YouSaid · the spoken record

Legwaila

lines on the record
469
first
1992-07-16
most recent
1999-09-17
sittings or episodes
63
sources
un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “As a neighbour, Botswana is committed to the construction of the friendliest of relations with a liberated South Africa, relations based on mutual respect and good-neighbourliness.”

    1994-05-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3379 (1994) · source

  2. “Sanctions have played an effective supportive role in the struggle against apartheid, contrary to the views of some in this Council who too often in the past would not contemplate invoking them against apartheid South Africa. Isolation and the whole pariahood of rejection and the "skunkhood" of untouchability to which South Africa had to be consigned as punishment for racial tyranny contributed in no small measure to the breathtaking drama of South Africa's transition to democracy. Africa's political liberation is now complete. For us in southern Africa, South Africa's liberation is even more welcome. We can hardly believe that our region is free at last - free to devote its energies to economic and social development, free to grow and prosper.”

    1994-05-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3379 (1994) · source

  3. “We know that the new South Africa has better devices for survival and prosperity than any other country on the continent of Africa. And yet the fact remains that the country needs massive doses of assistance to deal with the ravages of apartheid, and deal with them effectively and demonstrably, if its nation-building efforts are to bear fruit. In other words, now that apartheid is dead the international community must not think it is relieved of its responsibility to the people of South Africa. The draft resolution before the Council today marks an historic turning point, a near-miraculous salvation for a country and nation that had for so long threatened to drown itself in its own blood. Botswana supports the Council in this move.”

    1994-05-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3379 (1994) · source

  4. “There could have been no better omen for the rebirth of a nation that had experienced the kind of violence South Africa had experienced for three and a half centuries. Suddenly it dawned on all South Africans in their cultural and racial diversity that their future and the future of their country lay squarely in President Nelson Mandela's vision of national reconciliation, democratic pluralism and non-racialism. Thankfully, 15 days later the country remains peaceful and reconciled. Today the international community, through this Council, welcomes the new South Africa back into the comity of free and civilized nations. The removal of the remaining sanctions, we dearly hope, will not mean the abandonment by the international community of the new South Africa to its own devices.”

    1994-05-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3379 (1994) · source

  5. “It is with great pleasure that we welcome the presence in our midst of the first ever First Executive Deputy President of the new South Africa- as Bishop Tutu describes it, he is brand new out of the box - The Honourable Mr. Thabo Mbeki. Mr. Mbeki is here as a free man at long last. Gone are the days when he would come here as an exile, on his knees, to beg the Security Council to impose sanctions on South Africa as a contribution by the Council to the liberation of his people and country. On 10 May a new South Africa was born when its new democratically elected President was inaugurated. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that 10 May in South Africa was probably the most peaceful day in the whole history of that country.”

    1994-05-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3379 (1994) · source

  6. “Let me first congratulate you, Sir, on your assumption of the presidency of the Security Council in a month which we in southern Africa consider immensely historic. It is a fitting and pleasing coincidence that you, the representative of Nigeria and Chairman of the Special Committee against Apartheid, should so brilliantly contrive to be in the chair of this Council on the occasion of the lifting of sanctions against South Africa. You and your country have contributed in no small measure to the birth of the new South Africa. The same sentiments go to your predecessor, the Permanent Representative of New Zealand, who presided over the deliberations of the Security Council with skill and wisdom last month.”

    1994-05-25 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3379 (1994) · source

  7. “It is our earnest hope that the Security Council will live up to its responsibilities by appointing the Special Representative as envisaged in the resolution it is about to adopt and giving the measure ail the necessary teeth for this Special Representative to go to South Africa to do the job that we think must be done in order to assist the people of South Africa in their negotiations for the new South Africa, which I say we have all laboured so hard to achieve over the years.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source

  8. “Yes, all the leaders of South Africa have some responsibility to moderate the | political activism of their followers, but they are not and cannot be vested with the primary responsibility to enforce law and order. They have a responsibility to help the Government of the day maintain law and order, but the maintenance of law and order rests on the shoulders of the Government; otherwise the Government is abnegating its responsibility.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source

  9. “As the Foreign Minister of Zimbabwe said yesterday, it is no use agitating; let us resuscitate CODESA. Let us resuscitate CODESA, but not in the kind of environment that exists in South Africa today because we are going to have another walkout. But I think one walkout is enough if we want the negotiations to succeed. Therefore, even as we call on our brothers, on the leaders of South Africa to go back to the conference table to negotiate, of immediate importance to us is that we make sure that they can do so in an environment which will allow them to sit peacefully in that building in Johannesburg to negotiate a new dispensation for South Africa. It must be repeated that the responsibility for creating such a climate conducive to the success of CODESA, rests with the Government of the day.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source

  10. “It is because we in southern Africa have invested a great deal of hope in the CODESA process that we feel so strongly about what looks to us like a carefully calculated plot by some sinister forces in South Africa to sabotage CODESA, to return South Africa to its old, evil ways, to restore "grand apartheid". For there is a very clear pattern to the violence, as we all know, as it has been pointed out here. The more progress CODESA makes the more vicious and brutal the escalation of the violence. Yes, the stalled CODESA negotiations must of course be resuscitated. We hope they can be resuscitated so that new life, dynamism and purpose can be breathed into them, but with the proviso that a climate conducive to their success is created and enforced.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source

