OLIVER TAMBO
APARTHEID AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
Addresses to United Nations Committees and Conferences
Edited by
E. S. REDDY
NAMEDIA FOUNDATION
STERLING PUBLISHERS PRIVATE LIMITED
NEW DELHI
1991
CONTENTS1
Preface, by Fr. Trevor Huddleston
Oliver Reginald Tambo: A Biographical Note
APPEAL FOR URGENT ACTION TO STOP REPRESSION AND TRIALS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Statement at the meeting of the Special Political
Committee of the General Assembly, New York, October 8, 1963
*UNITED NATIONS MUST TAKE ACTION TO DESTROY APARTHEID
Statement at the meeting of the Special Political Committee
of the General Assembly, New York, October 29, 1963
MAKE ACCOMPLICES OF APARTHEID ACCOUNT FOR THEIR CONDUCT
Statement at the meeting of the Special Committee against
Apartheid, New York, March 12, 1964
*GREETINGS TO OUR FRIENDS IN THE UNITED NATIONS
New Year message to Mr. E.S. Reddy, Principal Secretary,
United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid, January 17, 1967
PRESENT STAGE OF THE STRUGGLE AGAINST APARTHEID IN SOUTH AFRICA
Paper prepared at the request of the Special Committee
against Apartheid, June 1968
NEED FOR NEW LEVEL OF INTERNATIONAL ACTION AGAINST APARTHEID
Statement at the meeting of the Special Committee against
Apartheid, Stockholm, June 18, 1968
*TRIBUTE TO THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE AGAINST APARTHEID
Statement at the meeting of the Special Committee against
Apartheid, New York, April 2, 1973
MOBILIZE WORLD SUPPORT FOR AFRICAN LIBERATION STRUGGLE
Statement, on behalf of liberation movements, at the
International Conference in Support of the Victims of Colonialism and Apartheid
in Southern Africa, Oslo, April 9, 1973
INCREASE ASSISTANCE TO LIBERATION MOVEMENTS
Statement at the International Conference in Support
of the Victims of Colonialism and Apartheid in Southern Africa, Oslo, April
11, 1973
*MOVE FROM CONDEMNATION TO CONFRONTATION OF APARTHEID AND COLONIALISM
Statement in Committee II of the International Conference
in Support of the Victims of Colonialism and Apartheid in Southern Africa,
Oslo, April 11, 1973
SUPPORT OUR PEOPLE UNTIL POWER IS RESTORED TO THEM
Statement at the Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly,
New York, October 26, 1976
CRUCIAL STAGE IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
Statement at the World Conference for Action against Apartheid,
Lagos, August 23, 1977
*WE SHALL WIN
Statement at the meeting of the Special Committee against
Apartheid to launch the International Anti-apartheid Year, March
21, 1978
*LETTER TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE AGAINST APARTHEID, JULY 29,
1980
In reply to message on the 25th anniversary of the Freedom
Charter
IMPOSE COMPREHENSIVE AND MANDATORY SANCTIONS AGAINST SOUTH AFRICA
Statement at the International Conference on Sanctions
against South Africa, UNESCO House, Paris, May 21, 1981
*THERE CAN BE NO PEACE OR STABILITY IN SOUTHERN AFRICA WITHOUT THE DESTRUCTION
OF APARTHEID
Statement, on behalf of the national liberation movements,
at the special meeting on Africa Liberation Day during the International Conference
on Sanctions against South Africa, UNESCO House, Paris, May 25, 1981
ACT WITH SENSE OF URGENCY
Statement at the meeting of the Special Committee against
Apartheid, New York, June 11, 1981
MOBILISE THE WORLD FOR SANCTIONS AGAINST APARTHEID
Statement at the meeting of the Special Committee against
Apartheid, New York, January 11, 1982
TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE UNITED NATIONS SANCTIONS RESOLUTION
Statement at the Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly,
New York, November 5, 1982
*DEFEAT THOSE WHO SUBVERT UNITED NATIONS DECISIONS
Statement at the Plenary Meeting of the United Nations
General Assembly, New York, November 9, 1982
VICTORY IS WITHIN OUR GRASP
Statement at the World Conference on Sanctions against
Racist South Africa, UNESCO House, Paris, June 16, 1986
*STEP UP THE STRUGGLE TO EVEN HIGHER LEVELS
Address to the International Labour Conference,
Geneva, June 19, 1986
It is an honour and a privilege to write this brief preface to a book of historic
significance. For it is quite certain that when the full story of the liberation
struggle in South Africa comes to be written the name of Oliver Tambo will be
joined with that of his friend and partner, Nelson Mandela, as deserving of
the highest honour. It will never be forgotten, for without Oliver Tambo, it
is true to say, the African National Congress could not have survived the years
and years of repression and exile as it has done. His presidency of the ANC
began in exile, but was the fruit of years of experience as student, schoolmaster
and lawyer within the country. He knew at first hand the meaning of apartheid
and its destructive power. When he was given the task of leaving South Africa
in order to sustain the struggle against that massive evil he had no hesitation
in doing so. In those thirty years of exile for himself and his family he achieved
recognition from the international community by the sheer integrity and intelligence
of his commitment to liberation itself. But it was a colossal and immensely
costly process. I have personal knowledge, through my friendship with him of
over nearly fifty years, of how colossal and how costly that process was.
In these addresses - each one so carefully prepared for a different occasion
at the U.N. - we have a historical record of the first importance. It is difficult
to think of any more significant presentation to the world community of the
true meaning of peace and justice, within the context of the U.N. Charter, of
the struggle against apartheid.
In my view the greatest need for all of us who wish to see a free democratic
South Africa with a constitution which will guarantee human rights to all its
citizens regardless of colour, race or creed, is a thorough historical understanding
of the process which has led to the present moment. Indeed, it is the abject
failure of the Western Powers in the past to have had such a perspective - a
strictly historical perspective - of the struggle for freedom, which has delayed
the achievement for so long. This book should be read by everyone who truly
cares about the future of South Africa, for it is the essential explanation,
by one of its greatest Presidents, of what the ANC has stood for since its foundation
in 1912 to the present day. The words of each address, so carefully chosen and
so beautifully linked together, express the greatness of the cause and the greatness
of the writer himself. The history of South Africa in this century is in the
large part the history of the ANC and its leadership. The future of South Africa
will depend in equal measure on the response of the world community to what
is here recorded in the words of Oliver Tambo.
Fr. Trevor Huddleston
This collection of addresses of Oliver Tambo to the United Nations General
Assembly and its Committees, and at international conferences organised by the
United Nations on the problem of apartheid, is a record of the efforts of the
African National Congress to inform the world of the struggle of the South African
people against an extremely brutal system of racist oppression and to urge the
international community to lend its support to them in destroying apartheid
and building a non-racial democratic society. It is indispensable for a study
of the role of the United Nations in dealing with a problem of which it was
seized almost since its inception.
The addresses span a period of over two decades during which the racist regime
in South Africa resorted to ever increasing repression and inhumanity in its
desperate efforts to suppress the spirit of freedom and impose its "final
solution" to perpetuate racist domination in the country and establish
its hegemony over the region. Millions of people were imprisoned; a million
families were forcibly removed from their homes and their communities; ten million
African people were deprived of their citizenship through the sham "independence"
of bantustans; thousands of students and children were massacred, maimed and
tortured. Numerous patriots were killed by the police or the death squads of
the regime, or tortured to death in detention.
In later years, the regime resorted such acts of aggression and destabilisation
against neighbouring States as to cause enormous death and destruction which
has been compared to a holocaust.
Yet powerful governments and vested interests continued to block all moves
for effective international action against the racist regime. While condemning
apartheid verbally, they increased their economic involvement in South Africa,
and provided the regime with arms, military and nuclear technology and intelligence.
The brutality of the racist regime and the complicity of external forces could
be countered only by enormous sacrifices and heroism of the South African people,
supplemented by persistent efforts to mobilise governments and peoples to isolate
that regime, force its allies to disengage from apartheid, and assist the liberation
struggle.
The addresses of Oliver Tambo before the United Nations are a reflection of
his efforts - first as head of the external mission of the ANC and later as
its President-General - to mobilise world opinion against apartheid and in favour
of the struggle of his people. They are, in fact, landmarks in international
action against apartheid.
The first address was delivered on the eve of the trial of Nelson Mandela,
Walter Sisulu and other leaders in which they faced the likelihood of death
sentences, and the second during the course of that trial. Their lives were
saved by a world campaign promoted by the ANC and the United Nations.
The next was at a meeting of the Special Committee against Apartheid in Stockholm.
The consultations of Mr. Tambo during that visit to Stockholm were instrumental
in persuading the Swedish Government to take a lead in the West by giving direct
assistance to the African liberation movements.
He then addressed the UN-OAU Conference in Oslo in 1973 which led to the recognition
of the status of African liberation movements as the authentic representatives
of their peoples and promoted increased assistance to them.
The next address was to the Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly
on the day when the South African regime proclaimed the so-called "independence"
of the Transkei. The resolution adopted by the Assembly, soon after his address,
helped prevent any international recognition of such bantustans.
The Lagos Conference of 1977 served, as Mr. Tambo suggested, to promote an
international mobilisation in support of the United Nations programme of action
against apartheid.
The next three addresses in 1981-82 were during a difficult period when the
Reagan administration in the United States moved closer to the Pretoria regime,
protecting it as it undertook blatant intervention and destabilisation in neighbouring
States, and tried to reverse the progress in international action against apartheid.
The hopes of the Botha regime to subdue the frontline States and overcome international
isolation were frustrated by an unprecedented upsurge of the people in South
Africa and solidarity by anti-apartheid forces around the world, including the
United States, encouraged by the United Nations.
The last address of Mr. Tambo was before a United Nations Conference in Paris
1986. In the midst of growing confrontation between the regime and the people,
and even as the regime proceeded in its desperation to impose a nation-wide
State of Emergency, he could declare that "victory is thin our sight".
I was privileged to meet Oliver Tambo when he first visited the United Nations
in 1960 to persuade delegations of member States to support international sanctions
against South Africa. Since 1963, when the Special Committee against Apartheid
began its work and I became its Principal Secretary, I have helped arrange his
visits to the United Nations in New York and to conferences in Europe and Africa.
I sought and benefited in my work from his counsel on many occasions. I was
constantly inspired by his modesty and integrity, statesmanship and vision which
reflected the greatness of the liberation movement of which he was a leader.
