[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 144 (Thursday, October 6, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 6, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
 ADDRESS BY NELSON MANDELA, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA, 
          BEFORE A JOINT MEETING OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS

  Mr. MANDELA. Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of Congress, this we 
understand fully, that it is given to very few, who came from outside 
the shores of this country, to stand in this lofty Chamber to address 
you, the law-makers of the United States of America.
  And so we speak today feeling the great weight of an extraordinary 
and elevating circumstance that you have extended this rare honour to 
us twice in our lifetime in a period of less than half-a-decade.
  We extend our humble thanks to you all and to the millions of people 
you represent. We express our gratitude that you have thus, as an Irish 
patriot once said, given to a subaltern all the tribute that is due to 
a superior.
  When last we were here, we came to thank you for the things you had 
done which had flung open the prison gates of our troubled land and 
enabled the leaders of our enslaved people to tread the soil of our 
country unhindered.
  We came to salute you for the place you had taken in the universal 
assault on apartheid, which had made it possible that once more the 
authentic organisations of our people should speak for the people 
freely and without seeking the permission of those who sought to ensure 
that the people had no voice except the voice of subservice.
  We came also to share with you our dreams of genuine independence, 
democracy and the emanicipation of all our people, you whose forebears 
had, at earlier times, dreamt of independence, of democracy and 
of the emancipation of all the people of these United States.
  The time that has passed since then has given it to us to come back 
to you to speak not of a dream deferred, of which your fellow-
countryman Langston Hughes spoke.
  The history that cannot be unmade has enabled us to repeat in this 
Chamber the poetry of the triumph of the oppressed.
  For, as the representatives of centuries of white minority rule bowed 
to the results of the democratic process, the people did, like your 
fellow-countryman, Martin Luther King Jr, cry out: ``Free at last, free 
at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last.''
  We were moved that even at that first moment of celebration, 
representatives of the American people were present among us to help us 
sing and louder sing of freedom, justice and peace.
  We were moved because you, like the great humanity to which we all 
belong, had committed your own human and material resources to ensure 
that for the first time in the entire history of our country, the 
people had the possibility to elect a government of their choice, 
without let or hindrance.
  When the proclamation rang out that the elections had in the 
substance been free and fair, we knew that we could proudly return to 
these shores to say: Dear friends, brothers and sisters, your wishes 
and ours have been realised; democracy has won the day.
  We were humbled and inspired that you honoured us again by sending a 
delegation of eminent Americans to join us at our inauguration.
  As we began our new journey into a new future, we took the presence 
in our country, of so weighty a group of emissaries of what is good in 
the American consciousness, to be a declaration which none could either 
forget or ignore, that you stand by our young democracy and commit your 
prayers to its everlasting success.
  Along the uneasy road to the victory of the cause of democracy and 
fundamental human rights, we, like the great revolutionaries who were 
the founders of this Republic, have had to rest the capacity of our 
people to break new ground in the history of human evolution.
  Principal among these was, on the one hand, the willingness of the 
erstwhile minority rules to concede political power without first 
resorting to such resistance as would reduce our country to a 
wasteland.
  On the other, was the ability of the oppressed majority to forgive 
and accept a shared destiny with those who had enslaved them.
  That both black and white in our country can today say we are to one 
another brother and sister, a united rainbow nation that derives its 
strength from the bonding of its many races and colours, constitutes a 
celebration of the oneness of the human race.
  It represents the triumph of that intangible nobility of spirit 
which, in a divided and unequal world, makes for peace and friendship 
among the peoples.
  At the end, the bloodletting stopped. At the end, goodwill prevailed. 
At the end, the overwhelming majority, both black and white, decided to 
invest in peace.
  In the end, it is all this that the ceremonial drums sought to salute 
as they throbbed to a rhythm both African and universal.
  But in the fullness of time, they too ceased to beat. Their powerful 
rhythms have been replaced by the great pulsations which represent and 
reflect a new society in formation. New challenges stand ahead of us.
  The flame of freedom, under whose light we danced in joyful abandon, 
has thrown an unrelenting glare on the great human tragedy on which was 
built the tarnished, tinsel glitter of an unjust society.
  As we look and look again at the reality that freedom brings, we see 
together with T.S. Eliot that we are, still:

     In the uncertain hour before the morning
     Near the ending of interminable night
     At the recurrent end of the unending . . .
     While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
     Over the asphalt where no other sound was . . .

