Ladies and gentlemen,
if I could have your attention please, we’re going to start.
President Zuma has a packed schedule so we are under some time constraints.
I’m Fareed Zakaria. If I could just ask all of you
to turn your cell phones off and that kind of thing,
we can get started.
I want to welcome the entire South Africa delegation.
The president was pointing out to me he has his entire cabinet here.
I see Trevor Manuel and I’m not sure
it’s not because you’re worried abou t some kind of a coup
taking place while you’re away. - That’s right.
But we’re going to start this just as a conversation.
We’re delighted to be joined by President Zuma,
the new president of South Africa.
Let me ask you, to start, Mr. President,
you are coming in to an office that was held by Nelson Mandela.
Do you feel nervous, apprehensive?
What are your thoughts about being in a role
that has been so public and so prominent globally?
Well, if anything, it is humbling to be given this responsibility
by the South African people, by my organization.
It is a task, indeed, that needs such great leaders as Nelson Mandela.
But let me say, that we have mentioned President Nelson Mandela,
that many people forget that this year, we are completing 20 years
since Mandela was released from prison.
On the 11th of February it was.
As a country, South Africa, we are celebrating this.
We have aligned it to the opening of our Parliament
so that the country could celebrate the big day
that heralded the events in South Africa that changed South Africa
from a racist conflict-ridden country into a democratic country.
We are, therefore, reminding everyone
and fortunately, Nelson Mandela is still with us, he still lives,
so we will be celebrating with him.
It’s important for us because the coming out of Nelson Mandela
and the contribution he made leading the negotiations
established a kind of culture in South Africa
that nobody had ever thought of.
Suddenly, we’re able to defeat racism, which was entrenched in South Africa,
and he led the approach and the campaigns
to reconcile South Africans and establish a truly democratic South Africa.
But you know, a number of people
look at your election with some apprehension, let’s be honest.
There are people who say you are a populist,
that you inherit a difficult economy.
South Africa is entering its first recession in 15 years
and people worry about what effect a series of populist policies
will have in an already fragile global economy
and with an already fragile South African economy.
Well, I don’t know if people talk about populists in the world.
I don’t know in terms what it means because
if a leader in a country is supported by an overwhelming majority,
I’m not sure how to divide the populists, the person who is just there.
The fact of the matter is that I belong to the ANC,
which is the organization that is supported by the people of South Africa,
and I’ve been one of its cadres in the leading positions for quite a while,
and of course, have taken over from not just Mandela,
from Thabo Mbeki who followed Mandela,
who also made a very huge contribution to make the task very easy
for some of us who followed thereafter.
We have come in, I think, it’s now seven months.
We have looked at government.
We have reconfigured some of the departments
in order to ensure that the effective government is there,
that transparency is deepened, that the delivery continues.
We have looked at the policies which basically emanated from the ruling party
so that there are no unnecessary kind of policies that emanate from an individual.
We have been able to follow the trend as it has been all the time
and we came in and unfortunately,
we had the financial crisis that affected everybody in the globe.
I think South Africa during that time
was able to withstand that pressure to a large extent
because of its very prudent economic policies and macroeconomic policies,
and we have been able therefore to absorb that.
Not that we did not suffer from the impact of it,
but I think, to a large extent, we’re able to deal with the matters
and I think we’re able to give leadership as a government,
together with business and labor and representatives of civil society,
to come together and really work out a package
as to how to meet the challenge of the recession,
and we succeeded to do so.
And I don’t think anyone could say because there was now a populist,
these matters could not be done and people did not know
what they were doing.
I think that government has always known what it is doing.
You talk about the majority
but there is also a minority in South Africa
that increasingly feels disenfranchised, the white minority.
You read interviews with people, FW de Klerk, various other leaders.
There is some evidence of white flight,
of people, either because of the high crime rates
or because of a sense of economic fortunes turning, leaving.
Do you care if white South Africans decide that they want to leave the country?
No, we don’t want them to leave the country.
They belong to South Africa.
We are aware that since 1994, some people felt, as the situation changed,
they were not very certain as to what is going to happen
and I think it made sense, given where we came from as a country,
you would have expected that kind of reaction.
But at times, that reaction, in my view, is exaggerated
because South Africans have accepted what South Africa is all about.
There are a few people at times
who feel some of the policies that were put across,
like, for an example, affirmative action, et cetera,
tended to put them in an awkward position,
but we have been able to explain these and people have accepted
what the government has put across as the policies that, in a sense,
encompass and embrace all South Africans.
There is nothing that people have been able to identify
as a kind of policy that exclude others.
Everybody is part of it.
Of course, there would be individuals who could be very vocal
who might give an impression
that things are not very well in South Africa.
