South Africa Offers Itself as a Model : Mandela: ‘Through democracy, (making) the world safe for diversity’ is a key goal.

We are, to use a famous phrase from another transition in history, present at the creation. Because this is so, there is a need to develop a sense of orderliness in the world. To do so, a direct link needs to be established between responsible membership of the community of nations and global stability and progress. The converse is also true; if countries want to enjoy the rights of community, they need to act responsibly.

Philosophers teach that the rights of citizenship follow from the sharing of values in the common cause. As we prepare for the new century, each country needs to build upon a set of common properties that will aim to anchor it within the ambit of a legitimate new world order.

The test of South Africa’s foreign policy in this context will be found in the quality of its domestic politics. My government wants South Africa to be a symbol of a world in which diverse people can live in peace. The quality, too, of the government will be reflected in our foreign policy. South Africa will be among those countries whose efforts are to promote and foster democratic systems of government. This is especially important in Africa, and our concerns will be fixed on securing the spirit of tolerance and the ethos of sound governance throughout the continent.

South Africa’s global destiny is linked to maintaining vigilance around the same precepts that united the world against apartheid, which were able to distinguish between principle and prejudice, which separated ethics from expedience, ingenuity from ineptitude.

Because the world community is in search of stability, our experience suggests that we dare not relinquish the commitment to human rights in international affairs. Global change has, if anything, heightened the salience of the issue. The unfolding tragedies, from Sarajevo to Rwanda, whose images are the lifeblood of the electronic media, underpin the importance of respect for human rights in securing our common future.

While governments should be mindful of the high ideals of human rights, they should be conscious of a democratic realism that surrounds the issue, too. The neglect of human rights is a certain recipe for internal and international disaster. The powerful secessionist movements that are found throughout the world are nurtured by neglect. The erosion of national sovereignty by global forces, from trade to communications, has been accompanied by an increase in the means to ensure its separateness: The right to differ has, tragically, become the fight to differ.

The violent breakup of states points to the horrors facing countries in Africa and elsewhere that are not prepared to accept that diversity is integral to the human condition. These failed states will fall prey to greater internecine strife that will sap, if not destroy, the potential of their people.

Many believe this fate beckons my own country. They are thoroughly wrong. Few people on Earth have experienced intolerance as have South Africans. Even in the darkest days of apartheid and the most tragic moments of our turbulent transition, South Africans of all colors and creeds have, with great courage, shown respect for difference. A central goal of South Africa’s foreign policy, like its domestic politics, will be to promote institutions and forces that, through democracy, seek to make the world safe for diversity.