 Good evening everyone, I am very pleased to be able to welcome you this evening to SOAS and also to our centennial lecture for the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy which is actually not going to be a lecture at all but a very lively conversation so it's great to have so many of you here this evening. This is SOAS' centenary, our centenary formally starts I ddweud y ffordd â hynny ac yn ymgyrch â'i ddoeithio, ac mae'n fywch i ddweud yw ymateb hynny. Mae gweithio i'r ddweud cyffredinol. Gweithio'n datblygiad ar gyfer ddim yn gweithio, ac mae'n ddweud ymgyrch i wyboddydd, i gaelôr yn ymgyrch â Soniaf Africa. Ieithio ein gafoddu arfawr ein ddechrau Minte, dweud byddwn o'r cilio a'u cyffredinol yn y maen nhw'n cael gall. Ond y salaf oedd y bryddiol dod yn gefnogi'r cadw, ac yn gwastorlu gwneud y ddwylo'r cadw ar gyfer y regerauedd South Africa. Y Dynist Dynist yn ymddangas oedd yn ymddangos ymddangos. Bydd y cîn ddechrau gwneud yn ei wneud o'r ffiniadau antiaodai, a gynnal i'raddeg a'r casf gan'r swy緊. Felly, Abdol, we are absolutely delighted that you are with us this evening, and I'm also delighted to see so many friends of the anti-apartheid movement who have joined us. I'll shortly be handing over to Lord Steel to say a few words by way of welcome, but before I do that I'm going to ask Dan Plash, who runs CSID, i'r llwylo'r gael Llywodraeth i yw Llywodraeth i ddau ddim yn gweithio ar y llwylo ar y ddechrau. Ond, os ydych yn ei wneud, mae'n ffordd i'r llwylo i'r Llywodraeth i'r llwylo, cymryd CISD yn ymylwyr o'r gaelach ar y gyfer. Felly, mae ymweld CISD yn yr hwnnw i'r gaelach ar gyfer. Mae'n gweithio ar gael y cwrdd. Llywodraeth i'r llwylo i'r llwylo i'r gaelach ar gyfer a'r llwyddiadau ymddangol. Yn y pethau, ddim e'n dweud, Dan. Mae'n dweud mae'n dweud, mae'n ysgrifennu i'r ddweud o'r ddigon o'r cymdeithasol yma, yn ystod y gyfnod o'r dweud, amser South Africa Fund yw'r ddweud Cynsortium Black o Barkleys Africa. Mae'n gweithio'r ddweud o'r cymdvertyn cymdeithasol, yw hynny'n gweithio'r ddweud. Felly, Abdul, ddim ei ddweud yma. Dlathau'n cael ei ffordd, Felry. Llyfr Gwyrdd wedi ddweud o'r ddweud, I was delighted to hear from Abdul that he had retired at the end of last year, not because I didn't think it was a great loss to public service, but I thought that I might possibly be able to extract him to come here to sow us, and hopefully he'll be joining us as ambassador-in-residence in the autumn, and I'm sure we have other roles that we can work out with him. So, Diplomys' formal loss, hopefully, is our gain. I have only ever known Abdul slightly over the years in my role previously as a lobbyist for disarmament around the United Nations, and his role on disarmament issues, conventional and nuclear, leading the research in the anti-apartheid movement, on to the South African conventional and nuclear system, was without parallel, and led him to testify on the arms embargo to the UN Security Council on a number of occasions during the period of the old regime. There are a long list of August formal positions that he took on for the new government, representing South Africa at several of the United Nations review conferences on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, chairing the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and so on. In all of these roles from the outside, it seemed to me that he provided leadership on one of the critical issues of our day, which is to still now save us from the nuclear holocaust, which is an unfashionable thing to talk about, but yet all the nuclear armed countries still steadfastly refused to enter negotiations and are all, as we speak, engaged in major renewal programs. So his role in South Africa, his role before coming to government, and his role in the non-aligned movement have, I think, played a very substantial role in providing the political pressure to restrain the nuclear arms race and to hopefully still roll it back towards nuclear disarmament. So those are the interests that I had personally in wanting to invite him here, knowing also his much broader role in the government and before. But I'd now like to ask Lord David Steele, who, as a Member of Parliament, worked with the anti-apartheid movement long before it became fashionable. It's hard to think of that now, but it wasn't just that Mrs Statcher branded the African National Congress as terrorists, but there was very little public support overall for the anti-apartheid movement in 1960s when David and others first started to display that. So I'll ask David to do that, and then I'll hand over to Abdul and also an old sparring partner and colleague from the BBC, Robin Denslow, who will engage in a discussion for some 40-45 minutes here with Abdul about his career and thoughts on the future. So without more ado, Lord Steele. Well, my Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen, first I must apologise for my dress. It's not that I dress like this to be in Abdul's honour, although that would be a good excuse, but I'm actually going to chair a dinner in the House of Lords, which is why I have to slope away a bit early. But I'm very sorry not to be here for the full evening, but when I heard that Abdul was going to be here, I couldn't resist being here myself. I joined the anti-apartheid movement as a student when I just went up to Edinburgh University after my school days in East Africa, and that was after the Sharpville massacre in 1959. So when I became an MP in 1965, I was active in the movement, and as you rightly said, it wasn't very fashionable then. And then just after the 1966 election, I had a deputation came to meet me in the central lobby, consisting of Abdul Minty, Bella Pini and I think John Enl's. And I wondered what they wanted, and Abdul said to me, we wondered if you would agree to be president of the movement. Well, I was quite taken aback because the first president was Barbara Castle, who had gone into the cabinet in Harold Wilson's first government in 1964, holded by David Enl's, who had gone into the cabinet in 1966 as social security secretary. So I said to him, well, but I'm a liberal MP, I've only been here a year. Why me? Well, he said, without the slightest bit of embarrassment, we're looking for somebody who is not likely to go into the cabinet. And we've been good friends ever since. But as Bob Hughes, Richard Cable and others will know, it was simply to be a figurehead, and it was much more important later to shift from MPs to the clergy, and Ambrose Reeves and Trevor Husson, of course, were great presidents of the movement. But I was a huge admirer of Abdul from not just then, but before that, and subsequently, he was the secretary of the movement. But he also, apart from the organisation of the movement, he was also an intellectual stimulus for the movement. And when he moved from London to Scandinavia, he continued much more in the line that you were talking about in exposing much of the collaboration that was going on with the old South African government, with, I remember him writing to us about submarines and one thing or another, it was quite extraordinary. And I'm sure Peter Hain also here would agree that he provided not just the organisational framework, but the intellectual background for the anti-apartheid movement in those days. So it was a huge pleasure to be able, after the transition in South Africa, to join him on a couple of occasions for Meals in Johannesburg and Pretoria. And it's a great delight just for me to say thank you for being here, Abdul. Thank you for all that you did. We look forward to hearing from you. Hello and nice to see you. It's a very, very great pleasure to talk to Abdul. I've known on and off since the, I don't know, when I started off in the Africa service back in the 70s trying to get information about South Africa and always finding Abdul, someone who knew exactly what was going on and being extraordinarily helpful. As we know, you've had a remarkable career, honorary secretary of the British anti-apartheid movement, South Africa's representatives, the UN Office in