  11. “Now, this very same police force, and for that matter, with an enhanced size - 110,000 policemen - cannot see or know what is happening inside South Africa, in trains, in hostels, at funerals and at political rallies. And some of these affairs are taking place during the day, without benefit of the cover of darkness. These same police arrive at scenes of public carnage hours late, long after the perpetrators have left, or arrive too early, because they have been warned, and then leave because they decide that there is no attack, not realizing that they are five hours early. And then they abandon the scene in advance and a few minutes later there is an attack.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source

  12. “What makes it so difficult for the police, for instance, to police these dwellings, search them and rid them of dangerous weapons or, if need be, surround them with security guards to ensure that they are not attacked by those who come from outside or from other hostels, or that the inmates of these hostels do not go out of the hostels armed to the teeth, either with so-called cultural weapons or with their modern weapons, to go and attack other hostels? Why is it that they just go out in broad daylight carrying these weapons and butcher people? We are talking here - and please listen carefully - about one of the most vigilant and efficient police forces in the world, and I say that charitably: a see-all, know-all police machine which in its heyday saw and knew what was happening up to the Equator.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source

  13. “Why, with a police force that is 110,000 strong, the South African Government is unable to control the violence, isolated as it certainly is to a few pockets of strife in urban South Africa and some pockets of strife in rural South Africa? Why is it that the Government is unable to control the violence? This remains a mystery to us. And if it is a mystery to those of us who come from southern Africa, I do not know what it could be to those who enjoy the comfort of distance. It is common knowledge that the notorious single hostels are dens of crime~infestation and anti-social pestilence engendered by the very squalid and dehumanizing nature of these so-called barracks-like dwellings.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source

  14. “There is no gainsaying the fact that in the present environment in South Africa, with its endless chain of massacres, CODESA has become an endangered process. Otherwise we would not be here to debate how the Security Council can assist in the rejuvenation of the process. Violence is not and cannot be a facilitator of the negotiation process. It is an inhibitor. Now what is the teleology of the violence we are talking about? To those of us who do not live in South Africa, there is clearly something terribly sinister about the character of the violence. Many of those who have taken the floor before me have noted the character of the violence - its viciousness, mindlessness, randomness and senselessness, compounded by the thickening mystery of the Government's inability to control it.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source

  15. “The commitment of the frontline States, the countries of southern Africa generally and of the continent at large to the negotiation process in the CODESA framework is unmistakable - or in any framework that the people of South Africa might choose if they want to abandon CODESA - and God forbid that they should. We want CODESA to produce the new South Africa we have all sought for so long. We have never wavered in our constant appeal to the parties in the negotiations to show fortitude and patience in their collective endeavours to craft a new constitutional dispensation for their strife-torn country. But the CODESA process needs peace and tranquillity if the negotiations are not only to flourish but also to succeed.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source

  16. “Why should the unremitting violence now ravaging urban and peri-urban South Africa not be debated in this very Security Council which has devoted - as I said a while ago - months of concentrated consultations and debates, and understandably so, to the violence in the Balkans and elsewhere? It has already been demonstrated that we have not called for this meeting on South Africa - at least those of us from Africa - with the intention either to seek confrontation or to pass a death sentence on CODESA, or to take sides in the troubled deliberations at CODESA. Our vested interest is solely - and I must repeat, solely - to seek explanations, not only about about the Boipatong massacre but about violence generally in South Africa today, the violence that may yet kill the CODESA process if allowed to persist unchecked.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source

  17. “I say this because there has been some apprehension, at least at the outset in certain quarters, about our decision to come to the Security Council to debate the situation in South Africa. We have heard it argued that a meeting of the Council would serve no useful purpose, that it would only compound an already confused and bioody situation. Instead of our coming to the Security Council to fan the flames of violence, it was suggested that we should devote our energies to pressuring the parties in the CODESA process to return to the conference table to get on with the negotiations. While these are very fine arguments they are a bit disingenuous.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source

  18. “This information is very valuable for the Security Council, because those of us who come from southern Africa believe it important that the same concern that the Council has shown for crises elsewhere be shown for the crises in Africa - the crisis in southern Africa being one of them, not forgetting the crisis in Somalia and the crisis in Liberia. Indeed, this is an important meeting, and I think we should take off our hats to the Heads of State of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), who insisted that it be held. We hope that this meeting will end with something that will contribute towards finding a solution to the problem that we face in South Africa.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source

  19. “Mr. President, you are my friend and you have appealed for brevity. Therefore, I hope you will forgive me if I do not congratulate you, so I will go straight into my statement. Mr. President, I think you and the Security Council must now realize how important it was for this meeting to be convened. You have given South African leaders the opportunity to come and express themselves, vent their frustrations, say what they want to do with their country and what they do not want to do with their country - whether they are going to mess it up or not mess it up.”

    1992-07-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.3096 (1992) · source