    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 16 (Monday, April 25, 1994)]
    [Pages 874-880]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Interview With Journalists on South Africa

    April 20, 1994

        Q. Could I begin, Mr. President, with a two-part question? What is
    the significance of the South African election to you and the American
    people? And do you have any particular message for the people of South
    Africa that we could take back to them?
        The President. First of all, I think it would be difficult to
    overstate the significance of this election to the American people for
    many reasons, first of all, our own history of racial division. We,
    after all, fought a great Civil War over slavery, and we continue to
    deal with our own racial challenges today. So all Americans, I think,
    have always been more drawn to the problems and the promise of South
    Africa than perhaps other nations have been.
        Secondly, our own civil rights movement has, for decades, had a
    relationship with the antiapartheid movement in South Africa. So this
    will be a great sense of personal joy to many, many Americans who have
    been involved in this whole issue personally.
        And finally, it's important to the United States because of the
    promise of harmony and prosperity in South Africa and what that might
    mean, not only to South Africa but to many other nations in the region
    and to the prospect of a revitalization, a new energy, a new peace, a
    new sense of possibility throughout at least the southern part of
    Africa. So it's very important.
        Q. Any particular message?

    [[Page 875]]

        The President. The message I would have is this: The United States
    is elated at the prospect of these elections. We have contributed to the
    effort to fight apartheid. We have tried to support the effort to have
    good elections and to make them meaningful, and we want to celebrate
    with and support South Africa. But we realize that the real work will
    begin after the election, of continuing to live in harmony, of fighting
    the new problems every day, of making democracy work, of dealing with
    the social problems and the very severe economic problem. And we intend
    to be a partner from the beginning. We intend to be a full partner.
        Shortly after the election I will announce a substantial increase in
    United States assistance and support for building South Africa
    economically, dealing with the social problems, helping the political
    system to work. And then in June, we will have here a very large
    conference sponsored by the Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, in
    Atlanta, bringing together large numbers of American business people to
    give us the opportunity to urge them to be involved with South Africa in
    the rebuilding.

    [At this point, an interviewer cited the Marshall Plan following World
    War II and asked if a similar plan might be suitable for South Africa.]

        The President. Well, I do believe that we ought to dramatically
    increase our assistance, which we will do. I think we ought to
    dramatically increase our private investment in South Africa, which I
    intend to work on. I think we ought to do what we can to mobilize the
    resources of other nations to also contribute. And I intend to spend a
    lot of time and effort on that.
        I don't know that I would say it's exactly like the Marshall Plan or
    that that is exactly what is needed, but it's obvious that a lot of
    money, a lot of investment, and a lot of opportunity is going to be
    needed to sort of jump-start South Africa. It's a very rich country. And
    I think that the promise of this new democracy is that people will be
    able to live up to their potential. And I intend to do what I can to be
    a strong partner in that.
        Q. This is the last one to--would you--you would probably be going
    to Africa soon, and is there any intention of paying a visit to our
    country?
        The President. Well, I hope that I can go, and I very much want to
    go. I assure you I'm going to send a very high-level delegation to the
    inauguration to celebrate the elections. And I have been talking with my
    staff about when I can go to Africa.
        This year, because of the 50th anniversary of the ending of World
    War II, I will wind up making three trips to Europe, and I will go to
    Asia in the fall. But in 1995, 1996, my travel schedule is more open.
    And I very much want to go there.
        I think that the United States, frankly, has not--with the exception
    of South Africa--has not paid as much attention to Africa as it should
    have and to its long-term potential and particularly to those countries
    that are trying to resolve their political problems and do things to
    help their people. So I would be honored to go there. I don't have a
    trip scheduled, but I hope I can go.

    [An interviewer indicated that the world faced increased racial and
    ethnic conflict and asked for the President's thoughts on whether a
    successful South African venture would help the world confront the
    problem.]

