March 6, 1980(1)
At a time like this, when we are witnessing historic changes in Zimbabwe, we are also very conscious of the fact that March 1980 marks twenty years after the Sharpeville massacre to which the Special Committee has drawn the attention of the international community.
We in the British Anti-Apartheid Movement are now operating in our twenty-first year and none of us, when we formed the movement in 1959, felt that the struggle would take this long. So, in a sense, if the campaign has had to be carried on for so many years and if so many of the issues that we are campaigning on today remain essentially the same as when we started twenty years ago, then it is appropriate to think back a little.
The Committee is aware of the fact that the South African liberation movement is one of the oldest on the continent of Africa. And it is as a result of the perspective of that liberation movement and indeed its own initiatives and links that we have seen, in the context of the South African struggle, the development of international solidarity in support of that struggle.
That solidarity movement started in the West a long time ago with the involvement of personalities such as Dr. W. E. B. DuBois and Paul Robeson - black leaders to whom this Committee has already paid tribute. All these black leaders started many many decades ago, acting in solidarity with the freedom-loving people of South Africa. And later we saw in Europe and in Britain leaders such as Fenner Brockway, now Lord Brockway, who, more than 90 years old, still asks the most questions in the House of Lords on African questions, and has had a record of a life-time of battle for colonial freedom.
And then later we saw after the war people like the Rev. Michael Scott, Bishop Reeves and Canon Collins, who have dedicated much of their lives to the freedom struggle in southern Africa. And through this Committee all of us who are involved in non-governmental organisations working on southern Africa would like to pay a special tribute to Canon Collins and the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa for the work that they have done - but particularly to Canon Collins who will be 75 years old this month and indeed carries on his work for the people of South Africa with the same commitment as before.
As I said earlier, the Anti-Apartheid Movement was formed in 1959; it was born on June 26, 1959, in response to the direct appeal of the Congress Movement and anti-apartheid leaders in South Africa who asked then that the outside world should impose boycotts and isolate South Africa. We are the oldest movement of this type, but we are also a movement which found that whilst we were started to work on South Africa, the perspective of the South Africa liberation movement was that the rest of Africa also had to be free - and that the South African struggle was linked with the rest of Africa. Though we started with South Africa we very soon extended our campaigns to working for the dismantlement of the then Central African Federation.
We were thus involved actively in campaigning for the independence of what is now Zambia and Malawi. Southern Rhodesia of course remained a major problem until only a few days ago.
We also worked more actively against Portuguese colonialism in Africa and in this struggle forged very friendly and comradely links with the leaders of the liberation movement in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau.
We were not working in isolation but in the context in which the South African liberation movement saw itself. Thus, this year, when we mark the twentieth anniversary of Sharpeville, we in the Anti-Apartheid Movement, which was born on June 26 - "South Africa Freedom Day" - are also conscious of the fact that this year also marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter.
We have seen in the course of our existence people like Cabral, Neto and Mondlane: great African leaders who carried on the tradition of Nkrumah and indeed of Luthuli of South Africa, in asserting that the South African struggle was linked up with the over-all struggle for freedom in the rest of the continent.
Today, we share in the joy of the people of Zimbabwe and indeed of all Africa in the victory that has come about in Zimbabwe. It is a victory because if we look back only at events during recent weeks, the way in which they were developing made many of us extremely anxious about the future. In this context we in the Anti-Apartheid Movement feel that President Nyerere was absolutely correct in drawing attention to the prevailing dangers in the process of the elections. Now, with Zimbabwe free in a sense, we still need to be extremely vigilant. The people of Zimbabwe have so decisively voted in favour of genuine independence that they are going to be subjected to all kinds of manoeuvres and efforts by the South African regime to destabilise the new administration that is being set up now in Zimbabwe. We must be extremely vigilant and warn South Africa and the enemies of Africa that if they should intervene in Zimbabwe in whatever way they calculate, in order to subvert the aspirations of the people, then the international community will act in full solidarity with the new administration in Zimbabwe.
