MARCH 3, 1961
Ladies and Gentlemen,
On behalf of the Indian people in Natal I want to express our sincerest thanks to Professor Matthews for declaring open this Conference. (1)
Professor Matthews is an international figure for whom our people have the highest esteem. Many of our intellectuals have regarded him as their guru when they had the privilege to study at Fort Hare.
Professor Matthews` address to this Conference is of great significance and importance to us for he comes to us as a leader of the African people who have shown courage and determination in the face of the mounting onslaught of the Nationalist Government. As an accused in the treason trial and as a detainee during the State of Emergency, Professor Matthews, together with his colleagues, became world news and we recall with admiration the stand he took when Fort Hare ceased to be a university and on its ashes arose another ethnic institution of indoctrination. Our community will do well to follow in the footsteps of Professor Matthews.
We are indeed proud to have Professor Matthews at this Conference which is being held by the Indian people at the turn of the century of their stay in South Africa. His presence here actively demonstrates the solidarity which has been built particularly in Afro-Indian relationships in South Africa within the framework of the democratic Congress movement.
Right at the outset of my address to this Conference I would like to say that it is a disgrace and a blot on the name of South Africa that Professor Matthews and his colleagues are not allowed to express their demands, which are the demands of the majority of the people of South Africa, through their major political organisation, the African National Congress, which had been built up and evolved over the last fifty years. (2)
I want delegates at this Conference to make a determined call for the lifting of the ban on the African National Congress and the other organisations which the Nationalist Government has banned in its efforts to stifle opposition, particularly on the extra-parliamentary front. Not only must Conference pass a resolution on this question but it must be the sacred duty of every Congressman and woman to work unceasingly for the removal of these shameful bannings so as to enable men like Chief A. J. Lutuli and Professor Matthews to play their rightful role in the affairs of South Africa.
This is a centenary conference and in this year when we have completed a hundred years on this southern part of the African continent it is vitally necessary for the smallest minority group in South Africa to take stock of what is happening on the African continent and in the world.
The year 1960 has been described as a year of Africa. It is a year in which we and the world have seen Africa's new awakening. Country after country has thrown off the shackles of foreign rule with the result that this so-called dark continent has found a new dignity.
We are a part of that great upsurge which is taking place on our continent in these historic times and as a part of Africa we declare from this conference that we make common cause with all the peoples of Africa who are striving for freedom and independence.
We want Africa to play its rightful role among the continents of the world and in the councils of nations. We believe in the closest possible cooperation between the peoples of Africa and Asia - the two continents who suffered so long together the indignity, humility and oppression resulting from foreign domination and where there are still peoples upon whom the yoke of colonialism weighs heavily.
We are proud of the increasing role played by the Afro-Asian Powers at the United Nations and are confident that with their continued efforts, supported by the democratic nations of the world, the struggle to put an end to colonialism and race discrimination will be greatly accelerated.
From this Conference we send our fraternal greetings to the peoples of the Congo who have suffered so much as a result of the tragic happenings in that country. We sincerely hope that the rightful and elected leaders of the Congo will soon, without any further delay, be allowed to lead their people and country in their newly-won independence and thereby bring to an end the present episode which has brought no credit to the United Nations itself.
On behalf of the Indian people of South Africa, I wish to express our deepest sympathy to the families of the murdered Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and his colleagues, and to the Congolese people. They will not have died in vain. Africa will always cherish and honour the memory of those martyred sons.
We believe in peaceful and non-violent solutions both to international problems and to problems within the border of one's own country. We therefore declare in favour of world peace and express the hope that a summit conference would be held in the near future leading to a lessening in world tension.
We believe that it is the duty of all nations claiming to be democratic to speak out against the injustices perpetrated on the African continent and, particularly in the United Nations, to take positive action against those countries which practise race discrimination. From this Conference we salute all those new independent States recently born on our continent and we are confident that they will champion the cause of all those who are not yet free.
While there is this great upsurge on the continent of Africa and while millions of her people have gained independence and human dignity, we on the southern tip of the continent are still groaning under the burdens of the Nationalist apartheid rule imposed on the people of the Union against the wishes of the vast majority.
Instead of governing with the consent of the people - which is essential in any country calling itself a democracy - we have in this country government by a white minority dedicated to retaining power exclusively for all time. Instead of consultations and discussions we are met by Saracens, emergencies, proclamations, bannings, banishments and other measures which are the stock-in-trade of an autocratic government.