He was deeply attached to the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United
Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The contribution he made
to enabling the United Nations to play a significant role in the struggle against
apartheid can hardly be exaggerated.
I present this collection - partly taken from the United Nations documents
and partly transcribed from tapes - as a record as well as a personal tribute
to one who was a source of inspiration to me for the past three decades.
E. S. Reddy
OLIVER REGINALD TAMBO: A BIOGRAPHICAL
NOTE
Oliver Reginald Tambo, Acting President of the African National Congress from
1967 to 1978 and President-General since 1978, has devoted his life to the struggle
of his people for liberation.
Born on October 27, 1917, in Bizana District of Eastern Cape, he studied at
the Anglican Boarding School, near Flagstaff, and later at St. Peter's Secondary
School in Johannesburg where he set academic records, completing his matriculation
with a first class pass in 1938. Awarded a scholarship, he studied at Fort Hare
College, graduating with a B.Sc. degree in 1941. He remained at Fort Hare to
qualify for a Diploma in Education but was expelled in 1942 for his involvement
in a student strike. He returned to Johannesburg and taught science and mathematics
at St. Peter's from 1943 to 1947.
He began studying law in 1948 and, in December 1952, established, with Nelson
Mandela, the first African legal partnership in South Africa.
He was one of the founders of the ANC Youth League in 1944 - along with Walter
Sisulu, Nelson Mandela and others - and successively its National Secretary
and National Vice-President.
He was elected a member of the Transvaal Executive Committee of the ANC in
1946 and, in December 1949, a member of the National Executive Committee of
the ANC.
When the regime's banning orders forced Sisulu to resign from the ANC leadership,
Tambo took over as Acting Secretary-General in 1954 and was elected to that
office from 1955 to 1958. Though banned in 1954 and restricted from leaving
the magisterial districts of Johannesburg and Benoni, he was not ordered to
resign from the ANC. He managed to continue to guide the ANC in its campaigns
against the forced removal of African communities and the introduction of "Bantu
education."
In December 1956, Tambo was arrested together with 155 other leaders, and charged
with treason. He was acquitted for lack of evidence.
In 1958, when Chief Albert Luthuli, the President-General of the ANC, was restricted,
he was appointed to the newly-created office of Deputy President-General. Next
year, he himself was served with orders prohibiting him from attending any gatherings
for a period of five years.
The ANC leaders soon became convinced that a ban on the ANC, followed by mass
arrests, was imminent. The National Executive Committee decided that Tambo should
go abroad to set up an external mission and campaign for international sanctions
against the apartheid regime. He left South Africa secretly a few days after
the Sharpeville massacre of March 21,1960. Provided with travel documents by
the Indian Government, he proceeded to London where he set up an external mission
of the ANC soon after the organisation was banned in South Africa. He attended
the Conference of Independent African States in June 1960 which called for sanctions
against South Africa and later in the year visited the United Nations in New
York to consult with delegations on proposals for sanctions.
In 1961, when Nelson Mandela and other leaders founded the Umkhonto we Sizwe
for an armed struggle, he was requested to take charge of military training
of the freedom fighters. With the arrest of Mandela and other leaders of the
ANC and Umkhonto in 1963-64, and the imposition of severe restrictions on Chief
Luthuli, he had to assume responsibility for guiding the struggle of his people
in South Africa, as well as redoubling efforts for international action in support
of the struggle.
He was elected Acting President of the ANC after the death of Chief Luthuli
in 1967, and President-General of ANC and Chairman of its Revolutionary Command
in 1978.
Tambo's role in arousing world consciousness has had an immense impact on international
opinion on South Africa. His leadership was crucial in maintaining and strengthening
the unity of the liberation movement through difficult times, ensuring the revival
of resistance with an ever stronger force and promoting a powerful international
campaign for sanctions against South Africa.
APPEAL FOR ACTION TO STOP
REPRESSION AND TRIALS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Statement at the meeting of the Special Political Committee
of the General Assembly, New York, October 8, 19632
I wish to express my deep gratitude for the privilege accorded to me to address
this important body. It was with considerable reluctance that I applied for
leave to appear before this Committee, recognising, as I did, the supreme effort
which the United Nations is making to induce the South African Government to
abolish and abandon policies which are a cruel scourge on the conscience of
every civilised being and an unequalled example of man's inhumanity to man.
But we feel we cannot too frequently appeal to the nations of the world to call
South Africa to sanity, nor do we feel we can be too emphatic in pointing out
what a great deal of the damage which the Government of South Africa and its
White supporters are doing daily, consistently and with arrogance may prove
impossible to repair and thus remain an enduring source of anguish for future
generations.
The readiness with which my request was granted by your Committee, Mr. Chairman,
confirms and is consistent with the declared desire of the nations and peoples
of the world to see the end of apartheid and white domination, and the emergence
of a South Africa loyal to the United Nations and to the high principles set
forth in the Charter - a South Africa governed by its people as fellow citizens
of equal worth whatever the colour, race or creed of any one of them. This kind
of South Africa is the precise goal of our political struggle.
In thanking you and your Committee, therefore, Mr. Chairman, I wish to emphasise
that I do so not on my own behalf, but also on behalf of my organisation, the
African National Congress, and its sister organisations in South Africa, on
behalf of the African people and all the other victims of racial discrimination,
together with that courageous handful of white South Africans who have fully
identified themselves with the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed
people of South Africa.
I should also like to take this opportunity to place on record the deep appreciation
of my people for the steps which have been taken by various governments against
South Africa, which alone can give any meaning to condemnation of the policies
practised by the Government of South Africa. On the other hand, I cannot exaggerate
the sense of grievance - to put it mildly - which we feel towards those countries
which have done and are even now doing so much to make apartheid the monstrous
and ghastly reality which it is, and which have thereby created in our country
the conditions which, if nothing else happens, will ensure an unparalleled bloodbath.
Assured of the support of these countries the South African rulers, who boast
openly of this support, are not only showing open defiance for the United Nations
and treating its resolutions with calculated contempt, they are liquidating
the opponents of their policies, confident that the big Powers will not act
against them.
This brings me to the special matter which, with your permission, Mr. Chairman,
I beg leave to submit to the distinguished members of this Committee for their
urgent consideration. It arises out of news of the latest developments in the
South African situation.
Trials of Mandela and Other Leaders
By a significant coincidence, this, the first day of this Committee's discussion
of the policy of apartheid happens also to be the first day of a trial in South
Africa which constitutes yet another challenge to the authority of the United
Nations and which has as its primary aim the punishment by death of people who
are among South Africa's most outstanding opponents of the very policies which
the General Assembly and the Security Council have in numerous resolutions called
upon the South African Government to abandon.
Today some thirty persons are appearing before a Supreme Court Judge in South
Africa in a trial which will be conducted in circumstances that have no parallel
in South African history, and which, if the Government has its way, will seal
the doom of that country and entrench the feelings of bitterness which years
of sustained persecution have already engendered among the African people.3
The persons standing trial include Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, which
are household names throughout South Africa, Nelson Mandela being known personally
to a number of African Heads of State; Govan Mbeki, a top-ranking African political
leader and an accomplished economist who has borne the burdens of his oppressed
fellow men ever since he left the university; Ahmed Kathrada, a South African
of Indian extraction who started politics as a passive resister in 1946 at the
age of seventeen, since when he has been consistently a leading participant
in the struggle of the Indian and other Asian South Africans against the Group
Areas Act and other forms of racial discrimination, and has, with other Indian
leaders, joined the Africans in the liberation struggle; Dennis Goldberg, a
white South African, whose home in the Western Cape was the scene of a bomb
explosion in 1962, when Government supporters sought to demonstrate their disapproval
of his identifying himself with the African cause; Ruth Slovo (alias Ruth First),
a South African white mother of three minor children, author of a recently published
book on South West Africa, and one of South Africa's leading journalists. I
could enumerate several others, and as I have shown, they consist of outstanding
African nationalist leaders as well as others who have for long been associated
with every conceivable form of protest against injustices perpetrated in the
name of Christian civilisation and white supremacy. Trials against well over
a hundred others are due to start at other centres in different parts of the
country.
The charge against the accused is said to be "sabotage." This means
in fact that they have contravened a law, or a group of laws which have been
enacted for the express purpose of forcibly suppressing the aspirations of the
victims of apartheid laws which no active opponent of the policies of the South
African Government can evade. A study of the statutory definition of "sabotage,"
which distinguished delegates will find in official documents which I believe
have been circulated to members, will show that a person accused of sabotage
can be sentenced to death for one of the least effective and most peaceful forms
of protest against apartheid.
Genocide Masquerading under Guise of Justice
The relations between the government and those it rules by force in South Africa
have never been worse. The law of the country has since the 1956 Treason Trial
been altered so as to make it practically impossible for an accused person to
escape a conviction. Lawyers who accepted briefs in political trials have been
subjected to increasing intimidation and it has now become difficult to find
counsel to appear in such trials. This has been particularly true in the case
of the accused who are now facing trial. The law of procedure has also been
altered with the result that whereas the State allows itself any amount of time
to prepare its case against accused persons, the accused, held in solitary confinement,
are kept ignorant of the charge against them until they appear in court. The
time allowed them to prepare their defence is subject to the discretion of the
court, and in the majority of cases the State insists on proceeding with the
trial with as little delay as possible. Preparing a defence from a prison cell
hardly enables an accused person to make any proper preparation.
An atmosphere of crisis has been whipped up and its effects have been reflected
in the severity of sentences passed by the judges and, not infrequently, in
the statements they make in the course of pronouncing sentence. Of special significance
in this regard is the judgement passed last week by a Pretoria judge on seven
Africans whom he found guilty of allegedly receiving training in the use of
firearms in a country outside South Africa. In sentencing each of the accused
to twenty years' imprisonment, the judge stated that he had seriously considered
passing the death sentence, but had decided not to do so because he felt the
accused had been misled. This judgement and these remarks are a sufficient -
and deliberate - hint as to what sentences the South African public and the
world are to expect in the new trials where leaders of the political struggle
against the apartheid policies of the South African Government are the accused.
It is known that the State will demand the death sentence.
Already more than 5,000 political prisoners are languishing in South Africa's
jails. Even as recently as the month of September of this year and after the
Security Council, in its resolution of 7 August, had called for the release
of "all persons imprisoned, interned, or subjected to other restrictions
for having opposed the policy of apartheid," three detainees have died
in jail in circumstances strongly suggesting deliberate killing. All these are
the direct victims of a situation which would never have arisen had the South
African Government taken heed of the many appeals which have been addressed
to it by the world public and expressed in resolutions of the General Assembly
and the Security Council.
