We salute our brothers, comrades-in-arms, and the world's progressive forces, with whom we together form one united and mighty fighting front. We greet and salute the liberation movements fighting in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and other parts of the world. We have reason to be proud of the achievements which we together have scored in recent times. We congratulate our brothers for the victories they have won: particularly our brothers fighting against Portuguese colonialism.
There is a thread that has run unbroken throughout the course of our glorious history of the past 300 years, whatever the year and whatever the conditions and the form of manifestation of that history. That thread has been the thread of struggle by our people, first to defend the independence of their country against foreign marauders, slave drivers, usurpers and colonisers; and later, to secure their freedom from domination and oppression by a white minority regime. We have learnt that in struggle, and only in struggle, is freedom and independence to be found.
Recent international developments point clearly to the unique nature of the present period in our history and struggle; a period which is unlike any other. It is a period which, more that any other, has imposed on all the oppressed people of our country the historical obligations to bring to a victorious conclusion the heroic strivings of three hundred years, which have included sacrifices made by our friends and supporters in numbers that have now grown and embraced peoples in every part of the globe. It is a period that has imposed on us the historical obligation to win. If there is any doubt of this fact, the events and development across the borders of our country should suffice to remove that doubt.
The foundation of victory has been laid and cemented with the blood of countless martyrs and in the suffering and sacrifices of men and women who are dedicated, and have devoted their lives, to the pursuit of freedom, independence and peace.
Today the white minority regime that rules our country knows that it has failed to stamp out our struggle. That its violence has only served to provoke increased violence and will continue to do so. That, in any case, the determination to be free cannot be stamped out by violence. This our enemy knows.
International Issue
We also know that the struggles conducted by our movement were not confined to South Africa only. It has been our policy to integrate our own struggle with the struggles of all opponents of evil systems born of imperialism and colonialism, and we have succeeded. Like Smith's Rhodesia, South Africa today stands isolated from all the peoples of the world. All peoples except the bloodsuckers who have grown fat on the sweat and toil of our exploited people. The regime is isolated and hated as no other, except by its collaborators at home and abroad.
Thanks to the world-wide movement we have built the colonialists and racists are being rapidly encircled by the mighty forces of freedom and independence. The proponents of racism apartheid, separate development - whatever the enemy may call it - have much cause to be worried.
In the final analysis, the issue between us and our rulers in South Africa is an international issue. It is an issue between those who want to see the world as a community of peoples living together in peace, whose natural resources and wealth belongs to all who live in that world. It is the issue which divides these people from those who believe-in injustice and in exploitation of man by man and the domination of nations by others; in the rule of the minorities over the majorities of people; in the exploitation of the many by the few: in short, in inhumanity and injustice.
These are the issues which divide the wealthy and rich nations of the world, the exploitative nations of the world, from their own struggling peoples, in the first instance - their own workers; and, in the second, the peoples of poor nations throughout the world. (It is important to make the distinction between rich exploitative nations, and just wealthy nations who have acquired their wealth through the labour of their own peoples, for themselves, exploiting no one, colonising no one, for this purpose). This division raises the issue on which, what is called, the Third World is fighting.
We are a part, therefore, of the forces of the world that seek justice. We fight for the freedom and independence, for peace, for a nonracial, ultimately non-national world society; a society without class.
The world which supports our cause is a growing one while the world which white South Africa represents is fast diminishing. Despite some setbacks as in Chile, there is a tide of revolution and of revolutionary change which is sweeping across the face of the globe. And this tide draws its greatest inspiration from the victims of injustice, of imperialism, colonial and racist domination, and these victims rising and fighting their oppressors and exploiters.
It is a tide which was most manifest and easily demonstrable in the hectic years of United States imperialist invasion of the small nation of Vietnam. The whole world rallied; but they rallied in the first instance because of the heroism, the sacrifices of the Vietnamese people themselves. It was the fighting spirit and capability of the Vietnamese which mobilised these forces for change.
In the Middle East, the issues arise from the dispossession of the Palestinians. That problem stands unresolved; but in the process it has sparked off a series of wars. The October war is hardly likely to be the last until this crucial problem of a landless, homeless, countryless, people is resolved.
