UNESCO. General Conference; 30th; Records ... - unesdoc - Unesco

upon respect for justice, the rule of law, human rights, fundamental freedoms, and human equality; secondly, that
international collaboration through education, science and culture must advance these developmental values; and
thirdly, that it is UNESCO’s mission to promote such collaboration.
35.5 It is quite clear that the founders of UNESCO intended the Organization to be a bulwark of the highest
civic morality. After more than 50 years of extraordinary endeavour, Member States are recalling UNESCO to its
roots, as we in South Africa are recalling it to its roots. We are testing its programmes, its mode of operation by
the exacting moral criteria that underlie the Constitution of UNESCO.
35.6 The appointment of a new Director-General has given Member States the opportunity to reaffirm the
fundamental purposes of the Organization and the manner in which they expect its business to be conducted more
efficiently at the opening of the new century.
35.7 So as we bid farewell to Federico Mayor, the Director-General, it is impossible for me, a Minister in a
democratic South African government, to be neutral about UNESCO’s objectives, or indifferent to its future.
Forty years ago, the majority of South Africans, identified by colour, were disenfranchised and the government of
my country was presided over by a fanatical racial bigot, who considered that UNESCO’s ideas on race were
subversive. He was right. UNESCO debunked racial mythology, and pioneered the study of racism as a social
sickness, a social pathology. Racist South Africa then withdrew from UNESCO in a vain attempt to forestall the
influence that the world body might exert on South African opinion.
35.8 Forty years on, after generations of anguish and blood, Verwoerd and his sort are history, and his ideas
of white supremacy have been thoroughly discredited and replaced by the nobler sentiments of reconciliation and
development. South Africa is proud to be back in UNESCO. Mr Mayor did so much to enable us to regain our
patrimony in UNESCO. At this turning point in the life of the Organization, we South Africans still have a direct,
vital and immediate interest in the noble project to construct peace in the minds of men and women.
35.9 Our democracy in South Africa has the vigour and vulnerability of youth. We have successfully
navigated our second non-racial democratic election. Our Constitution entrenches a real and comprehensive Bill
of Rights, protects the fundamental freedoms of all persons, and establishes impressive institutional defences
against human rights violations and the misuse of power. Our truth and reconciliation process has exposed the
depravity of the period from which we have emerged, and brought victim and violator face to face. Our laws have
abolished all forms of unfair discrimination; our press is free. Our courts are independent. Our civil institutions
flourish. Our great cultural and physical assets have now become part of the world’s heritage and we intend to
play a full part in their protection.
35.10 And yet, we dare not be complacent. Three centuries of colonialism and half a century of apartheid have
left a cruel legacy of gross inequality, corruption and interpersonal violence that bedevil our transition. Nowhere
is the full brunt of inequality felt as it is in education. Inequality perpetuates the poverty, the illegitimacy and the
deprivation of large parts of our common humanity.
35.11 In 1994 we were indeed a house divided, yet we joined hands to pull our nation back from the very pit
of destruction. Today, the democratic government at all levels and the institutions of civil society are working
together to rekindle the spark of non-racialism and integrity which were the hallmarks of our liberation struggle.
A mobilization of the human spirit and conscience is under way, to re-establish the plain, essential virtues and
values of integrity and public interest, and to re-instil the qualities of commitment and hard work, especially in
our schools. This is what Mr Nelson Mandela has referred to as the “RDP of the soul”, the reconstruction and
development of a new moral order through transformation of all our institutions and our minds, and educating us
for our diversity.
35.12 While the global phenomenon presupposes interdependence and a common intellectual and commercial
interest among the peoples of the world, the sickening ethnic wars and genocides of the current period tell us a
different story. While technology and international agreements build the sinews of our one world, the purveyors
of hatred and xenophobia insist that human diversity is an evil to be resisted.
35.13 One does not have to espouse a particular religion to be moved and alarmed by the profound millennial
symbolism of W.B. Yeats’ Second Coming:
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
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