Call for Immediate Action
I cannot believe that this world body, the United Nations, could stand by,
calmly watching what I submit is genocide masquerading under the guise of a
civilised dispensation of justice. The African and other South Africans who
are being dragged to the slaughter house face death, or life imprisonment, because
they fearlessly resisted South Africa's violations of the United Nations Charter
and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, because they fought against a
Government armed to the teeth and relying on armed force, to end inhumanity,
to secure the liberation of the African people, to end racial discrimination,
and to replace racial intolerance and tyranny with democracy and equality, irrespective
of colour, race or creed.
If you, Mr. Chairman, and the distinguished delegates here assembled, consider,
as I urge you to accept, that the developments I have referred to are of a nature
which calls for immediate action by the United Nations, then I am content to
leave it to you and your distinguished Committee, Sir, to decide on the action
which it deems appropriate.4
For our part, I wish to observe that every single day spent in jail by any
of our people, every drop of blood drawn from any of them, and every life taken
- each of these represents a unit of human worth lost to us. This loss we can
no longer afford. It is surely not in the interests of South Africa or even
of the South African Government that this loss should be increased any further.
Thank you, Sir.
UNITED NATIONS MUST TAKE
ACTION TO DESTROY APARTHEID
Statement at the meeting of the Special Political Committee
of the General Assembly, New York, October 29, 1963
Mr. Chairman, I wish once again to thank you and this Committee for this opportunity.
In South Africa, since the earliest days of white rule, our people have not
had the opportunity of being heard by the tribunals of State, by the people
who formulate the policies of that country, by the people who make laws determining
the nature and character of the lives we are expected to live in that country.
This year, and this occasion, is the first time, therefore, that we are being
heard directly. Its significance is that this distinguished and august audience
is not one of a group of people in South Africa, representatives of organs of
State, it is the Governments of the world - all of them. It is all the more
a pity that I am the only one who is taking advantage of this great offer. There
are others who in many respects could have more appropriately represented my
people, and all the oppressed people of South Africa, but who are languishing
in jail, serving long sentences or facing trial.
Some of them, who were the subject of resolutions adopted by this Committee
and the General Assembly three weeks ago, are at this very moment facing trial
in the Supreme Court in Pretoria, charged with offences allegedly committed
over a period of eighteen months, involving acts of sabotage in 221 or 222 instances,
and alleged violations of South Africa's Suppression of Communism Act. Not only
are they facing trial, but they are doing so in circumstances which make that
trial largely farcical. Hence the significance and the importance of the resolution
adopted by the General Assembly. They come before trial after going through
a phase of persecution, ill-treatment and torture that is new in the South African
situation, a fact which is an element of the tensions and the crisis that now
characterise the life of the people of South Africa of all races.
Here is an extract from a letter written by a person who sat in the courtroom
when these accused appeared three weeks ago. It says:
"The atmosphere in court was chilling, almost terrifying. Iron gates
barred the way. Police - hundreds of them, uniformed and armed - and Special
Branch men - masses and masses of them - amongst the spectators in the courtroom,
watching every move we made, and stationed between us, listening to every
word spoken on the spectators' benches."
In that kind of atmosphere, even for the best of judges, for the most impartial
among them, it must be extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to be impartial,
to remain immune to the effects of that type of atmosphere. And that will be
the atmosphere that will characterise the trial throughout. This is a description
of the atmosphere inside a courtroom; it is also an accurate description of
the atmosphere in the entire country.
In this letter the writer says:
"Some of the African accused amongst the eleven maintained most definitely
that they had been tortured in different ways - suffocated with wet bags,
given electrical and other treatment";
and a letter smuggled out of jail makes special reference to Nelson Mandela.
It says:
"He is graded 'Category D,' the worst for privileges and rights, although
the police state: 'He is a very well-disciplined prisoner.' He spends twenty-three
hours a day in a cell twelve feet by seven feet. He is prohibited from talking
to any other prisoner. He is allowed no reading matter whatsoever, neither
books nor newspapers, except such textbooks as are prescribed for the course
of study which he has been permitted to embark on by correspondence at his
own expense. He is allowed one thirty-minute visit from his wife every six
months and may write and receive one letter every six months. He may not purchase
or receive any food other than prison rations, which are: breakfast - mealie
meal, plus the option of sugar or pea soup, no milk; lunch - mealie meal and
a few cubes of meat on top; supper - mealie meal. He sleeps on a concrete
floor, on a mat approximately three-eighths of an inch thick."
I mention these facts not for the purpose of inducing any pity for any of these
accused. They believe in the cause they are fighting for; they are prepared
to suffer for it, even to be tortured for it. I mention them simply because
the condition of these men, who are leaders and for whom representations are
now being made in the court, is perhaps an indication of the fate of thousands
of others, also detained, to whom there is no access of any kind. It will take
a long time before the world knows what has been the fate of these people, why
some of them have died and what is even at this moment happening to them. In
the meantime the trial against these eleven is proceeding, and there are other
trials also due to proceed.
Unanimity against Apartheid
All this is happening in spite of the resolution that has been adopted. What
the United Nations does about any further acts of defiance by the South African
Government is part of the issues to which representatives are addressing themselves
at this gathering. For us in South Africa it is a matter of great interest exactly
for how long the United Nations can entertain this type of conduct by a Member
State. We are grateful for what has been done by the various groups represented
here and for the unity that has been expressed in their condemnation of this
system. You have here the African States, which form a group of their own, the
Asian nations, the East European countries, the Latin American nations, Western
Europe, the Nordic countries, the Commonwealth, the Western Powers - all bound
together variously by one circumstance or another and perhaps differing among
themselves on one ground or another. But they all have declared, as one man,
their condemnation of the policy of apartheid. It is common cause that there
has been no change in spite of this unprecedented unanimity of the world on
this one issue; it is common cause also that in spite of this persistent attack
on their policy, the perpetrators of it have gone ahead heaping misery upon
misery on those whom they hold in subjugation, this also in defiance of world
opinion and despite the efforts of the people directly affected by their policy.
The question that arises in our minds is: How far is the United Nations able
to watch this happening? We have in the past suggested a possible answer. We
have furnished facts indicating the nature of apartheid but also giving a hint
of what the ultimate results are going to be if apartheid is allowed to continue.
We have had occasion to listen to statements made by representatives which expressed
this fear, statements not drawn from the imagination but based on facts. This
year in particular this Organisation has established the Special Committee on
the Policies of Apartheid, which has done a tremendous amount of work in placing
at the disposal of the delegations and of the whole world an accurately detailed
documentation of these facts so as to ensure that any statements made, any decisions
taken, are based on an objective examination of the situation in South Africa.
This has made it unnecessary for us to bring facts to be considered afresh by
this body; but it has raised the question of what our attitude might be to possible
solutions that this Committee or the United Nations as a whole might decide
upon - because we are part of this situation and some of the delegations here
have indicated, perfectly rightly, that a great deal of attention, even of care,
must be taken in the steps contemplated for the solution of this problem.
Appeals for Sanctions
As early as 1958, we in South Africa, convinced then that if nothing was done
to bring pressure to bear upon South Africa in addition to what we were doing,
so as to compel abandonment of this policy, the stage would be reached which
is contemplated in a paragraph of the preamble of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. I quote from that paragraph:
"... it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse,
as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human
rights should be protected by the rule of law..."
We were aware that the rule of law in South Africa was fast becoming a dead
letter, that our own pressures internally were not bringing about the peaceful
changes in which we believed, and that it had become necessary to supplement
these pressures with what could be done from outside. So, in 1958, at the first
meeting of the All-African People's Conference the South African delegation
tabled a resolution for an international boycott of South African goods. That
resolution was adopted and picked up in a number of countries by various organisations.
In 1960, at the Addis Ababa Conference, another delegation of South African
political leaders submitted a memorandum to that conference of African Independent
States. In that memorandum, they asked for sanctions and for the isolation of
South Africa from Africa and the rest of the world. Their appeal was received
by the African States there assembled. A resolution to that effect was adopted,
and this was subsequently tabled for discussion at the fifteenth session of
the General Assembly. In 1959, the Secretary-General of the United Nations was
sent a memorandum by the African National Congress in South Africa, which asked,
amongst other things, for sanctions against South Africa.
We did all these things because we felt that the world and the United Nations
had a distinct role to play in South Africa. We knew that what we were asking
for would involve suffering on our part, but we also knew that apartheid would
never be abandoned, that racial discrimination in South Africa would never cease
to be the official policy of that country, until and unless there were sacrifices,
and the sacrifice of going hungry, of going without jobs because factories had
been closed was a very elementary kind of sacrifice in the situation in which
we were. It could hardly be compared with the ravages of apartheid on our people,
who even then were being treated like unwanted animals in their own country.
We also knew that a boycott of South African goods through sanctions imposed
from outside would also involve sacrifices for others outside South Africa,
but we believed that it would be a minor sacrifice, negligible in comparison
with the ultimate sacrifice which the whole world, we felt, would have to give
and to make if apartheid was allowed to stay in South Africa.
We have been reproached, perhaps indirectly, with being so childish as to invite
the world to inflict pain on us. It has been said that sanctions will hurt us
first and foremost. I have given this historical background in the hope that
we will not again have the discomfort of this kind of pity and paternalism,
because it is a type of pity and paternalism which hurts us even more than sanctions
would hurt us.
There was another reason why we thought of sanctions. We do not believe in
violence; we do not think that anybody believes in it. We do not want it; nobody
wants it. We did not think of invoking the world to invade South Africa. We
were convinced, living in South Africa and having lived there all our lives,
that if South Africa were effectively isolated through economic and diplomatic
measures, and others which have been mentioned in these debates, it would be
impossible for the South African Government to operate apartheid. Apartheid
would then have to be abandoned. We also believed, and knew, that it is impossible
to separate racial discrimination in South Africa from the economic structure
of that country. Racial discrimination, South Africa's economic power, its oppression
and exploitation of all the black peoples, are part and parcel of the same thing.
Sanctions would attack the economy, which could only be attacked from outside
through sanctions. We know of nothing else. We can attack it from the inside,
but the only method, as the representatives are aware, which has been allowed
us and left open to us is the type of method which is a last resort. By that
method, we could destroy the economy of the country. In the process, we would
destroy life as well, our own life included, but in the end, however tragic
it may have been, there would be no apartheid.
