March 31, 1983(1)
On behalf of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement and the World Campaign, we should like to thank you for inviting our Vice-Chairman, Mr. Vella Pillay, and myself to this meeting to observe the twentieth anniversary of the Special Committee. We would also like to associate ourselves with the congratulations and good wishes extended by earlier speakers to yourself, Mr. Chairman, and to Mr. Reddy on the award of the Joliot-Curie medal by the World Peace Council.(2)
The British Anti-Apartheid Movement was formed in London on June 26, 1959, when very few African countries were free and in direct response to the appeal which came out of South Africa from Chief Albert Lutuli, President General of the ANC, and other leaders for a boycott of the apartheid regime. Whilst our initial campaigns were to organise a consumer boycott of South African goods, we soon took on within weeks other issues: the release of political prisoners; the exclusion of South Africa from the Commonwealth; the demand for an arms embargo; support for the African liberation movements; the sports, cultural and academic boycott; the oil embargo and many related issues, all in the context of the overall demand for mandatory economic sanctions against South Africa.
In a sense and in a very real way, we were working on these issues before the Special Committee was formed and we had won some notable successes. But after the formation of the Special Committee on November 1962 our work was made very much more effective because of the close working relationship which developed over the years between us and the Special Committee.
One of the first issues on which we collaborated was over the Rivonia trial when Nelson Mandela and his colleagues were facing death sentences. At that time we established through the Anti-Apartheid Movement the World Campaign for the Release of all South African Political Prisoners and by coordinating international action and sending representatives to Rome to see the Pope, to Western capitals to see their leaders, we were able to have enough pressure mobilised throughout the world and succeeded in saving the lives of these South African leaders. But I am sure that as we mark the twentieth anniversary of the Special Committee against Apartheid today, we are also aware of the fact that Nelson Mandela has been imprisoned for every moment of every day of those twenty years. Twenty years is a very long time for Nelson Mandela and the people of South Africa. Twenty years is also a very long time for the Special Committee. For the Anti-Apartheid Movement which will next year be twenty-five years old, it is an even longer time.
On the basis of this experience of some twenty-five years, and twenty years working with the Special Committee, we would like to highlight a few aspects. First, on the role of the Special Committee. The very first thing that one can say is that the Special Committee has proved to be the most reliable and the most important instrument in the development of international policy and action against apartheid. There are various headings that other speakers have mentioned but I wish to draw attention just to a few which we believe were crucial in the past twenty years. Your actions with the support of the solidarity movements and public pressure in Western countries made certain that the attempt by the Pretoria regime to win recognition for bantustans was averted and that, today, none of the bantustans are recognised by any of the Western governments although we know that many of them wish to help South Africa in recognising those bantustans. We also know that at a crucial time in 1974-75, after the collapse of the Portuguese empire, coming about as a result of the liberation struggles in Portuguese territories in Africa, South Africa and its allies were able to create great international confusion even in Africa and it was the clear and forthright position of the Special Committee in exposing those manoeuvres that failed to produce the results that South Africa and its allies wished for. We know too that soon after that at the meeting of the OAU Council of Ministers in Dar es Salaam, Ambassador Edwin Ogbu, who is with us today, as Chairman of the Special Committee against Apartheid presented a paper which was crucial in uniting the OAU in counteracting this manoeuvre and recognising the South African regime as the main enemy of Africa which required all of Africa to stand four-square against it. Later in 1975 when the South African forces invaded Angola in collusion with the CIA, the Special Committee was the first and only Committee in the United Nations system to expose and condemn that aggression. Its role at that time, in defiance of pressures of Western countries, was a significant factor in helping to preserve Angola's independence.
There are many other aspects that we could refer to but because of shortage of time, we will abstain from that. However, in this context we want to commend the cooperation which the Special Committee promoted with anti-apartheid movements and solidarity groups throughout the world where you were able to overcome all the problems of protocol and other difficulties which exist in an interstate organisation like the United Nations and give us assistance for our campaigns. Secondly, we need to commend you for the way in which you have developed relationships with the liberation movements and the fact that they do participate in this Committee as if they are members of the Committee, and thirdly, for the tremendous information work done by the Special Committee and the Centre against Apartheid.