Geneva, chairman of the Africa Nuclear Energy Commission. Anywhere, of course, born and live in South Africa. When were you first aware of racial discrimination and realised you might devote your life to fighting against racism? Well, thank you very much, Jeremy. I may just spend a moment thanking our hosts here, because today is also a very significant day in that the World Summit on Humanitarian Assistance and so on just started. It will finish tomorrow. And to meet the Baroness here, whom I know for several years, has prepared for the summit. And quite a lot of the documents that are being studied there as a result of that work. And I think we don't often see this because at the time when you're producing these things, there's a lot of controversy, a lot of interest being affected and things go back by the side. Also, David, we were once travelling together and we were alerted by the first Labour Intelligence Minister that we may have something to do with this case. And when we landed where we lived, I asked David that he was there, but this troubles me. If somebody told you that I was picked up with drugs, would you believe it? Because that was obviously the objective. So David says, well, you are having trouble raising money for the anti-abaffid moment. And, you know, all the difficulties are gone. So if it was a lot of money, I suppose some people would say that you are likely to do that. Well, it worried me even more. So then we had to go through different types of work. Make sure we bought a suitcase which was not one where the lid went over. So you could slip something in. And many other things. So there were a lot of areas of work also with UDI, of the Zimbabwe, and so on. David and others were here, played a critical role at that time. And above all, many of these individuals acted with a great deal of honesty and integrity. And that was the main thing that they contributed to the movement, and enhanced, of course, the status of the movement. And the moral status is also all of Archbishop Haddleston and Emerald Reeves and others. So I'm very pleased they're here. With regard to the question, from the point you're born, the point of death in South Africa, your life is governed by race and colour. Where you were born, where you work, where you study, whatever you do, public parts you cannot enter, and so on. So all of us having human dignity means that it insults your dignity at a very early stage. And there is no humiliation as great as a humiliation that comes about when your uncle or your father or some other senior relative is beaten up, let's say, by whites because you are overtaking their car or some other incident. Or if you walked in Pretoria as we Asians, so to say, had to go for registration, then people would push you off the pavement and you were supposed to walk in the gutter. So that wasn't something unusual. It was normal. But you would then have to decide as to what you do. Because if you decide to resist, you have to be ready for retaliation and all kinds of victimization. And if you decide just to tolerate it, you would still be left with a bitterness of that situation. So very early on we all had these experiences. I was lucky that I grew up just opposite the offices of the ANC. And later when the government closed down our school to move us to an Indian area, a protest school was started by the Indian community, with the Indian Congress. And Ahmed Qathrada, who is so well known now, was the secretary of our school. And we attended a protest school. The police raided us, they wanted to arrest our teachers and so on. But at that time, 1956, 57, all we wanted was education. And they victimized us. Of course in 1956 we also had the treason trial. It was a massive trial in South Africa with Chief Lutuli and a whole lot of other national leaders charged for high treason, which came about because of the Congress of the People in 1955, which adopted the freedom charter. And by the way, at that time, Archbishop Huddleston and Yusuf Dado and Chief Lutuli were the three people who were awarded the highest honor of the ANC. So it's important to remember the historical role of someone like Trevor Huddleston at that time. He was that important to the struggle. So I think that we experienced it throughout our life, but then you know what to do. And so that was part of life. You moved to England, of course, became involved first in the boycott movement, and then after 1959 and Sharpville, the anti-apartheid movement. The ANC were famously denounced by Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan as terrorists. How did you find banging its charges like that? Well, maybe to provide the context. I moved here to study, as you say, we had the boycott movement, which was in response to an appeal from South Africa by Chief Lutuli and others. And then after Sharpville, we decided we needed a permanent organization and therefore the anti-apartheid movement. But at that time, people were learning new things about Africa. This black top continent as it was portrayed. All of a sudden, they got an idea of what was going on. They understood some of the things in South Africa because of our campaigns. And then Sharpville occurred, the very thing we were warning about. That if the world didn't act and the apartheid regime is left to its own, it would create a kind of racial holocaust. And I think that shocked people. In context, it's also important to remember that what is described as a riot by Africans, and then later Soviet, which were again a riot by school pupils, they were not those kind of riots. What had happened was there were demonstrations and the police rioted with their guns. Because at Sharpville, 70% of the people were shot in the back as they were running away. So I think it's important to remember that is the theory we were in. In the hours at Leeds University, I had the privilege to meet the vice chancellor and I persuaded him to nominate Chief Flutuli for the Nobel Peace Prize. The 1960 award was not given, so I said in 1961 they should give it to him. Unfortunately, he, Professor Heir, others at the university nominated him and Chief Flutuli got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961. That was a historic event. First African together, Peace Prize. And that reflected on our long history of nonviolence since the time of Martin Gandhi. So in our struggle, we actually have the longest history of active nonviolence of any other country in the world. So it is something from that other values came out of that and so on. Now in that context, for us to be described as terrorists and communists, by the way, because both were dirty words at the time, all of us were terrorists or communists. If you are not, there's something wrong with you in the eyes of those people. So they said this, but of course, in the 60s, I was also asked to join the World Council Programme to Combat Racism. We were working on divestment in South Africa, but also the Programme to Combat Racism was the first programme of that importance that supported in a humanitarian way the liberation movement. So we kept moving the world course all the time, all political and so on. And generally when Nelson Mandela led the underground and said that we would have to use armed struggle, our challenge was to explain to people outside that it is a people who were suffering who would be in the best position to judge what is in their interests and not. And if they chose armed struggle as a root, that was their right. It's not that we would recruit people for the armed struggle, we never did, we never said people should fight for the liberation movement or anything. But what we did say is that people should support sanctions. And I recall very vividly how Julius Nierari said at one of our very first meetings that when he was asking people to boycott South African goods, he wasn't asking for anything remarkable. All he was saying is please, withdraw your support from the apartheid system. And then later on, when I knew him then, or to know him then because he came here for constitutional talks, and