Africa Moves Forward
In Africa, for ten, eleven, thirteen years and more, peoples under Portuguese domination, who have lived and suffered the presence of this regime for almost 500 years, rose in struggle. Until then, "Portugal" was a geographic term unknown to most people. But when they picked up their weapons and went into the bush and confronted the colonialists, only then did the world awaken to the fact that there were countries in Africa dominated, almost ruined, its people butchered and killed, imprisoned and tortured by the merciless fascist Salazar-Caetano regime, which spared neither African not Portuguese. But not until the Mozambicans and the Angolans and Guineans of Guinea-Bissau took to arms, did the world know these people existed - and then the world rallied round them.
Now within about ten years, 500 years of Portuguese rule in Africa is beginning to crumble. Guinea-Bissau, unknown until very recently, is already an independent state led by its revolutionary party, PAIGC.
It is the same with us. We have been known in the days when we complained about apartheid and racial discrimination, but we ceased to be known when this remained our sole complaint. But what are we aiming at? We are not fighting simply to remove racial discrimination. The main issue of our revolutionary struggle is the transfer of power from the minority to the majority of the people of our country; and it is when we fight as determinedly as we can and as we have, and as we are known to be capable of, that the world will not only know of our presence, but will support us in the way that it has supported the peoples of Vietnam, the people fighting against Portuguese and Israeli colonialism .
And when we say white South Africa is becoming encircled, perhaps it's necessary to demonstrate this by reference to their own objectives. In this relationship of international dimensions between the haves and have-nots, between the oppressors and the oppressed, the racists and their victims, South Africa has sought, with her supporters, to maintain the status quo, to permit no change. She has proceeded firstly by imposing internal repression of everything that expresses freedom in the country, anything and everything that is related to the liberation of our people. We have been cut off as a people from the rest of the world, and subjected to perhaps the most intensive and repressive machinery, that obtains anywhere in Africa, which is equaled possibly by only few places outside of Africa. This is to contain the kind of revolution which draws international support, in the case of Vietnam and Asia, and which is helping to dismiss and expel Portuguese colonialism from Africa.
Bantustans Used
It is therefore the first task of the South African regime to fight every square inch of the ground which leads the liberation movement towards the freedom and liberty of our people. Simultaneously, the South African regime has embarked on an expansionist policy, an invasion outside of its borders, harassing independent African states, helping reactionary repression of our brothers in Mozambique, in Zimbabwe, in Angola, fighting the guerillas in Namibia. Meanwhile, the South African racists spread a creeping network of spies, informers and agents under the direction of the now notorious BOSS.
This machinery starts from South Africa itself, from house to house, family to family, and permeates the entire sub continent. It explains what happened to John Dube (Adolphus Mvemve). The bombs that exploded in their faces were not unrelated to the BOSS network. We know they were only the beginning. There have been no new assassinations as yet, but this is on the agenda of struggle.
Beyond this, South Africa carries out an intensive propaganda inside the country and abroad. It spends millions of rands, millions of dollars, to deceive our own people and mislead them, to deceive the world, and to paint an ugly picture of African independence. And as part of its propaganda, it has now used, and is using, the machinery of the Bantustans. Black puppets of many descriptions are globetrotting the world, carrying messages of their own oppressors and white washing them.
Then there's the campaign to attract foreign investments for the purpose, firstly, to strengthen the economy and therefore the regime itself, and thereby pursue the continued exploitation of the masses of our people, for the mutual benefit of the whites in South Africa, the privileged, the wielders of political power, and for the foreign companies, who bring in these investments.
The second object of inviting these investments is to involve the countries from which the investors come on the side of the regime and against the black oppressed, so that in a crisis the South African regime should be able to rely upon its supporters, international and internal. This is the scheme of the South African Government.
But it is only possible to show that in its objective to maintain the status quo, it has failed and is failing. The internal repression, which was beyond description in the middle and late 'sixties, which found many victims of torture, which sent our leaders to life imprisonment - and this is the tenth anniversary of their conviction and detention on Robben Island and elsewhere: these were the years where not a whisper could be allowed. But by dint of sheer determination to secure the ultimate objective of complete freedom and the transfer of power, our people have broken this ceiling, and there is what Vorster has now called a restless situation; political unrest in the country. It is political unrest which has developed despite his machinery, and even because of it
They Will Fail
The invasion outside is failing. Portugal, the people of Portugal, have been liberated by the fighting people of Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique. That is what brought about the coup. It was their victories against Portuguese troops. It is what created a Spinola - he was there in person, in Guinea-Bissau and elsewhere, and failed. The coup is a credit to the courage, determination, skill of the guerrillas and the fighters of Frelimo, PAIGC, and others of our brothers.