  The dead leaves that still rattle on over the asphalt, and ``the 
awareness of things ill done and done to others' harm'' which Eliot 
decried, speak to the pervasive poverty that afflicts our society; the 
despair of millions who are without jobs and without hope; the unborn 
whom we know will be born disabled and die before their maturity, 
because of poverty; the darkness that engulfs millions because they are 
both illiterate and innumerate; the many who will be victims of rape, 
robbery and other violent crimes because hunger, want and brutalization 
have warped and condemned many a human soul.
  What we speak of is not unknown to this and other societies across 
the globe. And yet it is a reality which assumes its own special place 
because it superimposes itself on new and as yet fragile democratic 
institutions, democratic institutions that have sprouted out of the 
turbulent African soil.
  This situation carries the features of a foundation that is, 
naturally, still in the process of setting. It represents the recurrent 
end of the unending process of the betterment of the human condition. 
It is to that unending process that we must turn our attention.
  The question that arises is whether we shall embark on that road 
walking alone or whether you will be with us, having decided thus, in 
the process of the exercise of your own sovereign will.
  It is perhaps right that we sit together again to evaluate this 
circumstance, to measure whether there is in it anything which demands 
of our people and yours that we enter into a compact founded on the 
imperatives of mutual gain.
  The new South Africa has been born out of, and into a new age of 
great change. Because, perforce, we describe our country's 
transformation in words that have a familiar meaning, because they 
originate in the mists of time--democracy, justice and peace--we too 
may not yet see that this is a transformation born out of and into a 
new age of great change.
  The new age will surely demand that democracy must also mean a life 
of plenty. As the images of life lived anywhere on our globe become 
available to all, so will the contrast between the rich and the poor 
within and across frontiers and within and across the continents, 
become a motive force impelling the deprived to demand a better life 
from the powers that be, whatever their location.
  As the possibility of nations to become islands, sufficient unto 
themselves, diminishes and vanishes forever, so will it be that the 
suffering of the one shall, at the same time, inflict pain upon the 
other.
  In an age such as this, when the fissures of the great oceans shall, 
in the face of human genius, be reduced to the narrowness of a forest 
path, much revision will have to be done of ideas that have seemed as 
stable as the rocks, including such concepts as sovereignty and the 
national interest.
  What we speak of is the evolution of the objective world which 
inexorably says to all of us that we are human together or nothing at 
all.
  The phrase you use, the concept of your being which is fundamental to 
the understanding of your society, the notion of a ``melting pot,'' 
has, in time, begun to address a reality that encompasses the globe.
  In the world of mundane things, as opposed to the celestial and the 
imaginary, a buyer is a buyer. The profits that your great corporations 
make, derive from whoever has the capacity to purchase their products 
and services, regardless of whether the customers are Chinese or 
African, Indian or American, European or Arab or Polynesian, male or 
female, young or old, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Moslem or Animist.
  The success of your entrepreneurs, and with it the capacity of your 
society to give work to your citizens, rests on the fact of the 
elevation of every person, anywhere in the world, to the position of a 
free actor in the market place.
  It will perhaps come to pass that the imperatives of this commercial 
market place will produce that magical elixir which the great thinkers 
of all time have searched for, which sought to convince all societies 
that the assertion was true and self-evident that whatever our 
different complexions, whatever our different racial characteristics, 
whatever our different gender features, we are nonetheless all of us 
part of one, indivisible and common humanity.
  It will perhaps come to be that this interconnectedness will produce 
among you, the distinguished members of these Houses of Congress, as 
among other actors on the world stage, policies which will spring from 
a common recognition of the fact that success or failure in the conduct 
of human affairs, can no longer be measured within the limited sphere 
defined by national boundaries that are the legacy of an ancient 
reality, away from which life itself has moved society a thousand 
leagues.

