over a period of two decades. After claiming that he intends to “tell the truth” about South Africa to the international community, president Ramaphosa dishonestly announced in New York that there are no farm murders or land grabs in South Africa. The South African government plans to enact laws to empower the state to confiscate the property of minority communities. One minister has given the assurance that the government only plans on taking property that belongs to minorities; the deputy president has threatened with a violent takeover if minorities do not hand over their property and the president has stated that these expropriation policies will turn South Africa into the “ultimate paradise” and the “Garden of Eden.” South African courts increasingly seem to condone discrimination against minorities, as well as hate speech. They do this by interpreting the South African Constitution in a manner that merely endorses the goals and policies of the political elite. This goes against the core of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of Race Discrimination, the United Nations Development Report and various other international legal sources. When AfriForum applied to register with ECOSOC as an NGO with special consultative status, we were told by a representative of the South African government that they will do everything they can to prevent us from gaining access to the United Nations, because, as we were told, according to the South African government, we “talk too much” when we raise awareness about minority rights in South Africa, and as a result, that we are “too arrogant”. He said that the South African government has already spoken with its allies in the United Nations and encouraged them to prevent AfriForum from raising awareness about the plight of minorities in South Africa. As was lamented in the introduction to this session, the United Nations does not have a good track record when it comes to intervention and the prevention of atrocities before they occur. We are of the opinion that one of the main reasons for this is that the United Nations places too much emphasis on diplomacy and fostering good relations with states, as opposed to peoples. States and peoples are not the same. There is one South African state and one South African government, while there is a plethora of peoples and minority communities in South Africa. The only way for the United Nations to strengthen its grip on ground-level realities is to decentralise its approach, as opposed to centralising it. By this I mean that the UN would play a much more constructive role if it were not to focus primarily on high-level conversations with states and global players, but to strengthen its ties with communities and organisations on ground level. In your introduction to the Fifteenth Session of the United Nations Forum on Minority Issues, you stated that “we can never wait until atrocities are committed to react.” The Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, prof. Fernand de Varennes added that the UN’s approach to