It has meant a serious, severe setback for white South Africa. The unholy alliance of three has lost one third of its strength. South Africa now limps along with Smith and he cannot be depended upon. What was rested by imperialism on these three pillars, must now be carried by South Africa alone. This is serious, especially when one considers that the people of South Africa are no less determined than those of Mozambique to reach the ultimate objective of their struggle, which has been costly to them in terms of life, in terms of liberty, in terms of fundamental freedoms which are enjoyed everywhere in the world.
Police spies and informers are faced with failure. The DGS (Portuguese Secret Police) has failed, it has been rounded up. This will also be the fate of BOSS. The failure of the DGS, its chief partner, is the failure of BOSS itself.
There has been a failure in their propaganda as well. A leading member of the South African Government has complained recently that there is more anti-South African propaganda in the world today than at any time in its history. That is a declaration, a concession, of defeat.
They are failing, and they will continue to fail, and therefore all the lies which they are telling and have been telling with the assistance of the South African Foundation, and with, now, the actual assistance of some South African blacks. must also fail.
Call To Action
The present historical setting makes the coming year one of the most important and decisive occasions in our history.
It therefore, becomes a historical necessity for the ANC to call upon all our people everywhere, our friends and brothers, supporters, comrades-in-arms and friends, to meet the new challenge with a determination and on a scale which cannot fail to eliminate once and for all the scourge of white minority rule and racism which has plagued Africa for centuries.
For the ANC and for the masses of the people of South Africa, it is no longer sufficient to cry or complain about what is being done to us or has been done to us. The time has come for our people to assume, in the field of action, responsibility for the destiny of our motherland, South Africa. 1975 must be the beginning of a new offensive for freedom and power in our country.
The enemy has set the pace if any were called for. He has provided the excuse for this offensive - we did not need an excuse, but his initiative justifies the call we are about to make.
He has chosen to place a large military force in the Caprivi Strip on the Zambian border, with aggressive intentions against the African independent state of Zambia, and to intimidate the struggling people of Angola, and his aim is also to intervene on the side of reaction in that African territory. He aims at terrorising the Namibian people, and even intimidating the African independent state of Botswana.
Within South Africa, itself, armed police are continuing to attack African villages and forcibly drive the people out of their land in many areas, to yet another death-ridden area. This is the fate now of more than a million Africans over a short period of time.
This regime, brutally fascist, is a tyrant and terrorist of Southern Africa. It is on the offensive - it does not have to be provoked. Indeed, far from any provocation, both in South Africa and abroad, especially in Africa, there has been a very loud silence about the key role of the South African regime in the aftermath of the Lisbon coup.
But the reality of Vorster's regime is crucial, is a crucial factor for the future of Southern Africa; and the vital issue of total and genuine liberation and peace in Africa cannot be wished away:
We have cited these two significant activities on the part of the South African regime, but they are not new nor isolated. They form part of a multi-faceted offensive heralding the final and decisive confrontation between the oppressed people of Southern Africa and Africa, on the one hand, and the white minority regimes that rule them. They are activities which give an added dimension to the importance and significance of the year 1975.
It is important to note in this connection that the Vorster Government is behaving in the way it is on the strength of an express mandate sought for from the white - whites only - electorate, and given with unrestrained enthusiasm on April 24, 1974. In the name of the white people of South Africa, and on their authority, the African people are being bayonetted out of their homes; the black people are being subjected to increasing harassment and bullying, and criminal aggression is under way against our brothers in Zambia and the rest of Southern Africa .
But let us make it quite clear that this is no complaint. It is simply a statement of the facts and realities.
The question is : What is to be done?
First is the vital question of unity; the unity of the fighting people in South Africa. We must be united in the ideological objective of liberation and the seizure of power for the majority of the people of South Africa as a whole. We must seek and find unity in action on any issue that affects any social group or class in any area of the oppressed people, wherever it takes place in the country. Fight a united and all he round struggle for your rights, for your humanity, for your manhood!
The international atmosphere for support of the actions of oppressed peoples, including our own people, has seldom been more favourable. The chances of victory, whatever the sacrifices demanded, have seldom been greater. Therefore: unite for power, unite in action. Further, resolutely oppose and fight against divisive stance and postures.
