Statement in the United Nations Security Council, March 25, 1977
Let me first express my deep gratitude to the Council for the honour you have shown me and the movement I represent by giving me this opportunity to make a contribution to your important debate. I would like to express a special word of thanks to the African group in the United Nations - a group of States which plays an increasingly important role in the work of the world Organization.(1)
When the United Nations was founded thirty-two years ago, only four of its 51 original members were African. One of those was South Africa. Today the African group make up 48 out of the 147 members. Thus, the cause of Africa is also the cause of the United Nations.
On this occasion, I would also like to pay a tribute to the African States for having so persistently sought to work through this Organization in finding a solution to the problems of southern Africa. The United Nations was created as an instrument for peaceful settlement of conflicts. This is also the way you have chosen to work in order to seek a change in South Africa - through negotiations and by demanding support from the rest of the world.
South Africa is still a bastion of racism. But an increasing number of people are beginning to see the end of apartheid and colonialism and the beginning of freedom and human dignity for the oppressed majority.
At the last Congress of the Socialist International in Geneva in November of last year, the problems of southern Africa were at the centre of interest. The democratic socialists of the world made it clear, through a resolution, that "neutrality towards the existing and coming struggles in southern Africa is impossible. Between the exploiters and the exploited there is no middle ground. Action must be taken designed to end a system which is both evil in itself and a threat to peace."
This week, the people of South Africa have painfully been reminded of a tragic day - the massacre in Sharpeville. Sixteen years later came the events in Soweto. Both these atrocities against a defenceless population were logical consequences of the apartheid system. But there are important differences. During these sixteen years, we have witnessed an escalation of the violence of the ruling minority. But at the same time, the will and the ability of the majority to resist the oppression and to unite against the rulers have increased. A people`s longing for freedom can never be extinguished. The time of submission is over.
Yet the system prevails, maintained by force. Is it that those who are not directly affected simply cannot conceive what apartheid really is like, what it really means? Let me give a few examples of what apartheid means to the people, in human terms.
Take Soweto: We now know what really happened in June last year. The official documents and police reports give this picture. It all started in Soweto, but the protests spread to more than one hundred townships in the entire country. The immediate cause was the children`s protest against the compulsory study of Afrikaans in the schools. But behind there was the dissatisfaction of the black majority with social and economic conditions in towns like Soweto. The brutality of the police led to new demonstrations. According to police inspector Gerber in Soweto, more than 16,000 bullets were fired in Soweto alone from June 16 - when the protests started - to September 16. These bullets killed and wounded 1,611 persons, while another 1,229 were killed and wounded by "other causes."
According to Professor S.J. Taljaard, who examined 229 of the people killed in Soweto, two-thirds of these had died from bullet wounds. Eighty percent of those killed were shot in the back. A doctor at the Peninsula Maternity Hospital in Cape Town states that in his hospital alone seventy infants died from teargas poisoning.
Take the system of "mental prisoners": This very day, the World Health Organization is publishing a report on a chain of privately-owned institutions accommodating many thousands of mentally ill black Africans, detained against their will. They are being forced to work without any pay. These institutions, labelled "human warehouses" by a retired official, get the bulk of their "patients" - in reality "mental" or political prisoners - from South Africa`s Ministry of Health. The private firm, Smith Mitchell of Johannesburg, which operates this slave labour system on a profit-making basis and has done so for more than a decade, calls it "therapy". It earned 13.7 million dollars in 1973. Between 8,000 and 9,000 black mental patients are involved.
Testimonies, among others in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, claim that many Africans are arrested in the slums for having "stirred up trouble" and after a hasty examination, sentenced to be "imbalanced" and sent away to these institutions.
Take the torture and deaths in South Africa`s prisons: Many people have died due to "suicide" in the South African prisons. They have been held under the so-called security laws, which allow for incommunicado detention without charges for an indefinite period. The most absurd explanations have been given for these deaths. The police talk of hangings, slipping on a piece of soap or in a staircase, jumping out of a window, etc. The responsible Minister for the Police, Mr. Kruger, has given his explanation the prisoners committed suicide on instructions from the Communist Party. The Catholic bishops have protested against the widespread torture in the prisons, which is used against children as well as old age people. The authorities answer by preparing new laws against so-called terrorism - laws which in other countries would only be applied in times of war.