        The President. Well, I do have some thoughts, actually. I think it
    has worked in South Africa partly because people with enormous influence
    decided to be statesmen instead of wreckers. After a certain amount of
    time, you had the leaders of the various groups deciding that there was
    no longer a future in fighting and killing and dying, that splitting the
    country up was not an option, and that somehow they were going up or
    down together. And then they translated those understandings into
    concrete commitments, not just an election. An election is only part of
    it, although a big part.
        I think the decision to go for a government of national unity for 5
    years is absolutely critical to this and making the decision before you
    know the outcome of the election. The decision to have a bill of rights,
    the decision to have a constitutional court, I think all these things
    have made a huge difference. And I think what you've got in other
    places, these sort of ancient divisions--racial, ethnic, and religious
    divisions--where people have not

    [[Page 876]]

    come to that wisdom; they don't understand yet, for whatever reason,
    that in the end they'll be better off if they work together and that
    controlling territory is nowhere near the significance in terms of
    quality of life and meaning of life that it was 100 years ago.
        It's almost as if, in some of the places that you've mentioned--and
    you've written so powerfully about Bosnia, and I know you care a lot
    about Azerbaijan; you have the Abkhaz problem, you have all these
    things-- it's almost as if the cold war sort of imposed a freeze-frame
    on the history of a lot of these places. And then when it went away,
    people woke up and resumed the attitudes that they had held in the early
    part of the 20th century, which they carried over from the 19th century,
    as if there had been no communications revolution, as if there had been
    no changes in the global economy, as if all these things had happened.
        Here in this country, too, the ethnic diversity of the United States
    ought to be our greatest asset as we move into the next century. It used
    to be in America that the burden we carried was the burden of the fight
    between blacks and whites going back to slavery and the Civil War and
    the aftermath. Now, in Los Angeles County alone there are 150 different
    racial and ethnic groups, 150 different ones in one county. And there
    was a study released in our press last week that said sometimes these
    groups resented each other as much as they resented the white majority,
    depending on what the facts were. So we're still dealing with this.
        I have to tell you, I believe that if the elections come off well,
    and especially in the aftermath of the agreement yesterday where Chief
    Buthelezi agreed with Mr. Mandela and Mr. de Klerk to participate in the
    elections and they worked out the constitutional role for the King of
    the Zulus--I think when that was done--I think if this election comes
    off, it will send a message around the world that there is another way
    to deal with these problems and that if it can be done in South Africa,
    how can you justify the old-fashioned killing and fighting and dying
    over a piece of land, over divisions which are not as important as what
    unites people in other places.
        I mean, it's amazing; you think of it--contrast what we see in
    Gorazde with what we see about to happen in South Africa. It's a matter
    of enormous historical impact. And I think that when it is shown around
    the world it has to reverberate in ways that we can't fully assess but
    that have to be positive.

    [An interviewer indicated that the proposed aid package for South Africa
    was much smaller than the one offered to Russia; he asked the President
    to response to those who believe the proposed aid package for South
    Africa was insufficient.]

        The President. Well, first of all, we've not finalized the amount of
    the aid package. We're working on it now, and we're going to get as much
    money as we can during this fiscal year from funds that are idle in the
    appropriate accounts. That is, there are some--we are looking, we are
    scouring the Government accounts for things, money that won't be spent
    that we can put into this. And we will do as much as we possibly can.
        South Africa is a country of 40 million people where 7 million are
    homeless, for all practical purposes. There is an enormous amount to be
    done. If you look at it in the larger sense, if you look at the amount
    of investment we have, we have only a billion dollars invested now in
    South Africa since the advent of the sanctions--and I'm glad that I
    could lift the sanctions--but a billion dollars. In the early eighties
    we had $3 billion. And one of the things that I intend to do in June
    with this conference that Secretary Brown is having is to do everything
    I can to accelerate return of American investment to the levels of the
    early eighties, and then to exceed that, because we know, as a practical
    matter, if you look at the incredible human and natural resources of
    South Africa, that there would be more American money, private sector
    American money than Government money.
        Now, next year and the year after--we're going to stay after this
    thing on a multiyear basis--we may be able to do better. But I think,
    given the condition of our budget laws and where the money is right now
    and the fact that we're in the middle of a fiscal year, we're going to
    do quite well.
        I don't want to be--we're in no position to be dictating that; we
    should be asking them. But I can tell you, I know we can make