The unity, which as the struggle advances will draw in and embrace a growing number of genuine supporters of the African cause, must begin at the level of the oppressed people themselves; the black people, but more particularly and especially the African people, who are the biggest, the worst, and most numerous victims of the all-white and racist regime's policy, the most exploited and humiliated. Upon their unity and united action in pursuance of the goals defined and elaborated by the ANC, there depends the united action of all the forces for revolutionary change in our country. The potentialities of a united and militant mass struggle, involving millions of Africans throughout the country, and fighting for their rights in the present atmosphere of armed struggles are tremendous indeed.
The Bantustans
This is precisely why the Bantustan programme, amongst other things, has become so important and so urgent for the enemy of our people, the enemy of African freedom and independence. Therefore, as part of our offensive towards unity and united action on a nationwide and national scale, we must look at the Bantustan programme squarely in the face. Let us not say we know all about it. Let us face it in the context of the new challenges. And since it is a stark obstacle deliberately placed in our path of progress to a free non-racial South Africa, ruled by its people as one nation in one country, we have to deal properly with it. Let us then restate some of the intentions behind the Bantustan policy as seen by the ANC, and the objective role of these institutions in our struggle in Southern Africa and in the African struggle as a whole.
The Bantustans have been created and forged as a weapon in the hands of the South African regime. And how is this weapon to be used? . . . The Bantustans are a weapon to divide the African people into separate tribes as they existed during the colonial wars fought against foreign invaders in our country. This separateness facilitated our defeat and subjugation at the time and since. That separateness is now being resuscitated hurriedly, to ensure our defeat again and perpetuate our subjugation. The reference to Bantustans as a policy of separate development is significant, precisely because it refers in fact to the separate entities with which we tried in past centuries to resist the invasion of the African continent from the south.
Our leaders, knowing the reason for our defeat, had united us into a nation under the banner of the ANC. These leaders included many tribal chiefs.
We now have what are called "Bantustan Leaders", and they are leaders, because they are in a position of authority and influence created of them, not by them. We have to ask quite objectively and without bitterness or rancour: In their position, are they trying to unite us for victory, relying on their positions of authority and freedom of speech and association; or are they, consciously or unconsciously, trying to separate us, for defeat and eternal enslavement; or are some, perhaps, of them not really interested?
But an even more important question: What are we, the masses, telling them to do about the Bantustans?
The divisions of Africans along ethnic or tribal grounds has, of course, other implications intended by the enemy. It lays the basis for inter-Bantustan hostilities, inter-ethnic, inter-tribal clashes, problems that we had overcome over the past fifty years. Already there have been clashes between various tribal groups in the mines, which fall into this pattern of getting the Africans to fight amongst themselves. Those clashes were organised.
Further, as a weapon, the Bantustan scheme is intended to encourage and resuscitate the whole concept of tribalism, to keep it alive, firstly in South Africa and, later, in Africa itself. It is not inconceivable that Kenya, for instance, or even Zambia, and others will be receiving a long succession of groups who are Xhosas, Vendas, Tongas, various other names - calling themselves nations, where once before they were regarded as part of one nation.
White South Africa is looking ahead. It is not happy with the unity of the African states under one leadership and the elimination of the tribal concept, which is colonialist in its origin. You don't hear of tribes in Europe, but we hear of tribes in Africa. It is a basis for division, and South Africa is forging this weapon.
And so we shall have Zulu dancers, all sorts of other groups from South Africa, until we become conscious of the importance of tribal groups. We may then be confronted with a tendency to secession. This would lay the foundation. African states, newly independent, developing, who are trying to forge their nations into one united whole and to get away from the divisions of colonialism, are having a scheme being prepared for them which is intended to undermine these efforts, to weaken the coherence of nations.
The weapon is also intended to divide international support for our cause. Various leaders of what are supposed to be independent nations-to-be go around the world as spokesmen of the African people. In fact, they are spokesmen of a number of each sections of the Africans. This destroys the concept of a liberation struggle headed by a liberation movement. It creates divisions and eliminates support for the liberation movement. Our supporters begin to bypass the national liberation movement, and deal directly with what we have always known to be regional areas in our country.
The weapon is also aimed at evolving a community of Bantustan satellites around the central, powerful, white superior state; and in this leader and satellite setting, to submerge, by various techniques, the sovereign and independent identity of neighbouring independent states, like Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland. South Africa does not create Bantustan states in order to elevate them into the level of sovereignty and independence enjoyed now by Botswana, for instance, or Zambia: rather must we suspect, on good ground, that their tactics will be to reduce the independent states to the level of the whole Bantustan community of ethnic groups. We are confident that the independent states of Africa will resist this as part of their struggle to maintain their own sovereignty. It is intended to use these racist created sub-states as cats paws to draw Africa under the economic and political influence and domination of the white state and its white superior citizens.
