A question of friendship

In an exclusive interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma spoke to Gamal Nkrumah
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa's dynamic but unassuming foreign minister, came to Egypt for four days last week at the invitation of Foreign Minister Amr Moussa. They held wide-ranging discussions on a number of bilateral issues and common continental concerns. This is not Dlamini-Zuma's first visit to Egypt. She first visited Egypt last April to attend the Africa-Europe summit.
A jet-setting minister, as befitting the representative of a country of South Africa's international standing, Dlamini-Zuma nevertheless has her finger firmly on the pulse of her country's -- and the African continent's -- most pressing social challenges. Dlamini-Zuma is a paediatrician who terminated a flourishing medical career to devote her life entirely to the anti-apartheid struggle. She headed the African National Congress health department in Lusaka, Zambia in the late 1980s, after working at a number of hospitals in England, South Africa and Swaziland. A former South African minister of health, Dlamini-Zuma is no stranger to the world of international diplomacy, but at heart she is still active in the medical sphere. She is a member of the steering committee of the National AIDS Coordinating Committee of South Africa and has a special interest in children suffering from HIV/AIDS.
Earlier this month she visited the United Arab Emirates and Oman, where she represented her country at the Indian Ocean Rim Association Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC) meeting on 7 and 8 April. South Africa, a founding member of IOR-ARC, a relatively new organisation established in March 1997, is keen to improve market access to the countries of the vast region which encompasses Africa, Asia and Australia. Egypt has observer status in the IOR-ARC.
South African Foreign Minister Dlamini Zuma (far right) in discussion with her Egyptian counterpart Amr Moussa
Photo: Amr Gamal
In Egypt, discussions with Moussa focused on bilateral economic and trade issues and especially on how to enhance trade and investment opportunities in both countries. South Africa and Egypt are Africa's two largest economies. "Our respective chambers of commerce have signed an agreement and now we as governments have to encourage our businessmen to do brisk business with each other. We must facilitate the creation of a conducive climate for business," Dlamini-Zuma said.
"Our economies are complementary in many ways. Egypt imports a lot of sugar. We are among the world's leading sugar exporters. We also looked at energy, electricity generation and upgrading the cooperation programme run under the Joint Egypt-South Africa Commission. There are areas of potential cooperation such as tourism, culture, defence and academic and scientific fields. Developing closer ties between Egyptian and South African universities and institutions of higher learning is also very important," Dlamini-Zuma told the Weekly.
After her talks with Moussa, Dlamini-Zuma flew to Washington, where she briefed United States Secretary of State Colin Powell on the Millennium Africa Recovery Plan (MAP) unveiled by South African President Thabo Mbeki earlier this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Dlamini-Zuma also exchanged views with Powell on Washington's Africa policy and especially its handling of several African conflicts, including those in mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola.
"There is no dignity in homelessness, there is no dignity in hunger, no dignity in poverty. For us to be able to deal with the challenges of African Renaissance and the African century, it is necessary to pause and look back into history, at both the bright and positive and the dark and melancholy periods that have shaped and defined us as Africans," Dlamini-Zuma said. "We in Africa must have a long-term vision. We cannot be going around with begging bowls and running programmes determined by others elsewhere. The greatest challenge is how to create and maintain democracies, how to avoid distribution of power and resources along ethnic and religious lines. We have seen that this inevitably leads to instability since those who are excluded will fight tooth and nail to achieve what they believe is rightfully theirs," she stressed.
By the same token, Dlamini-Zuma strongly believes in the Palestinians' right to national self-determination. "Palestinians have the right to lead stable and secure lives. Security concerns are not an exclusive prerogative of Israel and Israelis. We acknowledge the right of Israel to security, but Israeli security must be linked to the Palestinians' security," she told the Weekly.
"Palestinians have the right to lead a normal and peaceful life, to focus on social, infrastructural and economic development and national reconstruction. There must be the political will and resolve to end the conflict peacefully. We encourage negotiations. We went through armed struggle. We experienced war and exile. We took up arms to defend our rights. All doors were closed to us. But we took up the opportunity as soon as the apartheid regime was willing to negotiate. We abandoned the armed struggle," Dlamini-Zuma explained.