Such is apartheid: a weird dictatorship of the minority for social and economic exploitation. But it has also a unique feature. Apartheid is the only tyranny branding a person right from birth according to the colour of the skin. From the very moment of conception the child`s destiny is determined. A Swedish author has called this system "spiritual genocide".
Apartheid systematically dissolves family ties. It legalizes a cruel removal of populations. The whole black labour force is turned into migrant workers in their own country. A growing majority of both sexes is forbidden by law to live with their families outside the workless bantustans. Normal family life is increasingly a rarity. The children are, in the words of Colin Legum, becoming a neglected and starved generation, with no models of concern or caring, no loyalties, no self-esteem, no dependable relationships, no possible aspiration to responsible citizenship. They see their parents constantly humiliated. They have only known resentment, rejection and violence.
Outside South Africa we may feel that there is time to go step by step in the struggle against apartheid. But time is running out for the children of South Africa. The white minority should consider that those children are the people with whom they will have to negotiate one day. And those are the children whom we look forward to welcome in our midst as representatives of their people.
Mr. Ian Smith has said that Rhodesia and South Africa are agreed that they are both fighting to preserve the Western democracy that the white man brought to Africa. They are both hoping for external aid to fight for the interests of the so-called "free world". For us in Europe, with our colonial past, it is necessary to be crystal clear. We will never accept Smith`s and Vorster`s perversion of Western democracy. Their oppression and racism will never be included in a free world. They represent the very opposite of democracy. They are denying the peoples of Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa the most fundamental human and political rights - the same rights that the European labour movement was denied and that formed the basis of the original programmes of our liberation movements. Therefore, the workers of Europe historically are linked in solidarity with their oppressed brothers and sisters in Africa.
The resistance of the racist regimes raises the question of whether changes can be brought about only by violence or revolution, or whether there still is a peaceful way of eradicating the affront to human dignity known as colonialism, racism and apartheid. But it is easy to foresee that when people in search of peace and progress are met only by oppression and exploitation, they will ultimately resort to violence. The armed struggle becomes the last possible resort. Now, in Namibia and Zimbabwe, continued armed struggle seems to be unavoidable. How much armed pressure from the nationalists is necessary depends on how much unarmed pressure the Western Powers apply in the form of sanctions and the like, as President Julius Nyerere so well put it.
It is quite possible that white South Africa could have believed earlier that the policy of apartheid would succeed, if only they could buy a little more time and show a little more flexibility in some areas. But the architects of apartheid indeed built their plans on quicksand. Minority rule is coming to an end, and southern Africa is rapidly moving towards an uncertain climax. As the climax approaches and the struggle deepens, the risks of unnecessary violence and economic disruption increase, as well as the risk of the wrong kind of foreign intervention. As I have said before, the wrong kind of foreign intervention is the continued introduction of the rivalries of major Powers in the region. The right kind of foreign intervention is that which will support the liberation struggle and reduce the resistance of the forces which still cling to the ideas of maintaining white supremacy.
Last year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute - SIPRI - published extensive documentation of the risks of a steep escalation of the conflict in southern Africa, which may grow into the next major international battlefield.
The SIPRI study points to the risk of extensive foreign investments in South Africa helping to internationalize the conflict. The country`s raw material resources and its strategic position may furnish a pretext for further involvement on behalf of the white regime. At the same time, however, such involvement would encourage other Powers to become more active in the area. The same is true for Namibia. We are facing the twofold risk of a racial war and an escalated conflict between the foreign interests in this area. Thus the global consequences of the developments in southern Africa, South Africa`s threats and aggressions against her neighbours, the situation in South Africa created by apartheid - these three elements constitute a threat to international peace and security.
The liberation of the Africans will be their own work. And that liberation will inevitably come one day. But the international community can contribute to shorten the struggle and make it more peaceful, with less human suffering.
It goes without saying that the United Nations and its Security Council have a very particular and central responsibility. I sincerely hope that the United Nations, and your deliberations in this Council, will make a decisive contribution towards a just development in South Africa and towards the liberation of the entire southern Africa.
