Your Majesty;
Our Host, Prime Minister Paul Bérenger;
Your Excellencies Heads of State and Government and the Gracious First Ladies;
Your Excellency, Mr. Alpha Oumar Konare,
Chairperson of the African Union Commission;
Honourable Ministers;
Excellencies Heads of Diplomatic Missions;

Distinguished Guests;
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Let me begin by observing how pleasant and refreshing it is to be in this beautiful island—this paradise on earth that Mauritius truly is. I thank Prime Minister Paul Bérenger, the Government and People of Mauritius, for welcoming us here so warmly, and for all the arrangements for our comfort and safety.

In Dar es Salaam last year, I pledged to pursue areas of emphasis in the SADC agenda with commitment. These included combating hunger and ensuring food security, fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic, enhancing peace and security, and spearheading the SADC integration agenda, as well as working for sustained economic growth and poverty reduction. I undertook to continue the good work done by my predecessors to meet theses challenges. I have done my part, and I have every confidence that the incoming Chair will do his. I assure him of my personal, and my government’s full support and co-operation.

The Regional Integrative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP)

Your Majesty,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

The RISDP provides a road map for an integrated community. It is a blueprint for the development of the SADC region, and a recognition of our primary responsibility for our own development. The launching of RISDP in Arusha in March this year marked the beginning of its operationalisation. The unbundling of the RISDP currently being undertaken by the Secretariat will enable the ranking and prioritisation of the intervention areas, taking into account SADC objectives and integration agenda.

The commitment of SADC member states to ensure the development of our region through collective self-reliance was underlined, while acknowledging the need for external support. The agenda must be ours, but its implementation requires the active support of our international development partners. That is why the Secretariat is currently engaging them to mobilize funding for the implementation of the RISDP.

The planned SADC Consultative Conference early next year with the theme, “Partnership for the Implementation of the RISDP”, will provide a good opportunity to engage international cooperating partners and other stakeholders to ensure the effective and efficient implementation of our programmes.

SADC Restructuring Process

Your Majesty,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

As is the case with all reforms, the SADC restructuring exercise brought with it new challenges and constraints. At the Dar es Salaam Summit, we approved—on the recommendation of the Council—the needs-driven organic growth of the Secretariat. This entailed recruitment of Directors and Heads of Units who would later propose appropriate structures for their Directorates and Units, taking into account the programme priorities.

As it has turned out, the recruitment process has been painstakingly slow, the transitional phase has taken longer than anticipated, and this has heightened uncertainty and demoralization among the staff. Such a situation impacts negatively on performance and programme delivery.

I visited the SADC Secretariat last month, and this issue was brought to my attention with great passion. The report of my visit is before the Summit. We need to take corrective measures to ensure continuity of work, and stability of the staffing situation, at the Secretariat. One way would be to approve long-term contracts for staff with good records of performance so as to scale up efficiency and effectiveness, which after all is the primary objective of the restructuring exercise. We must also realize that shortening the transitional phase requires resources, and that is why we must all strive to fulfil our obligations towards the SADC budget.

Construction of SADC Headquarters

Your Excellencies:

President Dos Santos, at the end of his term, pointed to the office constraints that our organization was being faced with because of the restructuring process. He addressed the urgent need to construct a new building to allow the activities of our Community to be carried out in a conducive environment and dignified manner.

One year later, I visited the SADC Secretariat to find no progress in that direction despite the generous offer by the Government of Botswana of a sizeable plot (11,343 sq. metre), in the Gaborone Central Business District. The plot is sufficient to accommodate the SADC headquarters, including conference facilities for SADC policy organs, including the Summit. We thank the Government of Botswana for this welcome gesture.

A temporary solution has been found by renting a new office block sufficient to accommodate the SADC Secretariat staff currently scattered in different rented locations within Gaborone. This interim measure, while welcome, does not make less compelling the need to construct a permanent building to house the SADC headquarters. This must remain our top priority. Several funding options will be put before us. I urge the Summit to take a firm position that will enable the long awaited project to take off the ground as quickly as possible. I have no doubt that the decision to establish our headquarters in Gaborone is final and irrevocable. We must, therefore, show that we are there to stay by putting up an impressive structure to host our headquarters. I am sure that, with political will, we can do this.

