SPEECH AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON "CHILDREN, REPRESSION AND THE LAW IN APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA", HARARE, SEPTEMBER 24, 1987⁽¹⁾

Mr Chairman, Rt. Rev. Archbishop Trevor Huddleston,

Comrade Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe, the Honourable Robert Mugabe,

Your Excellencies, members of the Diplomatic Corps,

Comrades leaders of the brother people of Zimbabwe,

Distinguished participants at this important conference,

Comrades, friends, ladies and gentlemen,

The Afrikaner poet, Ingrid Jonker, died in 1965 at the young age of 32. Consumed by a dark foreboding and overwhelmed by despair, she committed suicide as her creative intellect was coming to its ripening.

By her death, she joined herself to the children of our country about whom she had written. Her tragic passing was as powerful an indictment of the apartheid system as were these verses which she has left us:

The child is not dead

the child lifts his fists against his

mother

who shouts Africa! shouts the breath

of freedom and the veld

in the locations of the cordoned heart.

The child is not dead

not at Langa nor at Nyanga

nor at Orlando nor at Sharpeville

nor at the police post at Philippi

where he lies with a bullet through his

brain

The child is the dark shadow of the

soldiers on guard with their rifles,

saracens and batons

the child is present at all assemblies

and law-giving

the child peers through the windows of

houses and into the hearts of mother

this child who wanted only to play in

the sun at Nyanga is everywhere

the child grown to the man treks on

through all Africa

the child grown into a giant journeys

over the whole world without a pass

We share with Ingrid Jonker that noble vision of the child who wanted only to play in the sun, the child grown into a giant, journeying over the whole world, without a pass. We share with her the knowledge and confidence that the wanton massacre of the children at Langa and at Nyanga, at Orlando and at Sharpeville, at Soweto, Athlone, Maseru, Gaborone, Harare, Maputo and Kassinga, the knowledge that this succession of massacres will not deny us our journey over the whole world - free at last, at last free, the last to be free but free, at last.

What pain it must have been to her, who, an Afrikaner, saw these images of those who immolated the child who wanted only to play in the sun at Nyanga, and then told her that they murdered in order to protect her, her kind and her "civilisation". And what her torment to know that each extra day of her "way of life" costs the souls of many a black child.

And under that terrible order the children die, with bullets through their heads, welts on their bodies, hearts and brains stopped before they could attain maturity, because a person as ordinary as you and I, has inherited powers that go beyond all that is permissible in the conduct of relations among those we would all count as mortal.

Slaughter of Black Children

A criminal tyranny that has the audacity to call itself a civilisation lives on across the borders of this country. It survives because humanity, and principally ourselves, has not yet said that an extra day of apartheid is an extra day too long. It thrives because it can include within its body count the lives of children whom it describes as opponents that it has vanquished. It persists because without the death of innocents, it cannot be.

We meet here today because we want to discuss the unspeakable plight of the black children of South Africa. We meet because there is something that is happening to the hapless and the innocent that should not be allowed to happen. We meet because we recognise that our own lives have meaning only to the extent that they are used to create a social condition which will make the lives of the children happy, full and meaningful. We have gathered ourselves in Harare and on this particular occasion because we know that a grievous injustice is being done to all humanity.

And yet, strange as it might seem, there are some who are opposed to the fact that we meet here, for these purposes. These are convinced that our consultation is of the devil's own making. And yet they are the first to stand unabashed in front of the whole world, projecting themselves as the very representation of all that is good, upright and unconquerable.

Our century has witnessed some of the worst atrocities in all human history, perpetrated by people who considered themselves good... And once more the peoples have judged that those who uphold the apartheid system are committing a crime against humanity itself. And as this conference knows, at the core of this crime is the theory and practice of racism.

What more man-hating ideology can there be than this which defines black people as less than human! And could we expect any consequence from its practice other than the slaughter of black children! The predator feeds on human blood. That fact defines its being.

