[This is the abridged text of a speech by Cuban President Fidel Castro Before the South African parliament, in Cape Town, on September 4.]
I am thinking about the enormous responsibility and the colossal historic task it signifies to create the new South Africa, as you are planning to do.
This promising country, yesterday the object of isolation and universal condemnation, could tomorrow be an example of fraternity and justice.
The opportune presence of a leader with exceptional human and political conditions makes that possible.
Nelson Mandela will pass into history because he was capable of wrenching from his soul all the poison that unjust punishment could create, for the generosity and wisdom with which, at the hour of an already uncontainable victory, he knew how to lead his selfless and heroic people so brilliantly, comprehending that the new South Africa could never be constructed on foundations of hatred and revenge.
Today there are still two South Africas, which shouldn't be called white and black — that terminology should be banished forever if one wishes to create a multiracial society — the rich and the poor; where one average family receives 12 times the income of the other; one where 13 per thousand infants die before one year of age, the other where 57 die; one where life expectancy is 73 years, the other where it only reaches 56; one where 100% know how to read and write, the other where illiteracy exceeds 50%; one where employment is widespread and virtually full, the other where 45% are without work; one where 12% of the population owns virtually 90% of the land, the other where almost 80% of the inhabitants own less than 10%; one which owns virtually all the technical and administrative knowledge, the other which was condemned to inexperience and ignorance; one that enjoys well-being and freedom, the other that has only been able to conquer freedom without well-being.
This horrible inheritance cannot be changed from one day to the next. Absolutely nothing is to be gained from disorganising the productive apparatus or failing to utilise the considerable material and technical wealth and the productive efficiency created with the workers' hands.
Bringing about social change in an orderly manner, gradually and peacefully, so that that wealth contributes the maximum benefit to the South African people, is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks to attain in human society.
There are many nations where similar economic and social problems exist, the product of conquest, colonisation and an untenable inequality in the distribution of wealth; but in none other like this did the struggle for the respect of human dignity arouse so many hopes. The contradiction between hopes, possibilities and priorities is not only an internal South African issue; it is something that is being debated and will continue to be debated in many countries.
The system of conquest, colonisation, enslavement, extermination of indigenous populations and the plunder of their natural resources throughout recent centuries left terrible consequences in the vast majority of the nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
In our hemisphere, the slaves were the first to rise up against colonial domination from as early as the 16th century. Major uprisings in Jamaica, Barbados and other countries took place in the initial decades of the 18th century, long before the uprising of the US colonies.
Many crimes throughout history weigh on the conscience of the civilised and Christian west, as it likes to call itself.
One idea can emerge from another: from the new South Africa, the hope of a new Africa. South Africa, from the industrial, agricultural, technological and scientific point of view, is the most developed country of the African continent.
South Africa currently produces 50% of the continent's electricity, 85% of its steel and 97% of its coal, transports 69% of all its rail freight, owns 32% of all its motorised vehicles and 45% of its road surfaces.
The rest of Africa is also immensely rich in natural resources. The enormous and untapped potential of its sons and daughters, their exceptional valour and intelligence, their capacity to assimilate the most complex science and technology, is very well known to those of us who have had the privilege to fight alongside them, combating for freedom or in peaceful construction.
Cuba is a little island at the side of a very powerful neighbour but, in spite of that, 26,294 African graduates and experts have passed through our country's educational institutions, and 5850 have received training.
At the same time, 80,524 Cuban civilian cooperative workers, including 24,714 doctors, dentists, nurses and health technicians, together with tens of thousands of professors, teachers, engineers and other qualified specialists and workers, have lent their internationalist services in Africa; and 381,432 soldiers and officers have mounted guard or fought alongside African soldiers and officers for national independence or against external aggression for more than 30 years.
Today, we contemplate with pain Africa's fratricidal wars, its economic underdevelopment, its poverty, its starvation, its lack of hospitals and schools, its lack of communications. Manhattan or Tokyo have more telephones than the whole of Africa. The deserts are growing, the forests are disappearing, the soil is being eroded.
Old and new diseases — malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, ebola, parasites and curable infectious diseases — are decimating its population. Infant mortality is reaching record indexes in relation to the rest of the world, as well as the rate of mothers dying in childbirth; in some of its countries life expectancy is beginning to fall.
The terrible HIV virus is expanding in geometrical proportions. I am not exaggerating if I state that entire African nations are at risk of disappearing. Each AIDS-infected person would have to pay $10,000 per year for medicines, just to survive, when public health budgets are barely able to assign $10 to the health of each person. Africa records nine of every 10 persons to die of AIDS.
An inevitable and profound economic crisis, possibly the worst in history, is currently threatening all of us.
In a world that has been converted into a casino, speculative operations to the value of $1.5 trillion are being undertaken which have no relationship whatsoever with the real economy. The price of shares on the US stock exchanges is multiplying to the point of absurdity.
Its Treasury bonds are the final refuge for frightened investors. The dollar lost its backing in gold when that country unilaterally suppressed the conversion established at Bretton Woods. From that moment, the value of the world currency reserves consisted of a simple question of confidence.
Wars like the one in Vietnam, at a cost of $500 billion, gave rise to that huge deception. To that was added a colossal tax-free rearmament, which raised the public debt of the United States from $700 billion to $2.5 trillion in just eight years.
Money became a fiction; securities ceased to have a real and material base. US investors acquired $9 trillion in recent years by the unrestrained multiplication of the price of their stock-exchange shares.
With that came the titanic growth of their transnationals' investments, accompanied by a boundless growth in national consumption, which thus artificially fed an economy that seemed to grow and grow without inflation and without crisis. Sooner or later the world would have to pay the price.
The most prosperous nations of south-east Asia have been ruined. Japan, the second world economy, can no longer detain the recession; the yen continues to lose value. The yuan is maintaining its value by force of sacrifice by the Chinese.
Economic disaster is looming in Russia, the greatest economic and social collapse in history through attempting to construct capitalism in that country. The greatest political risk is derived from the situation in a state which possesses thousands of nuclear weapons, where the strategic rocket operators have not received their wages for the last five months.
Within a few months, the Latin American stock markets have lost over 40% of the value of their shares, those of Russia, 75%. In recent months, the basic products of numerous countries — copper, nickel, aluminium, petroleum and many others — have lost 50% of their prices.
Could anyone assure that a collapse like the one of 1929 won't be repeated?
Only between then and now, there's an enormous difference. In 1929 there weren't one and a half trillion speculative operations, and only 3% of US citizens had shares in the stock market.
Add to that that the new world order is more than ever destroying the natural environment in which 6 billion inhabitants are living and in which, in just 50 years more, 10 billion will have to live.
I am not a prophet. I only know that great solutions have always emerged from great crises. I have confidence in the intelligence of peoples and humankind. I have confidence in the need for human survival.
I am confident that you, distinguished and patient members of this parliament, are meditating on the theme. I am confident that you comprehend that it is not a question of ideology, of race, of colour, of personal income, of social class; for all of us who are navigating in the same boat it is a question of life or death.
Let us be, then, more generous, more sharing, more humane. Convert South Africa into the model of a more just and more humane future world. If you can, then we all can.