We believe that the world, too, can destroy apartheid, firstly by striking
at the economy of South Africa. But if that failed, then the world would have
to sacrifice, as I have indicated, in a more elaborate and more costly way.
The mere possibility of the peoples of the world having less to eat, less to
clothe themselves with because of a boycott has led to various problems being
raised in regard to the implementation of sanctions. Fears have been expressed
that it would not work because the main trading partners of South Africa are
involved and are unwilling to support sanctions. They have said so. But we do
not think that this is any reason why there should be no sanctions.
First of all, very correctly, the African States, and perhaps before them other
States as well, such as India, have decided to have no economic relations with
South Africa, and no trade or diplomatic relations. This has its own effect,
except that it is being undermined to a greater or lesser degree by those countries
which persist in having trade relations with South Africa. But they have decided
to make this sacrifice. Last year a resolution was adopted which, if it were
implemented only by those countries which supported it, would be most effective.
Attitude of South Africa's Trading Partners
In the final analysis, it may be that apartheid brings such stupendous economic
advantages to countries that they would sooner have apartheid than permit its
destruction. It may be that some countries are faced with this cruel choice.
This is still no reason why those who are prepared to make the sacrifice should
not do so. However, we are worried about the difficulties voiced by South Africa's
trading partners as regards severing their trade relations with South Africa.
One of the sources of worry is that we owe racial discrimination in South Africa,
in so far as it is supported by the constitution of that country, to an act
passed by the United Kingdom Government, the South Africa Act of 1909, which
legalised racial discrimination. Today the United Kingdom is South Africa's
greatest trading partner. Because it is South Africa's trading partner, it is,
therefore, the greatest source of strength for apartheid. I do not think that
this position should be defended. We should be happy if we knew that the United
Kingdom was at least doing something about it, trying to extricate itself from
its complicity in the practices and policies of apartheid. What we have instead
is a boast by British firms that in 1962, of all countries trading with Britain,
South Africa was the source of its greatest profits. I shall quote from a pamphlet
called The British Stake in South Africa, issued in 1962. It says:
"Of all individual countries in which we hold private direct investment,
South Africa last year was the one from which we drew the biggest returns."
It is an uncomfortable feeling that the United Kingdom should have to depend
on apartheid for its biggest returns, particularly when one comes across a statement
such as that made by Basil Davidson in his book, Black Mother, in which he says
that by the end of the eighteenth century
"the value of British incomes derived from trade with the West Indies
was said to be four times greater than the value of British income derived
from trade with the rest of the world."
At that time, it will be recalled, there was a very heavy concentration of
slaves in the West Indies, and trade with the West Indies was the lucrative
enterprise it was because there was available this large mass of people who
worked without pay. There is some similarity between that situation and what
we find in South Africa, where millions of people, as Dr. Verwoerd has so eloquently
said, cannot rise above the level of certain forms of labour and are held in
conditions which we describe as conditions of slavery, and which, if we wanted
to be modest, we would describe as semi-slavery.
Representatives will recall the report, which came through yesterday, of a
large number of Africans being trapped in a mine in Johannesburg, with little
hope that they could be saved. The first question which occurs in the mind of
an African is: what were they doing in that mine? They were working. For how
much and for whom? The answer is disturbing, if there is any likelihood that
the laws and policies which compel them to work under those conditions and to
face death for nothing are going to endure because the big Powers are living
and thriving on that system.
There is another disturbing aspect which relates to the question of sanctions.
South Africa is encouraging immigrants from countries with white populations
- from Britain, from France, from Germany, from Italy, but a large number of
these people come from Britain. Firms in Britain are also moving to South Africa.
That might not be such a bad thing. If they like to live in South Africa, our
attitude is: that is very reasonable. It is a beautiful country. But the country
which invites these people is also deporting from South Africa what are described
as foreign natives. Africans, some of whom have lived there for over thirty
years, are being uprooted and deported to Tanganyika and other countries. Their
place, as far as the population of the country is concerned, is being taken
by the whites. Therefore this emigration to South Africa is of a racialist character.
It serves the interests of apartheid. One would have expected some attempt on
the part of countries to discourage their citizens from going to South Africa
- if for nothing else, at least because we say that it is an explosive situation
and we cannot guarantee the safety of these families. Yet we should hate to
do anything likely to alienate the rightful support which we have enjoyed from
European peoples.
From our point of view, if sanctions are impracticable on any grounds, then
nothing remains for anybody. I am using the term "sanctions" in a
broad sense, covering all the various methods by which South Africa could be
isolated. I should like to plead to this Committee to do the least that we expect
of it, to work out how sanctions can be effectively employed - the details of
it - how the trade which various countries are conducting with South Africa
can be diverted and dispensed among the over one hundred countries that should
be in a position to take it up. That would involve a sacrifice, but it is difficult
to reconcile the powerful statements which are made here in condemnation of
apartheid with the determination to sustain that same apartheid by giving it
the means of survival.
No Change of Heart of South African Government
May I refer to other problems in which we are interested and which have arisen
in the course of the debate on this question at this session. Reference has
been made to, and we ourselves were very interested in, the statement made by
the South African representative in the General Assembly. It has been felt that
the statement offers some hope and that perhaps there is a re-thinking by South
Africa of its policies. I should like to quote from an editorial in the Rand
Daily Mail of 12 October, which refers to that statement:
"Mr. Jooste occupied the rostrum and a substantial audience heard him
through."Carefully they listened, weighing up his words. But alas, there was
no single, tiny indication of a change of heart. It was the same old South
African line which everyone had heard before a dozen times. South Africa would
use, Mr. Jooste declared, all available means to defend the policies and possessions
of her white population."
The editorial goes on:
"For Britain, America and other important countries of the West, there
is now no longer any adequate excuse for stalling. All have condemned apartheid
roundly and publicly in the past - now they are being called upon to match
their practices to their pronouncements. The bans on arms shipments to South
Africa are the first responses to the mounting pressure on them."With the continued thawing in the cold war, the South African issue
is moving steadily to the top of the world's immediate concern. No longer
is it third, or fifth or eighth on the list of priorities. It is desperately
close to being the world's number one preoccupation."
We could not agree more with these comments. If any further value would seem
to attach to the statements made on behalf of the South African Government,
I think it is effectively disposed of by what Dr. Verwoerd himself has said.
I shall quote his words, which are reported in the Hansard, House of Assembly
Debates of the Republic of South Africa, Second Session. The statement was made
on 25 January 1963. Dr. Verwoerd was replying to a vote of no-confidence moved
by the Leader of the Opposition in South Africa:
"What does he mean" - that is, the Opposition Leader - "with
'control' when he says the United Party must retain control? The United Party
wants to 'retain control over the entire South Africa'... What does he honestly
mean the white man must do there under United Party policy? The word 'control'
is a word which means nothing else than white supremacy or white domination.
Control cannot have any other meaning than domination, supremacy. You can
call it what you like. Control is domination, domination is supremacy, supremacy
is domination, supremacy is domination. You cannot get away from that, Sir.
Control means that the white man will remain the real controller."
Then he states later:
"I now want to deal with what seems to me the crucial point in respect
of which this nation must say whether they have confidence in us or in the
Opposition, whether they have confidence in the National Party or in the United
Party."I maintain that judgement was given in 1961. Reduced to its simplest
form the problem is nothing else than this: We want to keep South Africa white.
The United Party also say they want to keep South Africa white. 'Keeping it
white' can only mean one thing, namely white domination, not 'leadership,'
not 'guidance,' but 'control,' 'supremacy.'"
Bantustans and Partition
Now, the bantustan theory or practice or policy has been referred to as a possible
way out. The Transkei is cited as a glorious example of people marching happily
to independence. What Dr. Verwoerd said in January of this year makes it clear
that there is no independence contemplated. There cannot be. Happily the majority
of delegations have seen through the trick and fraud of the bantustans.
But partition is also being worked up, mainly from outside the United Nations,
and partition is a kind of bantustan policy because it is based on the trick,
which has been resorted to, of talking about Bantu nations in South Africa and
a white nation, of talking about homelands for the Africans in South Africa,
but, also, about a white South Africa. These "homelands" are like
the locations that we already have, patched outside cities where Africans are
concentrated and kept in subjugation, available as labour. Whether it is called
"homelands" or bantustans or countries in terms of partition it is
still racial discrimination and apartheid - it is still white domination.
In fact, although it has not been stated in so many words, we are worried by
any suggestion of partition. Just as we have rejected the bantustans, we reject
partition even more, because that would be an acceptance of racism after all.
It would be its entrenchment. You would then have established in Africa a system
which propagates and is allowed to propagate racism. You would have a portion
of the country, the greatest portion of South Africa, surrounded by little,
isolated, poor, miserable patches of land called States, a strategy for keeping
the African people in permanent servitude. That is no answer to apartheid. There
is no answer to apartheid apart from striking directly at its head.
It is so evil and has been condemned so forcibly and so genuinely that the
only way to handle it is by destroying it.
Freedom for All
Fears have been expressed, however, that if apartheid were destroyed, the lot
of the white people in South Africa would become a doubtful one. We think it
is right that the United Nations should concern itself with the welfare of all
peoples, even groups of peoples. The Charter states that every individual, whatever
his colour, shall be protected from victimisation on the basis of that colour.
We ourselves have been worried about the fact that in South Africa there is
a group of people, or individuals, or a racial group, which have been subjected
to torture and indignity because of the colour of their skins or their origins.
That is what we are fighting against.
I should like to refer to statements which have been made by South African
leaders, other than myself, indicating our concern in ensuring that South Africa
will be a happy country when apartheid has been abandoned. Chief Albert Luthuli
made a statement recently from which I quote because it happens to be available.
He said:
"The main thing is that the Government and the people should be democratic
to the core. It is relatively unimportant who is in the Government. I am not
opposed to the present Government because it is white; I am opposed to it only
because it is undemocratic and repressive. My idea is a non-racial government
chosen on the basis of merit rather than colour. Appeals to racialism at elections
should be a legal offence."
Nelson Mandela said at his trial:
"I am no racialist and I detest racialism because I regard it as a barbaric
thing whether it comes from a black man or a white man."
May I say that these are leaders of people and are expressing the feelings
of their people. The only way to ascertain the feelings of people is through
what is said by those whom they have chosen to be their leaders and their spokesmen.