he then arranged for me to attend all the Commonwealth Conferences from 6 to 1 right up to 94. And every two years those conferences took place, but Julius Nierari prepared for each conference well before. He was an old fox, he calculated very hard. In the end outman who had Mrs Satter. But in that context he also said that the degree of armed struggle that Africa would have to engage in to support the liberation ones would be dependent on the degree of unarmed pressure that the international community put on the apartheid system. So this was important and this was explained to many people. Many British public figures and others of course supported that position. So how then do you see the distinction between legitimate resistance and terrorism? How do you define that? Well terrorism is what the word says, you know, just terrorism. But the label is legitimate liberation struggle is out of a national movement. It has responsible leaders, they represent their population. And indeed many people asked us too why do you support boycotts? We said it does because it's part of the liberation struggle. It was one of the fundamental pillars of the liberation struggle. So when you have a national liberation struggle you also ask for international solidarity. So it was part of a wider struggle, not just an isolated event of terrorism or whatever or some action by where you throw a bomb or bring a plane down or something of that kind. And when you look at the history of the struggle it's quite remarkable that despite all the massive oppression that went on there's not one incident where any South African threatened to or attempted to bring down a South African areas plane or anything of that kind. So I think it's a testimony to the commitment of the people who are fighting a project that those are not the methods they would use nor they encourage others to do so. So they were clearly wrong. We had to work very hard much later when Nelson Mandela came here for the concert to make sure that he didn't meet Mrs Thatcher on the first location. We also had to brief him before when he did meet Mrs Thatcher that he should meet her and resist the temptation to smile a lot. So there were many challenges in the struggle. And also these so-called small things are very important in order to maintain your integrity and position. And then of course Mrs Thatcher couldn't wait to have photographs with Nelson Mandela. It was one of the problems we had all the time whenever anybody visited South Africa when I was working in the ministry we had to say, What's this person coming for? And then we had to check quickly whether they were facing a general election. In many cases they were doing this. So those who had to come to South Africa, we arranged that they would want to photograph very quickly around and took up many hours with their photographers to photograph Nelson Mandela. So the world changes in remarkable ways. I remember as a journalist that the anti-apartheid movement was a remarkable source of information. How important was it for you to get things right? This was absolutely critical because you have a protest movement with all kinds of groups supporting you, with enormous enthusiasm, people making a lot of sacrifices. And they also tempted at times to go beyond the straight facts that they know in order to win support. So you could say things that this was happening in South Africa if it wasn't and so on. So we had to keep that discipline in our organisation. The other important thing is that we were in London and at that time London was the centre of world's news. It was not in the other capital. So we were responsible for what was happening and what we were saying to people. Another very important area is from the early days we had links with African leaders and African governments. When the overview was set up, we were involved with the overview people who set it up in 1963. And they were relying on our information. So we had to make sure that people who supported us and relied on our information were not put in a position where any information was provided which they could not work with. Also British political and other leaders who put their confidence in us and would work with us. And they would be subject to a lot of pressures for supporting us that they could not be wrong footed for the wrong information. So that was critical for us that we checked and double checked information before we carried on any campaigns. And I think that helped us to survive through very difficult periods. But later on we became perhaps the biggest political lobby group in the country. And managed to influence foreign policy in a dramatic way when all academics and everyone saying that you cannot have a national protest movement that can influence foreign policy. And hey, we were influencing foreign policy. And also commonwealth policy, African policy and so on. So African policy was based also on the information we were giving because the non-aligned movement countries did not have missions in South Africa. They were boycotting South Africa. So we were the source of information for that. And we also had to do something else which we pay tribute to Cannon Collins and others. When we found out that someone was arrested, often their lives were in danger. And Cannon Collins was stepping with his fund. We would secretly arrange for lawyers to defend them. So many lives were saved. Some of that story has been told but much of it hasn't. But I think it should be explained because ordinary people in Britain supported that fund for the first reason trial of 56. And then later of course for the other trials, the Rivonia trial of Nelson and Delight. So we had to get correct information towards it in that one. Developing those contacts presumably made it much easier to move from being an activist to a diplomat, if you like. Well, it wasn't a break like that. You see, because when we worked with, let's say, Julius Niereric, Counder, Ziqueir, Guam, Croma, many others, we were simply a street organisation. But they respected us. And they took our word for being accurate and acted. For example, when the 61 Commonwealth Conference took place here, Barbara Castle had done a tremendous job asking for South Africa to be excluded. And some of the anti-abared leaders went to see Prime Minister Nero, Macarius, others. I was sent to see Tuku Abdurrahman, Prime Minister of Malaysia. But at that time everyone considered that he was a handpicked British Prime Minister. They were left in movements as the British government were not supporting. When I would see him in his hotel in the Dorchester, he says to me, You are Muslim? I said yes. He says to me, I'm also a Muslim? I didn't know what to say. Then he says, if I come to South Africa and I want to stay in any hotel, can I? I said, no, you can't. So he turned to two of his assistants and said, this is an ungodly country. Cannot be possibly in the Commonwealth. Now, here we're working with Cromo and others to say, how could we outdo Macmillan who was there in the conference and work out a way for South Africa to be excluded and do all that. So all those leaders were conferting with each other in the hotel lobbies as well. And then here Tumco comes out and says, no, there can't be members of these. So of course that gave a campaign such a boost and made the other leaders look almost moderates. When Tumco was saying that. Mind you, it had another result that Tumco then adopted such strict policies that no South African was allowed to be in his country. And we had a South African white lady who married a diplomat from Malaysia and he wouldn't allow her residence rights. So we had to intervene with him again and say, no, there are some good white people, please. Don't do that. We have a lot of them in Britain in our movement. So we were acting actually with governments acting on our information well before we were diplomats. So I'm saying that this movement that developed was a people's movement with vast numbers of people in the western countries doing remarkable and extraordinary things allied to