The second aspect, Mr. Chairman, is in a sense slightly personal but no less significant. And that is that since the formation of the Special Committee with its first Chairman, Mr. Diallo Telli and later with all the successive Chairmen that we have had, and now with yourself, we have had remarkable good luck to have persons of tremendous calibre and deep commitment who have helped to advance the work on southern Africa. We know that this is the first Committee to be boycotted by the Western Powers and despite the fact that they do not serve on this Committee, the way in which the Special Committee has conducted its work has meant that they have won respect and recognition even from some of these Western Powers who did not wish this Committee well.
In 1964 the British Anti-Apartheid Movement convened in London an international conference of Governments and non-governmental organisations to further the cause of sanctions. At that conference not only did we have a delegation from the Special Committee but also for example, Mr. Emeka Anyaoku, who spoke earlier, and Mr. Haksar representing the Indian Government. That conference was called to examine all the aspects of sanctions and it reached the conclusion that sanctions were feasible, that they were practical but what they lacked was political will. From 1964 to 1983 that situation has not changed in that what they lack is political will on the part of the major Western Powers.
Secondly, partly as a result of the fact that Mr. Diallo Telli became Secretary-General of the OAU but also because of our relations with the Special Committee, we were able to establish very close working relationships with the OAU and over the twenty years the OAU, helped by the Special Committee, has also developed its own relationships with anti-apartheid movements. So we were able to build up an alliance relationship with independent African States and forces of public opinion in the collaborating countries in order to support the objectives of the OAU and the United Nations.
In this context, we are also enormously grateful for the mainstay in the United Nations system on the question of apartheid and here I speak of Mr. Reddy who, since we met in the early 1960s, has been a constant source of encouragement, support, knowledge and guidance not only to the British Anti-Apartheid Movement but to every anti-apartheid and solidarity group that has come into existence in that period.
The third aspect, Mr. Chairman, is the substantial issues that we are concerned with. The last twenty years are the most traumatic in terms of the transformation of colonial Africa into the independent States of Africa. As the transformation of colonial Africa into a continent of free, liberated and independent States developed, the Western Powers focused their policies not only on sustaining the South African apartheid system through accelerated capital investments, trade and the provision of supplies for a massive armaments and nuclear industry but also of employing South African power to intimidate the independent African States into accepting a status of subordination and inferiority. In this critical sense South Africa has become the instrument of indirect colonialism and of fixing the African continent permanently into the strategic and geo-political sphere of the United States and other Western interests. It is this which explains the systematic Western violation of the arms embargo, the support given to the Pretoria regime in developing its nuclear-weapon capability and the policy of what is today called constructive engagement with the apartheid regime. This constructive engagement means in effect to bolster the South African regime, to confer upon it a regional Power role on the subcontinent whereby it is able to attack all independent African States within its reach without any international action forthcoming to put an end to that aggression, where it is able to occupy Namibia without suffering any international consequences, and, indeed, being provided with a military arsenal, with an air force and a missile system that puts the entire African continent within the reach of the Pretoria regime. And that is the scale of the support given to Pretoria by the Western Powers.
In earlier years when we were campaigning for an arms embargo, British, French and other Prime Ministers used to say that the provision of arms to South Africa was only for external defence. And I remember very well how in the late 1960s and early 1970s President Nyerere used to argue at Commonwealth conferences and elsewhere that Africa comes within the orbit of South Africa's external defence no matter how much the Western leaders talk about a supposed Soviet threat in the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans.
And today we see the very armaments provided to South Africa to contain so-called Soviet expansion in the southern oceans - the Buccaneer aircraft, the Mirage aircraft, the entire arsenal provided to the Pretoria regime - being used daily against Angola and all the other frontline States in the area. But the range of South Africa is not only to the immediate region as we have seen with the attack against Seychelles and its recent attack against Lesotho which does not even have a defence force. So South Africa behaves in Africa as if the entire continent is at its disposal in order for it to unleash violence on an unprecedented scale in order to intimidate and subject the entire African continent.