Looking back on twenty years we see now that we are still arguing - and in the past few days I have been arguing in other United Nations forums - that perhaps one should have an arms embargo against South Africa that is effective. This was our demand 20 years ago. We are still arguing for a sports isolation of South Africa. We are still calling for an oil embargo against South Africa. We are still calling for sanctions against South Africa. And over twenty years what we have witnessed is that whilst we have been making these demands stronger and louder and getting perhaps more and more resolutions in the United Nations which have been stronger over the years, in the same period, South Africa has never enjoyed as much trade, had as many arms, as much investment and as many links as it has today with the rest of the world.
But, although South Africa may be very strong in the formal sense, of having physical power, we are also aware of the fact that the balance in the world has changed very dramatically. And this change in the international situation has been brought about of course with the independence of Africa. Essentially, it is the African States that have, at international forums and through their links with Western and other countries, made southern Africa a top priority issue.
In March 1960, just before Sharpeville, the British Prime Minister MacMillan indicated in Cape Town that we were witnessing a "wind of change" blowing across Africa and that Africa would have to change dramatically. But we have also seen that despite this assessment by the British Prime Minister in 1960, from March 1960 to March 1980 no country seems to have been working on the side of the status quo and the old order as much as Britain through successive governments. And today we see new dangers in British policy because we have an administration in the United Kingdom which is perhaps among the most committed since 1960 to the side of South Africa in the battle South Africa faces with the rest of the world.
In this context I want to draw the attention of your Committee to a speech made by Prime Minister Thatcher to the Foreign Policy Association in New York on December 18, 1979. After talking about the developments in Rhodesia and the elections and the initiatives in Namibia, this is what she says in the context of southern Africa:
"In this context I want to say a particular word about South Africa. There is now a real prospect that the conflicts on South Africa's borders in Rhodesia and Namibia will shortly be ended. This, combined with welcome initiatives on South African domestic policies, offers a chance to defuse a regional crisis which was potentially of the utmost gravity, and to make progress towards an ending of the isolation of South Africa in world affairs."
Mr. Chairman, we predict that Her Majesty's Government in London will now redouble its efforts to echo South Africa's propaganda and initiatives to try and consolidate South Africa's role in the Western economic, political and strategic system because we know that in Mrs. Thatcher's cabinet are also the most fervent advocates of developing a military alliance with South Africa under the guise of the protection of the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean area and the so-called importance of the Cape sea route. Therefore we see new dangers in the coming years because it appears as if British policy towards decolonisation in Zimbabwe and Namibia has been directed by its primary interest, to protect South Africa's security in the long term. And no doubt certain guarantees and assurances were given to Pretoria in the very process of decolonisation in Zimbabwe but unfortunately their schemes and plans have failed in this case.
So what are the new initiatives that are being thought out in Pretoria now, since their schemes have not worked? One thing is certain: they are mobilising on the military front. Indeed we in the Anti-Apartheid Movement have information about a general mobilisation order sent out to Brigade 81, which is 7,000 strong; the reserves have been called up or asked to be ready to be called up for conventional action in the area because this is an armoured brigade. We also know of course, as your Committee knows, that South Africa has established new military bases around the border of Zimbabwe and has mobilised along the entire border of Mozambique. So we have an extremely dangerous situation developing in southern Africa with South Africa prepared to act and intervene against African States, confident in the knowledge that previous attacks of that kind have not brought forth any decisive action from the United Nations and particularly from the Western countries.
At the Lagos conference in 1977, we reached the conclusion that the freedom of South Africa is linked with the freedom of Africa: and that is not just a general statement because when we now look at the military might of South Africa and its missile capability, its firing range throws an arc around the Horn of Africa. Africa, and all of Africa, is directly threatened by South Africa so long as the apartheid system prevails in Pretoria. In this context it is terribly important for the Special Committee against Apartheid also to review its position with regard to the future. Although we need to be very vigilant about Zimbabwe and need to ensure that the developments over Namibia move in a favourable direction, it is now very much the case that South Africa is the absolutely top item on the agenda. And this Special Committee must not allow the Western governments to come forth with the excuses they have been coming forth with in recent years: that they need the support of South Africa to solve the problem of Rhodesia and therefore one must not put any pressure on South Africa. We rejected that approach totally in the past, as we do now, but now it is the responsibility of this Committee to focus more directly on the problem of South Africa.