African and Asian governments and some communist governments in the United Nations where we set up the special committee against apartheid in 1963, the Council for Namibia, the Decolonisation Committee and we use the United Nations very well. And I think that is also part of the work of the anti-apartheid movement that's not well known, you know. The strategy that you use to get an academic boycott that grants the sports boycott that Peter and others worked so hard on with the decisions in the United Nations on sports boycott on all other campaigns. So we created that kind of legitimacy and the countries who opposed us had to explain why and it was quite a difficult task for them and they lost a lot of moral credibility in that process. So we were acting actually with states and as I said I was asked by African leaders if I could attend commonwealth conferences and anti-apartheid movement sent me to every conference and we went there with information, interacted with them so we were involved in negotiations as allies of the African and Asian countries. So it wasn't such a break. But of course, after the freedom in South Africa and I was going to do a multilateral work, the fact that it worked against a South African bomb and the South American issues, it was a great thing for South Africa to be the first country to have introduced the proposal for the indefinite extension of the NPT. It had not happened. If I can move on to that. I mean one of your major concerns has always been the whole nuclear issue proliferation. Is there a concern to start with your work in the apartheid bomb or before that? No much earlier. What is not so well known every day is that in South Africa we were all shocked even though we were children by Hiroshima and Nagasaki and we had a National Peace Council in South Africa arranged meetings. Sometimes we went there, police beat us up, smashed exhibitions and so on. So it was part of our DNA Jewish, part of our freedom struggle, was also fighting against nuclear weapons. If we were free, what would we be going to do in a free world with a lot of weapons around that would make a human survival of an issue? People forgotten Kwamey and Krumatu soon after the independence of Ghana, the first international conference called was on disarmament. So there's a long tradition and in 63 I worked with the OVAU and drafted the resolution for Africa as a nuclear weapon free zone, something we only realised after South Africa became free. So it was very important for us to ensure that and remember the French and others were using Africa for tests, nuclear tests. So we had to do that. So it was always important. But we didn't know South Africa was preparing its nuclear weapon capability until I wrote something in 1969, a booklet that Trevor wrote forward for in which I stumbled against a quotation from a South African senior government official who said at some ceremony that we must not only look at the non-military uses of uranium and so on. So they were already indicating that. Now very few people read those kind of details. The anti-apartheid movement, we made sure we read everything. If we didn't read propaganda and the other work, we wouldn't have the information. It wasn't research that you do in a university or anything like a thesis. It was kind of research on facts we made sure it was used effectively and that is how we managed to get much of the information. So the fight to end the apartheid bomb was the same as others. But the danger was that here you have a desperate regime and if it is equipped with nuclear weapons it could blackmail international community in Africa by saying if you don't do this we are likely to use nuclear weapons and so on. So that was extremely dangerous because the international community in the western countries basically they collaborated with the apartheid regime so much. I mean I wrote paper after paper for the UN and anti-apartheid showing their collaboration. All the answers were we are only dealing with South Africa in peaceful nuclear energy. So 1977 there was a report that South Africa was about to test nuclear weapons. We were all at a very big conference in Nigeria, a world conference and David was there. And there they said they were going to do and the French president wrote to the thing to say to South Africa, don't detonate this. And I'd been in touch with the French the government and all the western governments. I wrote a message to say how can they detonate something they don't have. We didn't get an answer. But that was and then after that we had to work much more seriously. So at that conference the United Nations suggested we set up a world campaign against military and nuclear collaborations in South Africa and the Norwegian Prime Minister offered to host that if I was acting as his director and that's why I moved to Norway but continued with the anti-apartheid work. We advised the South African delegation in 1995 on the non-proliferation treaty who've been involved in a lot of discussions like that. How do you see the whole issue of nuclear disarmament now has the world become safer? No, this is one of the biggest regrets you see. Because a big debate in 1995 where the treaty was 25 years old is whether you extended for another set period or indefinitely. We South Africa took a rather courageous decision because the whole non-aligned movement was against our decision to go for an indefinite extension. Now the reasons for this were two. One is that we wanted Africa to become a nuclear weapon free zone. Now we couldn't do it with a time limit because then we couldn't altogether nuclear weapon states to agree to support that regional treaty. The second one was you shouldn't leave open the possibility for any government to think that if you have the NPT extended only for 10 years or 20 years and after 20 years they can develop nuclear weapons. So you would actually allow for proliferation to possibly develop and that's why we took that position. And then South African foreign minister and so on myself we talked to each of many other countries and when we were at the NPT we had to stay for a month we managed to persuade the non-aligned to support this but we had a whole lot of terms and steps and so on worked out for subsequent negotiations to reduce nuclear weapons. Unfortunately all those meetings took place but no negotiators came there to negotiate anything. So they became little talk shops and now the last NPT review meeting that I was also representing South Africa at New York I was forced to say to the nuclear weapons states that they tell us they have to retain nuclear weapons for their security and as a deterrent. So we begin to ask up to the end of the cold who are you deterring and to what is the security tell us because we could also be the victims of their mistakes and that the danger is and that has happened from 1995 with every NPT review meeting and I've been to all of them that the NPT has I mean I said to the conference that you are in danger of making the NPT a treaty of the nuclear weapons states and I'm afraid that the factor that is what has happened and this is disastrous but the global community is not sensitive to this issue we are not aware consciously of the fact that an aircraft could be flying up or anything which is mistaken to be a nuclear weapon and terrible things are happening I mean in Germany they found that the United States are moving nuclear weapons from one place to another without knowing there were nuclear weapons and that led the foreign ministers to say close down all the bases here and take your weapons out something we are living in a very dangerous era and now countries are spending millions on modernizing these weapons they want to make smaller weapons easy for delivery systems so nuclear weapons are being upgraded all the time and can you imagine if there was disarmament and that money was put towards development we would really be able to strike a hard blow against many diseases against poverty and so on so the world would be a much better place so it's not, it's actually to