrum and beyond. It was often a struggle, managed out of the Asmal household, and underpinned by dedicated volunteers who campaigned to isolate apartheid South Africa at all levels, including sporting and cultural.
There was early success with these campaigns as a succession of Irish playwrights refused to allow their work to be performed in South Africa. The Springbok rugby tour to Ireland in 1970 was a pivotal moment, building huge momentum in our country, and intersecting with our own new sense of determination on civil rights in Northern Ireland. While the matches went ahead, the tour was marked by huge protests against the Springbok (and indeed Irish) teams for taking part, and against the apartheid regime.
The struggle against apartheid around the world, including Ireland, was often epitomised by protests against such tours by Springbok teams in defiance of the international community’s efforts to isolate South African international teams. Post-apartheid, rugby has become a great connection between our two countries with the mighty Springbok being very welcome and indeed formidable visitors to Ireland. Though not, perhaps, as formidable to us as they once were!
For people of my generation, the struggle against apartheid was the great defining moral argument of the second half the 20th century, an issue which united people from Dublin to Durban. Having seen peace return to Europe and the birth of what we know today as the European Union, apartheid seemed to us one of the great obscenities facing the world. The utterly repugnant idea that one’s race should predetermine one’s prospects in life needed to be fought.
I want to tell one short story to illustrate just what the impact of this injustice had in my own country on one small group of people in Ireland. In July 1984, just over thirty years ago, a group of workers, mainly young women, in a supermarket in Ireland, refused to handle produce imported from South Africa. For this refusal, they were suspended, thus marking the beginning of what would be a three-year battle by twelve determined and brave workers. Their principled stance eventually led our government to ban South African goods from being sold in Ireland, and this ban remained in place until the end of the apartheid regime.
By their action, the strikers, ordinary working women, highlighted the injustice of life in South Africa for the great majority of our people, and forced the government to act. They thereby illustrated a point perhaps most eloquently made by the famous Irish statesman and philosopher, Edmund Burke, over two hundred years ago:
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he or she who did nothing because they could only do a little.”
This is the point that those striking supermarket workers were making. The actions of millions more around the world to confront the moral outrage that was apartheid, those who marched, or boycotted rugby games, or refused to buy South African goods, all in their own way contributed to the worldwide wave of change and transformation that eventually helped South Africans to liberate themselves.
Kader Asmal’s contribution went beyond fighting the good fight in Ireland. He was also preparing to build a new South Africa. As a member of the ANC’s Constitutional Committee, along with Albie Sachs, who went on to become a Justice of the Constitutional Court, he drafted the Bill of Rights in the kitchen of his home in Foxrock, Dublin, in 1988.
The Bill of Rights, which was subsequently incorporated into the new South African Constitution was a truly seminal document and was an essential element in the transition to democracy and the drafting of a new Constitution.
Kader was not finished there and on returning home to South Africa, he became Minister for Water Affairs in South Africa’s first democratic government, and later Minister for Education. Among his initiatives was the launching in 2001 of the South African History Project, “to promote and enhance the conditions and status of the learning and teaching of history in the South African schooling system, with the goal of restoring its material position and intellectual purchase in the classroom.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has remarked that “what we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.” Nevertheless, rightly, Professor Asmal ensured the central role of history in the school curriculum.
I am delighted that the Irish Government has honoured the contribution that Kader has made to Ireland and South Africa by establishing the Kader Asmal Fellowship Programme. Each year, we intend to send ten students to Ireland to pursue master’s level studies in the areas of business management, food science, agriculture and nutrition, international development and public administration.
As part of this Programme, and in particular recognition of Kader’s contribution to law, we have, in cooperation with the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, reserved one fellowship in international law at Kader Asmal’s old university, Trinity College Dublin. Applications for the 2015-16 academic year are, I believe, already open. I encourage and challenge students here to look at the Programme and to consider studying with us in Ireland.
I am of course in South Africa for the second time in twelve months. The last time was to honour the giant among men, Nelson Mandela, a man whose personal story of sacrifice and statesmanship remains one of the most powerful and moving of the 20thcentury. I was privileged, along with those brave women who risked their livelihoods to strike against apartheid, to attend Nelson Mandela’s funeral here last year in the company of so many world leaders and to pay tribute to the outstanding international statesman of our generation. Nelson Mandela belongs to South Africa but also to the world, to all people fighting against injustice. And he truly belongs to the ages.
Mandela and those who fought apartheid and created your new state also helped us in ending the violent sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. All sides learned lessons from your experience, often in private, unannounced visits to your country, where enemies could talk and begin to explore pathways to peace and justice.
In 2000, Cyril Ramaphosa former Secretary General of the ANC and now Deputy President, together with Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland, were appointed to work on weapons decommissioning in Northern Ireland. This process was crucial to building trust between the two communities in Northern Ireland.
It was an important step on the path to the decommissioning of the Provisional IRA and the subsequent establishment of the devolved power sharing institutions in Northern Ireland, that continue to provide peace and stability there. We remain extremely grateful for Mr Ramaphosa’s personal contribution to the Northern Ireland Peace Process – but also to the powerful example of reconciliation provided by your leaders and your people.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first democratic elections in South Africa and the subsequent establishment of its first freely elected government under President Nelson Mandela. Since the advent of democracy in South Africa, Ireland has been a strong supporter of the process of transformation. In 1994, Irish Aid, the overseas development agency of the Government of Ireland, began a programme of support to South Africa that continues to this day.
