Comrade Chairman,
We bring to this Conference the greetings of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress and its members, its allies and the mass of the people of South Africa. We especially greet the Conference on behalf of the militants of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
We salute Comrade President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, President of the MPLA-Workers' Party, President of the People's Republic of Angola. We also salute MPLA-Workers' Party, the women, workers, peasants and the youth of Angola, especially the dynamic Angolan Pioneers.
Our presence in Luanda coincides with a sad moment in the life of the Angolan people. We wish to express the condolences of the ANC on the passing away of Mother Maria da Silva Neto, mother of the illustrious son of Angola - the late Comrade President Antonio Agostinho Neto, mother of the Angolan nation, our mother.
Comrade Chairman, I wish to take this opportunity to greet in his absence, our brother and colleague, the great leader of the Palestinian people - President Yasser Arafat of the PLO.
Comrade Chairman, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates,
During the preparation of this Conference, the International Preparatory Committee observed that the Luanda Afro-Arab Conference "will constitute a historic landmark". The African National Congress is in full accord with this assessment and will accordingly, through its delegation to the Conference and in unity with the distinguished representatives gathered here, seek to contribute as best as it can to the accomplishment of our common objectives.
We feel that we owe it to the heroic masses of the People's Republic of Angola, to the MPLA-Workers' Party and to the Government of this embattled Republic to thank them for allowing us to hold our Conference in Luanda, above all, to thank them by ensuring that we do in fact achieve the mission which we gave ourselves when we set about organising this Conference.
The sense of obligation is especially emphasised by the knowledge that even as we are speaking here, the Angolan armed forces and the people of this country are shedding their blood and laying down their lives to defend the right of Angola to be and remain a people's republic, sovereign, independent and committed to the construction of a social system which serves the interests of the people and not those of the transnational corporations, the warmongers, the colonialists and the racists, the vampires of imperial banditry.
In a direct sense, therefore, the sentinels who stand guard around the Conference, defending the right of progressive humanity to meet in Luanda, are the entire people of this country. The message that must go to them out of this Conference at the close of our gathering must surely be that the forces standing guard over this homeland of democratic mankind have increased a million-fold thanks to the Angolan people having given the possibility to the Arab and African peoples to meet here to plan for the defence and advancement of everything for which the Angolan people are today laying down their lives.
Our Conference could not have come at a more opportune moment. The need has never been greater than it is today for the progressive forces of the Afro-Arab world to launch a united counteroffensive to beat back the offensive that world imperialism, and especially the United States, has launched to turn our countries and peoples into vassals.
The imperialists see in our countries a rich prize which, in bounding arrogance, they are convinced belongs to them. They have argued themselves into the belief that this prize is like a ripe plum ready for them to pluck into their watering mouths. The forces of reaction, therefore, think now is the time to act - and they are acting with rare determination and pitiless savagery.
Our countries are pregnant with huge reserves of important natural resources. They have a vast potential for agricultural production. They are washed by oceans teeming with nutritious marine life and harbouring yet more natural resources. They have large human resources comprising our peoples who have a great respect for the necessity and dignity of labour. It is these human and material resources that world imperialism seeks to seize and exploit for its benefit.
The Afro-Arab world also looms large in the global military posture of the world imperialist system. The generals in the Pentagon and in the aggressive NATO alliance believe that they can and must use our countries to gain and maintain a military stranglehold over the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic. They seek to use this military superiority both to ensure imperialist control of our countries and to encircle the world socialist system, especially the Soviet Union.
In the face of the determined opposition of the forces of reaction and contrary to the plans, schemes and strategies of these forces, the Afro-Arab world has, in our times, made an invaluable contribution to the universal struggle for the liberation of man, for the renewal of the world order in favour of independence, democracy, social progress and peace. By their efforts and their sacrifices our peoples have played and are playing a key role in banishing the age of darkness which imperialist domination had imposed on so many millions of people.
Quite clearly, the urge towards progressive change affects not only the Afro-Arab world but also other continents, including Europe itself, Asia and Latin America, where the thrust of the imperialist offensive is currently directed against such countries and peoples as Cuba, Grenada, Nicaragua and the democratic forces in El Salvador. It is in this context that international imperialism decided to go all-out in a bid to regain its positions - a policy which today has turned the combined land mass of Africa and the Middle East into a strategically central battlefield in the worldwide struggle between the two irreconcilable forces - the one of progress and the other of reaction.
Imperialism is pursuing a multi-faceted but integrated strategy for the realisation of its goals in the Arab and African countries. At the heart of this strategy are three key objectives. The first of these aims at the strengthening of the forces of reaction in the zone comprising Africa and the Middle East, these being Zionist Israel and apartheid South Africa.