Walter Sisulu, who is among those who are facing trial today, has stated:
"The fundamental principle in our struggle is equal rights for all in
our country, and that all people who have made South Africa their home, by
birth or adoption, irrespective of colour or creed, are entitled to these
rights."
Robert Sobukwe, who, after serving for a period of three years, is still in
detention indefinitely - perhaps for the rest of his life unless we do something
in the meantime, which we hope to be able to do - stated:
"Freedom of the Africans can only be established when the African group
comes into its own. Freedom of the Africans means freedom for everyone, including
Europeans in this country."
Any other leading personality in the South African liberation movement would
have expressed himself in similar terms. The Committee may be aware of a document
known as the Freedom Charter which was adopted at a conference to which political
parties and all organisations from every racial group were invited. My recollection
is that I had written the letters, one of which was addressed to the National
Party of South Africa which was then in power.
The Freedom Charter purports to express the views of all South Africans of
every race, and the gathering which was held in 1955 represented all races.
Everyone was invited. The Freedom Charter begins with these words:
"We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the
world to know that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white,
and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the
will of all the people."
That statement, which declares South Africa to belong to all who live in it,
is a drastic concession on the part of the African people, but it is a demonstration
of the willingness of the African people to live in South Africa with everybody
who wants to live there on the basis of absolute equality - no racism, no racial
discrimination, no superior race, no inferior race. On that basis South Africa
belongs to all who live in it.
It has been suggested by a group of Nordic countries, whose peoples have made
great sacrifices for South Africa, that apart from any pressures, such as those
which have been referred to in the past, the United Nations should give some
attention to the question of what will replace apartheid. We welcome these suggestions,
if it is felt that the time has come to work out the details. But the effort
would be entirely wasted if it were not also recognised that unless the pressures
which have been suggested by delegations and in resolutions of the Security
Council and the General Assembly are intensified, in other words, unless the
sanctions in the broadest sense are applied, or an act which is of the nature
of sanctions in its effectiveness is undertaken, then it is irrelevant what
kind of proposals we may have for the future. The Freedom Charter, the document
to which I have referred, and the other official statements made by prominent
leaders in South Africa have been treated by the South African Government as
not even worth the paper they are written on - an attitude South Africa will
maintain until it finds itself unable to practise the policy of apartheid.
In my own view, we have not yet reached the stage at which we can go into details
about what will supplant apartheid, over and above the statements which have
been made in explanation of our official policies and over and above the provisions
of the Charter itself, which are a protection of individuals. But, needless
to say, whatever the United Nations and the countries which have supported us,
and the delegations here which have attacked apartheid, feel should be done,
we will co-operate with them. I cannot go into the question of when and by what
machinery this should be done. I should merely like to say that if we have the
opportunity of discussing this - that is, any of our people, any of our leaders
- with either the Nordic countries or the African States, or any body which
will be established, we will be willing to participate.
But may I repeat that it will be dangerous for the United Nations to get itself
bogged down in the pursuit of solutions which are irrelevant to the present
situation in South Africa, in concentrating on the details of how to protect
the whites in the future and abandoning the more urgent modes of action in the
interest of peace, in South Africa and externally; namely, the problem of how
to intensify the pressures which have been mentioned in the debates that have
been the subject of resolutions adopted by the Assembly.
Challenge to the United Nations
Finally, I should like to say that we have said in the past that the South
African situation is approaching a crisis. We said so in 1960 in an unofficial
memorandum that we distributed at the United Nations, and there can be no doubt
now that South Africa is in a crisis. But this is not the end. That situation
is deteriorating rapidly and is capable of any developments any day. The fact
that in the last five weeks, or five months, or eight months, on the face of
it things have been quiet and peaceful, that investments have been increasing
and mounting, that investors have been drawing greater and greater profits,
and super-profits, and that people have been flowing into the country - families
from everywhere except from Africa - that fact should not blind the world to
the realities of the situation.
We cannot be expected to sit side by side with it. We have come to the United
Nations because of our belief in it. But if the United Nations finds any real
difficulties, we are bound, most naturally, to explore every other avenue that
is open to us, whatever that is, to strengthen ourselves in every way that is
conceivable. There is no question from our point of view of postponing anything.
Apartheid has outlived its time in the world and most certainly in Africa. What
would encourage people who like to see changes come about in a peaceful way
would be to feel that, now that the question is in the capable hands of the
world's governments, through the machinery of the United Nations, we shall begin
to see dawn in South Africa. We thought we saw that dawn when 106 countries
voted unanimously against South Africa. We saw so much of the dawn that cables
were sent to President Kennedy congratulating the United States. Cables of that
kind are not sent to President Kennedy every week or every year. This was a
demonstration on the part of people who felt that the United Nations was at
long last seizing the bull by the horns.
Cables were even sent to Lord Home, then Foreign Secretary. It was possibly
the first cable he has received from any African people about British policy,
certainly in South Africa. But this again was a reaction to what appeared to
be a decision on the part of the big Powers in the West to join hands with the
ordinary people and save the world from an approaching disaster.
But if we got too excited about that decision, and if in fact nothing still
is going to be done, then may I repeat that that seems to us to indicate the
need to seek other avenues, whatever those may be. Needless to say, in my view
- and I may be entirely wrong, but I believe this faithfully - the United Nations
cannot allow South Africa to continue acting in defiance of its expressed views,
without undermining confidence on the part of the world in the ability of the
United Nations to deal with the situation of which it is seized. I also believe
that South Africa is imposing a severe strain on the United Nations. But that
strain can increase with fatal results, even for a world organisation, unless
action is taken immediately. Hence our appeal for action.
MAKE ACCOMPLICES OF APARTHEID
ACCOUNT FOR THEIR CONDUCT
Statement at the meeting of the Special Committee against
Apartheid, New York, March 12, 1964
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Committee:
We wish to thank you on behalf of the African National Congress and all the
oppressed people of South Africa for giving us the opportunity once again to
appear before you to furnish you with information which may assist the United
Nations in taking a decision on the policies of the South African Government
which are an increasing menace and threat to peace in Africa and the rest of
the world.
With great interest we have read the reports compiled by your Committee, which
have been distributed to different parts of the world. These reports, bearing
the authority of the United Nations, have served to bring the facts of the South
African situation to the immediate attention of the peoples of the world.
We know that this distinguished Committee, no less than ourselves and our people
in South Africa, would wish to reduce the area of debate and discussion at the
United Nations to the barest minimum, and to allow time for decisions and action
aimed at the root of the evil of racialism which threatens to overflow its South
African boundaries and engulf the rest of mankind. We shall therefore avoid
inflicting you with a recitation of the sordid facts of apartheid rule in South
Africa, and will rather address ourselves, by way of emphasis, to possible ways
and means whereby the United Nations could interpose its authority in the interests
of human life, of peace and of security. To this end we wish to recapitulate
some of the observations made by our delegation when it appeared before your
Committee in July 1963 and by myself in an address to the Special Political
Committee during the eighteenth session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Claiming to act in the name of "Christian" civilisation and "Western"
democracy, the South African Government has spared no energies in unleashing
a most barbarous attack on the African people and other opponents of its policies.
Documents circulated by this Committee abound in evidence of inhuman methods
of torture perpetrated on a scale unprecedented in the history of South Africa.
During the last year innocent people were arrested and cast into solitary prison
cells, and there subjected to unrestrained savagery by these self-appointed
representatives of so-called Christian civilisation and Western democracy.
We are grateful, Mr. Chairman, to note that in response to the appeals we made
in the name of our people, when our delegation appeared before your Committee
last year, both the Security Council and the General Assembly have adopted resolutions
imposing an embargo on the supply of arms to South Africa and calling for the
release of all persons detained or otherwise restricted because of their opposition
to the policies of apartheid.5 It is common knowledge,
however, that the South African Government has completely, and openly, ignored
these resolutions. The behaviour of this Member State of the United Nations
in persistently flouting well-considered decisions of this world body calls
for immediate investigation.
Accomplices of Apartheid
In conformity with its disregard of world opinion, the South African Government
has continued to press on with the enforcement of its apartheid policies which
are invariably aimed at the black people of South Africa - I would include all
who are not considered white - and pursued for the sole benefit of the white
population. Giving added encouragement and strength to this sustained persecution
of our people, foreign investments have continued to pour into South Africa
in an unbroken stream.
Last year, we proposed that those countries which have economically involved
themselves on the side of our oppressors "be called upon to withdraw forthwith
from the arena of conflict in our country and that they should be specifically
indicted in the forums of this Organisation." We went on:
"As a first step in the process of censuring those bodies and organisations
which deliberately flout the decisions of this Organisation by giving support
and aid to the white racists in South Africa, we propose that a blacklist of
companies such as De Beers Limited, African Explosives and Chemical Industries
and others which collaborate with the South African Government in the manufacture
of ammunition in the country should be compiled. Members of this Organisation
should be called upon to sever relations with these companies."
We are pleased to note that at its recent meeting in Lagos, the Council of
Ministers of the Organisation of African Unity has decided to establish a Committee
charged with the task of compiling a comprehensive report on the nature and
extent of trade conducted by certain countries and companies with South Africa
on the one hand, and with Member States of the Organisation of African Unity
on the other hand. This report, we learn, will be submitted to the Conference
of African Heads of State for decision and necessary action. It is our hope
that such a report will be made available to Member States of the United Nations
sympathetic to the cause of the African people in South Africa and wishing to
join the African States in taking measures against the South African Government
and all its active supporters.
White immigrants, mainly from Great Britain, have recently been entering South
Africa in large batches, no doubt to share in the all-white looting of African
labour, to render numerical support to the South African Government and to give
physical expression to the solidarity which the home countries of these immigrants
have with white domination in South Africa. Member States of the United Nations
who have joined in the condemnation of racial discrimination in South Africa
and who have either connived at or encouraged emigration to South Africa are
helping to extend the area of racialism and racial conflict in the world to
their own countries. We would urge this Committee to take steps to bring this
practice to the notice of the United Nations.
Repeated reports indicate that South Africa is enjoying an economic boom. This
is no doubt encouraged by a sense of security induced by the belief that with
arms supplied by its friends, the South African Government is able to ensure
stability in South Africa. In explanation of this stability, gleeful fingers
are pointed at the leaders of the liberation movement and other opponents of
apartheid who are either languishing in jail, subject to various restrictions,
being tortured, or facing trial on charges carrying penalties which range from
long terms of imprisonment to death by hanging.