It is also appropriate, since we are in a sense the oldest anti-apartheid movement, which had the first contact with this Committee when it was established in 1963, for us to make a few remarks about the role of this Committee. We would like to pay a special tribute to the work of the Special Committee against Apartheid and the Centre against Apartheid.
It is unique in the United Nations system to have a Committee of this kind. Indeed, it is unique internationally, in any international forum. You were the first in the United Nations system to recognise liberation movements and to allow them to participate in your work. In other forums these representatives of the peoples of southern Africa have had to go as petitioners and almost as outsiders trying to talk about their situation. And the position has been the same with the anti-apartheid and solidarity movements. Whenever any of our representatives have come to New York both informally and formally we have had the closest relationship with the Special Committee. Our first contact with the Committee was in 1964, when we organised in London an international conference to consider the question of sanctions against South Africa. When your delegation participated in that conference and came back to New York it was able to pass on the results of that conference to the United Nations.
You have recognised the primary role of the liberation movement in any discussions and formulation of plans for southern Africa and this is precisely the attitude and the policy of the anti-apartheid movements as well. So we are at one in terms of our objectives and our policy. But now you will have the responsibility to try to convince both governments and the international community that the essential test of the United Nations basically is how the United Nations Organisation responds to the hopes and wishes of oppressed people elsewhere. At a moment like this, the critical and central situation which requires attention is of course South Africa.
We have seen in the past few weeks and indeed now when the results of the elections are known in Rhodesia, that Africa is not taking vengeance against whites or against the previous enemies of Africa. They have fought in Zimbabwe a bitter war - a long war - with tremendous sacrifices on the part of the African people. But despite all the propaganda and statements in the West and by Western leaders that somehow those who lead the liberation struggle in Africa are blood-thirsty, seek vengeance, always wish to kill, we now see the truth staring the world in its face! And it is important for us to point out to these leaders in the West that they ought to look not only at the Rhodesian experience but indeed the experience of the whole of Africa. In the whole process of liberation of Africa nowhere does one see an iota of vengeance despite the bitterness of the struggle and the severity of the repression carried out by previous rulers. So it is important to point out that the bogey is destroyed repeatedly, not only over the war against Portuguese colonialism or in Zimbabwe but with other liberation struggles on the African continent. And so too with South Africa we say that the peoples of South Africa and Namibia who wish to have their freedom want no more than what the people of Zimbabwe want. But they want nothing less either: they would like genuine self-determination and independence.
Although the general context is important, and I hope the Special Committee will also address itself to the new responsibility it faces in the situation in the 1980s, it is nevertheless important for us to carry on our work and I now turn to several specific aspects.
We are particularly pleased to see that the United Nations has decided to organise an international conference on sanctions. We not only offer our cooperation because since our inception our main objective has been to get a sanctions policy against South Africa but we would like to ask that the documentation be well prepared for this conference and, perhaps even more important, we would request that there be adequate and full consultation with various anti-apartheid organisations, certainly the liberation movements, and all other groups that are committed to the policy of the Special Committee and the United Nations. It would be a pity if we put all the resources into a conference and find that it has adopted a good position which organisations are not able to carry out later. It is important to pay some attention to the results that we want to get out of the conference not only in terms of the decisions and the documents but the implementation of the policy already adopted by the United Nations.