have nuclear weapons increases your insecurity and presumably you'd hope for a peace dividend at the end of the Cold War we did and indeed many people wrote about it and the difference of the world is that at that time many leaders in the Nordic countries in Canada in Australia even New Zealand they supported the non-aligned countries the south and we all looked forward to an era in future where we would get rid of poverty we would have one world we would have a multilateral system in the United Nations so we create a rules based global community and that was a hope and people were very excited they wrote a lot about it and a lot of political solidarity that developed if you look at today's world we've lost that whole Nordic support Switzerland which was neutral and tried to be rich now I joined the UN is now also very much working with the western countries in Geneva where I've spent four years now as ambassador and it's a really big disadvantage so what did you go wrong what went wrong you said those countries will join the EU some of them and as they did that another thing happened which is imperceptibly that here you had at the beginning of 12 or 14 more countries with independent policies all the policies went into one structure we got one block and everyone at that time said the United States is very dangerous in terms of unilateralism and I used to say also in other foreign ministry that the danger is not so many the United States is a EU because here you got a vast number of countries and they do not discuss the policy with you in advance so for you to be able to give your input all you get is a decision at the end and then all those countries have to defend it and then we have to learn very quickly while I was working in Victoria for the government when diplomats used to come to my office for our views on different subjects once one Nordic ambassador came and said now what about these issues 32 questions so I said must I waste my time and talk to you when I only need to talk to Britain, France and Germany if I want to influence you I don't need to talk to you he was a friend so I gave him all the points he came back and I said what can you do with this he was very honest person and he said no I personally am very sorry I cannot he could not take it into any his decision making process so I think one of the problems is the EU ministers and others meet they make a decision that's it in Geneva the EU meets every morning 8 o'clock by 9.30 they have a position when we come into the different fora we have this position blanket position nothing we can do to change it so I think global democracy and interaction of diplomacy has suffered a great deal that they already have a position and there's not much you can do about it and then the non-aligned and the countries of the south are fragmented some are co-opted because they are in terrible economic conditions and others they are promised all kinds of assistance so you cannot even maintain the unity of the south so I think we are going through a very difficult period at the same time the other danger is that we are having global power configuration changing a lot of power moving to Asia to China to India and the established global powers do not know how to respond to this so we are living in a very dangerous world so very soon on some issue because of breakmanship and because one is calling the bluff of the other you could very well find that something just ignites which gets out of control and with a kind of weapon systems and political attitudes that political leaders create you see this is another dilemma leaders create political attitudes in positions of their own population and then if they want to change course they can't, they are trapped in their own opinion and you cannot then work for peace so this is a very very dangerous and difficult era that we are all living in I feel sorry for young people today You spent much of your life looking at the inner workings of the UN and the different UN agencies looking back now are you impressed or depressed by what you found and the changes there have been Trevor Huddleston always used to complain if anybody talked about optimism and pessimism because he said we should always have hope but you must work for it so part of the answer is that of course there is a lot of encouragement that most of the world is there in the 1960s the decolonisation and so on the UN played a very important role in the decolonisation process and all the other things that happened so there is a possibility but now we are finding that a lot of institutions and we have a lot more of them cost a lot of money we cannot get the budgets we need you see in Geneva where I was fortunate to serve the international organisations there all of them they make the difference in your daily lives the World Health Organisation International Telecommunications Union Intellectual Property all these in Geneva and many humanitarian ones and then we have the Human Rights Council but there is very little money in those organisations and when you go for a better budget people say we don't have enough money so the budgets shrink as the budgets shrink and work needs to be done the big powers come and say we will earmark X amount of money for project Y and they do and this distorts multilateralism because you are now dependent on certain key countries for certain contributions but for many of the projects they also give you their officials so you no longer have an international civil servant that's being developed globally conceptually speaking so we are living in very bad times because multilateralism is damaged it's in crisis in my view and we are not able to build it further because there is a backward step because of financial constraints and so on so global democracy and global participation and global peace suffer but it's not only there the Ebola crisis was very difficult to handle the head of the UN health organisation had a few of us in I was only African we discussed what to do and the dilemma she has was appointed as a coordinator but she didn't have resources and we sat there to help in the end we had to work quite fast and it was a funny thing maybe only South Africa could do it Cuba for each support and then the US ambassador was there and we said you can do a lot more so please can't you come now this is really needed we had a couple of meetings already so they knew the issues and then we moved to China and so on so we eventually got I mean President Obama then had an African summit in Washington just happened to be there and then they utilised that also to give support Britain came in with a lot of support that is the one time I said to the EU why don't you use your disaster funds you have a lot of them for this because they didn't have a budget for this so we'll see what we can do so I think there are also possibilities like that but you have to work with some imagination people have to swallow their pride which is difficult so it's a difficult area to work in but I am not as optimistic or hopeful as I would like to be I think we could have achieved more but I think as long as the international community is there and people are participating as long as they are there there is hope that things are possible but it's not as easy as we are expecting So how does all that affect humanitarian assistance at a time where there are massive problems of migration, poverty now drought in Africa Valerie could give us a better answer because we have admired her from Geneva and four years have been there as well with the remarkable innovative and other ways in which she was able to act with all kinds of disasters including a very difficult one of Syria but that's not the only one Haiti, you just think any areas of conflict because you have to make sure that when you get these disasters if possible countries can be prepared for it before because you can't do very much and then the resources would flow and how do you do that and that's why I said in the beginning because I really feel it that all the work that you did and the papers you