And as if this is not enough, we have also seen the provision of nuclear-weapon capability, the perfection of nuclear warheads, of missile systems and other forms of nuclear collaboration with the apartheid regime. And in this context I want to just spend a moment to show the relevance of the role of the ANC and the liberation struggle in South Africa because, for example, when we campaigned to stop nuclear collaboration with South Africa, we failed in that the French Government authorised the delivery of the Koeberg plant to the Pretoria regime. It was the direct action of the ANC in South Africa which was trying to impose the international arms embargo against South Africa. By acting in South Africa in such a decisive manner the ANC now has to try and ensure that it is acting to preserve the safety and security of independent Africa and all the States in that region. So the twenty years of experience, Mr. Chairman, has also shown us that the liberation movement in Namibia and South Africa had to take on an added burden not only to fight for their own liberation, as difficult as that is, but to fight this monstrous system of apartheid with all its military and nuclear might which is presenting such an enormous threat to international peace and security. And therefore in a very real way when we destroy the apartheid system, we will have destroyed this threat, this growing threat to international peace and security. And in this context, in this added context, the liberation movement deserves the full support of the international community.
But the second experience of twenty years is that the South African regime recognises no boundaries and has attacked the front-line States and other countries in the region. And they, too, require our support and we welcome the forthcoming mission of the Special Committee to be led by Ambassador Sahnoun(3) hoping that it will come back with a programme of action with which the international anti-apartheid community can mobilise full support for the frontline States.
Thirdly, on the question of sanctions we of course have to work for the tightening of the arms embargo to ensure that the nuclear embargo is made effective as also the oil embargo. But we really have to move forward and not simply repeat old slogans. In this context the conference of the anti-apartheid movement called in Britain in March last year, with the presence and participation of the Vice-President of Nigeria, reached the conclusion that the situation has now reached a point where Africa, the non-aligned countries and all committed governments have to move forward to ensure that their relations with the Western countries become much more dependent on the policies of the Western countries in relation to southern Africa. We have had a number of actions by Nigeria, by Tanzania, by various other governments against multi-national corporations operating in South Africa but these isolated actions are not enough and there is no reason why these individual countries should bear the full burden of the retaliation. Therefore, we would like the Special Committee to begin to take initiatives to mobilise the committed governments of the world together with the anti-apartheid movements to ensure that this objective becomes a reality.
It is our belief that the potential is there. The potential for united action exists if only we could have the machinery to bring it about and we hope that the Special Committee will address itself to this problem. Secondly, and mention has already been made of it, one has to concentrate much more on mobilising public opinion in Western countries as we have been trying to do in Britain through the anti-apartheid movement. But we need to intensify these efforts elsewhere, and as Ambassador Sahnoun has emphasised, the special need to promote action in the United States at this time. Thirdly in this context I think we also need to look anew at the methods of work that we have utilised over the past twenty years. I have said earlier that twenty years is a very long time. I also recall that twenty years ago there were not very many people who believed, in the era of the winds of change speeches and so on, that apartheid would survive for twenty years.
In the 1960s there was an optimism about freedom coming to South Africa as well. But it has taken so long because of the enormous support the Western countries have given to the apartheid regime and continue to provide today. And what we have seen is that every success, every pressure, every gain that we have made has been countered with increased support from the Western Powers for South Africa. And later on not only the traditional allies of South Africa but Israel and various Latin American countries joined this alliance system. Thus today we face this paradox where, with the largest number of resolutions we have ever had on apartheid through the United Nations, with the strongest resolutions, with the biggest majorities, we also face a situation where South Africa has never had as much investment as it has today. Indeed, South Africa has never had as many arms as it has today.
And in regard to the arms embargo which we first secured in 1963 and then got the 1977 mandatory arms embargo which was an enormous political victory - when we examine the history of this five-year embargo we see the nature of the problem we face. The Security Council Committee, which has a responsibility for exercising and administering this embargo, has not met for over two years - at precisely the time when we have, through the World Campaign and anti-apartheid organisations, been revealing arms smuggling cases stretching from Austria to Denmark, the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Germany. The Security Council - as we were told yesterday by the Chairman of the Committee on the Arms Embargo- has had before it since 1980 a report of its own Sub-Committee with sixteen recommendations to strengthen the arms embargo. That was given in September 1980. We are now, Sir, in 1983 and in this period the Security Council has not even discussed that report.
What explains this paralysis in the United Nations? What permits the Western Powers and others to provide South Africa with all the armaments it needs while the arms embargo remains on paper in the United Nations as a sacred decision and the only decision made under Chapter VII of the Charter?
This shows the atmosphere in which we are working and when we compare this to the 1970s for example when some of us were engaged in stopping a British Prime Minister when he was trying to sell six helicopters to the apartheid regime, the entire Commonwealth was at risk. Now these arms flows continue to Pretoria with very little being at risk. There is a certain air of self-confidence and assurance on the part not only of Pretoria but of the Western Powers and the new rulers in Washington who are giving South Africa increased elbow room in order to conduct its aggression with greater self-confidence.