I want to take this opportunity to restate the policy of the Natal Indian Congress. We believe in a democratic South Africa for all South Africans - white and non-white - and we believe it is possible to achieve that objective by peaceful and non-violent means.
We believe that the Nationalist Government is working diametrically against a democratic South Africa. It is foisting on the people of this country an Afrikaner caste rule under a tribal Republic which has not the support of the vast majority of the people of South Africa.
The Nationalist Afrikaner caste rule has stirred the conscience of many white South Africans who had hitherto accepted the policy of white domination under the United Party regime. And for the first time many leading white South Africans, who have in the past not associated themselves with the democratic movement in South Africa, are now, under the Nationalist rule, giving thought seriously to such fundamental issues as the vote.
It is significant to note that the Congress of Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Progressive Party have all emerged on the political scene after the Nationalists came into power.
We welcome these white South Africans who today preach non-racial doctrines and are thereby regarded as outcastes among big sections of white South Africans who still uphold the doctrine of white supremacy. In particular we warmly acclaim the Congress of Democrats which is a member of the Congress Alliance and which has accepted the Freedom Charter as its programme.
While consideration is given to the question of the vote in different political quarters in the country it is essential for us to reiterate our stand on this vital and fundamental issue. We believe in universal adult franchise because we believe in democracy and because democracy as yet has not found a better form of suffrage.
We are the smallest racial minority in this country but because we believe in the democratic ideal the question of other racial groups swamping us never worries us when we discuss the question of the vote. White South Africans will do well to accept this democratic ideal for themselves; they will, like the Indian people, be able to accept universal franchise without resorting to strategems of loaded or qualified franchise designed to perpetuate white control.
Twelve years of Nationalist rule have resulted in the serious diminution of civil liberties for all in South Africa. We now face a Republic while in our memories is still only too fresh the draft Broederbond Republican Constitution. In the face of this threat and in the face of the increased arbitrary powers the government is arrogating to itself, we, who are also at the vanguard of the political struggle in the country must in the name of our people, call upon the Government to convene a truly national convention which can put South Africa back on the road to sanity.
I strongly endorse the sentiments expressed by Professor Matthews on this question for I feel that the time has arrived for an urgent meeting of South Africans of all colours to give our country a lead for which it is crying out.
Looking at the Indian scene today we find that after a century in South Africa we live under the fears of the Group Areas Act with increasing unemployment and with insecurity threatening our very existence. We find foisted on our people an ethnic university which has received the unanimous condemnation of the Indian people and to crown it all the Government is to establish what it calls the Asiatic Affairs Department.
It is indeed ironical that when the African people are breaking away repidly from the narrow paths of tribalism and while Indians are abandoning their past caste affiliations the Afrikaner is today the greatest exponent of tribalism and caste in South Africa.
While the African and the Indian and the Coloured want to be regarded as South Africans - for that is what they are - the Nationalist Afrikaner is imposing on them a spurious tribalism and he wants them to be ruled through separate departments. The logical development would be the creation of a Department for Jewish affairs and a Department for English affairs - all coming under the jurisdiction of a Nationalist Afrikaner Cabinet. This segmentation of the South African population and the group thinking which it inculcates is designed to arouse and accentuate group antagonism and is founded on the well-worn concept of "divide and rule". We reject completely the Department of Asiatic Affairs. We are South Africans and we refuse to be divided on an ethnic basis as part of the implementation of the policy of apartheid.
The first one hundred years of our stay in South Africa have ended. We enter the second one hundred years with the proud knowledge that we have already made a vital contribution to the prosperity of our country. In the political field, we have, while holding high the torch of non-violence, made a fitting contribution to the cause of freedom for all in this country of ours.
Let this first Conference after the observance of the centenary of our arrival in South Africa be a landmark in our political organisation and action in South Africa. Let us rededicate ourselves to the cause of freedom, justice and human dignity. Let us march forward with all true democratic South Africans to a non-racial Free South Africa.
SEPTEMBER 3, 1961
This Twenty-third Conference of the South African Indian Congress meets at a time when the Indian people of South Africa have completed a hundred years of their stay in this country. It is meeting at a time when we as the smallest minority group in our country are facing great challenges and history has destined that we must play our rightful role in solving the gigantic problems which face South Africa.
We are a small country at the southern tip of the great continent of Africa and we can either retreat further and further into isolation from the rest of the world or advance boldly to face the future as a democratic nation, holding its rightful position in international affairs.