Agriculture and Food Security

Your Majesty,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

An Extra-ordinary Summit on Agriculture and Food Security was convened in May 2004 in Dar es Salaam to address the stagnation of agricultural production and persistent food shortages in member states. We made collective commitments to reverse this situation, which for too long has shamed the region. We agreed on a short-term and medium to long-term Plan of Action. The strategies contained in the short-term Plan of Action include:

· Increasing sustainable agricultural financing and investment in line with the AU Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security issued in Maputo, in July 2003;
· Enhancing production, productivity and the overall food availability;
· Improving access to safe and nutritious food;
· Strengthening disaster preparedness; and
· Mitigating the impact of HIV and AIDS on Agriculture and Food Security.

The Dar es Salaam Declaration and Plan of Action, therefore, constitutes the main framework of the food safety net that should make food insecurity a thing of the past. We now have to move quickly from commitment to action, nationally and regionally.

Member states have the primary responsibility for the implementation of this Plan of Action. The Secretariat has to ensure that we, member states, live up to our undertakings. It has to monitor and evaluate progress within the agreed timeframe. The test of our commitment is the extent to which we are prepared to go to follow through, at the national level, what we resolve to do at the regional level. Good resolutions, splendid matrices and virtuous declarations must all translate into speedy action to be credible. The first reports on our actions are expected by end-November this year. Let us all cooperate with the Secretariat to fulfil our duty to act, and to report.

From the bountiful treasure of the wisdom of the Bakongo, we are counselled thus: “You are beautiful, but learn to work, for you cannot eat your beauty.” Our declarations and plans of action may be beautiful, but unless they are made to work, they will leave us hungry and begging for food.

Land and Agrarian Reform

Your Majesty,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Our efforts to ensure that Southern Africa overcomes the devastating cycles of food insecurity, and ensure further that agriculture plays its important role for economic growth, poverty reduction and broad-based development, those efforts cannot be divorced from the sensitive question of land and agrarian reform.

Let SADC speak with one voice on this matter, and let the outside world understand, that land and agrarian reform in the SADC region is necessary. Different problems and different strategies may apply in each different country. But there is no gainsaying the necessity of some form of reform in all countries.

Let SADC speak with one voice, and let the outside world understand, that to us Africans land is much more than a factor of production; we are spiritually anchored in the lands of our ancestors. We are truly “sons and daughters of the soil.” To dispossess us of land is not only to consign us to perpetual economic deprivation, it is also an affront to our spirit, to our sociological sense of being, to our very humanity and our inalienable right to dignity as a people.

Let SADC speak with our voice, and let the outside world take note, that we have not forgotten how the best lands in many parts of Southern Africa ended up in the hands of minority groups. It was a process of widespread and often violent or treacherous dispossession; with neither fair price nor compensation, with neither legal recourse nor respect for good governance and human rights.

Time has passed. We forgive those who did this to our ancestors, but now that we are in power, we cannot run away from our historical duty to set right these historical wrongs and injustices. In a much more civilized way, we want to create fair and just mechanisms—not to disposes anyone, but to redistribute land, and to help new land owners become productive in the quickest possible way, on lands over which they have secure property rights. The development and long-term stability of our region demands that we take a coordinated approach to issues of land distribution, utilization, tenure, administration and adjudication.

That is why we agreed to establish a Regional Land Reform Technical Committee to support—technically and financially—individual member states in designing and implementing land and agrarian reforms, and to share, among them, best practices. I earnestly urge that the establishment of this Facility be fast-tracked, and further that all those development partners of ours who are committed to helping us in this process should come forward with firm commitments and real resources to set this process in motion.

A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All

Your Majesty,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Last year in Dar es Salaam I briefed you on the progress of the work of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation, which I was privileged to Co-Chair with President Tarja Halonen of Finland. As I reported to the Assembly of the African Union last month in Addis Ababa, the Report of the Commission entitled “A Fair Globalisation: Creating Opportunities for All” was launched officially in London on 24 February 2004. Today, I want to highlight briefly, what the Report says about organizations such as ours, and to ask for your active support in agitating for the implementation of its recommendations in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, and as our contribution towards building a fair and more inclusive process of globalisation.

Let us not forget that those who benefit from the current processes and regimes of globalisation will not be in a hurry to reform the system. We have to push harder. A Sotho proverb says, “A bird will always use another bird’s feathers to feather its own nest.” What we are saying in the Report is that the time has come for the feathers to be spread more evenly and fairly.

Having recognized that most resentments against globalisation stem from the undeniable fact that too few people, within countries and between countries, are benefiting from the opportunities for a better life that globalisation and the technology driving it provide, the Report says that efforts to build a fairer and more inclusive globalisation have to begin at home. Countries are, therefore, urged to strengthen regional and sub-regional cooperation “as a major instrument for development and for a stronger voice in the governance of globalisation.” The Report further points out that regional integration has been widely accepted as an appropriate “route towards a fairer, more inclusive globalisation.”