    [[Page 877]]

    it available for economic development projects, for human resource
    projects like housing and health and education, and for democracy and
    institution building--how do you set up a system which will deliver
    these services and function properly.
        It occurs to me, for example, the interconnection in South Africa
    and southern Africa generally, the transportation and waterways and the
    potential for telecommunications interconnection to leverage economic
    growth explosively throughout the region, is very great. It might be
    that your leaders would say, ``Well, if you have this amount of dollars,
    put it into these investments because they'll generate more
    opportunities.'' It may be that your leaders will say, ``We can't stand
    the sight of all these people living in substandard conditions; put more
    of it in housing.'' It might be that there's a public health problem
    that you want to deal with. I think that we should be guided in part, or
    in large measure, by what we're asked to do by the new leaders of the
    new South Africa.
        Q. Mr. President, do you have any plans to invite the new South
    African President to Washington?
        The President. Absolutely, I do.
        Q. Quite soon?
        The President. Yes, I will issue the invitation promptly after the
    election.

    [An interviewer suggested that South Africa's crucial need is education
    in democracy and tolerance and said America might be particularly
    helpful in this regard.]

        The President. Well, we're certainly prepared to do that, to make
    that kind of investment. And we have, as you know, invested some money,
    as I said, since I've been President I think somewhere in the range of
    $35 million, just to try to make the political process work right.
        If you ask me one thing I have learned in my own life growing up as
    a young boy in the segregated South, it is that this is something that
    you never solve. You just have to keep improving. You have to keep
    working with it.
        My own interest in politics in America was inflamed overwhelmingly
    by my opposition to racial segregation in my own State, my own
    community, our own neighborhoods, our schools, and the terrible
    consequences which flowed from that. And so I thought, well, you know,
    when I grow up maybe there's something I can do to solve this. And when
    I ran for public office and when I served as a Governor of my State, and
    then when I became President, I think that I'll always be able to say I
    did things to make it better.
        But this is not the sort of thing you solve. Unfortunately, human
    nature being what it is, identifiable differences will always be used by
    narrow-minded people or frustrated people or ignorant people or
    sometimes bad people as a lever, a wedge, a means of acquiring power or
    influence or dominance or just inflicting harm. But it can get better
    and better and better.
        That will be the test. The ultimate test of your democracy will be
    whether a disciplined effort can be made to take the attitudes
    represented, as you acknowledge, by your leaders and keep working until
    they become more and more and more real in the daily lives of every
    citizen of your country. But it is not a job that will ever be
    completely done. It will always be something you have to work on. At
    least that's our experience here. It will get better, but you'll always
    have to work on it.

    [An interviewer said that despite some progress, the United States is
    still a largely segregated country and asked if it will improve.]

        The President. If they work at it I think it will get better. But I
    think you will, first of all, people will always tend to show a certain
    affinity to organize their living patterns around people who are more
    like them. But some people will seek a more integrated life. That's my
    experience in the South; that's my experience in America. I mean, I was
    amazed when I traveled around in other parts of America that a lot of
    people that I knew in other parts of the country lived a more segregated
    existence than I did, for whatever reason, maybe just the nature of the
    population of their communities.
        But I think there will always be a certain amount of cohesion of
    people of the same race or ethnic group or religious group, particularly
    if they have strong religious convic-

    [[Page 878]]

