pd06ap98 Statement on House Action Against Legislation Proposing a Uniform...

	Web GovRecords.org

State, our hearts, too, are with Westside, and with the grieving 
families whose loved ones were killed or injured in that tragic incident 
just 4 days ago.
    This is the third time in recent months that a quiet town, and our 
Nation, have been shaken by the awful specter of students being killed 
by other young people at schools. We join the families of Jonesboro and 
all America in mourning this terrible loss of young life, life so full 
of promise and hope so cruelly cut short.
    We mourn the loss of Natalie Brooks, of Paige Ann Herring, of 
Stephanie Johnson, of Brittany Varner, and of a heroic teacher, Shannon 
Wright, who sacrificed her own life to save a child. These five names 
will be etched in our memories forever and linked forever with the names 
of Nicole Hadley, Jessica James, and Kayce Steger of Paducah, Kentucky, 
and Lydia Kay Dew and Christina Mennefee of Pearl, Mississippi. Our 
thoughts and our prayers are with all their families today.
    We do not understand what drives children, whether in small towns or 
big cities, to pick up guns and take the lives of others. We may never 
make sense of the senseless, but we have to try. We have seen a 
community come together in grief and compassion for one another, and in 
the determination that terrible acts like these must no longer threaten 
our Nation's children.
    Parents across America should welcome the news reported just this 
month by Attorney General Reno and Education Secretary Riley that the 
vast majority of our schools are safe and free of violent crime. We've 
worked hard to make our schools places of learning, not fear, places 
where children can worry about math and science, not guns, drugs, and 
gangs. But when a terrible tragedy like this occurs, it reminds us there 
is work yet to be done.
    I have directed Attorney General Reno to bring together experts on 
school violence to analyze these incidents to determine what they have 
in common and whether there are further steps we can take to reduce the 
likelihood of something so terrible recurring.
    Already we've seen the remarkable difference community policing has 
made in our Nation's streets. Now we have to apply that same energy and 
resolve to our schools to make them safer places for children to learn, 
play, and grow. At school there must be full compliance with our policy 
of zero tolerance toward guns, and at home there should be no easy 
access to weapons that kill.
    Protecting our children from school violence is more than a matter 
of law or policy; at heart, it is a matter of basic values, of 
conscience and community. We must teach our children to respect others. 
We must instill in them a deep, abiding sense of right and wrong. And to 
children who are troubled,

[[Page 527]]

angry, or alone, we must extend a hand before they destroy the lives of 
others and destroy their own in the process.
    We have to understand that young children may not fully appreciate 
the consequences of actions that are destructive but may be able to be 
romanticized at a twisted moment. And we have to make sure that they 
don't fall into that trap.
    Three towns: Jonesboro, Pearl, Paducah--too many precious lives 
lost. The white ribbons that flutter today in my home State of Arkansas 
are a poignant and powerful challenge to all of us, a challenge to come 
together for the sake of our children and for the future of our Nation.
    Thanks for listening.

Note: The address was recorded at 12:52 p.m. on March 27 at the Cape 
Grace Hotel in Cape Town, South Africa, for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on 
March 28.


<DOC>
[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
 [frwais.access.gpo.gov]


[Page 527-532]
 
Monday, April 6, 1998
 
Volume 34--Number 14
Pages 525-568
 
Week Ending Friday, April 3, 1998
 
Remarks in a Roundtable Discussion on the Future of South Africa in 
Johannesburg

March 28, 1998

    The President. Let me first just thank all of you for taking the 
time to come and meet with Hillary and me. We've had a fascinating trip 
to Africa and a wonderful 3 days in South Africa, but I didn't want to 
leave the country without having the chance to have kind of an informal 
conversation with young people that are making the future of this 
country. And I want you to say to us whatever you'd like to say, but I'm 
especially interested in what you see are the main challenges today, 
what you think the United States and others could do to be helpful.
    The story of the liberation of South Africa is a fabulous story. As 
I said last night in my toast to Mr. Mandela, one of our most eloquent 
political leaders in America said that in democracies, campaigns are 
conducted in poetry, but government is conducted in prose. And there is 
always a lot of hard work that has to be done. And I think it's very 
important that your generation maintain its optimism and energy, and 
it's important that the rest of us continue to make a constructive 
contribution to your efforts.
    So I basically just want to listen today and hear what you have to 
say. And if you have any questions for us, I'll be glad to answer them, 
but I want to learn more about your take on your country and your 
future.
    Hillary, do you want to say anything?
    Hillary Clinton. No, I would be happy just to start.