commissioned and so on are being discussed now as we meet here and so you don't always see the results of your work but as long as you work and build blocks solid blocks for the future you have some basis it horrifies me just the discussions we had in Geneva with people I remember in the late 60s Malawi 10 million people 5 million refugees Africa had refugees no one asked where you come from and we don't have food for you and we don't do they acted in a humane way manner now we see tear gas used against refugees how have we allowed this to happen and the other paradox Lebanon not a rich country by any means has its own challenges takes in so many refugees and looks after them to the best of its ability many other countries I hope it's not true that developed countries have lost some of their humanity because in Africa and Asia certainly somebody came wherever they were in that condition that we helped of course we had many refugees South Africans around South Africa so do you feel that's what's happening I think what is now happening is that people are being treated in a manner they were not treated before that people are becoming desensitized to the suffering to human suffering both people who see they just isn't in any capacity and there isn't the kind of leadership one sad thing globally if you think today there are very few outstanding leaders that you can follow and we found in a different way in the commonwealth too when we had Africa, Asia, Caribbean with us we had to develop partnerships with western countries Australian Prime Minister Canadian Prime Minister others all came to the party and worked with us and later when Mrs Thatcher said no we created this very innovative way of dealing with her in that in the commonwealth we said at one of the meetings I mean I didn't the leaders did that we will continue without you in this case we respect you and we leave you out and she thought Derek Ingram, her press secretary at a meeting of the British press said you know we have now stuck a blow for Britain and we've got it but she didn't know that the language we had used was a section of Britain so Britain actually opted out of the commonwealth if you wish in those decisions so different ways had to be used to move forward but I think now people unfortunately have become quite insensitive to many of the tragedies that we are facing so we do need global leaders to give a lead and others to support it but too many people are concerned with whatever it will cost here or what you do this or find some other way or that someone else contributes something if others don't then we don't need to and so the human misery is increasing unfortunately and as an ambassador from the south, from South Africa has it been difficult getting your voice heard against the voices of the major powers has that been frustrating? That is frustrating because of this change that I have explained to you about the role of power and we don't have stormtroopers in the south we have no power there was a time in the anti-apartheid work for example that if Nigeria said something Garton and others would sit up I was at one commonwealth conference when Nigeria had just nationalised BP and I remember the British foreign secretary in the reception absolutely shocked and shouting at the Nigerian foreign minister and he said no if you treat us like this we have the right to respond and here's Nigeria which is completely against nationalisation they can nationalise anything for domestic policy or anything else all of a sudden nationalise because of the anger so I think there was a stage when people listened to other countries took a long term view that if you didn't do this you might suffer consequences later we'd all suffer so we all must work as a global community I think now that's gone it's becoming irrelevant in Geneva sure we had decisions as I said just come to us we had very few discussions in the human rights council which is the most important political organ in Geneva we never have discussions you have a council meeting high level sections some ministers come and make statements and then you have the EU or what have you or others putting forward a text of a resolution they've worked out already where they'd get a majority and then the lobby the majority there's no discussion you can speak for two minutes if you're lucky or one minute depending on the time the chairman gives you because there's a pressure of time and then there's a vote and that's the end of it there's no discussion some of us have asked for it in reforming the work and so on but there's hardly any and it's largely predetermined because in various groups there are many African conflicts that we have to deal with there Sudan, Burundi, a whole lot of others so we really miss this dialogue and the African Union takes very good positions but its voice is not respected as much as it should we should be moving towards giving more responsibility to regional organisations the regional organisations know the conditions in their area they can probably also deliver grants agranus, behaviour and so on and then there should be a link between the regional organisations and the United Nations in order to move forward and what about issues like Libya which obviously involves an awful lot of Northern Africans? Well Libya was the issue I mean in the sense that over 50 African heads of states jointly made an appeal there should be no NATO intervention and no arms should be used that we should try and look for other ways of creating more democracy there or creating more democracy there this was communicated formally also to the Secretary General of NATO by an African leader but nobody listened to us its our continent and that the experience of Iraq was not a pleasant one so the question is where do we go how far do we protect the international war now over Libya just before that I said it to diplomats at several dinars that they had got oil concessions from Libya and at that time they were in quiet later the alternative others had arms deals with Libya people are interested I can give you all the details but they didn't want that discussion and we were concerned that if too many arms were put there he was a little unreliable in Africa could cause a lot of confusion on our continent so it shouldn't happen and we were told not your business bilateral relations so here we had Gaddafi removed all instruments of the state were destroyed infrastructure was destroyed for which there was no need and now seven countries in the Sahel suffered the consequences of the mercenaries and modern arms going there and many of them had better arms than the governments of those seven countries so I think it has been a really major disaster and secondly wherever anyone goes and opposes a tyrant or somebody that is not popular at that time then they are given money it happened in Afghanistan it happened in Libya and these are the ones who have actually later created terrorist groups the same ones so how where are we going to discuss this globally even the US administration now there are questions about the whole Libyan exercise but you see we have to find a way of not going there to destroy the state and the structures yes the leader you have to work to getting more democracy expand that area certainly but not in a way that you throw this person out you destroy the infrastructure and they bombed water reserves and so on and then of course they did take over the oil Western leaders came immediately with shell and so on they took over the oil so what was it all about so I don't think many people can have confidence and faith that there was a moral issue involved it was just that the situation was used for other interests it makes us all worse off today and Africa had its voice it was right but nobody gives you credit for being right they don't like you saying it because they were wrong but that is a tragedy so you depressed about the future then? I don't know about depressed but I think we all have to be hopeful by working for what we want so if we just have individual reactions it doesn't matter