However, the actions taken in the United Nations, or the lack of such actions, cannot serve as an alibi for passivity on the national level. Each country and government, each popular movement, has its own responsibility and its own role to play.
Allow me then, in reply to your kind invitation, to mention some of the areas where such action could be taken.
First, we must work for a halt to all arms export to South Africa and all military cooperation with its government. The apparatus of oppression is strengthened by each new weapons delivery. The military cooperation gives the country the means to start its own manufacturing of arms in most important areas of weapon technology, may be also in the ultimate of weapons. Can you really condemn the policy of apartheid in the United Nations, while you at the same time send arms to those who are practising apartheid?
Let me also point out that the Chairman of the Special Committee against Apartheid, Ambassador Leslie O. Harriman, has recently referred to a substantial foreign involvement - direct or indirect - when it comes to supplying South Africa with rifles, helicopters, teargas and ammunition, which were used in the Soweto massacres. No African country or combination of African countries could be a military threat to South Africa. Yet South Africa is continued to be armed from abroad. What is the logic behind such a policy? South Africa`s continued refusal to heed the demands of the international community gives no alternative to a mandatory arms embargo.
Second, we must seriously deal with the question of investment and export of capital to South Africa and Namibia. I will elaborate on this vital point in a moment.
Third, we can give material and political support to the liberation movements and the already autonomous States in their struggle for national independence and economic emancipation. Governments could also easily increase their contributions to the United Nations Trust Fund for South Africa and the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa. These bodies need funds and are doing extremely useful work in the field of humanitarian and legal aid to the victims of apartheid.
The repeated acts of aggression against Zambia, Angola, Mozambique and Botswana must be condemned. If we are to be credible in our opposition to foreign involvement into African affairs, we must also put an end to the recruitment, training, transit and assembly of mercenaries on our own soil.
Fourth, our refusal to recognize the so-called independent bantustans - Transkei being the first one - should be followed up by opposition to the efforts of international companies to give unofficial recognition by massive investments in those areas.
Fifth, we should increase our efforts to bring an end to the illegal occupation of Namibia, refute sham arrangements, and support SWAPO without whose participation no realistic policy could be shaped. Namibia should have immediate independence and majority rule.
Sixth, parliaments could set up parliamentary committees to investigate the activities of those companies, which have subsidiaries in South Africa, for the purposes of ensuring that such companies are run along the lines of internationally acknowledged working practices. Where these are not adhered to, the company shall cease its activities entirely.
For a long period of time the South African government has been encouraging foreign investments in the country. Behind this policy there lies not just a desire to increase the economic resources of the country. Of no less importance is the fact that foreign investments create ties to a number of rich industrial nations which acquire an economic and political interest in the preservation of the apartheid system. The foreign companies benefit both from the country`s high technical standards and from the extremely low wages of the black labour force. The return on invested capital is high. In addition, the investments help the country`s flow of trade along, which in turn make South Africa`s trading partners more sensitive to disturbances in the South African economy. Riots in South Africa have repercussions on employment in other countries.
Since Angola and Mozambique have become independent States, South Africa`s isolation has increased. The country has no friends on the African continent other than the Smith regime in Salisbury.
In this position, South Africa has intensified her efforts to attract West European, American and Japanese capital. According to information from various sources, the Vorster Government is carrying on a broad international campaign to induce foreign capital to participate on favourable terms in the exploitation of natural resources, preferably in the Transkei and in Namibia.
There is a theory that economic development and foreign investments in the long run would help to loosen up the apartheid system. The idea is that the lack of trained manpower would force the government to let black labour into jobs which had previously been reserved for whites only. The foreign companies would also be able to set a good example in their relations to Coloured and black labourers. Reality has effectively contradicted this theory. The disparity of wages between black and white workers has for instance continued to widen. Leading black South Africans, supported by many years of experience, have categorically denied the claim that it is possible to achieve gradual development toward greater economic and social justice within the framework of the apartheid system. Both the ANC of South Africa and SWAPO of Namibia have urgently appealed to the international community to try to stop investments in South Africa and Namibia. There is a growing understanding for their demands. Their appeals are more and more being met by proposals for practical action.