[At this point, Friendly Twala, a Ministry of Education district 
education coordinator specializing in guidance and career orientation, 
described his background and experience in mediation and conflict 
resolution. Graeme Simpson, director, Center for the Study of Violence 
and Reconciliation, described his work and suggested that violent crime 
was perhaps the greatest threat to democracy and human rights in South 
Africa.]

    Mrs. Clinton. Why don't we go around and hear from everybody briefly 
first, and then perhaps have a conversation about some of those issues?

[Bongi Mkhabela, Director of Projects and Programs in the office of 
Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, stressed the need for integration of youth 
issues into national policy and for training of the next generation of 
leaders. Vasu Gounden, director, African Center for the Constructive 
Resolution of Disputes, suggested sustainable aid and the African Crisis 
Response Initiative as discussion topics and praised the Entebbe Summit 
communique positions on democracy and civil society. Bongani Linda, arts 
manager, Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, described 
his work with prisoners and youth and suggested that cultural exchanges 
could have a positive impact on youth in communities such as Soweto. 
Kumi Naidoo, executive director, South African National NGO Coalition 
(SANGOCO), urged that the U.S. Agency for International Development 
remain involved in South Africa beyond the transitional period ending in 
2002 and provide increased assistance to the nongovernmental sector. 
Nicola Galombik, director of educational television, South African 
Broadcasting Corporation, emphasized the importance of information and 
technology to bridge the cultural and interpersonal divisions of 
apartheid by carrying the messages and faces

[[Page 528]]

of all South Africans. Chris Landsberg introduced himself as incoming 
head of the foreign policy program at the Center for Policy Studies in 
South Africa, and referred to the fact that both he and Mr. Naidso had 
studied at Oxford in the United Kingdom.]

    The President. There are days when I wish we could all go back. 
[Laughter]

[Mr. Landsberg stated that his country faces challenges in addressing 
the needs and concerns of a formerly disenfranchised majority while 
incorporating minorities in its society; avoiding a disconnect between 
elite society and rural society and the poor; generating economic growth 
and encouraging democracy in Africa; and encouraging its private sector 
to find solutions for social problems. He expressed his hope that 
partnership with the United States would have a positive impact.]

    The President. Thank you.
    Hillary, do you want to say anything?

[Mrs. Clinton agreed that there are challenges to democracies 
everywhere, at all stages of their development. She asked about 
coordinated efforts in South Africa to try to replace the enthusiasm for 
liberation and freedom with a long-term commitment to a stable, 
functioning democracy with full participation. A participant described 
the new National Development Agency, which provides financing to 
grassroots organizations and acts as a policy forum which reports to the 
Parliament. Another participant suggested that people who had withdrawn 
from public life after the end of apartheid might be brought back into a 
struggle to end poverty. He also stated that businesses should offer 
more than monetary contributions to nongovernmental organizations.]

    The President. Let me ask a question, a followup question that may 
seem almost simpleminded to you, but I think the answer--whatever answer 
you give will give me some indication about where the conversation 
should go. Why has the crime rate gone up so much in the last 4 years? 
Anybody can take it.

[A participant suggested the crime levels had previously been under-
reported, but that gangs now offered youth the same type of subcultural 
identity as anti-apartheid political parties had, with the added benefit 
of wealth potential. He defined the problem as one of identity, culture, 
economics, and education, and said the government had to confront its 
lack of technical capacity to implement its policy.]

    The President. I agree with that. Anybody else want to say anything 
about the causes of crime?

[A participant stressed the need for career guidance in schools so that 
more people would be prepared for employment, and for more aid to 
education from NGO's as well as the government. Another participant 
reiterated that crime figures were and still are unreliable and noted 
the involvement of international organized crime. A participant then 
stated that disadvantaged communities now have heightened expectations, 
while unemployment is a major problem, and that crime levels discourage 
foreign investment.]

    The President. Let me just observe, I don't think it is an 
insurmountable problem, and I think it would be certainly not grounds 
for withdrawal of foreign investment.
    But let me tell you a story about a different society. I went to 
Riga, Latvia--Hillary and I did--a few years ago, and the last of the 
Russian troops--the former Soviet Union--Russian troops withdrew from 
the Baltics. And Riga is the largest northernmost port in the world, I 
think. There are about a million people there. So the Baltic States are 
finally free of Communist domination after decades. And we sit there, 
and we're having this conversation like you and I are. We're having--
these three Baltic Presidents--and I ask them, what would they like me 
to do--is to open an FBI office in Riga.
    One of the most popular things we did was to open an FBI office in 
Moscow. Why? Because they had this totalitarian, control-oriented 
society, and when they ripped it away and substituted a democracy for 
it, nature abhors a vacuum. And then besides that, there were a lot of 
unemployed people who had positions in the apparatus. And they were 
dealing with huge amounts of transnational crime, the kind of thing you 
talked about earlier.