    tions. You see that all over the world. You see that here. To a certain
    extent, there's nothing wrong with that and it's not unhelpful. What is
    unhelpful is if that is used as a way to divide people and if it leads
    to some sort of legal or practical discrimination. And I think what Mr.
    Lewis is saying is absolutely right. We still have too much of that in
    America.
        We had a meeting here this morning, just for example, we had a
    meeting this morning; we had a couple of hundred people in the Rose
    Garden to talk about how to better immunize all of our children in
    America. And it's appalling that a country as wealthy as we are only
    immunizes about two-thirds of our kids, about 64 percent of our children
    under 2 with all the recommended childhood immunizations. And it is
    impossible to avoid the conclusion that one of the reasons is that
    children under 2 are more likely to be children of color and more likely
    to be poor than adults over 50 who tend to make the decisions that
    control public policy in this country. That's one reason. That's not the
    only reason, but it's one reason.
        So we had a meeting today to celebrate trying to organize ourselves
    with some discipline at the community level to eradicate not only a
    health problem but a problem of discrimination against the young, the
    poor, and often, children of color. But I think you see this played out
    over and over and over again in every society. But I do believe you can
    make it better.
        And what I think is going to happen in this country is that
    increasingly we will come to understand that the fact that we are a
    multiracial society is an enormous asset in a global economy, but only
    if we take advantage of it, only if we educate all our children, keep
    them healthy, and teach people to live together in ways that permit them
    all to succeed. Otherwise, this potential asset becomes an enormous
    problem.
        South Africa has an enormous asset now. You have a biracial society;
    you have some other ethnic groups, too, I know, and mixed race, but you
    have essentially two great large ethnic groups of people, each of whom
    have different experiences, different backgrounds, different contacts
    throughout the world now. It can be a terrific asset for you that you
    are different, but only if you use it. It has been a terrible handicap.
    You can now turn it into an asset.
        So I guess my answer to Tony is, some places it will be better; some
    places it will be worse throughout the world. But if you look at the way
    the world is going, you basically are going to have two kinds of
    societies that will do well, it seems to me: highly homogeneous,
    coherent societies that think they can operate with great discipline by
    their own sets of cultural rules which are widely accepted within the
    society, who will then attempt to do well in the global economy by
    having high rates of savings, investment, and exporting to others but
    keeping their own life; or open, multiethnic societies which welcome the
    whole world and try to find a way to make strength out of diversity. And
    what you're going to see is each of those societies will be dealing with
    the conflicts that any course of action dictates.
        You've got a great reform movement going on in Japan, fighting great
    opposition, because they're saying, ``We need to be more open; we need
    to appreciate diversity more,'' but ``We don't want to be so open, we
    don't have any discipline or control or direction or whatever.'' And you
    have America saying, ``This diversity is a great asset for us, but not
    if we have so little discipline, our crime rates are too high, our
    education systems are too poor, or whatever.'' So you have these two
    great models, each of them trying to find the strengths of one another.
        You have a chance to do that in South Africa. And it's a unique
    opportunity, at least in that part of the African Continent. And I think
    it's an extraordinary thing. And I think the world will come beating a
    path to your doorstep. It won't just be the United States; the whole
    world will start showing up down there when you pull this election off,
    because they will be so exhilarated by the moral and the practical
    potential of what it is you're engaged in. That's what I believe.

    [An interviewer cited the concern expressed by a white South African
    journalist about possible human rights abuses by the new government.]

        The President. I'd like to answer the question--it's a good question
    and a fair

    [[Page 879]]

    one--and I'd like to sort of--I'll give you two answers, consistent one
    with the other, but I think showing what I perceive to be the dimension
    of the problem.
        First of all, the leaders of the country have taken great steps to
    minimize the prospect of that development by agreeing to a constitution
    with a strong bill of rights and a constitutional court and by agreeing
    to a government of national unity and by also, frankly, siding with
    international global developments that are consistent with human rights,
    renouncing terrorism, renouncing the spread of proliferation of weapons
    of mass destruction. All these augur for a government that will be
    balanced and fair and will not tolerate as official policy the abuse of
    human rights. If that should occur, I think the United States should
    have the same obligation to speak against it there as we did before in
    South Africa, and as we do now elsewhere in the world. I think that's
    hopeful.
        I think the far greater danger for the man who wrote the piece--and
    it was a very moving piece, I thought--the far greater danger is what is
    in the heart of millions of people who--to go back to your question--who
    have not yet bought into the whole process that is unfolding. And who
    knows how many people there are carrying what wounds inside who may
    think they have some opportunity and some position to which they might
    be elected or just some opportunity because of their newfound freedom
    for payback time? I mean, that is something that no one can calculate.
        In other words, democracy requires every day millions and millions
    and millions of decisions in a country as large as 40 million, by
    people--they just make decisions--sometimes you'll begin to make them
    almost subconsciously--to support the democratic process, to show
    personal restraint, to respect the rights of other people, to deal with
    all these things. I think what's going to be the far bigger challenge,
    is when you get the government in place and you've got the laws, you've
    got the bill of rights, you've got all this stuff, the government's
    going to try to do the right thing, I think the majority party will try
    to do the right thing--what will happen is, what about all the people up
    and down the line? And what is in their hearts? What kind of temptations
    or opportunities will be there? Those are things that happen to free
    societies, and you'll just have to work at stamping them out and
    minimizing them. I think that's what the real problem is.

