We trust that you will enjoy your stay in the free and democratic South Africa to which you helped to give birth. Your struggle and ours, to which the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere contributed so much and to whom we pay tribute and repeat our fond farewell, was not only about ending the system of apartheid. The millions of our people are engaged in a heroic effort to live up to this expectation, both in our own interest and as our contribution to the creation of a better world. The democratic project is a matter that must remain at the centre of our focus, as recent negative developments in the member state of Pakistan have shown, and as recent very happy developments have demonstrated in the member state of Nigeria. I am especially happy to see the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, HE President Olusegun Obasanjo, among us, truly an eminent person in the struggle for the defence of the freedom and dignity of all Africans, and all human beings within our universe.
Racism continues to deform human relations across the face of our common globe.
Constituted as it is, and having been among the leaders in the effort to end the cancerous racism represented by the apartheid system, the Commonwealth cannot but occupy the front trenches in the historic striving, practically to give effect to the concept that all of us are made in the image of one God. Everywhere in the world, including our countries, the women remain victims of social systems that decree their subservience. Our continuing failure genuinely to respond to the challenge to attain human equality, is demonstrated by the very composition of our meeting, according to which, clearly, maleness continues to be a critical criterion for accession to political leadership. The Commonwealth contains a significant proportion of the women of the world. It cannot be that we pride ourselves as a Commonwealth when that special collective, a commonwealth, distinguishes itself by defining the women as beings alien to the commonwealth.