While we do not feel the need to argue with those who regard this form of stability
as real, we consider it pertinent to ask who, as between the white supremacist
in South Africa and the profit-seeking foreign investor, is the happier to see
the Africans and other opponents of racial discrimination hounded, harassed
and herded into jails, tortured, sentenced and hanged? Who is the greater racialist
as between those who formulate and enforce theories and policies of racial superiority
and those who furnish the capital, technical knowledge and manpower for the
execution and maintenance of those policies?
In the past we have stated, and we repeat now, that the oppressed people in
South Africa must and will settle accounts with their oppressors by any methods
and means open to them, the determining consideration being whether they want
to achieve their freedom at all costs or to live in bondage forever. But insofar
as the South African situation is the immediate concern of the United Nations,
then those outside South Africa who are accomplices in the perpetration of an
acknowledged vice, must account for their conduct to world opinion.
We would strongly recommend that this Committee in its search for modes of
action against apartheid should give a substantial share of its time and energies
to a consideration of the means by which such accomplices can be made to reconcile
their public protestations with their deeds. For, it would be dangerous, even
if it were possible, to continue pretending that the joint condemnation of apartheid
by its opponents and ardent supporters is sufficient to dislodge a system which
draws strength from a combination of economic power, military strength and an
unbridled zeal for the use of brute force.
For another reason it is important to be clear as to what makes apartheid possible
and what guarantees its continuance. Reputed leaders of our people - men of
unquestionable integrity and uncompromising enemies of any evil system practised
by man on man - are today standing in danger of losing their lives, precisely
because they are the men that they are. It is true that for many years the whole
world has warned the South African Government of the unavoidable consequences
of its conduct of affairs. But it is equally true that for many more years the
South African Government has received all the financial and material encouragement
it needed for continuing and persisting in its policies and practices. We cannot
over-emphasise the urgency of identifying all those forces and influences which
should be held answerable for any past, present or future loss of life in South
Africa.
Trials of Opponents of Apartheid
Mr. Chairman, following a long list of political trials in various parts of
South Africa, nineteen political leaders, including a girl of seventeen years,
have recently been sentenced in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, to terms of imprisonment
of from 5 to 20 years. Twenty-five other leaders are on trial in Ladysmith,
Natal, and in Cape Town the case against eleven political leaders and trade
unionists - among them there are four women - has been proceeding now for five
months, the charge against the accused being incitement to acts of sabotage.
There are many other similar trials.
But mention must be made once again of the Pretoria case against Nelson Mandela
and others, which is now approaching its closing stages, the State having led
all its evidence against the leaders. This case will be resumed on April 7th,
when evidence on behalf of the leaders will be tendered. This is the case which
was the subject of a resolution adopted by the General Assembly in October last
year. The fact that this trial has continued uninterrupted despite that resolution
presents the United Nations with one of its most crucial tests. It is a case
which is capable of giving rise to serious complications in South Africa and
beyond its borders and one whose progress should be kept under the closest observation
by this Committee.
We would urge the Committee, in its reports, to underline the importance of
individual Member States of the United Nations, in their own spheres of influence,
taking active steps to prevent the South African Government from embarking on
acts and carrying on a policy so inescapably subversive of peace. In this connection,
it is our feeling that not enough is being done at the international level to
challenge the right of the South African Government to hold as criminals, to
persecute and even kill men, women and young people, whose basic and sole offence
is their opposition to inhuman practices.
Bantu Laws Amendment Bill
If there was any doubt in the minds of anyone that what the South African Government
is asking for is trouble in South Africa, the Bantu Laws Amendment Bill, now
before the all-White South African Parliament, should completely remove that
doubt. In this new instalment of apartheid the South African Government goes
out of its way to push the African population deeper into the dungeons of slavery.
In one of its key clauses the Bill establishes a network of what are euphemistically
termed "Aid Centres." These are in fact slave labour detention camps
which are intended to entrap all Africans out of the bantustan area.6
It will be recalled that the bantustan scheme seeks to confine some four million
Africans in poverty-stricken cheap labour reservoirs presently known as reserves.
Africans forced by hunger and starvation out of these reserves or bantustans
will be caught up in this network. Those at present living outside the reserves
will similarly be regimented into the scheme. The Africans ensnared in these
"Aid Centres" will be distributed as black labour to white masters
and farmers throughout the country. The end result will be a homeless, migrant,
slave population of eleven million Africans. Even the practice of catching Africans
in the streets and selling them to white farmers, which was stamped out by the
courts a few years ago, is now being re-introduced and legalised in the Bill.
Thus, straight from listening to years of condemnation of the ruthless system
by which the whites maintain themselves in power over Africans, and after hearing
warnings that such a system endangers peace and security as much in South Africa
as everywhere else in the world, this arrogant collection of power-drunk race
maniacs have now produced an apartheid measure which deals with the African
on the basis that he is purely and simply a thing - a chattel in the control
and service of the white man. He is a labour unit, not a living human being
with personal and civil rights; not a man entitled to freedom and the right
to plan and run his own life, and determine his own destiny. To these men who
boast of the strongest bonds of friendship between them and the British and
Americans, the African is at best a slave in all but name. They own and possess
him, and have now evolved a scheme for selling him.
No one can doubt any longer now that life for the African in South Africa is
not life. If it is, it is worth nothing. But we promise that in that event no
other life in South Africa is worth anything - white or not white.
Let the United Nations and the world, therefore, save what it can. What it
cannot will either be destroyed or destroy itself. This, to us, seems inevitable
enough.
GREETINGS TO OUR FRIENDS
IN THE UNITED NATIONS
New Year Message to Mr. E. S. Reddy, Principal Secretary,
United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid, January 17, 1967
At the beginning of the New Year, I would like to send cordial seasonal greetings
to all friends of our cause, and particularly to our friends in the U.N. Special
Committee on Apartheid.
Those of us who are engaged in the struggle for justice and for the destruction
of racial oppression in our country are deeply grateful for all the help that
is being given, both materially and morally, in our fight against a ruthless
tyranny.
At this time of joy, there is much for us to sorrow over in our country, and
unhappiness for many persons and families in South Africa who are bearing the
brunt of apartheid oppression. But we are also conscious of the generous help
which is being given by our friends, to alleviate hardship, to give legal assistance
to those being persecuted for their resistance to apartheid, and to enable us
to go on fighting in good heart.
For this we are especially grateful to the U.N. Special Committee on Apartheid
and all its devoted workers. The Special Committee on Apartheid has engaged
in many worthy ventures on behalf of the struggling masses of South Africa and
I would particularly like to commend support for the Campaign for the Release
of Imprisoned Politicians in South Africa; this is one project which we can
never abandon, and which we must continually be working on. There can be no
letting up until the men who are condemned to spend their lives in prison because
they fought injustice are free: this is the duty which we owe to them and which
we cannot abandon, and so I am especially glad to commend this project to which
Defence and Aid International are now giving a great deal of their support and
attention.7
The fight for freedom must go on until it is won; until our country is free
and happy and peaceful as part of the community of man, we cannot rest. And
so, at the beginning of a New Year, I greet you all and wish you well and say:
Thank you, and forward to the freedom of our country.
PRESENT STAGE OF THE
STRUGGLE AGAINST APARTHEID IN SOUTH AFRICA
Paper prepared at the request of the Special Committee
against Apartheid, June 19688
Twenty years ago last month, a minority of the white minority in South Africa,
steeped in the doctrines Hitler sought to impose by force on mankind, seized
political power from another section of the white minority and immediately embarked
on a vicious offensive against basic human rights. Later that year, the accredited
representatives of the world's Governments, filled with the horror of Nazism
and fascism, assembled at the United Nations and adopted the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights.
Thus the year 1948 witnessed the crystallisation of two opposing forces: the
one, resting on an international base, seeking to advance human rights in all
parts of the world and the other, aiming at a studied destruction of human rights
for all black people, and spearheaded by a clique of white-skinned men and women
in South Africa.
It is fair to say that both forces have made great strides since that eventful
year. On the one hand, hundreds of millions of people spread over Africa, Asia
and the Caribbean Islands have won their independence and regained their human
dignity. A new Africa is being built on the ruins of a colonial era, and a once
dominated, oppressed and humiliated two-thirds of the world now forms an integral
and acknowledged part of the international community of peoples. This is an
indisputable triumph of the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights.
On the other hand, the bonds of bondage that bound millions of black people
in South Africa twenty years ago have since been tightened to the absolute limit,
the screws of oppression and exploitation have been driven in without mercy
and racial discrimination permeates every sphere of South African life. Basic
freedoms, few and far between in 1948, have been ruthlessly whittled away until
today there are none worth mentioning. This, also, is an indisputable achievement
for the doctrines of baaskap, superiority of the white skin and colonial domination,
and is the more sinister because victory for reactionary forces is by definition
the defeat of the forces for progress.
These achievements of twenty years of effort in two opposite directions lend
special significance to the International Year for Human Rights proclaimed by
the General Assembly and underscore the historic importance which the African
National Congress of South Africa, together with its allies and sister political
organisations and all genuine opponents of Nazism, attach to General Assembly
resolution 2307(XXII) adopted on 13 December 1967, authorising the Special Committee
on the Policies of Apartheid of the Government of the Republic of South Africa
9"to intensify its efforts to promote the international campaign
against apartheid."
In view of the oft-repeated claim by the fascist Government of South Africa
that there is peace and calm in that country, and by the big Western Powers
that the situation in South Africa in no way constitutes a threat to international
peace and security - claims persisted in despite constant warnings not only
by the liberation movement in South Africa but also by the vast majority of
United Nations Member States - it might be useful to refer to some of the developments
in and around South Africa during the past five years.
Recent Developments in South Africa
The South African delegate to the General Assembly in 1963 presented South
Africa as an island of peace in a turbulent world, with great strides being
made not only in the general welfare of what are contemptuously termed "Bantu"
but also in the direction of "Bantu self-government," the Transkei
being cited as an example of guided progress towards independence.
Since then, however, the racist regime has had to present the world with the
barbarous 90-day and 180-day detention acts invoked to legalise police torture
and secret murder, in a desperate bid to suppress the liberation movement; there
have been more political hangings and life imprisonments, as well as the greatest
number of long-term political prisoners than during any corresponding period
in the twenty years of fascist rule in South Africa; the State of Emergency
in the Transkei, first proclaimed in 1960, is still in force in this so-called
self-governing territory; the much-publicised policy of creating more bantustans
in South Africa has ground to a halt in the face of the stubborn resistance
of the people; to the unprecedented collection of draconian laws that besmirch
the South African statute book, and despite the notorious "Sabotage Act,"
there has now been added the infamous Terrorism Act.