Deadly Scheme
A Bantustan "state", perforated with numerous interlinking and scattered blots of allegedly white territory, and having no identifiable and continuous territorial boundary, is an incredible and unimaginable absurdity, incapable of acceptance by even the most insane person. What makes Vorster persist in this absurdity is that it serves the serious demands of his political and military strategy and masks his true intentions about the so-called independence of the Bantustans.
In any case, whether the Bantustans territory is consolidated or not, it is unthinkable that any African could concede or sign away the historic and inalienable rights of our people to ownership of the whole country by accepting a so-called international boundary.
The Bantustans are intended to serve as part of the machinery of super-exploitation of the workers, to be operated with the cooperation of the Bantustan authority, whose function is to serve as a shock-absorber of mass African revolt against the regime, with inevitable internecine strife, starting within the Bantustan and even developing into an inter-Bantustan conflict. This would justify intervention and direct control from Pretoria.
The Bantustan programme seeks to create and build up a third force, designed to divert the masses of the oppressed people from the path of revolution and freedom and to set them wallowing in the quagmire of reformism for generations to come. The "liberal" press in South Africa has out-stripped itself in the campaign to strengthen this third force as a substitute for, and an alternative to, the national liberation movement. But this third force is no different from the creations of Salazar and Caetano in Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique, or from similar efforts made in Rhodesia and Namibia. It tries to divide a people otherwise bound to one another by a common desire for liberation and freedom.
Finally, the South African racist regime uses the Bantustans to try and present itself to the world and to Africa as being in line with African and world thinking on decolonisation. This is a fraudulent conduct, and the racists know it.
From every conceivable point of view, therefore, the Bantustan programme is a deadly scheme which seeks to roll back the progress of our noble struggle over the graves of fallen heroes and martyrs, across many decades, to the days before Bambatha.
We have no alternative but to fight the Bantustan programme with ruthless determination, render it ineffective and unworkable. But also, and at the same time, since it is a weapon of destruction, while it lasts we must grab it from the enemy's grip and turn it against him and for the liberation of our country.
In the meantime, the offensive for freedom must forge ahead in every other field and area of action. This call goes out to all opponents of racist oppression and exploitation; to all people who want to see, not just change, but racial change that brings freedom to our oppressed people.
Those of our men who find themselves trapped into administering the bantustan programme to the detriment of our past, present and future, and who clearly understand their objectively dangerous role in making the scheme succeed, are in a situation bristling with difficulties. If occasion we criticise them, it is not for lack of appreciation of the problems they face. It is because our first responsibility is to the revolutionary struggle and to the success of that struggle. We owe this to our people, to Africa, to our colleagues in the national liberation movement, to the world, to all mankind.
These men will be strengthened to serve the interests of genuine freedom for the people of South Africa if the masses of the people correctly identify their enemy as the white supremacist structure, and if they fight for their motherland, if they reject the Bantustan scheme as they have always done.
The liberation movement lives and fights for and with the people. In the final analysis, the fighting people, led by the ANC and united in action, will themselves resolve the problem in the best interests of the successful struggle.
The situation is South Africa has assumed new and favourable trends for our struggle. We cannot work in the same old way. Those who are in the leadership of the Bantustans need to re-examine their historic role. They are under obligation to work for our future, not against it.
Our brothers in Africa will surely exercise the greatest vigilance and work with us to frustrate and defeat Vorster's devilish scheme. Our supporters the world over. . . will campaign against the Bantustan programme and work for its defeat.
Call for Isolation
Foreign firms and multinational companies with investments in South Africa have unleashed a highly financed and divisive campaign to defend their participation in the super-exploitation of our people, exploitation made possible by the vicious system of white racist rule, which oppresses us with armed force.
They have picked invaluable allies from among our enslaved Africans. They have had to do this in the face of irresistible pressures upon them from men and women, from workers and
organisations, who are part of the world solidarity movement supporting the freedom struggle of our people.
The demand on foreign companies to withdraw their investments in South Africa is part of a world-wide campaign comprising a large variety of international pressures aimed at compelling the South African regime to abandon its oppressive and racist domination of the black people, or at any rate at weakening its capacity to persist in the enforcement of these policies.
