A TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT FW DE KLERK BY GEOFF JOHNSON
2022-09-13
Nedbank SA Charity Golf Day Founder and Chairman Geoff Johnson paid tribute to FW de Klerk at the 25th annual anniversary of the event this
Nedbank SA Charity Golf Day Founder and Chairman Geoff Johnson paid tribute to FW de Klerk at the 25th annual anniversary of the event this
It is once again a great pleasure for me to address the Cape Town Press Club.
I shall spend a little more time today on the past than on the future ‐ because, at the age of 84, I have much more past than future ‐ and also because the past has become an increasingly contentious issue, not only for the present ‐ but also for the future.
As the tide of imperialism ebbed from Africa, South Africa found itself floundering in the last pool of white rule. We were glaringly out of step with the new international norms of non-discrimination, equality and self-determination that had been articulated in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.As the tide of imperialism ebbed from Africa, South Africa found itself floundering in the last pool of white rule. We were glaringly out of step with the new international norms of non-discrimination, equality and self-determination that had been articulated in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It is generally acknowledged that the first cracks in the apartheid system appeared in 1976, when the youth of Soweto (near Johannesburg) started to protest against the system that they experienced as unjust. The ANC in exile claimed credit for this uprising. This was met by stern measures by the South African government.
Last year the Wall Street Journal wrote that South Africa was at a crossroads, in 2018 the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement was too titled ‘South Africa at a Crossroads’, stressing the difficult economic and fiscal choices confronting the government, and in 2017 South Africa was once again at a crossroads according to a discussion held at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. No doubt an expert in something, somewhere, was saying we are at a crossroads the year before that, and again another ten years before that.
It is a great honour for me to address such an important and interesting conference at my old Alma Mater. The theme of the conference is as daunting as it is interesting – dealing as it does with ‘Reformation theology and its impact on world societies after 500 years’. I must point out at the outset that I am a lawyer and not a theologian – so offer the following comments with some trepidation.
In 1989 the American Academic, Francis Fukuyama, proclaimed that the “end of history” had arrived:
“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
It is a great honour for me to address this meeting at this critical time in the evolution of the new South Africa. Some critics now charge that our transition to constitutional democracy 25 years ago was a great mistake and that we should never have surrendered power. Others claim that we could have negotiated a better deal. Some think that we could have retained some or other minority veto.
It is a great pleasure for me to be able to address you today on a topic that is so relevant to so many of the developments that are shaping the world in the 21st century.
People who imagine that ethnicity and religion are artificial hang-overs from a regrettable and unlamented past are deluding themselves.
They are still central to the lives of billions of people throughout the world.