The endless rows of children's graves, ready prepared for the children whose death by disease and starvation is planned according to defined statistical regularities, marks the true essence of this system. The barefoot child - clothed in a sack that should carry produce - planting, hoeing, reaping is the alter ego of the white farmer who towers above the toddler with a whip in his hand. The orphan is no more than a precise statement that apartheid lives. The mangled remains of the black child who wanted only to play in the sun are the justification for the existence of the largest and most sophisticated machinery of repression that Africa has ever known. The apartheid predator feeds on human blood. That fact defines its being.

Let the Truth be Told

This terrible desolation defines for us what our struggle must be about. We cannot be true liberators unless the liberation we will achieve guarantees all children the rights to life, health, happiness and free development, respecting the individuality, inclinations and capabilities of each child. Our liberation would be untrue to itself if it did not, among its first tasks, attend to the welfare of the millions of children whose lives have been stunted and turned into a terrible misery by the violence of the apartheid system.

Moreover, our concern for the children, the inheritors of our future, cannot be postponed until the day we achieve our emancipation. That is why this Conference is being held. It should result in the greatest possible international mobilisation around the issue of the plight of the children of South Africa. The world needs to be informed about what is happening to these young lives. Let the truth be told in all its gruesome detail. Let all humanity see the true face of apartheid, mirrored as it is in the glazed and staring eyes of the children it is starving to death and in the sightless eyes of those it has murdered.

Let all those in the West who still treat with this regime as legitimate explain why they continue thus to aid and abet the commission of a crime against humanity. Let them stand accused as those who, by refusing to impose sanctions, extended a helping hand to the apartheid regime so that it could continue its campaign of terror against the children.

Act in Defence of Children

Inside our country, we, as well, have a responsibility to act now in defence of the children. There too, we must rip off the cloak of silence which the Pretoria regime tries to drape around its horrendous misdeeds. The democratic movement must, in its entirety, join the campaign to force the racist regime to take its blood stained hands off our people!

Other men and women of conscience must themselves join in this struggle because none can reckon themselves human and be unconcerned about what is happening to the young. We would expect that people of all faiths would feel moved by their own beliefs to say we too must be counted amongst those who stood up in defence of the children. Similarly, the Child Welfare Societies have an obligation to extend their own work and join the battle for the advancement and protection of the fundamental rights of the child. So too must the cultural workers, like Ingrid Jonker, use their talents in pursuit of the common goal.

Manoeuvres of the Regime

Of late, the Pretoria regime has been involved in a wide-ranging propaganda campaign whose aim is to give racial tyranny a new face and thus to divert attention away from the ugly reality of the continuing system of apartheid. That ugly reality includes the unrelenting persecution of the children, the murder of activists by secret murder squads, ongoing and planned illegal trials of the people's army, Umkhonto we Sizwe. It is represented by the continuing state of emergency, the execution of patriots and some of them in secret, the attempt to force the so-called independence on the people of the KwaNdebele bantustan, aggression against the Frontline States, plots to assassinate leaders of the ANC, and so on.

To hide this reality and to shift the focus of our offensive away from the objective of our advance towards people's power, through struggle, the racist regime has been making all manner of noises about the issue of negotiations. At the same time, it hopes to give sufficient grounds for its international allies to be able to claim that the basis for negotiations exists and thus to try to undermine and destroy the campaign for sanctions. The fact of the matter is that the Botha regime is not interested in any genuine negotiation that would lead to the transfer of power to the people through a system of one person one vote in a united, democratic and nonracial South Africa. Its preoccupation is to manoeuvre in defence of the apartheid system.

The proposal to establish a so-called National Statutory Council reflects this preoccupation. Of fundamental importance to the conflict in our country is the reality that the regime that holds power over our people has neither political nor moral legitimacy. It is the result, the expression and continuation of a racist and colonial legacy which decreed that a white settler minority should govern, while the black indigenous majority must be consigned to the status of the governed.

In all our history under racist rule, the reality has been that though we were defeated, we have never been conquered. We had to live with the fact of white minority domination but have never accepted that it is a condition to which we must succumb. That is why the ANC was formed 75 years ago, and that is why our people have sustained the struggle over all these decades.

It cannot be that at this late hour we would accept some creature of the apartheid parliament, given to us as a mechanism for negotiation, created by the same illegitimate institutions to which we are opposed, and subject to summary dismissal by the same institutions.