The demand for withdrawal is a demand in support of our struggle for freedom and political power. It has nothing to do with the right of our workers to fight for the best possible working conditions against any company or firm in South Africa, whatever its origins.
We have not called on our workers yet to drive out foreign companies helping to keep us oppressed. We have called on our supporters overseas, in Japan, Western Europe, and North America. to pull them out.
The call for the economic and all-round isolation of South Africa, which has now been taken up by Africa, the UN, and numerous support bodies overseas, emanated from a decision taken by our national leaders in South Africa.
Chief A.J. Luthuli, lying motionless in his noble grave; Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, now bravely enduring minute by minute, the severity of Robben Island; and others. All have now been silenced with death or imprisonment by our enemy. Nothing has changed in the conditions which justified the decision. Therefore, there is nothing to justify a change of tactics. It is their mandate we are carrying out in the light of the situation as it affects our struggle for liberation.
Those of our people who now have some freedom to travel abroad must not subvert the efforts made at enormous sacrifice by the peoples of Africa, nor must they subvert the international solidarity which is indispensable in our struggle for freedom and independence. It is correct and true to say that they owe what limited freedom of travel they now enjoy, at least in part, to the active and practical support of our struggle by the international solidarity movement. Our people must not subvert these efforts.
Withdrawal of investments can involve the closing down of firms and consequent unemployment. In any case, where this occurs in the course of political struggle for our liberation, it does not matter if we become unemployed. In our struggle we have given our lives as all fighting people do. We can easily sacrifice full stomachs. The majority of our people are doing just that every day.
It is the responsibility of the Pretoria regime to provide employment for our people from the limitless wealth it has collected from our long and ruthless enslavement. The regime must not be taken off the hook by our asking supporters of our struggle to take over this responsibility. The Bantustans are the regime's idea, imposed on us in the teeth of resistance. Let the regime pay for its expansive ideas.
Therefore let us fight together, and together mobilise for our freedom, in a world only too eager to see us free.
Call for Action
Our black workers have always understood that their super- exploitation, starvation wages, misery, the pass laws, racial discrimination and humiliation all derive from lack of political power. They have a history of struggle, not only as workers, but as oppressed people.
It is their sweat and labour that enable the enemy to operate a boundless military budget, maintain a gigantic civil administration, and secret police force, and in addition ensure a life of luxury for the white minority population. But their labour is like fuel energy to the economy of the oppressor regime; as such it is a mighty weapon in their hands. What is required is the massive organisation of the workers. They must rise and fight as one country-wide and united force for decent wages, for trade union rights, and for liberation.
Two hundred delegates, representing 186 million workers from different parts of the world, attending an international trade union conference in Geneva last year, pledged all-round and detailed support for the struggle of the oppressed workers in South Africa. Their courage has had an international impact. Once again we call the black workers to action.
Then there is our youth, equipped with a strong national consciousness and deeply devoted to the cause. They have a distinct role to play in the unification of our people for the final assault on the white minority rule. Their proper place is in the vanguard of the struggle, where militants and courageous fighters are to be found, with Umkhonto we Sizwe (The Spear of The Nation).
The time for our women to move into action in defence of their rights, their family life and the future of their children is now. Their record of struggle is unsurpassed.
Those who have suffered for long under apartheid, driven from area to area, watching their villages and homes bulldozed, groaning in misery in Dimbaza and similar death holes, tomorrow arrested under the pass laws - those who live from the cradle to the grave under a white government that boasts the worst form of racism in the world - those people cannot but commend the United Nations in its adoption of an international convention proclaiming apartheid a crime against humanity. We ask the Christian Council of South Africa and other organisations to declare its support for the liberation movement, which seeks to stop this monstrous crime against people who cannot make themselves white and would hate to be white in South Africa, anyway.
We could not on any occasion omit to pay tribute to the very high morale maintained by our colleagues in South African and Rhodesian prisons, under harsh conditions.
The imprisonment of people for unconscionably long periods of time, for nothing more than political offences, becomes an act of wanton persecution, where, as experience has shown, it changes neither the imprisoned nor the mass demand for human rights.
We commend our people on Robben Island and other prisons to the conscience of the world. They must be released.
Among them, somewhere in South Africa, is Flag Boshielo, a senior leader of the ANC, ambushed, wounded, captured and tortured severely by South African troops in the Caprivi Strip, and then shanghaied to South Africa. We demand the South African Government tell the world where he is, and produce him to the International Red Cross.