(continues)
There is much for which we can blame rich industrialized countries for the unfairness and inequity of globalisation. The national and regional dialogues that the Commission held in Africa produced a long list of grievances against the governance and outcomes of globalisation. These include unfair rules, applied unfairly. They include frustrations with policies and attitudes of institutions of global governance, whose genesis goes back to the post-war era when all of our countries were not participants in international dialogue. Our grievances include unfair terms of trade and investment; and limited market access. There are also issues of the debt burden, of HIV/AIDS, of poverty and of migration, to mention only a few.

But no one seriously advocated disengaging from the process of globalisation. And, as the Report noted, “Africans did not just blame others for their problems. They too felt responsible for failures to build trade, integrate with other economies and benefit from the positive aspects of globalisation.”

The Report added that, “Although many trade and other regional cooperation agreements existed on paper, there was a lack of political will, or of physical infrastructure, to make them work. Nevertheless, regional integration could be an effective vehicle for integrating Africa into the global economy.”

And this is my appeal to you today as I rise from the SADC chair. The time has come for us in the region to take matters in our own hands; to demand policy space to do this; to accept that we are ultimately responsible for ourselves, and for the benefits that we can derive from globalisation. There is much that we still import from abroad that can be sourced regionally. Why can’t coffee and tea grown in SADC countries be the dominant beverages on the shelves of our supermarkets? Why can’t regionally processed and manufactured goods find places of honour in our markets? At 22 percent, intra-SADC trade is way behind our declared aspirations.

Your Excellencies:

We need a new push, and a real effort, to increase intra-SADC trade. Even the 35 percent target for next year—which I am not even sure we will meet—is still on the low side. We cannot afford to be too externally oriented while at the same time complaining about the negative aspects of globalisation. Let us not forget that even the most well-meaning among our development partners would want, in the end, to benefit from vending their wares and services to us. This is the reality of the world, and we must wake up and make a deliberate effort to direct our trade primarily across borders, not across continents.

Likewise, when we need investment, we need to look closer home. Cross-border investment and trade should underpin the integration of our economies. The sustainability of regional cooperation hinges on the willingness of governments and enterprises to spread investment and trade opportunities across, and among, the SADC member countries. Everyone has to win to stay in the game. These matters are within our power to decide on, and act upon. We cannot blame anyone else if we hesitate to invest in each other’s country, and if we drag our feet in sourcing our trade and service needs from among member states. Let us do more to trade and invest among us, and build the infrastructure to support a genuine and thriving regional market. Let us speed up the process to harmonize our investment regimes and macro-economic policies. And let those among our development partners who wish us well, help us to do so now.

SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections

Your Majesty,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

About three weeks ago, our Ministers of Defence and Foreign Affairs met in Sun City, South Africa, under the auspices of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, to deliberate on SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections in our region. Without prejudice to the discussions we will have at this Summit on the draft to be presented to us, I should like to make a few general points at this stage.

The first is that contrary to what is often portrayed in the media, these principles and guidelines are not directed at any one or any group of countries. Our effort to agree on such principles and guidelines is the culmination of a long process of introspection and self-assertion, of thinking for ourselves and determining what is appropriate to our circumstances and what is not; what works and what does not work. We are tired of being lectured on democracy by the very countries, which under colonialism, either directly denied us the rights of free citizens, or were indifferent to our suffering and yearning to break free and be democratic. We want to send out a clear message that we fought for freedom and democracy. Freedom and democracy were not given to us on a platter. Today, we are equally committed to guaranteeing that such hard-won freedom and democracy persists and matures in our countries.

Secondly, we need to educate all our people more on this subject. A few of them think we can have what has been called “coca-cola democracy”. The following Zulu proverb admonishes us: “Copying everyone else all the time, the monkey one day cut his throat.” Unless we want to cut our throats, real democracy has to grow from within—it is an evolution, not a revolution. Imported and imposed systems of governance that pay no heed to the actual social, economic and cultural circumstances pertaining in new democracies, will not take root.

In democracy, as in all other things, no one size fits all. The social, historical and cultural fabrics of our societies are known more and better to us, than to others. We know our democratic aspirations better than anyone else. So whatever we will agree upon, we should all be people of our word and commit ourselves to implementing it. But, we should at the same time ask the outside world to respect what we collectively decide upon. The principles and guidelines should be assessed on our terms, and our yardsticks, not on those of others. Above all, multi-party democracy and its attendant elections must never be a cover for the destabilization of our countries.