we'll just react and therefore also in terms of political work or the anti-apartheid work or everything if you have a set of beliefs you have to have a set of beliefs and principles and values we believed in anti-apartheid in a strange way in multilateralism we worked with everyone you know Peter was running one extreme group running onto pictures getting arrested and everything we had a lord doing something else so we had different people connected to the anti-apartheid structure in different ways now we also mobilized the world got everybody working so what we had is we had policies started with boycotts went to sanctions went to sports boycotts culture all those and around all of those we mobilized so as more and more people supported us we became a force for that and more people understood the issues that's the other thing so the question is unless you organize you become almost irrelevant so you have to organize even if you are too and then you add and you have to organize with a sense of perspective and a mission if you wish it can be wrong you may not go as fast as you wish it took us over 30 years in the United States to get all the state authorities to support boycotts nobody planned it it would happen in a year or two and then President Reagan his vetoes were actually vetoed by Congress so he couldn't get it through we got sanctions through financial sanctions so I think you have to persevere you have to keep to the commitment and you have to mobilize as many people as possible on the basis of values and principles and that is a remarkable thing in the South African struggle that millions of people across the world thousands upon thousands made huge sacrifices and suffered consequences for belief for a country they'd never been to but they accepted the leadership of the organization they accepted the leadership of the leaders who are here who provided that and in that way we were able to move forward so what is the state of South Africa today then? South Africa today is in a sad status because first of all we have changed just over 20 years okay 21 we have not been able to address the disparities of the apartheid structure at all we've done it in a number of 5 million houses free electricity free water those kind of things but the major issues remain most of the economy is full control by 70-80% by the white community from before so there's no transformation of that and they've been now having political conflicts of a kind where the constitution court had to step in so I think that people are going through a lot of pain and anguish reflection trying to find out what it is that they can do to reassert the kind of principles that were the basis also of the struggle and after there are many people beginning to get engaged with it but you know these kind of struggles it's a long walk you have to try and manage whatever change is possible without being destructive and it's very easy to be destructive in a context of anger and moving forward so I think that there is a debate going on in South Africa many people are impatient but that's inevitable in that situation what we have changed basically is it's a fantastic feeling to be in a country and if anyone dead to react to you in a racist manner you know you have the law behind you it is a remarkable feeling those of us who never had it before we appreciate it even more for most of you it may not matter but for us it is vital that you can walk around the country the same place in Pretoria where they treated us very badly I live there now no one dares point of finger at me in a racist manner if they do the whole state structure will be with me the Human Rights Council will be with me the Commission will be with me and so on we also have I should say we have a relatively free press many people condemn the free press because it's always we can say what they want they're not locked up for saying it which used to be the case before so there are a lot of blessings in the change that we've had and then on the continent of Africa it's very important for us to advance the continent we cannot claim that we are successful in anything unless we are able to foster African unity and there we've done remarkable things I think how many people here know that we are the only institution in the world where we insist that half of our commissioners of the African Union must be women and indeed as a former foreign minister and now chair of the AU said when the first discussions took place about appointing women and the men said no no we don't have good enough candidates she said look I'm reminding you that when we drafted this we said a minimum of 50% women so I might ask for 60% then the men gave up but I think it's a big jump if you think if you see the commissioners on the continent and what they're doing we've also in the AU said we will not allow coups and we will not recognize anyone who comes to power through coups and that's largely been maintained these are not easy positions to take or to sustain for a continent with a history that it's had so it depends on what kind of perspective or canvas you look at the changes so there South Africa has also become an area of hope for gender equality Nepal also conceived through there moving now not as fast as we would like it to but at least we managed in those first years and I was fortunate to be involved in it for several presidents three presidents and there for example when Mozambig didn't have much money for health and other projects we said we would give you some but Mozambig must also commit to the Nepal criteria of putting a percentage of their national budget in those areas health education social services and so on so when those things happened development aid also came more easily because it showed that the countries were prepared to do that and in that process in the Nepal context we also talk about mainstreaming women in gender the difficulty in Africa because many African women still don't have a sense of identity, they have no title to land all these kind of things so this is a lot of work to be done but we have to also make sure that in South Africa everyone feels comfortable and proud but I think we have to go through this difficult period and hope that at the end we will try over that but it will have an impact on the continent because we work with the continent I must thank you very much indeed I'm sorry I've been asking you probably too many questions I should now open it up to everyone else but a question over here Would South Africa be better with the UK leaving the EU or with the UK staying in the EU and Do you think South Africa should form a similar union with the southern African states like we have in the EU over here Well, with regard to the debate here in the Britain I'm really not competent to go into that and you'll understand I'm not trying to avoid anything take a position either side but I don't have enough information about the total thing as to how it would affect developing countries in Africa and so on so we have to wait for that The second question was about our region What was it precisely? Was with a forming a similar union in the southern African states that the EU is over here Well, we have a sadic community and we are working functionally very well really very well Sorry? Even with Zimbabwe Yes, in fact particularly with Zimbabwe Zimbabwe if you may not know is an African country how can we leave it out in fact on Zimbabwe we will leave one area very important country you must remember other facts that people forget that in Zimbabwe we have the best educated population on the continent difficult maybe for some to accept but it's true so if you look at all that why should we do away with them many of them are playing a big role in African international organisations even in the UN you disagree with it so on but you can't therefore just break up a regional arrangement because of that and now the OAU which succeeded the OAU is formed on the basis of the EU structures its organisation and so on commissioners so now some of us in Africa are asking question as to