These measures are not consistent with the prevalence of a state of cordial
relations between a white master and his black servant. Nor are they adopted
merely to maintain a status quo ante or destroy a subversive liberation movement.
They seek to contain a swelling tide of revolution and revolt by the masses
of the people against the entire system represented by white racist minority
rule. These measures are as inevitable in the short term as they are valueless
and even disastrous in the long term - inevitable because those who set out
to reverse the course of human history and change the basic nature of living
man must need resort to methods that are increasingly offensive and intolerable
to man; valueless because these methods must fail and are failing; disastrous
because by their racialist orientation, purpose and brutality, their growing
effect is to bedevil the future for the very white minority whose interests
they purport to serve and protect.
Thus predictably, the logic of an economic policy founded on racial discrimination
has forced the South African regime to further tighten the iniquitous Pass Laws
by enacting legislation such as the Bantu Laws Amendment Act, more completely
condemning the African population to the status of cheap migrant labour for
white-owned industries. This law, the Suppression of Communism Act, the "Sabotage
Act," the 90-day and 180-day detention laws, the Terrorism Act and numerous
sections and sub-sections all combine to form a repressive umbrella under cover
of which a reign of police terror has been unleashed and is sweeping through
the towns and rural areas of South Africa. The people are being hunted and hounded
out of their homes, from one segregated ghetto to another, deported from towns
and cities to the countryside, and in the country subjected to house-to-house
raids in the course of which weapons of every description are seized and confiscated.
Intimidation and victimisation of opponents of apartheid has mounted.
In the meantime, the exploitation of people has become more ruthless as the
economy flourishes in an unprecedented boom. While such diseases as tuberculosis
are being eliminated among the whites in South Africa, they are taking a heavy
toll of life among the Africans and other victims of white minority rule, and
nowhere is this more evident than in the bantustan territory of the Transkei.
Armed Struggle for Freedom
It is these and similar conditions, inter alia, that are at once the cause
and the effect of the escalating racial conflict between the ruling white minority
and the ruled black majority in South Africa, and it is important to warn again
and again that this escalation, born of a policy that is strictly inhuman, can
only be accelerated, far from being slowed down, by lapse of time.
By the year 1961, it had reached a level which led the African National Congress
and the oppressed population of South Africa to decide on armed struggle as
the next phase of the fight for freedom. That decision which, it can now be
said, will always constitute an important chapter in any analysis of the current
political situation in the whole of southern Africa, was not taken lightly.
The massive loss of life it entailed, the destruction of property, its implication
for individual African independent States and for the peace and security of
the whole of Africa and the world were not lost to the African National Congress
and its leaders.
But no one familiar with the struggles of oppressed peoples against colonialism
and racial discrimination, particularly in the period since World War II, no
one conversant with the long struggle of the South African people, and no one
who believes whole-heartedly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights can
seriously question the decision of the oppressed people of South Africa and
their allies to embark on a national revolutionary armed struggle for freedom.
For any who may still be in doubt, it is necessary only to refer to the countless
resolutions condemning and demanding the abandonment of the policies of apartheid
which have been adopted over a period of at least two decades by the United
Nations, by its many committees and agencies, by individual Governments, organisations,
conferences and groups of men and women in every quarter of the world; to the
numerous times that the apartheid regime has ignored and defied these resolutions
and appeals; to the mountains of documents and paperwork embodying studies revealing
the horrors of white rule in South Africa, all of which make our freedom struggle
one of the most thoroughly documented in history; finally, we need only refer
to the sustained and mounting violence with which our peaceful and non-violent
struggles were treated, including the series of massacres inflicted on our people
when they sought, unarmed, the restoration of their human dignity.
Mahatma Gandhi, the great apostle of non-violence who founded and perfected
his methods of struggle in South Africa, often said that he preferred violence
to cowardice, and we may here recall the words of Chief Luthuli in 1964, from
the isolation of Groutville, Natal, when he explained the new phase of the freedom
struggle:
"However, in the face of an uncompromising white refusal to abandon a
policy which denies the African and other oppressed South Africans their rightful
heritage - FREEDOM - no one can blame brave and just men for seeking justice
by the use of violent methods; nor can they be blamed if they tried to create
organised force in order ultimately to establish peace and racial harmony."
Conflict in Southern Africa
There have been other developments in the past few years bearing directly on
the struggle against apartheid. The attainment of independence by Zambia, Malawi,
Botswana and Lesotho has occurred side by side with the implementation of an
expansionist policy by the Pretoria regime, which has for its aim the establishment
of an empire ruled over by the white master-race, and consisting of a large
number of small black bantustans extending over the whole of southern Africa
from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Zambia refused to be part of this empire
or to stoop to the status of a glorified bantustan. Instead she threw her weight
behind the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe and the rest of southern Africa.
This led the South African regime to strengthen its ties with the other members
of the unholy alliance, particularly Rhodesia. Ian Smith10
admitted last year that if the South African Government had not given him assurances
of support, he would not have proceeded with UDI .11
In fact South Africa can be expected to have encouraged UDI to ensure the existence
of a neighbouring white minority regime to which she is now in the process of
exporting apartheid.
The rest of the independent African States bordering on South Africa are faced
with a choice between supporting the racist regime and supporting the liberation
movement and little evidence of neutrality. The masses of the people throughout
southern Africa remain totally opposed to white minority rule and fully support
the struggle of their brothers in South Africa. The attempts by the South African
racist regime to blackmail and bully neighbouring African governments into allying
themselves with it is a mean and selfish move to involve these governments in
a bloody defence of its inhuman policies in the same manner that it has driven
200,000 whites in Zimbabwe into an unequal war with 4,000,000 Africans.
With the growing scope and intensity of the struggle against the apartheid
regime and other members of the unholy alliance of Vorster, Smith and Salazar12,
the pressure on neighbouring States to become actively involved increases, and
the conflict progressively takes on the character of a confrontation between
colonial and white minority rule on the one side, and on the other, the combined
numerical might of the supporters of majority rule in southern Africa. In this
sense the armed struggle against apartheid is the struggle against white minority
rule everywhere, and has become inseparable from the struggle of the people
of Zimbabwe as well as being an essential part of the struggle for freedom from
Portuguese colonialism.
It is these factors, among others, which explain the alliance that has been
forged between the African National Congress of South Africa and the Zimbabwe
African People's Union.
The armed struggle launched by these two liberation movements in Zimbabwe has
exposed not only the deep involvement of the Pretoria regime in the internal
affairs of Rhodesia, but also its sinister designs against African States. Already
the South African Prime Minister has repeated wild threats against Zambia. These
threats have been followed up by the derailment of trains in Zambia, the blowing
up of a bus, the bombing of civilians and very recently the blowing up of an
important bridge. The existence of an active unholy alliance of which Vorster
is a key member makes it unimportant which member of the unholy alliance is
responsible for the attacks.
It is clear therefore that even at this very early stage of the armed conflict
the situation in southern Africa, precisely because it now directly involves
South Africa, is beginning to have serious international repercussions. When
the conflict springs up and spreads, as it soon must, over South African territory,
the desperation of the apartheid regime can be expected to make itself felt
in the rest of Africa. But let it be emphasised that having started the armed
struggle, we shall pursue it with increasing ferocity until the monster of racism
and exploitation has been completely destroyed. The probability of an international
crisis resulting from our struggle will not deter us.
Vorster's threats have been triggered off by the fact that already, the South
African regime is paying heavily in blood for the crimes it has perpetrated
against our people under its apartheid policies. Scores of South African troops
have been killed by ZAPU-ANC guerillas in what are merely preliminary encounters
in Rhodesia.
Isolate the South African Regime
So far we have omitted reference to the role of foreign capital and other financial
interests of Western countries in the South African situation. This question,
however, has been thoroughly canvassed in statements, memoranda and reports
now in the possession of the United Nations. What remains to be considered is
action which must be taken to induce these countries to withdraw their support
for the apartheid regime.
We in the African National Congress have always believed that the honourable
task of freeing South Africa rested firmly with the people of South Africa themselves.
The task of international organisations was to assist the liberation movement.
This still remains the fundamental position of principle from which all international
action should be appraised.
We have in the past insisted on sanctions being imposed on South Africa. We
believe this demand is more valid now when the armed struggle is in progress
than at any previous time. We interpret United Nations resolutions acknowledging
the legitimacy of our struggle and calling for moral and material support for
it as meaning, inter alia, that member governments should honour and carry out
United Nations decisions on South Africa, including termination of trade links
with that country. The least the United Nations can do is to enforce compliance
with its resolutions by all member States and to consider appropriate action
against those countries which undermine these decisions.
Trade with South Africa by Britain, France, West Germany, United States of
America, Italy and Japan is no moral and material support for the liberation
movement but a deliberate act designed to perpetuate a racist regime in southern
Africa. As such, it is a gross violation of the United Nations Charter and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Other international pressures have been enforced in the past. It would be absurd
for these to be in any way reduced at a time the struggle of our people requires
that they be considerably increased. The impression that South Africa has been
totally unaffected by international pressures is one which the well-financed
information service of that Government has spent millions to induce. It is a
massive international whistling in the dark which South Africa must not be allowed
to get away with. The recent hullabaloo over the exclusion of South Africa from
the Mexico Olympic Games is an indication of how much the advocates of white
supremacy feel international pressure. Therefore the demands for political,
military, social and cultural isolation of the present regime remain valid and
must be pursued with greater effort, organisation and skill. Such pressures
are now an important part of the armed struggle for the overthrow of apartheid
by the people of South Africa and are a form of support for our people.
The South African Information Service has vast resources at its disposal and
is supported by powerful lobbies in various key countries, through the radio,
by means of glossy well-produced magazines distributed free, by means of films
shown free whenever requested and, above all, by extolling an economy whose
benefits are derived from the brutal exploitation of our people. It is essential
that there should always be a world-wide campaign to win the masses of the people
to the struggle for the complete eradication of racialism and apartheid.