I think we are a very proud rainbow nation
that is working together at all material times socially,
in the economic sector, and in every other thing
and we adopted a culture of participation.
For an example, some people would say that
this government concerts too much,
and that’s how we feel we should involve people
so that people feel a part of the processes in the country
because we feel everybody must feel “We are part of this,”
not where they must feel excluded,
and we do not run short of explaining what we are trying to do.
So there isn’t anything that I would say –
I would agree with those who say South Africa is now something else
since the coming of democracy in South Africa.
In fact, if anything,
South Africans have come to embrace what is happening in the country.
They are very happy.
But it doesn’t mean that in any situation
we could have 100 percent people agreeing on anything.
I don’t think there is any country that could claim that.
That’s why we’ve got oppositions in countries because at times, people,
even on the things that they say they are agreed on,
the way to get there, at times, they don’t necessarily agree.
I think in South Africa, there is an element of exaggerating things.
Do you believe that South Africa, moving forward,
needs more market-based reforms
or does it need more government intervention?
It needs a mixture of the two.
I don’t think we… - You are fudging the question.
No, I’m not avoiding the question. It needs a mixture of the two.
You cannot do with one or the other. It needs a mixture of the two.
The question is how do you balance it in terms of the material conditions
in the country where you are operating.
And this is what we have said.
Our economy is mixed economy and we are dealing with both,
the participation of the public sector and the participation of the private sector.
But how will you get yourself off of purely commodity-based economy
and improve the skills, the manufactured processes
without unleashing the private sector to a larger extent?
No, what we have done, for an example, right now,
we have put across our policies very openly
as to what is it that we are trying to do
with the participation of both private and public
and it has worked for us up to this point in time.
Right now, for an example,
we have put across a program very specific on infrastructure.
We have put aside an amount of about R700 billion aimed at dealing with this,
which helps to expand the area of investment
with regard to the infrastructure because infrastructure in South Africa
is very much needed and we are busy with it.
We have been putting an infrastructure for 2010.
We are proceeding after 2010 to proceed with even a much broader of it
and both private and public are supposed to participate.
So there is no way where we say
this is the only one that will solve our problems.
We believe the nature of our country the mixture of these two
helps us to move forward.
One area where I think many people hope
you will diverge from the policies of Thabo Mbeki,
diverge from the policies of your predecessor is on AIDS,
South Africa and the government’s response to the AIDS crisis.
You face the extraordinary situation where life expectancy in South Africa,
a country with strong economic growth,
has actually declined over the last decade.
Will you do something different than Thabo Mbeki did on AIDS?
Well, I know that people tended to look at our policy in the past
based on what some of our colleagues as individuals said.
I think government has always had a very comprehensive policy
in terms of HIV and AIDS.
But the way issues that were raised that – and people including President Mbeki,
he has specific views that he said this way.
His specific views were not necessarily…
But there were bogus issues not based in science
and had the effect of stopping an enormously important movement forward
to deal with the problem.
But that’s just the point I’m making, that these were specific views
and it started by President Mbeki
asking questions which needed scientists to answer.
And instead of the scientists who answered, that provoked a debate.
It did not move away that we had
a very clear comprehensive policy at the time.
What we have done now,
we have removed the politicization of HIV and AIDS
and therefore removed those debates and came back to the policies.
We are, at this point in time, we have prioritized health
as one of the five priorities and we have a very comprehensive program
to deal with that, including to remove the perception that existed then.
So insofar as we are concerned, on that issue, we are clear.
In December, for an example,
announced new measures which added on,
enhanced our policies that were there before,
and I think the country is very happy
and I think the world is very happy with the approach that we have adopted.
Mr. President, I have to ask you an awkward question,
but in preparing for this interview,
I was actually asked this by so many of the women who are here
because it relates to an issue
that they see is one of equality in treatment of women.
You have many wives. You practice polygamy.
There are many people who say this is symbolically a great step backward
for the leader of South Africa to be embracing a practice
that they say is inherently unfair to women.
How do you react?
Well, it depends what culture you come from.
People interpret cultures in different ways
and some think that their cultures are superior to others.
That’s a problem we have in the world.
That’s a problem which we need to deal with.
We follow a policy that says we must respect the cultures of others.
That’s a culture. That’s my culture.
It does not take anything from me, from my political beliefs and everything,
including the belief on the equality of women.
It’s my culture.
And I’m sure there are other cultures that do that kind of thing.
The problem is that when people have their own cultures,
they think that their cultures are the only right one,
probably the only one accepted by God.
It does not work that way.
You believe you treat all your wives equally?
Absolutely.
Totally equally. Totally equally.
I think there are many people in this audience
who find it a complex challenge to be married to one person.
Mr. President, a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much. - Thank you very much.
Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.