  If what we say is true, that manifestly, the world is one stage and 
the actions of all its inhabitants part of the same drama, does it not 
then follow that each one of us as nations, including yourselves, 
should begin to define the national interest to include the genuine 
happiness of others, however distant in time and space their domicile 
might be.
  You, honourable members of the U.S. Congress, are part of and 
represent the most powerful Nation in our universe. I am, on the other 
hand, an African.
  I come out of a continent with whose travails and suffering you are 
very familiar. You will therefore understand it easily why I stand up 
to say that for such a powerful country as yours, democracy, peace and 
propserity in Africa are as much in your national interest as ours.
  Because I am an African, you will, I am certain, understand why I 
should stand here and say that it is our deeply held belief that the 
new world order that is in the making must focus on the creation of a 
world of democracy, peace and prosperity for all humanity.
  Is the time therefore not upon us when we should cease to treat 
tyranny, instability and poverty anywhere on our globe as being 
peripheral to our interests and to our future.
  Has not the end of the paralysis in world affairs, which resulted 
from the conflicts of the cold war and the threat of a nuclear 
holocaust, posed to us all the challenge to redefine the purposes of 
the world's system of international relations.
  Can we not, then, move from the negative to the positive! The 
situation of conflict between two competing systems having been brought 
to an end, do we not now move away from the negative, of the global 
destruction of one system, to the positive, of the global creation of 
the conditions which will make it possible for all peoples to enjoy the 
right to full human dignity.
  We are deeply moved by the commitment which the great people you 
represent, and which you yourselves and the President of the United 
States have made, that you will stay the course with us as we 
strengthen democracy in our country, ensure stability born of freedom 
and banish poverty and deprivation.
  You have taken these positions not out of a sense of condescending 
pity for our people but because you have felt and recognised that our 
success advances the very principles on which this country is founded.
  Such recognition can never be an end in itself. It must surely be the 
beginning of a process of embarking on actions that reinforce the 
independent activities of the peoples to address these matters.
  If all of this is true, then great countries, such as this one, and 
great institutions such as the United Nations, the International Bank 
for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund and 
the European Union, must begin to put as a purpose central to their 
policies and actions, the creation of a world of democracy, peace and 
prosperity.
  For the very first time in the history of humanity, we have arrived 
at the point where it has become possible to pose this challenge. That 
possibility has arisen from the fact that, given the will, humanity 
does in fact have the means to begin the creation of the new world 
order whose central features we have sought to define.
  One of your poets, Walt Whitman, has written of an age that must 
dawn, when every hour of the day will bring peace and happiness to all 
the people of these United States, and not the uncertainties of the 
uncertain hour before the morning, of which T.S. Eliot spoke.
  Here is what he wrote:

     Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
     The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
     The gentle soft-born measureless light,
     The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd noon,
     The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
     Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.

  Shall we not awaken to the challenge of our times and bend every 
effort to achieve so magnificent a result!
  I do firmly believe that the people of this country, who have done so 
much to write the history of the world, have the vision, the wisdom and 
the daring to strive so that what is good shines over the cities and 
the villages of that world, enveloping man and land.
  Once you set out on this road, no one will need to be encouraged to 
follow.
  Surely, the order of the day is forward march.
  Thank you.
  [Applause, the Members rising.]
  At 11 o'clock and 48 minutes a.m., the President of the Republic of 
South Africa, accompanied by the committee of escort, retired from the 
Hall of the House of Representatives.
  The Doorkeeper escorted the invited guests from the Chamber in the 
following order:
  The members of the President's Cabinet.
  The Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
  The ambassadors, ministers and charges d'affaires of foreign 
governments.

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