trinity logo optIt is a great honour to accept the Praeses Elit award from so ancient and august an institution as Trinity College.  It is also a pleasure to address the Trinity College Law Society.  As you may know, I myself am a lawyer.  In 1972 I almost became a law professor – but chose instead to go into politics.  The rest, as they say, is history.

We seldom stop to think how radically the world has changed since the beginning of the 20th century: it is not only the material conditions in which we live that have changed out of all recognition, but perhaps, more significantly, many of our core values and social attitudes.At the beginning of the 20th century Europeans still believed that they had some almost divinely ordained right to rule distant peoples in Africa, Asia and the Americas.  They thought they had a special calling to bring civilization and Christianity to what they dismissively regarded as “lesser peoples”. This was despite the fact that some of these peoples – particularly in Asia – had glittering civilisations that far outshone anything in Europe before the 18th century.  It was the era of Pax Britannica, of District Commissioners – from Nigeria to Malaya – dressing for dinner in remote hilltop stations – and dispensing justice to the natives.

As always, the expression of noble motives often masked naked exploitation.  The litany is long and shameful – from the decimation of the native peoples of the Americas; to the slave trade; to the Opium Wars; to the extermination of the entire aboriginal population of Tasmania; and the awful depredations of Leopold II in the Congo.

Racial, gender and class discrimination were regarded as natural and acceptable facets of relationships between human beings.

Of course, it would be wrong to see imperialism only as a process of exploitation and repression. European powers did bring law, education and modern medicine to the territories that they ruled. In India the British united the warring states and left the subcontinent with railways, a sound system of law, uncorrupt administration, and cricket.

After World War II attitudes toward imperialism and race began to change quite radically. A number of factors were involved:

The value systems that western societies had long professed began to catch up with them:

Despite the continuation of slavery in the United States and the expansion of the British and French Empires during the 19th century, these resounding affirmations of equality had been spliced into the DNA of Western civilization.

The FW de Klerk Foundation Annual Conference

The FW de Klerk Foundation Annual Conference – hosted in conjunction with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung – took place on 31 January 2025. The theme of this year’s conference is: “South Africa’s Position in the World Today”.
 

 Esteemed speakers include Ambassador Andreas Peschke (Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany); Magda Wierzycka (CEO of Sygnia); Dr Harlan Cloete (Local Governance and Public Leadership – Research Fellow) and Johan “Rassie” Erasmus (Springbok Coach).