In this overall process, then, the alliance of the Western Powers and South Africa has reached a point where as the peoples of southern Africa challenge that monstrous apartheid system and with near successes, we face the danger of real intervention from the Western countries. This intervention is already there in the form of arms supplies, mercenaries and so on. An so as our pressures mount internally and internationally, and the regime becomes weaker in various ways, it resorts more and more to the use of war as an instrument of policy and is supported in this by the Western Powers. Thus, what we face today is the real prospect that the African continent will become a sphere of war and violence manifested through the South African regime, through its so-called regional power in the continent of Africa, through its integration into the Western defence system whereby it is now regarded as a major ally in the Indian Ocean area as well as the South Atlantic region. And it is the responsibility of all of us to avert that war and to avert that catastrophe that South Africa is determined to inflict.
Like earlier speakers we are optimistic about the future. But our optimism is not based on the progress that we have achieved through the international community, as important as that is. It is based primarily on the courage and the successes scored by the African liberation struggle in Namibia and South Africa, and secondly on the steadfastness and sacrifices being made by the people in the front-line and other States. We in the outside world often say that victory is certain and that is true. And sometimes we have said as we said yesterday that victory might come sooner than many people expect and that too is true. But I want to warn that time is neutral and we are perhaps not utilising this time as effectively as is South Africa and its allies. And therefore we must redouble our efforts and match the efforts of the people of South Africa and Namibia and of the frontline States and ensure that victory is brought forth sooner rather than later.
In conclusion I want to refer to two other aspects. One is that the twenty years of effective action that we have spoken of by the Special Committee and other groups has also somehow created a sense of insensitivity to the horrors of apartheid. And there is the danger too in the international community and particularly here in New York at the United Nations which we fail to understand when we are away working at grassroots level of how one can deal with the Namibian question as simply a routine question that seems to be involved with talks about talks about talks about talks, with missions after missions going to deal with South Africa. There was a time soon after we called the International Conference on Namibia in 1966 and presented that report to the United Nations when people in this forum were talking about expelling South Africa from Namibia.
And now we are talking to South Africa about it agreeing to leave Namibia. There is a danger too, in the debates and resolutions against apartheid that there develops a certain atmosphere of routine action with routine resolutions. We must not allow the apartheid issue to become a routine issue where everyone confesses their abhorrence of apartheid just as every Christian confesses that he is against evil. In this sense we need action rather than statements. So we have to guard against making apartheid a routine issue because it is today an issue of supreme importance not only for the peoples of Africa but to maintain peace and security in the world.
The second point in conclusion that I wish to address myself to is that whilst we have new opportunities and we can take them and act decisively, there are also new dangers. And we must not underestimate either the opportunities or the dangers. We need to recall that in the last twenty or twenty-five years we have also seen, of course, the significant decolonisation declaration of the United Nations and that most of Africa is independent. But from the very outset in 1960 all Africa and every African realised that the core of the problem of African independence was the problem of apartheid in South Africa. And despite the fact that we have a large number of independent States, none of those States are either free or independent in the true meaning of that word because South Africa and its apartheid system continues to survive.
In order to make Africa independent, to truly decolonise the African continent, we must destroy the apartheid system and redouble our efforts. We have to take stock and we have to rededicate ourselves.
We have to realise that if we really want a celebration, then we have to work hard, use time wisely, unite all the forces available in the struggle against apartheid to ensure that independence comes to Namibia soon and that victory is achieved for the people of South Africa. So that when we celebrate inside South African borders, that will be the time for celebration not only for the South African people but for the continent of Africa and indeed for the rest of humanity. For not only would we have ended this phase of colonialism and racism, but we will also have begun the phase of cooperation among African States, to put to use all the resources which in South Africa are used today to oppress the peoples of southern Africa for the real development of independent Africa.
(1) United Nations Centre against Apartheid, Notes and Documents, No. 18/83, April 1983
(2) The Chairman of the Special Committee, Alhaji Yusuff Maitama -Sule of Nigeria, and the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General in charge of the Centre against Apartheid, E. S. Reddy, were awarded the Joliot-Curie Medal of the World Peace Council at this meeting of the Special Committee.