The second is the deployment in the zone of the largest possible military force and war materials of the United States. The anti-popular Reagan Administration further seeks to drag its political and military allies inside and outside NATO into participation in its criminal adventures in our zone.
Thirdly, the enemy's strategy aims at the destabilisation and destruction of all progressive governments in our zone and their replacement with puppet regimes. The overall objective is to turn all Arab and African countries into client States, apparently sovereign but in fact helpless dependencies of the imperialist world. An important element in this third enemy objective is of course the defeat of the liberation movements fighting for the emancipation of Palestine, Western Sahara, Namibia and South Africa, namely, the PLO, the POLISARIO Front, SWAPO and the ANC.
The Reagan Administration is playing out a gigantic and dangerous confidence trick involving both southern Africa and the Middle East. In southern Africa the United States Government pretends that it is keenly interested to secure as quickly as possible the genuine independence of Namibia.
To achieve this objective it argues that it must gain the confidence of the Pretoria regime. In preparation for the implementation of a programme of active all-round support for this regime by the United States, Reagan startled the world by proclaiming that apartheid South Africa was an ally of the United States of long standing and that there existed between the two countries a coincidence of strategic interests and concerns. Accordingly, and to give just one example, the United States has decided to resume cooperation with Pretoria in the enrichment of uranium to expedite apartheid South Africa's nuclear programme.
The United States is using its supposed search for a just solution of the Namibia problem as a screen to cover its real objective of strengthening its strategic alliance with the colonisers of Namibia. With the practised skill of a crooked business speculator, the Reagan Administration offers the world the promise of an independent Namibia in the indeterminate future and demands that the international community must in exchange tolerate and approve its immediate normalisation of relations with, and all-round reinforcement of, the apartheid regime.
In the Middle East, the Reagan regime pretends to be interested in the evacuation by Zionist Israel of occupied Arab lands and the settlement of the Palestinian question - the heart of the problems of this zone. But in fact, as was demonstrated only a few days ago with the signing of new agreements in the United States, further tightening the military alliance between Tel Aviv and Washington, the Reagan Administration poses as a peace maker in order to gain better possibilities to raise the aggressive capacity of the warmonger in the Middle East, the Zionist State of Israel.
To the south of our zone, the Reagan Administration seeks to ensure that its ally, the apartheid regime, is strong and capable of fulfilling the shared objectives of the aggressive Washington-Pretoria axis. To the north of our zone, exactly the same holds true with regard to Israel. Further to consolidate these aggressive strong points, Pretoria and Tel Aviv maintain close relations and cooperate on a wide spectrum of issues.
As is well known, certainly to the distinguished delegates gathered at this Conference, this cooperation includes the production of nuclear weapons, military subversion, intelligence gathering, investment, trade and so on.
In between these terminal points, namely Israel and South Africa, the Reagan Administration is going all out to strengthen its relations with all reactionary forces that it can find among the Arab and African peoples and, without openly forming military pacts as the United States did immediately after World War II and in the fifties, in fact seeks to ensure that the Afro-Arab zone is bisected by a string of military allies of the United States, stretching from Israel in the north, through the Arab world and the African continent, to South Africa in the south.
To strengthen this military agglomeration, the United States continuously circles the Afro-Arab zone with large numbers of naval forces which are also capable of large air operations. It also has land-based forces in such areas as the island of Diego Garcia in the south and Oman in the north, while it enjoys access to military facilities elsewhere in our zone.
The United States also has the so-called rapid deployment forces which only recently - to the eternal shame of those who allow this force of aggression to step on African soil - carried out military manoeuvres in the Arab and African lands to perfect its operational capacity. Washington, as we all know, is currently marshalling together an international military force which, under United States command, will be placed in the Sinai. This force can only serve as a dagger aimed at the heart of the Arab nation.
World imperialism knows that the most consistent and unyielding opponents of its schemes to impose its hegemony over the Arab and African peoples are the progressive States and the liberation movements of our zone. In the enemy's calculation, it cannot succeed in its aims until it has liquidated the African and Arab progressive governments and liberation movements.
Hence we see today the desperate efforts to wipe out of existence the People's Republic of Angola and similar actions against other independent States of southern Africa including Mozambique, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The imperialist enemy of the African and Arab peoples is accordingly training and deploying puppet groups such as the UNITA bandits in this country and the so-called Mozambican Resistance Movement in Mozambique to assist in carrying out the enemy's schemes. The recent criminal invasion of the Seychelles by murder squads of the Pretoria regime also had the aim to overthrow the progressive Government of President Albert Rene, to install puppets and to transform the Seychelles into a base of aggression against independent Africa.
