OCTOBER 9, 1959
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are indeed grateful to Mr. Brian Bunting (1) for accepting our invitation to declare open this 12th Annual Conference of the oldest organisation in South Africa regardless of race, colour or creed. On the 22nd of May, 1894, over sixty-five years ago, Mahatma Gandhi founded the Natal Indian Congress in this city and we are proud of the fact that we have over all these years held high the banner of freedom, pursuing a policy of race harmony, peace and non-violence in a country where the rulers have steadily proceeded in just the opposite direction.
In the past our conferences have been opened by Chief Lutuli and various other leaders of the African National Congress. We have also had Dr. Brookes, Mr. Lovell of the Labour Party and Mr. Alan Paton to perform this same task. This year in Mr. Brian Bunting we have one who has all his life stood with the cause of freedom and justice and we are indeed thankful for his stimulating address which has raised the basic questions which affect our country.
Our Annual Conference presents a non-racial platform from which all sections of our multi-racial society can declare their unswerving faith in the cause of freedom which is indivisible. Delegates present at this Conference will in the business sessions work out an effective programme for the ensuing year aimed at building the Natal Indian Congress into a powerful member in the Congress Alliance whose major task will undoubtedly remain to strengthen the development of a broad united democratic front of all South Africans opposed to apartheid and segregation so that we can in the shortest possible time reach our goal of a truly non-racial democracy in South Africa.
Our platform this evening clearly demonstartes our firm belief that race contacts at all levels lead to harmony and understanding which is indispensable to the removal of fears often based on ignorance. Absence of this understanding and harmony causes a great deal of pain and suffering to the fourteen million people who go to make up our country. Our platform also firmly rejects the false contention of the rulers of South Africa who are pursuing policies based on a belief that race contact breeds friction.
As the President of the Natal Indian Congress and as President of the South African Indian Congress I have firmly believed in the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi who has left us such a rich political heritage. Guided by this philosophy we hold hatred for none in South Africa and we believe that through non-violent political action we can reawaken the whole of South Africa, white and non-white, to a realisation of the brotherhood of man.
In South Africa the Indian community constitutes the smallest minority and yet it is to the credit of the Indian people that they have never sacrificed basic human values or the ideals of democracy in any attempt to protect their rights as a minority. White South Africa will do well to draw an important lesson from this fact instead of abandoning the basic democratic ideals under a false belief that in doing so they are protecting the rights of white South Africans. They must learn that freedom is indivisible and democracy non-racial.
Our philosophy presents us with no problems in the international field for we believe that the nations of the world must resolve their differences through negotiations by peaceful and non-violent means. We therefore stand for international peace and hope and pray that in the ensuing year positive steps will be taken by the great Powers to end the cold war and to banish war as an instrument for settling international disputes.
We reiterate our wholehearted support for the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and we are filled with pride at the increasingly important role played by the new free countries of Asia and Africa in world affairs.
While declaring our firm belief in the ability of the South African people to find a solution themselves to the problems that face them in our country we take this opportunity of thanking all the peoples and governments who have declared their support to our just struggle for democracy. We are indeed grieved and pained at the differences which have occurred between our two friends, India and China, and we are confident that in the very near future these two great Powers will resolve their differences amicably.
To India and Pakistan in particular we are grateful for their initiative and efforts in placing before the United Nations the question of our treatment in South Africa.
We hope that this year the United Nations, at the instance of the Afro-Asian bloc and other democratic countries, will take positive steps against racial discrimination which has within it the seeds of a global conflict.
On the South West African issue there is indeed an urgent need for the United Nations to bring South Africa to book, particularly in view of its intransigent attitude adopted to the United Nations Good Offices Commission.
The policies pursued by the rulers of South Africa have made the Union an outcast among the family of democratic nations. In the economic field moves are afoot to utilise the boycott weapon internationally against the Union and in the sporting and cultural fields there is a growing demand to isolate South Africa. The international movement for the boycott of South Africa began in 1959 following a call by the African People's Conference in Accra in December 1958 and the launching of the Boycott Campaign in London in June 1959.
The West Indian cricket tour has now been cancelled as a result of the Union-wide opposition against apartheid conditions in sport. We hope that the same result will be achieved in respect of the proposed All Blacks rugby tour against which there has been similar outcry both in the Union and in New Zealand.
