The former president of South Africa and a Nobel Peace Prizewinner addressed ways in which technology in education andhealthcare can be used to stabilize impoverished nations and fightthe global threat of AIDS in a symposium on campus.
F. W. de Klerk addressed more than 200 people in the Holiday Innballroom at the Kemmons Wilson School Tuesday afternoon as part ofthe two-day Techsposium at the FedEx Institute of Technology.
"The world cannot continue de facto apartheid between a stableand prosperous West and an unstable East with its billions ofpoor," de Klerk said.
Technology, de Klerk said, has made the world smaller, allowingfaster travel and communication than ever before. This growingglobalization, he said, means technologically advanced countrieslike the United States must take a more active role in theconflicts of other countries.
De Klerk shocked his country shortly after becoming president in1989 by ending apartheid, removing the ban on the African NationalCongress and freeing Nelson Mandela.
"Billions continue to live in poverty, ignorance and disease,"he said. "We can no longer ignore crises in distant countries."
Only 4 percent of African students, de Klerk said, reach thecollege level of education, and many head to Europe or the UnitedStates instead of staying in their native countries aftergraduation.
"Instead of getting an education," he said, the rest "areeducated in how to use an AK-47."
The central challenge to national and global leadership, headded, was preparing a better life and a better world for futuregenerations.
Though de Klerk refused to take sides on the war on Iraq and thewar on terror, he said he would have liked to have seen a moreinclusive alliance instead of action by a few nations.
The removal of "megalomaniacs" like Saddam Hussein, he said,could only help establish Iraq as a constructive force in theMiddle East,.But he encouraged a more holistic and global approachto nation recovery.
"Terrorists misuse social conditions to work up feelings ... towhip up resistance," de Klerk said. "If you rid nations of thoseconditions, you rob terrorists of ammunition."
The University of Memphis' Techsposium is another example of theFedEx Institute applying technology to real world situations, saidSandy Schaeffer, director of the Advanced Learning Center.
"It's about how we can use technology and technology tools toaddress social issues," specifically education and health care, hesaid.
York Bradshaw, chair of The U of M Sociology Department, beganworking on bringing de Klerk to The University over a year ago.
Through an exchange program with the University of Pretoria,Bradshaw formed relationships with people who knew de Klerk andbegan talking about bringing the former president to The U ofM.
Bradshaw said he didn't realize Memphis in May had chosen tohonor South Africa this year until a few weeks ago, at which timethe two organizations sought one another out for support.
"It's fortuitous that de Klerk happened to be here," Bradshawsaid.
The Techsposium continues this morning. One of the morning'sactivities include a video conference in The Zone with adjunctprofessor Benjamin Hooks of the Benjamin Hooks Institute for SocialChange, Rep. Harold Ford Jr., and high school students from bothMemphis and South Africa.