The repudiation in practice by the Reagan Administration of United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 dealing with Namibia question, as well as related efforts by the Pretoria regime, acting with the support of Washington and other imperialist countries, physically to annihilate SWAPO and the ANC, represent also part of the enemy's effort to remove the progressive forces which bar his path to the success he wishes to achieve.
To the north, the enemy is also seeking to liquidate the Palestinian people and their sole and authentic representative, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. The United States continues, without letting up, to encourage and aid the illegal occupation of Western Sahara by an African coloniser, and gives to this coloniser the means to pursue the illusory objective of destroying the POLISARIO Front and to ensure that, for the future, this strategic corner of Africa fits into the plans of world imperialism as a base of aggression. The recent and continuing provocations against the Arab Libyan Jamahariya mark only a phase in an offensive which it is clear, will intensify as the forces of reaction, led by the Reagan Administration, seek to impose their own hirelings on the Libyan people.
Our reply to the enemy's offensive must and can only be to struggle, attack and counterattack. The people of South Africa, recognising the urgent need to liberate themselves and to destroy the forward post of imperialist aggression on the African continent, namely apartheid South Africa, are engaged exactly in that process - struggle, attack and counterattack.
The much-vaunted aim of the racist Pretoria regime to maintain so-called peace and stability within South Africa, a euphemism describing the desire of the apartheid regime to wipe out the South African liberation movement and turn our people into a docile and pliant herd - that aim, it has been admitted by the enemy himself, is impossible to accomplish.
It is impossible to achieve because practically, every day and everywhere, throughout, our people are in revolt. Through mass action and military combat we are bringing closer to its realisation the noble objective of the transfer of power to the people of South Africa. No amount of resistance on the part of the enemy, whatever the intensity of the violence of that resistance, can save the racist tyrants from defeat.
In a month's time, on the 8th of January, 1982, the people of South Africa and our friends and allies throughout the world will be observing the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the African National Congress.
For our people, the 70th anniversary of the ANC will provide an occasion when they will seek to act in unity, to assert in a trial of strength the reality of the power of the people, making it increasingly difficult for the apartheid regime to continue exercising its illegitimate control over our country.
During what will prove to be a decisive phase in the struggle to liberate South Africa, depending on what we are able to do, we shall base ourselves on the collective strength and experience accumulated over seven decades and rely for our rear base on the liberated areas of Africa, Arabia and the rest of the world - themselves freed during these decades.
It is a happy coincidence that this historic moment in our march to liberation is preceded so immediately by this equally historic Afro-Arab Conference. We are convinced that we shall come out of this Conference with a properly and seriously conceived programme of united action, this time not restricted to the narrow confines of our country and the apartheid issue, but embracing the great questions of our age that are a challenge to our peoples from the Cape of Good Hope to the Euphrates.
The African and Arab peoples are confronted with the same problems and the same enemy. The guns used to enslave the peoples of Palestine, Sahara, Namibia and South Africa are from the same source. The crazed assassins who go on murderous rampages in the south of the Lebanon and the south of Angola are the product of the same teacher and the same school. The corporations that plunder our resources feed the same hand.
Our destinies lie together. However difficult it may be, the Conference has the responsibility to ensure that in future when the people of Palestine are under attack, those of South Africa do not stand idly by; when the Angolan people are being massacred, those of Syria do not feel that the issue is too far and of no relevance to them; we must ensure that whenever the enemy attacks he will meet our united wrath. And what formidable united strength resides in the hands of the hundreds of millions of African and Arab peoples represented at this historic conference!
By the very act of our coming together in this heroic city of principled revolutionary struggle, we have dealt a mighty blow against the cunning imperialist policy which has sought to divide the Arab from the African, seeking to convince us that the interests of the one are inimical to those of the other; that this was the case yesterday, that it is so today and will be tomorrow. We have today joined hands as fellow fighters in the same forward trench in the struggle against imperialism. We must guard and nurture that unity because for our suffering peoples it contains the living hope for a future of peace, prosperity and friendship among the peoples.
We salute the distinguished delegates to the Luanda Afro-Arab Conference. We greet especially our brothers and sisters and comrades-in-arms of the PLO, FRETILIN, the POLISARIO Front and SWAPO. In the interests of one common future, we wish the Conference success in its work.
A Luta Continua! 1 From: Sechaba, February 1982; also in ICSA Bulletin, London, February 1982