As the oldest national organisation in South Africa, the South African Indian Congress has made its position clear both in international and national affairs. There is no doubt as to where we stand in relation to world affairs or in relation to our own country. It is however essential to emphasise our stand and restate in the clearest terms possible our policies so that delegates attending this Conference can go back to their constituent bodies and to their respective areas knowing fully well what lies ahead of us and how to meet the challenges which confront us.
Both in the international and national fields we stand for peace and for peaceful solution of the problems which beset humanity. It is because of this fundamental stand of ours that we have at all our Conferences declared in the clearest possible terms that we believe in the ending of the cold war which is today creating fears in the mind of humanity. If we cannot have peace the only alternative is war and war in this nuclear age means incalculable destruction to civilisation - the possible end of all that mankind has contributed to progress and the ushering in of such dark ages that man has never experienced in his past and primitive history.
The devastation which can result from nuclear war can be so great that no ideologies may survive after the holocaust to guide man to further progress. It may mean the destruction of man. Believing as we do in peace we strongly support the world-wide movement which seeks through the United Nations to solve all international problems through negotiations and by peaceful means; we regard foreign domination of any people as having in it the seeds of war and we regard in similar light racial discrimination within the boundary of any single State.
We therefore welcome the emergence of free and independent States, particularly within our continent, and we make common cause with all peoples everywhere who are in the midst of liberation struggles. We welcome the role played by the new independent Afro-Asian States at the United Nations and we express our gratitude to them and all others who have championed our cause at the United Nations and who have spoken out against the inhumanity of discriminating against people on grounds of race.
While we believe in the extension of political rights to every man and woman within our own country and throughout the world, the Government of the Republic of South Africa is pursuing a directly opposite policy. It is the only country in the world which enshrines race discrimination in the statute books of the highest law-making body of the country and attempts to justify its practices under the false slogan of separate self-development.
The present government has inherited the policy of race discrimination from its predecessors and has sought to give it a philosophical facade under this theory of self-development - a new name for the much discredited policy of apartheid.
Internationally the effect of this policy has been to isolate the Government of the Republic of South Africa from the rest of the world. Our country is no more a member of the Commonwealth (3) and in every international gathering South Africa is subjected to severe criticism based directly on the policy of segregation and apartheid.
The total State machinery is geared for the advancement of apartheid and it is integral to this scheme that those who are opposed to it are going to be confronted with more and more restrictions and hardships. These restrictions and hardships are in the first instance imposed on the non-white majority in our country but since democracy is indivisible their effects will be and must be, as in fact they are already being, felt by all South Africans, white and non-white. How true this is is borne out clearly when one analyses the laws enacted by the Nationalist Government during the past 13 years. One by one the lights of liberty are being extinguished and if the democratic forces do not rally to face this challenge total darkness may prevail in South Africa.
Our historic task is to play our rightful role within the democratic camp in the country for the meeting of this challenge not only in a negative way but also in a positive direction by creating the conditions which will result in a lasting non-racial democracy for South Africa. Numerically we are a small group and yet we belong to the Congress Movement which to my mind is the most powerful factor not only in opposing the tyranny of apartheid but in leading South Africa to freedom for all in a non-racial democracy.
Since we last met one of our allies - in fact the leader of our alliance - the African National Congress - has been declared unlawful. We call upon the Government of South Africa to remove this ban, both on the African National Congress and on its leaders, so that Chief Albert Lutuli, one of South Africa's greatest democrats, can lead his people under the banner of the organisation enjoying the confidence of the African people.
Bannings of organisations and individuals are not the weapons of democrats and we therefore call upon the Government to repeal the laws which make such bannings possible in South Africa.
We welcome the growing non-racial front among white South Africans for we believe in the closest possible alliance of all South Africans of all races and colours.
We meet on the eve of yet another so-called General election confined to the white electorate in South Africa. We are, however, not mere spectators. Although denied the vote we are keenly interested in the outcome of the elections. After 13 years of Nationalist rule white South Africans have the opportunity of either accepting or rejecting the policy of apartheid and segregation. The elections will give us some indication of how far white South Africans have been indoctrinated by apartheid.
On the parliamentary front it is however correct to say that at present we find very little hope for drastic changes which are so essential to end existing tensions and to lead our country on the path of sanity. The official United Party opposition is weak and policyless precisely because it agrees on fundamentals with the apartheid philosophy of the Nationalists. It is offering no hope to the majority of the people of the country. To the extent to which the Progressive Party rejects racialism we welcome it although fully aware of the fact that it is by no means voicing the aspirations of the voteless majority in the country.