that is the correct structure for Africa and that is a much more important debate and a discussion but what we have done with the customs arrangements and so on will we hope now result in far more trade between African countries at the moment only 3% of our trade is with each other so that infrastructure by the way is being developed now as well considerably but we have to reduce the tariffs we have to make it easier for companies to come in and to function and all the development that is going on in South Africa itself with all the criticism people have of it the biggest investor in infrastructure is the state private companies have money but they are not moving so we are trying to talk to that to say they should also invest it and then there are also international partners as mentioned China and others are also coming in into some of those big infrastructure projects so we do have to work with those infrastructure projects another bag there sorry yes sir thank you very much there have been criticisms in relation to South Africa being a one party or dominant party state do you see it changing the second question is in relation to regional organisations which you mentioned which I think is a very good point but would we see the necessity of regional the regional blocks themselves taking I mean taking giant strides rather than waiting for opportunities to be given them I am talking about in the context of UN chapter 8 provides for regional institutions already is it the responsibility of regional institutions to do more or should they just wait and to be given the opportunity to do more ok well with regard to one party state you know we who have been South Africans for a long time I remind you that since 1948 to 94 we had a one party state no one said it no one wanted to say it it was somehow against the apartheid regime so they didn't say it so South Africans particularly white South Africans know very little about democracy because they've never had it they had a one party state throughout with a lot of repression dictatorship state terrorism number one in fact I was describing South Africa at that time as a state terrorist number one because attacking African countries and so on at will so I think the one party state now I've quoted one party state yes there is a majority but you have to make up your mind whether you support democracy because if you support democracy you get one person one vote and you get a result of it what mechanism do you wish to put in place to stop that big question very difficult question many people over Iran of course also didn't like that they elect many and so on now Rohani maybe but they at least have elections even if you may not like them many other countries in the region don't so I think in terms of democracy you have to say is democracy something that exists where you must have more than one party and if you're very concerned about it you know our first government was a coalition government we had even Mr De Clarca our main enemy in it so they've been serious and they are the ones who left the government successively they were brought in even Mr Mulder of the small party made a minister so I'm saying there from the government side there was an effort to work to some kind of if you wish coalition framework or consensus framework by involving others what people repeatedly said is that if the ALC gets a very big majority it will just unilaterally change the constitution the question that arose that arises now is the constitution that it wrote and I think the encouraging sign now is that our chapter 9 institutions now the public protector has been fully protected supported took positions that many people would say is against the government the government came and said no it will support you despite what happened I think those institutions are strong and we have to make sure they remain strong to be able to protect the state we also have a full of rights that the parliament cannot change I don't think many countries in the world have that so we must not throw everything away in this context I certainly don't believe that in the majority people elect a certain government that that government must now immediately say that if we rule we rule as one party states I remember in Sweden once there were only about 15% of the people who formed that government Prime Minister all states government I was a very small government but it's because none of the other opposition parties could agree so he could do it and by consensus he ruled for some time so I think it's a complicated issue it's not just as easy as that as for regional blocs yes we are committed under when we were president of the security council your turn comes around we held special sessions where our president foreign ministers went there to try and persuade the U.S. to work more closely with the regional organisations so we have been pressing for this throughout so that if there are conflicts in Africa and so on they should discuss it indeed in 1974 I was invited to a conference in Addis Ababa which was a first ever conference called by the United Nations in Africa so the security council met in Africa to discuss all African questions together and I think we need to do that because there are so many conflicts and so on so if you just address one or this or that you can't really make much progress so you have to look at all with some kind of assistance that will really be sustainable so then it was President Bush, the father he was then the U.S. ambassador in New York and he came to Addis for that and sat with us all night to say don't fight very hard for your independence and freedom let's work for Namibia first and then when white people get used to it then we can do it for South Africa so he gave us a lot of advice at the time to the back there, thank you Mark Robinson, CISD thank you for a very interesting discussion my question is on a topic that's prevalent to some extent all over the world developed and underdeveloped and that is corruption and in particular my question is on black elite corruption which is very damaging throughout the continent of Africa I was at a talk in Oxford last week which was attended by a Ghana activist Annas who named shames and jails corrupt officials throughout Ghana and that has been quite successful in helping to limit the problems that I'm just interested in your views on how you see corruption being combated throughout Africa and in South Africa in particular well we all have to fight corruption the problem I'm talking also my early years when I worked in the foreign ministry and we engaged with many western countries our very great difficulty was to try and convey to the government's concern that we had a corrupta and a corrupted now I don't know if you believe me but at that time we showed them that German law allowed you to bribe people to get business the law allowed it how can you then say that it's something you don't want others to do when you're doing it yourself so I think it's a very complicated issue certainly we don't want any corruption now African countries have been fighting very very hard to get the money from the countries where their dictators have then deposited money I think Britain is also involved in that discussion I know that our former president Tabor Beke is doing a project for the continent on it we're not getting much cooperation from the countries that are keeping the spoils either Switzerland or many others okay so I think that if we are to work this we need cooperation it has to be a global effort to make sure it doesn't go but the national efforts should also remain and we should may strengthen them but the organizations like Transparency International and so on they are active in South Africa they are active in other countries so partnerships have to be developed and we must also engage the trade union movement and other structures within the country and we want it to advance but I agree with you absolutely that we have to fight corruption it's a major priority Thank you very much I'm afraid we're going to stop Thank you very much