Peace and Security

Your Majesty,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Not much progress is possible without peace and security. I am glad that most of the SADC territory is peaceful. But the situation in the DRC remains volatile, despite the gains achieved with the installation of the Transitional Government. We must actively be seized with the situation in this country to ensure lasting peace and stability in our entire region.

The Great Lakes Regional Conference on Peace, Security and Development to be hosted by Tanzania in December this year will provide space for national governments, civil society and international development partners and agencies to comprehensively address the root causes of the region’s conflicts and instability, and strengthen partnerships for peace, security and development. SADC has to be engaged in this peace-building project, and I ask for your support in this endeavour. The truth is that, in this era and age, we have no one else to blame for conflict and insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa except ourselves. And the subsequent negative image of our continent portrayed by the international media is harmful to all of us.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, we used to say that the independence of one African country was incomplete as long as another African country was still in colonial bondage. Today, we need to say that the peace and security of one African country is incomplete as long as there are other African countries embroiled in conflict and insecurity. We must rise to the challenge. At the very least, let us make the SADC region a conflict free zone.

HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria

Your Majesty,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

The SADC region is the global epicentre of HIV/AIDS. The Maseru Declaration has been printed and disseminated. It provides us with a framework of commitment in the fight against this pandemic. We need to translate it into deeds, nationally and regionally.

We take note, with satisfaction, that an HIV and AIDS Unit has been established at the Secretariat, and a programme manager recruited. A technical committee on HIV and AIDS has also been established. The process of establishing the SADC HIV and AIDS Trust Fund has been initiated. We heartily welcome the contribution to the Fund by the Republic of South Africa of 1 million Rand. Thank you South Africa for showing the way. We should all follow this example, which is a demonstration of our “do it ourselves” commitment.

But, even as we focus on HIV/AIDS, we should not lose sight of the grave danger posed by malaria. Regionally, malaria is the second biggest killer of our people. In my country, it kills more people, especially children, than HIV/AIDS. Almost 100,000 lives are lost each year because of malaria in Tanzania. Malaria must be fought with renewed vigour and determination.

Gender and Development

Your Majesty,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Our Community has long committed itself to enhancing gender equality, and especially to mainstream the role of women in all matters, including at the highest levels of political, social and economic power. We will in this Summit consider a regional Progress Report on Gender Equality.

I am sure the Report will show that we are making progress, but not progressing as fast as we should. For most of us, we are yet to reach the minimum target we set for ourselves of ensuring at least 30 per cent women representation in our Parliaments and Cabinets by the end of 2005. I congratulate South Africa for attaining this goal. I will do all in my power to ensure that Tanzania does likewise, especially with regard to Parliament, before I leave office towards the end of next year. Let us all commit ourselves to meeting this target. The political, social and economic developments in our countries will not attain their full potential until we put more women at the centre of whatever we want to achieve, especially if we concur with the Chewa people of Malawi that: “Mother is God number two!”

Conclusion

Your Majesty,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Let me conclude by thanking you all for the honour bestowed upon my country and myself by putting us on the SADC chair for the last 12 months. I thank you all for your trust and confidence, and for your support and cooperation. Without your support, my task would have been exceedingly daunting.

Whatever was achieved, it was because of your support, and I thank you.

My term was encumbered by my ill health. I thank all of you who sent me your best wishes for my quick and full recovery. As you can see, I am much better, and getting better by the day.

I thank the Executive Secretary, Dr. Prega Ramsamy, and the staff at the Secretariat, for fulfilling the responsibilities we entrusted upon them, sometimes under very difficult conditions.

I congratulate our hosts for excellent preparations for this Summit, and I thank them once again for the warmth of their reception and hospitality.

Your Majesty,
Your Excellencies;
Ladies and Gentlemen:

I have in this, my last speech as SADC Chair, argued strongly for the accelerated pace of regional cooperation and integration. I urge for more policy coherence in what we do, and for greater political will to lift our vision and focus from the national to the regional. If we are too bogged down by what we want nationally out of accelerated integration, we risk losing sight of the greater benefits awaiting all of us in the longer-term. The largest tribe in Tanzania, the Wasukuma, have a proverb: “I pointed out to you the stars, and all you saw was the tip of my finger.” Let us resolve today to lift our eyes beyond the tip of the finger to the stars.

I thank you for your kind attention