Remarks at the University of Witwatersrand - Department of State Secretary Colin L. Powell - Transcript

DISAM Journal, Summer, 2001 by Colin Powell

[The following is a reprint of the testimony given by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, May 25, 2001]

I have been looking forward to visiting Witwatersrand University. This is a place with a remarkable history, and it is an honor for me to be before you this afternoon. For nearly eighty years, you have stood for academic excellence, you have stood for equality in a time when it was very difficult to do so. You have stood for opportunity. And above all, you have stood for the future. And it is the future that I want to talk to you about today, your future, the future of South Africa, the future of Africa as a whole, and the future of the world that Americans and Africans will share together with all the other peoples of the world. A future that your generation will inherit, but also one that each of you can help to make. Unquestionably, you will inherit lingering problems from the past, but you will also benefit from the progress of recent years.

Your generation is the first to have come of age in a free, democratic and pluralistic South Africa. Yours is the last generation to have experienced the shame and daily humiliation of apartheid. The generations of men and women who came before you, your grandparents and parents and aunts and uncles, changed their own lives and your lives, and the destiny of an entire nation was changed because they dared to hope and they dared to act. And soon it will be up to the new generation, being educated here, to hope and to act. America will hope with you. America will act alongside you. America will be with you every step of the way into the future.

As President Bush put it in his inaugural address, America engages with the world by history and by choice. We share a proud heritage with every ethnic group on the planet. We are a nation of nations. We also choose to engage, because in today's world, America's prosperity and wellbeing are linked ever more closely to the growth of freedom, opportunity and security everywhere in the world. And I am here today to say on behalf of President Bush that Africa matters to America, by history and by choice.

We have almost 35 million citizens of African descent. Last year, the total United States and African trade approached $30 billion, and America is Africa's largest single market. The United States is the leading foreign investor in Africa. Over 30,000 Africans are studying in the United States today. Our pasts, our presents and our futures are closely intertwined. As America's 65th Secretary of State and her only African-American Secretary of State so far, I will enthusiastically engage with Africa on behalf of the American people.

Only seven years ago in 1994, when most of the students here were teenagers, I had the privilege of being on the American delegation to President Mandela's inauguration. Chancellor Goldstone and I shared the stage at that time, and we were together for a brief period of time. I had the great privilege of experiencing in that rare moment, when you could see and feel history being made in front of your eyes, you could feel it under your feet. As an African-American, I was proud; as a member of the human race, I was inspired; as a student of world affairs, I was thrilled by this act of national reconciliation.

All of you will have your memories of that day. My memory is a very specific one. I waited out in front of the Union Building with so many thousands of others. I could hear the swelling noise below the hill, as tens upon tens of thousands of people waited. And then finally the moment came when the announcer said, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the new president of the new South Africa, Nelson Mandela. And as the cheers got even louder and I could see out of the corner of my eye Mr. Mandela approach the stage, I noticed suddenly that he was not coming up alone. In front of him were four white generals of the South African Defense Force, as his escort, as his guard of honor, showing their allegiance to their new president. And as a general and as a soldier, I saw that. I truly knew I was watching history being made. I knew that something remarkable was happening that day, and something remarkable would be happening in the days that followed. And in the seven years since that historic day, remarkable thin gs have happened. South Africa has emerged totally from decades of international isolation and domestic turmoil. You have had a peaceful transition of power, from President Mandela to President Mbeki. You have extended democracy to the grassroots through local elections. You have adopted and given force to a model constitution. You have embraced open markets and initiated economic reforms. You have shown the world that revolutionary change can be made without violence, that great injustices can be redressed without revenge, that diversity does not have to be divisive.

And you have been working with other African nations and the international community as a whole to end conflict in troubled parts of this continent. You still have your problems, you still have your challenges. But you have accomplished so very, very much as a new nation. You have achieved all of this and more in seven short years. And seven years from now, or seventeen years from now, when your generation will have come into its own, what kind of South Africa, what kind of Africa, what kind of world will we see? What kind of world will you have helped to shape? The spread of democracy and market economies and breakthroughs in technology permit us all to dream of a day when, for the first time in history, most of humanity will be free of the ravages of tyranny and poverty. It is well within the reach of that possibility, it is well within the reach of your generation.