In the past twenty years we have also seen a steady erosion of the victories that were won earlier. For example we have, through public organisations in the West, been most effective in the area where the public can act directly and that is on the question of sport. Iin the 1970s we physically stopped South African sports visits to Britain despite the fact that we were not only confronted with the South African lobby and the British Government, but also the British police force and sports administrators. But, physically, simply by the turn-out of thousands of people protesting not only in London, but in Cardiff, in Bristol, we were able to stop that tour. Later there were campaigns like that in Australia and New Zealand. We have succeeded but now, with the visit of the British Sports Council to South Africa, with the visits from France, we see an extremely sophisticated method of counteracting and undermining our sports success, so that erosion of the sports boycott is being attempted now by very powerful forces. The Special Committee needs to pay attention to that.
Secondly, we see in a whole host of areas that individuals and groups from friendly countries are beginning to establish new links with South Africa. For example: we note with shock and surprise the report in the South African Digest of February 8, 1980, that Colonel Aare, head of civil defence from western Denmark, has visited South Africa and has had discussions there. He says he is interested to meet people in South Africa and talk to them about their plans and see how conscious they are of the need for civil defence. We know that South Africa faces a city counter-insurgency situation and therefore it seeks to invite individuals such as Colonel Aare to South Africa both to exchange information and for its propaganda effort. We are surprised that this kind of erosion takes place from a country that is otherwise friendly on the question of apartheid.
Then, a couple of weeks ago we learnt that SAS, the Scandinavian Airline System, is now training its pilots for the Airbus in South Africa, on a simulator provided by South African Airways. I have taken the matter up with all three Governments and the response is that SAS explains that it was not able to get simulation time from the company which made the aircraft in Toulouse. It then sought some time from Lufthansa and from Eastern Airlines in the United States but found that it could not get the additional hours that it required, so it entered into an agreement with South African Airways. Subsequently, SAS has made a statement that there is nothing unusual in this because South African Airways is a member of IATA and therefore SAS has, on previous occasions, also had normal relations with South African Airways as with any other international airline system. This case is particularly serious, Mr. Chairman, because in all three countries - in Norway, Denmark and Sweden - the national trade union movements have for several years demanded an end to airline links with South Africa, and now we understand that the Social Democratic Party in Sweden has also called for an end to these links. We in the anti-apartheid movements are surprised when we examine the city portrait that SAS provides for Johannesburg, it is filled with South African propaganda, including an invitation to tourists to visit the Transkei and other so-called tribal areas. So this particular case of SAS also shows again what we have always said: once you develop links with South Africa you end up promoting the apartheid system internationally and become a hostage to the apartheid system.
Then, whilst we are talking about not providing South Africa with oil and making the boycott more effective in terms of denying energy resources to South Africa, South African coal is being imported by various European Economic Community countries - by Italy, France and Germany, there are even reports that Ireland may import some - and, most surprising in terms of the scale of the imports and the effect on energy policy is the import of coal into Denmark, where the electricity commission has contracted until the 1980s to rely on South African coal rather than coal from other countries. So South Africa is building up a kind of strategic importance in reverse in the context of the energy crisis. And it is not only in the field of coal but also in the field of uranium. Especially in the United States, there is great interest in the technology used in the SASOL oil-from-coal project. We also know that there is interest in the South African process in the International Energy Agency in Paris, as well as the energy sections of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Economic Community.
There are other situations which the South Africans capitalise on greatly. A few months ago a Norwegian ship was lost somewhere around South Africa and Brazil, somewhere in the ocean. The Norwegian authorities asked the South Africans to help them look for this ship. In the process not only was a Norwegian air force plane sent to South Africa but the Norwegians also requested assistance from the United States and the United States sent two Orion aircraft to South Africa. So, in a sense, overnight, the principle and spirit of the arms embargo was circumvented by air force planes from two Western countries operating in South Africa jointly with the South African system in order to rescue ships. The implications of this are serious but the propaganda value that South Africa is obtaining through this is even more serious. We get a situation now where the South African defence magazine and other publications quote Mr. Stanbo, a Norwegian shipping company owner, that it is precisely the arms embargo that has led to the loss of 20 lives which were lost on the missing ship.
In December there was a similar case with regard to a Danish ship. In this case there are also press reports that the ship was in fact carrying cargo to South Africa from the Middle East, from countries which had committed themselves to an embargo. So this situation needs to be looked at.