[[Page 529]]

    Same thing happens at the local level; one of you mentioned this. 
There is a pretty even distribution of international--and energy and 
ambition in this world, whether it's out there on that play yard or in 
the wealthiest neighborhood in the United States. And nature abhors a 
vacuum. And we found--I'll never forget, once I was in Los Angeles when 
the gang problem there was particularly intense several years ago, and 
there was a three-page interview with a 17-year-old gang leader. And I 
read this; I said, ``My God, this guy is a genius. Why did we lose this 
young man? He's a genius.'' And when he was asked, ``Well, what are you 
going to do when you're 25,'' he said, ``I don't expect to be alive.''
    I think all this goes back to what you were saying at first, those 
of you who worked in the NGO community, those of you that are worried 
about the institutions of civil society. I think that for so long it was 
obvious what the big problem was here, and you had to deal with the big 
problem first. I mean, if you hadn't done that, you couldn't go on to 
other things. And it was easy to organize the emotions and the energies 
and the gifts of people toward that, whether they were young or older. 
But then after that, you're left with a freer government, a more open 
system, a more open society, but you still don't have all this 
infrastructure. And there is no simple

answer, but I think that basically you have to have both more leaders and 
more structures.

    I think about--for example, in the United States, I just got a 
report right before I left here attempting to analyze the reasons for 
the big drop in crime in America in the last 5 years. And I may miss the 
numbers, but this is roughly accurate, because I read it in a hurry. 
Roughly, the people who did this research concluded that about 35 
percent of the drop was due to an improving economy: more people had 
jobs, and the gains of property crime and the risk of getting caught 
were not so important. And a little less than that was due to improved 
policing: more police officers and rooting them more closely in the 
community, so that they worked with children and with families and with 
block leaders to keep things from happening in the first place. And the 
rest of it due to a whole amalgam of factors related to keeping mostly 
young people out of trouble in the first place, giving them other things 
to do.
    The best example of structure I've seen since I got up this morning 
is all those kids in their uniforms out there singing the song to me 
when I got out. But in America we have the Boys Clubs, the Girls Clubs, 
the YMCA, and all of those organizations, the scouting movement.
    Those of us in government sometimes tend to be very almost 
egocentric, and we forget what real people do with their time all day 
every day, from the time they get up in the morning until they go to bed 
at night. And most real people don't have all that much contact with us. 
We fund the schools and the police officers driving around and other 
things. So I think that our aid programs and a lot of our partnerships 
ought to be focused on helping you develop more leaders and more 
structures.
    Hillary took me the first day we were in South Africa--we got in in 
the middle of the night, and she made me get up early the next day 
because she said, ``You've got to go back to this housing project that I 
visited that's outside of Cape Town''--about, I don't know, 30 
kilometers outside of Cape Town, to meet this woman who was in charge of 
this community-based self-help housing project where poor people were 
building their own homes. And you have to contribute to the membership 
of the organization, so there was a remarkable amount of organization in 
this very poor community and a lot of leadership. And I didn't ask 
anybody, but I bet there is lower crime.
    So my own view is, I look around here and I think, if you believe 
that there is an even distribution of talent, intelligence, and ability 
in more or less every place, then we have to have more people who have 
the chance to go to Oxford and Georgetown, or Witwatersrand or wherever, 
and whatever it takes.
    You made some very specific suggestions that I thought were good. 
I'll see what I can do to help get more

American athletes and entertainers to come here and relate to all sectors 
of the society. We agree that the aid programs should be extended, that it 
should not be replaced by trade, but instead supplemented for it. I will 
see what I can do to

[[Page 530]]

do some more leadership training initiatives. And I'll see what I can do 
with the business community. I'm going to dedicate a Ron Brown Commercial 
Center here today, and I'll alter my remarks a little bit to reflect the 
advice you just gave me.

    But I just want to make the point that--I drive down these streets--
I wanted to come to this neighborhood so badly, and I admire you all so 
much. But I can only say, when you get discouraged, just remember, 
nature abhors a vacuum. There is an equal distribution of intelligence, 
energy, leadership, and organizing ability. Bad things will happen when 

Other Popular 1998 Presidential Documents Documents:

Other Documents:

1998 Presidential Documents Records and Documents