The real strength of the democratic forces in the country is in the extra-parliamentary front. The voteless democratically-minded majority in South Africa has the vital role of convincing the dominating minority group that South Africa belongs to all her people who must on a basis of equality share the good things that the country offers and assume equal responsibilities in advancing her prosperity and greatness.
The Indian people have suffered much under the policy of segregation and apartheid. The past hundred years have been years of trials and tribulations but we have emerged from them with clear foresight; as adherents of the democratic ideals we claim no special protection as a minority group, we claim no superiority, we claim a democratic future for all South Africans and we hold the unshakeable belief that in a true democracy individual merit will alone count and not the race or colour of persons.
We are totally opposed to the regimentation of the South African population either on racial or on ethnic bases. We are totally opposed to the creation of the apartheid wall separating the privileged white minority from the under-privileged non-white majority. With equal vehemence we condemn all compartmentalisation of the non-whites on ethnic basis. We must reject the concept of labelling South Africans as Zulus, Indians, Jews, Afrikaners or English. Instead we want the democratic concept of a single and indivisible South Africa to prevail, with all her people regarded as South Africans enjoying equal rights and discharging equal duties within our common motherland.
Having that concept as we do we totally reject the creation of the Indian Affairs Department. The South African Indian Congress will have nothing to do with it for we claim to be South Africans although it took the white ruling group in South Africa a hundred years to admit that we are a permanent part of the country's population.
As recently announced by Dr. Verwoerd it is clear that the Nationalist Government does not intend to regard us as a part of the integrated South African community. The Government policy appears to be one which envisages separate areas for Indians as it does for all non-white people of the country. This separation or apartheid is to be implemented through laws such as the Group Areas Act and the Indian Affairs Department will be the instrument through which co-ordination will be given to the different apartheid laws for the achievement of the Government's objectives. That is the only light in which we can see the Department of Dr. Maree. (4)
Can the Indian people be blamed for holding this view? To them the creation of this Department is to negate all for which they have stood and for which they have striven since they first came to the shores of this country and since Mahatma Gandhi gave them political cohesion and a democratic objective.
To cooperate with the Indian Affairs Department is to show our willingness to isolate ourselves into Indian Group Areas and to accept the Nationalist policy of apartheid which offers nothing but complete economic ruination of the Indian community. An ethnic university has already been imposed on us and if we are not careful, under the guidance of the Indian Affairs Department the control of Indian primary and secondary education will follow.
Our future is not in apartheid, not in ethnic division, not in the spurious policy of self-development under the Indian Affairs Department. Our future lies in a common society in South Africa with deep roots in a non-racial democracy.
All those who believe in a common society and in a non-racial democracy must now come together and voice their opposition to apartheid unitedly. That is the only salvation for South Africa. The historic Conference of African leaders held in Pietermaritzburg and the new awakening among the Coloured people, as reflected in the Malmesbury Convention, (5) are strong pointers of how the non-white people of the country are thinking. They have with them a resolute band of white democrats. Together, this democratic force is the real challenge to apartheid and racism in the country. The future belongs to those who believe in the democratic ideal. That is the lesson of history.
Delegates attending this Conference will in their deliberations deal with the policy of apartheid as it affects the different facets of our lives. I do not intend dealing with any of these matters in detail. It is the task of all and every delegate present at this Conference to have our basic objectives clear and to realise that we are a small but very important regiment of democracy. We must leave this Conference with a new spirit and a rededication. We must be prepared to face the future boldly and with courage. We can only do so if we know and understand the problems of our people and take part in their day-to-day living so that we can truly voice the aspirations of Indian South Africans. We must as we have done in the past make common cause with all South Africans so that we can lead our country to its goal of non-racial democracy within the shortest possible time.
Forward to a Democratic South Africa!
(1) Professor Z. K. Matthews, a distinguished educator, taught for many years at the Fort Hare University College. He resigned his post as Acting Principal in protest when the government took over the College in order to turn into a segregated institution. He was a leader of the ANC for many years.
(2) The African National Congress was banned in April 1960, soon after the Sharpeville massacre.
(3) Because of the opposition of the members of the Commonwealth to apartheid, South Africa was obliged to leave the Commonwealth when it proclaimed a Republic at the end of May 1961.
(4) Dr. Maree was the Minister of "Indian Affairs".
(5) The Coloured National Convention was convened by a number of Coloured leaders with broad public support. The Government banned the holding of the Convention in Cape Town and several other urban areas. It was held in July 1961 on a farm in Malmesbury, 35 miles from Cape Town. The participants pledged to work for a non-racial democratic South Africa.