There are other efforts by groups such as Rotary International which, in order to try and get some kind of recognition for the Transkei, is distributing the Transkei stamps internationally. I will leave information on this for the secretariat to follow it up.
Another area which we in the British Movement have been working on for three to four years is the whole question of medical conferences. I do not know whether your Committee is aware that South Africa is paying special attention to get various medical professional groups to South Africa for international conferences, offering to pay their full costs and indeed using South African Airways to reduce the cost of transport as well. We would like the Special Committee to help us in this regard and would ask the Chairman to address a letter to the Director-General of the World Health Organisation and ask for a list of all those organisations in consultative status with WHO. Then we should address a request to those organisations and ask them who their South African counterpart is, and then look at their constitution and try and work for the exclusion of South Africa from this international network which is encouraged by the consultative status provided by WHO. We may of course need to do this with the other specialised agencies also later but our investigations so far are directed mainly at the medical field and in this regard any help that you can give us will be extremely valuable.
Last year in South Africa they called an international conference to study the effects of an atomic explosion and how they would control the effects of that on the population. They took international experts to South Africa and it is our duty, through both the Special Committee and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, to make sure that international experts do not visit South Africa to participate in such conferences and also that international bodies do not hold their conferences in South Africa.
Then there is an issue of new links that South Africa is establishing with various countries like Uruguay, Paraguay, Taiwan and South Korea. This Committee probably has information about this but we suggest that this aspect needs special attention and perhaps letters should be addressed to these countries and possibly even missions sent there to discuss with them their developing links with South Africa.
Then, finally you are probably aware of South Africa's attempts to develop what it calls a constellation of States in southern Africa. This strategy is old - to create a dependence on South Africa by other African States and to use that in order to gain political influence, if not control, with a view to ensuring that those African States will not provide assistance to the liberation struggle in South Africa.
This is an extremely dangerous policy being encouraged by the Western countries and the Special Committee needs to draw attention to that and to publicise the facts.
In this regard we feel that Mrs. Thatcher's statement indicates very clearly the line that we are going to hear more of very soon and which some of us have heard already when we talked to Western government leaders. They are beginning to argue, in a very powerful form, that one cannot have armed struggle in South Africa, because if you pursue the armed struggle in South Africa, then the level of violence that it will provoke from the enemies of Africa - that is the apartheid regime - is so great that it will have a spill-over effect on the rest of Africa and that is something we cannot afford. And therefore, because of this danger of violence and particularly if South Africa has nuclear weapon capability, we ought to go "soft" on apartheid and we ought to work for reforms within the system.
We predict that this is the line that is going to be taken by Britain and various other Western countries in order to eliminate support for the armed struggle in South Africa by the international community. Therefore this Special Committee has to do all it can to counteract the efforts that are already being made in London and elsewhere.
Finally, you know about the work of the World Campaign which we have been doing for one year. The Special Committee was the first to encourage the establishment of the World Campaign and we simply want to report that our work is going well. In Britain, in the context of the World Campaign, the British Anti-Apartheid Movement has started a petition campaign to get signatures for the demand that there should be mandatory sanctions on all forms of nuclear collaboration with South Africa. We are also distributing the scientists' statement which was adopted at the Seminar last February (organised jointly with the Special Committee) where individual scientists committed themselves not to go to work in South Africa and assist its nuclear programme.
We are also at this moment working actively on the question of political prisoners and of course to try and ensure that the executions planned by South Africa do not take place.
In the coming weeks, months and years, we will need the guidance and support of the Special Committee. We are confident that with the record of the Special Committee it will stand firmly on the policy that has already been established in the United Nations. But under your personal guidance and commitment we are confident not only that we will develop a working alliance between the anti-apartheid movements and the Special Committee but that we will broaden the international anti-apartheid community in such a way that our solidarity measures up to the responsibilities that we all face in the future crisis that is going to confront us when we deal directly with South Africa.