In those 20 years since democracy was established in your country, Ireland has provided support to South Africa’s democratic institutions, to the social sectors and to sustainable rural livelihoods through local economic development.
In partnership with you, we have assisted in the areas of education, gender-based violence, health, water and sanitation, and HIV and AIDS. We are currently also supporting economic growth through the Department of Trade and Industry’s strategy to develop special economic zones, through capacity building in the training of nurses, and in support for training in commercial law.
We are committed to continuing that support and to working with you in the challenge – a challenge we face ourselves – to build inclusive, transformational and sustainable economic growth. As we reflect on the achievements of twenty years of democracy in South Africa, we find ourselves asking a very basic question: how can individual nations achieve such social and economic goals in an increasingly globalised and interdependent world?
The impact of climate change and the depletion of the natural resources on which economic development is based are already leading to changes in the way that economies are developing. Over the next decades we are going to see a process of economic transformation, which will affect the value of basic assets such as land, water and forests. The prices and markets for many commodities will change radically as new, more efficient technologies develop, and as cleaner renewable sources of energy replace traditional fossil fuels.
It is universally accepted that poor people and poor countries are most at risk, and already suffer most, from the impacts of climate change. This, however, does not mean that efforts to slow, halt and reverse climate change will necessarily benefit them. We must acknowledge, then, that the very necessary move to more environmentally sustainable economic models involves both risks and opportunities for poor people.
Proponents of Green Growth see the transformation to sustainability as an opportunity to renew and accelerate economic growth. Undoubtedly, private corporations and countries are already moving to become market leaders in new technologies and to secure control over the markets and assets that will be critical to sustainability and the key future growth sectors in national and global economies.
However, there is the danger that in processes of economic transformation, the greatest benefits accrue to those who are best positioned to take advantage of them – those who already have greater control over assets, wealth and political processes. It does not have to be so. The shift to sustainability, if managed ethically and fairly, offers the possibility of making economies more inclusive and of directing new economic opportunity towards people who are currently excluded from socio-economic progress and prosperity. This, however, will not just happen. Poverty reduction will not just follow the market process.
Across Africa we have seen, over more than a decade, some of the highest growth rates in the world, and yet the numbers of hungry people remain persistently high and some of the most basic millennium development goals are still out of reach.
We have spent the last generation demonstrating that economic growth alone does not necessarily or naturally improve the position of the poor. As we tackle climate change, we must not make a similar mistake of assuming that what is good for the environment is automatically good for poor people. To do so would risk developing policies that might achieve greater environmental sustainability while failing to reduce poverty.
In the forthcoming debates about the UN’s sustainable development goals, we must instead bring together sustainability and poverty reduction as overarching goals. This will require concerted political will to put in place active and responsive policies that have the specific purpose of ensuring that the transformation to sustainability prioritises benefits for the poorest and most vulnerable people. This means taking choices such as:
ensuring poor people’s rights over land – instead of facilitating acquisition by external investors;
opting for hundreds, or thousands, of small scale energy systems, which can provide energy in the most remote communities – rather than investing in a few big-ticket hydro or clean coal power stations that will serve only those already connected;
guiding investments and regulating markets in areas such as bio-fuels and carbon sequestration so that they provide livelihoods for poor people- rather than increasing competition for the assets they depend on;
investing in and supporting innovation in the livelihood technologies of poor households to increase resilience to climate change and resource efficiency – rather than seeing sustainability as a technological import from industrialised countries;
managing natural resources to prioritise jobs and value addition within the economy, reinvestment of profits and sustainable public finances – rather than just going for growth and ending up with an under-priced and overexploited extractive industry sector;
directing climate change finance to the poorest and most vulnerable households.
These are not simple policy options; they are significant political decisions. Taking these decisions requires strong and visionary leadership – the kind of leadership provided by Nelson Mandela, for example – but they also depend on the ability of marginalised communities to exert influence over policy making.
Empowerment of those living in poverty is both a critical driver of the fight to end poverty and one of its most important metrics. The right investments in economic and social infrastructure combined with legislative and regulatory measures supporting basic rights – to decent work, to gender equality, to ownership and control over individual and collective assets, and to influence in economic governance – are important building blocks of economic empowerment. They will improve the terms on which poor people engage in markets and will make economic growth more inclusive and more effective in reducing poverty.
Such measures cannot be an add-on to a sustainable economic development agenda. Climate scientists warn us about tipping points, beyond which climate change becomes catastrophic. Who is to say that there are not social tipping points beyond which governance failures become self-perpetuating?
The rise in inequality is a direct consequence of poorly regulated markets; but inequality is not inevitable. I have said in many occasions that we need to re-legitimise and revitalise public policy. This means that we must reinvest governments and the political process with the duty and responsibility to define social objectives for the economy. This is the only way in which states and governments can have the ability to make a real social contract with their citizens and deliver on it.
Those countries that have made most progress on the millennium development goals are countries where governments have taken this role. In defining the post 2015 development framework next year, we must recognise this as a fundamental role for all governments, and as a critical success factor for achieving the sustainable development goals.
You, the young educated people of South Africa, represent a precious resource. To you and your generation will fall the role of sustaining and leading the new South Africa as it moves forward from youth to prime. I want to wish you well on your own journey in this wonderful country, blessed with so much potential and with a great future ahead of it.
Thank you again for the opportunity to meet with you and talk with you here today. You have inspired me and convinced me that the links between South Africa and Ireland are not a matter of history alone. They matter to both of our peoples now, and as we face common challenges in the years to come