At this Conference I want to announce that I have received a personal communication from that world-renowned philosopher and Vice-President of India, Dr. Radhakrishnan, that he has declined invitations to visit South Africa. The University of Natal had invited Dr. Radhakrishnan to attend the University's Golden Jubilee and it was also reported in the press and later denied that he had been invited by a certain individual to visit the Union next year during the observance of the centenary of the arrival of Indians to South Africa. This decision is fully in keeping with his dignity and the dignity of India and we welcome this.
While the world has been moving with increasing speed to greater freedom and democracy and while Africa itself has made tremendous strides with the emergence of nine new independent States, the rulers of South Africa have continued to assail the civil liberties of South Africans of all colours.
Since freedom is indivisible there can be no freedom for white South Africa whilst abject oppression is the lot of the non-white South Africans.
This fact is being realised more and more by white South Africa with the result that there is now the manifestation of a more democratic outlook in quarters where none existed before. The conscience of white South Africa is astir and we welcome this development. The birth of the Progressive Party is a significant event further illustrating this trend.
Notwithstanding the fact that the Verwoerd Government is doing its utmost with its fantastic plans of bantustans and ethnic universities to impose tribalism on the whole country, there are powerful forces working against sectionalism and tribalism and for the creation of a South Africa in which there will be no room for racial oppression and where all will free, and will be judged only on merit. The most powerful factor on the democratic front is the Congress Alliance led by the African National Congress under the Presidentship of Chief Albert J. Lutuli, one of the country's greatest democrats who has been banned and banished.
With the rest of democratic South Africa we condemn the restrictions imposed by the Government on so many of the leaders of the freedom movement. Had it not been for this restriction the Chief would have been with us this evening in person to guide and inspire us in our common struggle for freedom for all.
We Congressmen and women are proud of the fact that we have made the country as a whole realise that a lot of re-thinking is necessary and that the status quo has no moral or ethical justification. As a believer in non-violence I must condemn with all the power at my command all acts of violence which have taken place in the country, on the side of the Government and even on the side of the people who have at times under great provocation met violence with violence.
The Natal-wide spontaneous women's demonstrations nonetheless brought sharply to the notice of South Africa and of the world the poverty and frustration resulting from racial oppression. The separate and unequal treatment meted out to the non-white citizens has been the prime factor for the disturbances which have made many thinking South Africans realise how just the slogan for a "pound a day" is to the non-white worker to enable him to live a life reasonably free from want and hunger.
While we meet at this Conference the treason trial is still in progress and our thoughts go out to those thirty accused who are now appearing in Pretoria. It is the duty of all right-thinking people, specially in South Africa, to give unstintingly to the Treason Trial Defence Fund.
Next year the Indian people will be observing the centenary of their arrival into this country and it is right and proper that they should be thinking in terms of the franchise not only for themselves but for all South Africans who are at present disenfranchised and as a result suffer all the indignities of apartheid oppression. Let us enter the centenary year re-dedicating ourselves to the cause of freedom.
Delegates assembled at the Conference will have to give serious consideration to the problems facing South Africa. Their main task will be to take decisions and help to implement them so that the Natal Indian Congress can play its rightful role in the Congress Alliance, the vanguard of democracy in the Union. We must remember that we have a historical role to play and we can only do so if we realise fully the importance of a well-organised freedom movement in South Africa. The primary task of the delegates is therefore to examine the Congress organisation, to study all its weaknesses, to offer constructive criticism in order to build our Congress into a greater political force.
I would like this Conference to adopt as its central theme the task of budilding the Congress into a powerful organisation dedicated to the achievement of a non-racial democracy. Delegates must spend the major part of their time in discussing the organisational problems of Congress and I am sure that if we do that in a calm and objective manner then we will be giving not only our people but the entire country the lead it requires.
Let us therefore get down to the business sessions of the Conference with the firm resolve that unitedly we can lead our country to freedom. We know that justice is on our side and we know that nowhere in the world have an oppressed people failed to achieve their freedom.
Forward to a free South Africa, forward to a non-racial democracy!
AFRICA MAYIBUYE!
(1) Brian Bunting, a journalist and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, was a member of Parliament in 1952-53, representing Africans. He was editor of weeklies, successively banned, which strongly supported the Congress Movement.