In November 1976, at the Scandinavian Labour Congress - an association of all the Social Democratic parties and trade union organizations in Scandinavia - a resolution was adopted calling for a ban on new investments in South Africa and the adoption of a national plan of action in accordance with the recommendations of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). And at a conference on apartheid, the ICFTU has adopted recommendations which - among other things - call for a ban on all new investments in South Africa, including the replacement of machinery, repairs and maintenance. These proposals reflect a growing awareness among the trade unions of the treatment of black workers in South Africa - arrests, dismissals, job reservations, bans on trade union activities etc. They want to show their solidarity with their harassed and persecuted friends. And they realize that unjust and unfair labour policies in South Africa will in the long run harm also labour relations in the investors` home countries.
The Social Democratic Government in Sweden had for several years discouraged Swedish businesses from investing in South Africa. Last August, we proposed a sharpening of the attitude to Swedish investments in South Africa. At the same time, on a Scandinavian basis, the government took the initiative for a common action at the international level.
This policy has been continued.
Next week, the Swedish Parliament will debate a motion presented by the Social Democratic Party which asks for an immediate change in Sweden`s currency legislation in order to prohibit the export of capital to South Africa and Namibia. As a second step to guarantee the deceleration of Swedish financial interests in South Africa we urge the government to initiate discussions with the companies having subsidiaries in other countries investing in South Africa for the purpose of reaching an agreement on how restrictions on Swedish companies operating in those countries should be applied. If such an agreement cannot be reached, we will propose further legislative measures.
The reason for this increased pressure for unilateral action is not difficult to discern. We all feel that a dramatic change has taken place in the political situation in South Africa since the riots in Soweto last summer. The risk of racial war has drawn closer. The question of limiting or ending foreign economic interests in South Africa thus becomes not merely a political question about what could conceivably be done to put effective pressure on the South African Government. It also becomes a moral question for each government whether our companies - in our countries - should be allowed to take part in the exploitation of the black labour force. According to South African laws, the foreign companies have to apply the rules of apartheid at their places of work. They are thereby forced to place themselves on the side of the oppressors in the battle which is now about to enter a new and more serious stage. Therefore, in my opinion, the situation in South Africa has progressed to such a point that each country has to consider unilateral prohibitive measures.
It has been argued against a ban on investments in South Africa that this would hurt the mother companies in the Western world and lead to unemployment for the workers there. But in this case, it is important to note that the workers themselves have made their choice, through their international confederation. They have told their governments that they support a ban on investments in South Africa and are prepared to take the consequences. Now, the governments and the companies must take their responsibility. It is time to decide on which side we stand, what forces we want to support.
A ban on investments in South Africa can be really efficient only if it is part of an international action that has the support of those industrialized countries which have the largest economic interests in South African business and industry. It can be really efficient only if it has the wholehearted support of the world community. Therefore the Security Council must take the lead in such actions. This underlines the great importance of your deliberations and your decisions. It is of primary importance now to get a process started in common action.
Permit to conclude with one last reflection. The international debate has taken on a new dimension of moral commitment and involvement in the human and political rights of people. This reflects a concern for basic values - a concern for the fate of people, their plight and their suffering but also their hopes and dreams of a better future. It represents an element of vitality and humanity that is badly needed today.
There can hardly be a place where moral commitment is more eminently justified than in the case of South Africa. First, because apartheid is a unique and, in many ways, extreme form of human evil. Second, because we all know that the system cannot prevail for any long period of time without direct or indirect support from abroad. Third, the liberation of South Africa will primarily be the task of the Africans themselves. But we all know that the international community could make a decisive contribution if only the necessary political will is mobilized.
The Security Council of the United Nations should be the expression of a united political will. Therefore, the oppressed peoples look towards this Council with hope and expectation.
It is sometimes said that there is no higher moral than to preserve peace. Rightly so. But as long as there is apartheid and racism, there can be no peace.
(1) Mr. Palme was invited to make a statement during the discussion in the Security Council on the situation in South Africa, on the proposal of the African members of the Council.