It is in any case to add insult to injury to suggest that we who have opposed any elections based on race should now accept an electoral process based on race. To imagine that we can be convened and presided over by the marshalls of the racist hordes, to discuss the abolition of a racial tyranny imposed and maintained by the same marshalls, beats all understanding.

The contending forces in our country are as clearly defined as they were with regard to this country when a new constitution was negotiated and agreed in 1909. On one side, there are the forces, both black and white, which represent the democratic and nonracial perspective. These have, themselves and on their own, recognised the leading role of the ANC. On the other side are those of apartheid racism and reaction, grouped around the ruling fascist party, including its black puppets.

Once more, the Pretoria regime is playing politics with an issue which is of principal concern to all our people, the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners. We would like to take advantage of this opportunity to reiterate this demand and to urge all opponents of racism both inside and outside our country further to step up the campaign for the release of all our leaders and activists who are imprisoned and detained and for an end to all trials of those whose only offence has been to join the struggle for a democratic South Africa.

Intentisy the Offensive

So must we also intensify the campaign to save the lives of the tens of activists who have been sentenced to death by the apartheid courts. Already some of these have been hanged and some of them in secret. We must not by our silence and inactivity become unwitting collaborators with the apartheid regime in the commission of judicial murders of men and women who are heroes and heroines of our struggle and of our people. Indeed we could pose the question - how can there be a climate conducive to negotiations when these patriots face and are objects of execution?

Rumours put out by the Pretoria regime that some of its members have been in contact with the ANC are complete falsehoods without any foundation whatsoever. When and if the time comes that the apartheid regime feels compelled to talk to the ANC, it will have to come to us openly and not in secret. We who represent the majority of the people of our country, the victims of the apartheid system, would have to ensure that these masses know what the racists are saying and ensure that these millions participate in any activities designed to shape their destiny. Our very convictions dictate that we enable this democratic process to take place.

South Africa must be transformed into a united, democratic and nonracial entity and a force for peace and progress in our region and our continent. That will only come about through struggle carried out in our country and supported by the world community. The Botha regime is not a force for change but the principal obstacle to fundamental change. Our strategic objective must therefore continue to be to intensify our offensive, to defeat this regime and to ensure the transfer of power to the people. The unity of all democratic and anti-racist forces both within our country and internationally is fundamental to the victory we all seek. Consequently, we all have a common obligation to guard that unity like the apple of our eye.

We are meeting here to discuss the situation of children in apartheid South Africa. As we discuss this issue, we should not forget the similar plight of children in Namibia who, in addition, are forcibly recruited into the army of occupation, corrupted into joining the various terror gangs and forced to serve as prostitutes to satisfy the animal needs of the army of terror.

Neither should we, overwhelmed by the harrowing stories that describe the abuse of children in South Africa, ignore the plight of millions of children throughout southern Africa who are also dying in unimaginable numbers, thanks to the criminal campaign of destabilisation and aggression carried out by the Pretoria regime and its surrogate puppet groups.

All this knowledge should spur us both to act in defence of the children and to intensify the general offensive against the racist system whose evil deeds made this Conference necessary. In this regard, we have the unquestionable obligation to escalate our political and military assault against the apartheid system. Equally we need to press on with even greater vigour for the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions against racist South Africa.

Victory is not Far

We join in welcoming you all to this important Conference and are certain that our deliberations will do much to widen the front of struggle against the apartheid crime against humanity. We would like also to thank our dear brother, comrade-in-arms and leader, Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, for joining us this morning and for his inspiring call to battle, from one who everyday is, like us, faced with the counteroffensive of the apartheid regime.

To our old friend and fellow-combatant, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, we say thank you very much for taking this important initiative. In you, the children of our country have always found a protector and a second parent. In their name, we wish you good health, being certain that the victory of the cause to which you have dedicated your life is not far.

Finally, let me extend a special word of welcome to Lisbet Palme who has also interrupted a busy schedule in order to be with us. Thank you for your care and consent. Your commitment gives us enormous strength to fight on, whatever the difficulties.

Thank you.

1. ¹ From: Tambo papers

The Conference was convened by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston in view of the massive repression against children in South Africa and the detention of a large number of children.