    [An interviewer asked if the United States would make a greater effort
    to uplift and assist Africa.]

        The President. I think the United States should focus more on Africa
    as a whole, as a continent.
        Q. Do you intend to do that?
        The President. And I intend to do that. Now, you know today, of
    course, we're profoundly--I know that--I won't use your term, but you
    know what occupies our headlines, of course, are in the north, Somalia
    and Sudan and the problems there and then moving down the continent to
    Rwanda and Burundi and then moving down to Angola where more children
    have been injured by land mines than in any war in human history. It's
    not on CNN at night, so people don't talk about it. And we're terribly
    troubled by Rwanda now, but it wasn't so many months ago that in a
    period of months it's estimated that as many as a quarter of a million
    or more people died in Burundi.
        So it is true. But there are other stories in South Africa as well.
    There are other countries where progress is being made, where democracy
    is beginning to work, where people are beginning to try to put together
    these things that will make a successful country. And it seems to me
    that the United States ought to be working with countries that are
    trying to make good things happen, as well as doing what we can to
    alleviate human suffering where there's a tragedy.
        And I think we need a more balanced and more aggressive policy in
    Africa, and I am hopeful that we'll be able to provide one. We've been
    so caught up with our own financial problems and cutting back on
    everything. And in our country, foreign aid of all kinds has a history
    of being unpopular among the people and, therefore, among the Congress.
    But I think that if there is a success in South Africa, which I expect
    there to be, I believe America will try to come to you; I believe the
    world will try to come to you; I think there will be a fascination about
    it. And I

    [[Page 880]]

    think that it will not only spark greater development in the southern
    part of Africa, but it will give us a more balanced view of what our
    overall policy should be. I realize I'm an optimist, but that's what I
    believe will happen.

    [An interviewer praised the President's sincerity and stated that South
    Africa was fortunate to have Mr. Mandela and Mr. de Klerk as role models
    in the move toward tolerance and democracy.]

        The President. Well, if I might just comment on that and say one
    thing--I thank you for saying that. And I thank you for being positively
    inclined toward me. If you lived here, you would have an obligation to
    be more critical of me. [Laughter] I accept it.
        Let me tell you what I think about that. I think that both Mandela
    and de Klerk are remarkable stories, and together, they are a stern
    rebuke to the cynics of the world: de Klerk for the reason you said,
    because he was an Afrikaner and because of the image we all have of that
    and what it was and what it meant politically and racially and every
    way; Mandela because he spent the best years of his life in a prison
    cell, walked out by most standards an older man, still ready to be young
    and vigorous and able to free himself of the bitterness that would
    surely have destroyed most people who had to live for 27 years behind
    bars. That also is an astonishing story.
        If these two people are capable of that sort of internal growth and
    wisdom and understanding, there must be a way for the rest of us to
    impart some of that to the society at large in South Africa and the
    United States or wherever, so that they, in turn, can live together. But
    both stories are truly astonishing.
        I think also they owe a lot to others, too. We were talking before I
    came into this interview--I believe, in the history of the Nobel Prize,
    the conflict in South Africa between the races is the only thing that's
    produced four Nobel Prizes over the same issue: Albert Luthuli, then
    Bishop Tutu, and then Mandela and de Klerk. I mean, this is something
    that the world has been fixated on with you for a long time.
        But the internal changes of those two people, that's what you have
    to find a way--that goes back to where you started. You have to find a
    way to mirror that down here where people live and buy newspapers and go
    to work every day and find a way to live together.
        Thank you.

    Note: The interview began at 7:03 p.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the
    White House. The interviewers were Richard Steyn, editor-in-chief, The
    Star, Johannesburg, South Africa; Aggrey Klaaste, editor, The Sowetan,
    Soweto, South Africa; Anthony Lewis, New York Times; and Clarence Page,
    Chicago Tribune. This item was released by the Office of the Press
    Secretary on April 22. A tape was not available for verification of the
    content of this interview.