US Nobel Prize economist Milton Friedman said a policy should not be measured by its intentions but by its outcomes. For this reason, this summit is very timely as it has become necessary to reflect on the multicultural outcomes of the constitutional dispensation to prevent us from ending up in an irreversible slide towards monoculturalism.The importance of multiculturalism

Allow me to begin with expressing how much pleasure it gives us to work with the FW de Klerk Foundation as a partner.

In the past few years the partnership between the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the FW de Klerk Foundation as well as with its Centre for Constitutional Rights (CFCR) has been most productive and fruitful. We have jointly hosted many conferences, workshops and seminars on important constitutional topics that are pertinent for a sustainable democratic future of South Africa.

It is a great pleasure for me to be able to address you this afternoon. 

When we consider the challenges that confront us, when we read of gloom and despondency, we should step back for a moment and remember two consoling thoughts:  that we live in one of the most beautiful and vibrant cities in the world; and that this is by far the best time in human history.

It is a little more than six years to the end of this century and to the dawning of the new millennium. In three years we will mark the centenary of Alfred Nobel’s death and in eight the hundredth year of this award.

There can be little doubt that one of the greatest benefits of South Africa’s transition to non-racial constitutional democracy in 1994 was the dramatic improvement in the country’s international standing.

I have been asked to speak to you this afternoon about South Africa’s transition to non-racial constitutional democracy – with particular attention to the role played by communication.

Twenty-five years ago we South Africans were confronted with seemingly insurmountable problems. 

It is a great honour for me to address you on the role of leadership in a rapidly changing world.

It is also most appropriate that this lecture series should be dedicated to President Clinton – because – in his approach to Northern Ireland during his presidency – he showed exactly the kind of leadership that you wish to promote.His deep involvement in – and commitment to -your peace process and his appointment of former senator John Mitchell as his special envoy opened the way to the historic Belfast Agreement in 1998.

I have been asked to address you on economic and political prospects for South Africa and Africa – a topic in which I, of course, have a very special interest. The first point that I would like to make is that in our globalised world the futures of South Africa and Africa are inextricably dependent on, and interlinked with, developments in the global economy and in global geopolitics.

For the past 60 years one of the main preoccupations of well-meaning people and organisations in the West has been their concern over Third World poverty and their determination to promote a more equal distribution of planetary wealth.

The vehicle they usually chose to achieve this worthy goal was foreign aid.