"We don't have magic solutions. But we must strive to resolve conflicts through peaceful negotiations. Africa's conflicts leave in their wake a bloody trail of death and destruction. It is imperative for us in Africa to resolve the continent's many conflicts. Conflict resolution is everybody's business," Dlamini-Zuma stressed. "We are like the human body. If there is a festering wound in a toe it might affect the foot, perhaps the infection might spread to the entire leg causing fever and the entire body suffers. So we have to redouble our peacemaking efforts and devise strategies of conflict resolution." She added, "Conflicts must not be left unresolved, otherwise they might spread through a domino effect to include the entire continent. No African country is immune or can survive as an isolated island. We are all part of the African continent. What happens in one part of the continent impacts all."
Beginning in May, the South African immigration department announced that asylum seekers without proper permits would be deported. With thousands of asylum seekers having poured into South Africa from other African countries in the past five years, the issue of illegal immigration has become a bone of contention between South Africa and several African countries. Asylum seekers arrive in South Africa from as far afield as the conflict zones in West Africa, Somalia, Sudan and other Horn of Africa countries, the Great Lakes region, Angola and other economically depressed neighbouring countries such as Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Soaring crime rates in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town are blamed on illegal immigrants.
Successful asylum seekers are to receive new refugee identity cards, while unsuccessful applicants will face deportation. The issue of illegal aliens is a particularly prickly issue in South Africa today, contradicting the country's stated policy of advancing the "African Renaissance." South Africa leads the drive towards continental regional economic integration, development and democratisation, but is hampered by its own challenges of unemployment and spiralling crime rates. South Africa's foreign minister put the problem of illegal immigrants in the context of the economic and social malaise facing her country and the entire continent.
"At times of an economic downturn, there will always be friction when fighting for jobs and scarce resources. Regional integration and economic cooperation is crucial in redressing this problem," Dlamini-Zuma noted. "We cannot have development in one country or part of one country while other parts of the continent remain underdeveloped," she said. Dlamini-Zuma strongly believes that immigration problems would ease if a regional, or better still continental, strategy for development is adopted.
Dlamini-Zuma noted that South Africa is a microcosm of the world. Virtually every race and nationality is represented in the country: people of European, Asian, Arab and African descent have all made South Africa their home, she explained. "Legal immigrants are in the majority. Professionals, doctors, teachers and academics. Nobody hears anything about these people. They lead perfectly normal lives in South Africa and contribute to the country's economic and social well-being. But they don't make news. Illegal immigrants on the other hand are much talked about in the media. Good news is not news. Bad news is," Dlamini-Zuma said. South Africa itself suffers an exceptionally high rate of joblessness with unemployment estimated to be as high as 45 per cent. With few job openings, some of the illegal immigrants resort to crime as a means of survival.
Dlamini-Zuma conceded that there is a need to refine the way some immigration officials in South Africa handle this sensitive issue. South Africa, she said, has had a long tradition of employing people from neighbouring countries in the mines and as agricultural workers on the country's farms. "Traditionally, people from Malawi, Mozambique and Lesotho have worked in South Africa's gold and diamond mines. Some have settled with their families permanently in South Africa and have been given South African citizenship. They enjoy full citizenship rights. During the days of apartheid, white immigrants from Europe were given South African nationality and Africans from neighbouring countries were denied South African nationality. In the post-apartheid period we have changed this deplorable tradition and African immigrants resident in the country for over five years are granted South African nationality if they so wish," Dlamini-Zuma stressed.
Indeed, South Africa's foreign minister noted that there are more Basotho (the indigenous people of neighbouring Lesotho), more Batswana (natives of Botswana) and more Shangaan, the dominant ethnic group in southern Mozambique, in South Africa than in their respective countries. "I am a Dlamini," she said. "Almost half of the population of Swaziland have Dlamini as a surname. But I am South African," she explained.
Dlamini-Zuma likewise spoke frankly about the land question in southern Africa. In recent years Western nations have criticised South Africa for adopting a soft stance towards Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's bid to confiscate white-owned farms and distribute them to the indigenous African majority. "It doesn't help to say that we have a soft attitude towards Zimbabwe. The entire struggle in Zimbabwe was about land," she said. "If Africa can't feed itself, then it has no hope of recovery. We cannot ignore the question of who owns land and how it is utilised. A major complaint of Zimbabweans is that the land owned by whites is left fallow, that the land is owned by people living abroad and who only visit Zimbabwe for holidays. Zimbabweans want the white-owned land to be used by the African landless peasants for food production. It is a fair expectation. The Zimbabweans have a genuine problem and we sympathise with their predicament. We understand their problem because we went through the same struggle. The whole southern African liberation struggle revolved around the land question."
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