Struggle will Grow until Victory
Any measures carried out by the international community are, however, only
supplementary to the efforts of the oppressed people and their allies. The burden
of conquering freedom is theirs. Our armed struggle begins, as always in such
struggles, with the oppressed people weak materially, although powerful in the
justice of their cause. But it will grow in strength like the triumphant struggle
of the great and heroic people of Vietnam. Already in the armed clashes that
have taken place, the white fascists have taken a severe beating from the ZAPU-ANC
guerillas. A worse fate awaits them in the coming years. The price to be paid
in South Africa and far beyond its borders will be enormously high, but final
victory will go to the defenders of peace and human dignity.
NEED FOR NEW LEVEL OF
INTERNATIONAL ACTION AGAINST APARTHEID
Statement at the meeting of the Special Committee against
Apartheid, Stockholm, June 18, 196813
Mr. Chairman, Your Excellencies, distinguished representatives and guests:
Permit me first of all, Sir, to express the gratitude of the African National
Congress for the invitation extended to me to submit a paper to this important,
in many ways historic, session of the Special Committee on Apartheid.
Your Committee, Mr. Chairman,14 which has
been entrusted with one of the most difficult tasks by the United Nations, has
been an inspiring example of devotion to the cause of freedom for the people
of South Africa. Your own inspired and capable leadership of this Committee,
the resourcefulness of your Secretary15 and
the devotion of the members of the Committee has made this organ of the United
Nations in a way an important wing of the liberation struggle of the people
of South Africa. It has helped to bring the United Nations closer to us than
might have been the case otherwise and has served to make up for the loss of
confidence in the ability of the United Nations to assist, to which we have
sometimes fallen victim.
We know that you and your Committee, Sir, in turn draw inspiration and energy
for your work not only from the unfailing support you enjoy from the vast majority
of the United Nations members, but also from the devoted leadership of the United
Nations Secretary-General, His Excellency U Thant, whose bitter opposition to
the inhumanities of apartheid is for our people a source of encouragement and
continued faith in the ability of the United Nations to intervene effectively
in the South African situation, given the necessary will on the part of all
its powerful members. I would ask you to convey to the Secretary-General the
gratitude of the leaders of our liberation movement, both in and outside South
African prisons, for his vigilance and concern over the South African situation.
It has been my special honour and privilege to be welcomed to Sweden by the
Social Democratic Party as its guest and to have met His Excellency the Prime
Minister.16 The choice of Sweden as the venue
for the session was from our point of view appropriate in a special sense because,
of all the Western European countries, Sweden, with the rest of Scandinavia,
has played a dominant role in the sphere of international pressures against
apartheid and in giving moral and material support for the victims of apartheid.
Among the prominent citizens of this country, we have Her Excellency Mrs. Alva
Myrdal, who is an expert on the South African situation.17
I had the honour to present to her, in the United Nations Group of Experts in
1964 our approach to the problems of the South African situation and the ways
by which we thought that even at that late stage a solution might be found.
We shall continue to regard her as an expert because I believe that a time will
be coming when the world, and particularly ourselves, will feel the need to
refer to the recommendations and findings of her Group18
and whensoever this happens, Mrs. Myrdal will be one of the persons that we
shall have in mind.
I said yesterday that in her contribution she had raised a number of questions.19
Now, I want to say today that there is, in fact, at this stage no positive answer
to the question of what preparations we are making for the time when we shall
be taking over. These are too insignificant at this stage to deserve mention.
They depend largely on the co-operation not only of the United Nations and its
agencies but on a whole number of people who would place at our disposal their
services and facilities. Our people cannot leave South Africa. We have no immediate
means of doing anything with them, except put them behind the wheel of struggle
in South Africa. They cannot come out and travel freely because international
law requires that they should have documents to do so. South Africa will give
them no documents. Therefore there is no impressive state at present, short
of real assistance from friends and countries and Governments, on the basis
of which we could make various preparations. But we have them in mind.
There is another reason, Mr. Chairman, why Sweden is in our view so appropriate
as a venue for this session of your Committee. It was in Scandinavia, in Norway,
and - but for the fears of the South African Government - might have been Sweden
itself, that seven and a half years ago, our beloved leader, Chief Albert Luthuli,
made what has turned out to have been his last public address to his people,
to Africa and to mankind. He stated then, when he was in Scandinavia: "All
the strength of progressive leadership in South Africa, all my life and strength
have been given to the pursuance of the non-violent method of struggle in an
attempt to avert disaster in the interests of South Africa and I have bravely
paid the penalties for it." Mr. Chairman, he paid the final penalty when
he was killed in a mysterious train accident on July 21st last year. He was
then in his place of restriction and confinement in Groutville, Natal. The African
National Congress is working on plans to honour his memory, and when these are
announced it is our hope that the world that knew and supported his leadership
will participate in paying lasting tribute to his life and work.20
May I mention another severe loss sustained by our people in the death recently
of Professor Z.K. Matthews, a political colleague of Chief Luthuli for many
years and an outstanding leader of our people, who was Botswana's Ambassador
to Washington and the United Nations. Apartheid persecuted him until he left
South Africa and he spent the rest of his life in the service of the people
of newly independent Botswana.
These two great leaders of our people have not left a vacuum. They have left
behind their colleagues in the leadership of that people. Many of these are
on Robben Island, in Pretoria's goals, in other gaols in South Africa. Nelson
Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Bram Fischer, Ahmed Kathrada, Elias Motsoaledi,
and countless others have their hearts where they were before they were incarcerated.
We hear from them and their morale and spirit is an inspiration to us and a
cause for us to more than double our efforts. Their resistance to the conditions
of prison is a challenge to the people who stand with them in the determination
that South Africa be free.
Mr. Chairman, the paper that I have presented deals in general terms with the
present stage of the struggle in South Africa. I should like to emphasise a
few aspects of what I have said in the paper.
Southern Africa - an Area of Common Struggle
First of all, it seems important to appreciate that apartheid, the worst form
of racialism in the world, is confined not only to South Africa; the policy
of the South African Government is confining its effects not only to the territory
of South Africa. South Africa is the main base on which this evil will be conquered,
but the evil extends its tentacles to areas beyond the borders of the South
African State. South Africa is tied up intimately with the rest of southern
Africa and the intimacy grows by the day. The African National Congress is confronted
in South Africa with a powerful machinery which spreads itself out and is just
about as effective outside South Africa itself and therefore, with the progress
of the struggle, the involvement of South Africa outside of its borders has
been increasing and today what is happening outside South Africa is as important
as what might be happening within South Africa itself.
In other words, progressively southern Africa is becoming an area of common
struggle against a common enemy. The power of the South African State enables
it to conduct a determined struggle in defence of its position in such territories
as Zimbabwe. This explains why the people of South Africa have become involved
in Zimbabwe. It is not that we are fighting Smith only or an illegal regime:
we are also fighting apartheid itself, if you like, on the outskirts, although
it is obviously not our strategy to conquer apartheid merely on the outskirts;
but this has become inevitable precisely because there is an increasing degree
of South African presence in Rhodesia and we in southern Africa have come to
recognise that southern Africa will be conquered, as an area, when South Africa
itself is conquered.
People are often concerned to know why there is silence, peace, quiet, in South
Africa, as the South African Government claims, why the South Africans are fighting
in Rhodesia? The reason is that South Africa is in a turbulent state under the
surface, but the turbulence is approaching the surface and has been for some
time. The clash that takes place in Zimbabwe, which involves South Africans,
both supporters of apartheid and opponents of it, is an outgrowth of the conditions,
the explosive conditions, within South Africa itself. Our supporters in the
world should recognise that South Africa has an interest in maintaining a white
minority government in Rhodesia and this is because it wants to defend and perpetuate
the racist State in South Africa itself. I have said before, and I would like
to repeat now, Mr. Chairman, that what we see happening in Rhodesia is the beginning
of what we shall soon see happening inside South Africa itself and if today
there is an explosion, an explosive situation, in Zimbabwe, which people can
see, it is a matter of time before the same sort of explosion will be seen to
take place in South Africa.
Withdraw Support to Apartheid Regime
Now there is an error which we make, which the world makes, of separating the
evils of apartheid from the sources of power which maintain apartheid. Apartheid
has continued to defy world opinion, even to resist our own determined efforts,
not so much because it is in itself an evil and an unconquerable system, but
simply because it is enabled to exist. It is enabled to exist by those who give
support to it. Apartheid, like the African people of South Africa and all the
oppressed people of southern Africa, can fight with support and the support
which has made apartheid possible for so long is the financial support which
it receives from outside South Africa, and in order to appreciate part of the
determination of the racist regime in South Africa, one has to recognise that
they have something to rely on, they have been given power.
It was in recognition of this that we have suggested to the international community
two forms in which they can assist, and I want to emphasise that what we are
asking the world to do is not to solve our problems for us but to assist us
solve those problems. We have tried to ask that assistance be given in such
a way that we can solve the problems peacefully. That has not been forthcoming
and we are continuing to try to solve the problems with the methods that are
available to us and the stage that has been reached is that the methods apparently
available to us now are those which we have tried to resist over a long period
of time. They are the methods of violence.
We have asked the world to assist at two separate levels - the one is to withdraw
assistance from apartheid. Instead, that assistance has been increased. The
demand that no arms should be supplied, that there should be no trade with South
Africa, that there should be economic sanctions against South Africa, was a
demand for withdrawal of the assistance which makes apartheid so difficult to
conquer.
Assist the Liberation Movement Directly
The other form was not of withdrawing assistance, but giving assistance to
us directly. There are countries in the world which do assist us materially,
directly. The whole world supports us morally. Some countries, some people and
some institutions give us assistance materially. Part of this assistance goes
to our people generally, to the victims of apartheid. It goes for the defence
of those who are being persecuted under the apartheid laws, it assists the dependents
of the victims of apartheid. Part of the assistance should come directly to
the liberation movement. This is the other aspect of assistance which comes
to us.
We have appealed for direct assistance to the liberation movement, precisely
because in the final analysis it is the liberation movement, it is the people
of South Africa, acting politically, that will destroy apartheid, and if the
world is so concerned about the destruction of apartheid and the removal of
that scourge from mankind, the task of doing that rests on the liberation movement
and there is every reason why we should come to Sweden as an organisation, as
a liberation movement, and ask to be directly assisted. We have asked the United
Nations to authorise this so that individual governments and peoples and countries
will have no excuse for refusing us direct assistance.21
Enforce Economic Sanctions against South Africa
There is another mistake we have made. Apartheid is like Hitlerism, Nazism.
It will not be conquered by trying to talk to it, by only passing resolutions
about it or by approaching it hesitatingly. It will not even be conquered by
ordinary methods. It will