SPEECH TO THE FOREIGN POLICY ASSOCIATION AND THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, JANUARY 22, 1987⁽¹⁾

Mr. Albright, President of the Foreign Policy Association,

Reverend Randolph Nugent, President of the African-American Institute,

Ladies and gentlemen,

We once again have occasion this afternoon to express the deep appreciation of the African National Congress and the people of South Africa for an important stratum of the American public.

We have been to the United States before. We have addressed gatherings, never so large as those we witnessed last night and this morning. We believe wherever we go the Americans will be gathering around us to hear what we have to say about the situation in which they have taken so much interest. We are encouraged by this.

Indeed, in our corner of the world, southern Africa, we have come to feel the pleasure of the American public growing increasingly on our side in the confrontation between democracy and injustice. We have been aware of the mighty voice that has come from the campuses, from the factory floor, from religious congregations, from politicians and intelligentsia - a voice that has been heard with growing clarity by our people in South Africa and by the Namibian people with whom we share the burden and the task of having to remove from the face of the world the crime against humanity which is known as apartheid.

My first duty, therefore, on behalf of the African National Congress, on behalf of all its leadership, on behalf, too, of Nelson Mandela and others who languish in jail with him, certainly on behalf of the victims of the apartheid system - my first duty is to acknowledge your support, to thank you for that support, and to say that it is support which is not being given and has not been given in vain.

For, as I shall demonstrate, things are beginning to be different, and they certainly will never be the same again. When we were here last time, the question of sanctions was the centre of intensive debate among the American people. We urged then, at meetings we held, that the contribution which America can make to great effect on the southern African scene would be to break its alliance with racism, to abandon constructive engagement which we regarded as an unmitigated disaster for the people of southern Africa.

Appreciation for Sanctions

We urged that the weapon which the United States could use against apartheid with telling effect was comprehensive sanctions. We believe we owe it to the American people in general, and to their representatives in Congress, that the United States has taken the unprecedented and leading step of enforcing a fairly impressive selection of sanctions against South Africa.

It is not a common feature of American practice that Congress overrules its President. But it was in the interest of the world community that Congress went ahead. We are grateful for this. It is true Congress did not go far enough, and therefore the fight is still on. But I must take this opportunity to congratulate all those who pressed this nation, as part of their participation in an issue that involves the whole of mankind, for action that was in support of the victimised, in support of the denied.

We have had much to complain about the foreign policy of the United States as it affects southern Africa, and we thought at the base of the mistake that was being made was that that policy was predicated on the supremacy of the United States, on its being a world power which, therefore, somehow knows what is good for everybody else, which could listen to Nyerere, Kaunda, Mugabe, Samora, and dismiss it on the grounds that the United States knew better what was good for the people of southern Africa.

We think that approach must be wrong as a basis for foreign policy. While we concede that foreign policy must be based to some extent on the interests of the country, we think the interests of those whom it affects are at least of equal interest.

It is therefore significant that we can come to the United States and say "Thank you" for this expression of foreign policy which enabled you to take a decision in response to an appeal which the suffering people of South Africa have been making to this country. What is needed now is to build on this approach.

We believe that the stated intention of the United States to get to know what the people of South Africa want and do not want is the beginning of a correct approach provided that some respect, some consideration will be given in the formulation of policy to what we want and what we say. But we must warn against a tendency to ignore reality because you do not like it.

The South Africa we Envisage

I think our common objective is surely, and it must be the wish of all Americans, to have in South Africa a people who could live together as fellow South Africans in much the same way that the American people, in terms of their constitution and law, live, work, strive together as fellow Americans. This is what is uppermost in the policies of the African National Congress.

And if against the backdrop of a disastrous policy like apartheid which divides people, which sets people against one another on the basis of race and colour, a policy which requires violence to maintain itself in place, a policy which is essentially anti-human and must be resisted by human nature itself - if against the backdrop of that policy the ANC says we want the people of South Africa, black and white, people of all creeds, people of all shades of opinion, we want, in the first instance, to move away from the definition of humanity in terms of race and ethnicity and therefore to build a nonracial society in which people are not conscious of the colour of their own skin, let alone the colour of anybody else's skin, a country in which we shall all be Africans because we are in Africa, we were born in Africa, where it will matter nothing that more than three hundred years ago our ancestors came from Europe.

That is part of the solution that the African National Congress is offering. Who would want to object to that?

We want something else. Some of us have read and reread the American Declaration of Independence, and to us it says all the right things, including where it refers to the right of people to overthrow a government that is not operating in their interests. We have a government that is not only operating not in our interests, but against our interests, to our destruction, to our dehumanisation. In place of that, the African National Congress says: Let us have a democratic South Africa. And our concept of democracy is colour-blind, it is nonracial, it is a democracy which involves participation by South Africans in the running and in the affairs of their country.

We don't seek democracy in colour terms, in race terms. To do so is to look at South African society through the eyes of apartheid, and to continue along the path of apartheid.

Here, again, who would object to democracy? We heard the word "democracy" from European nations. Those of our people in South Africa whose ancestors originally came from European nations should be the advocates of democracy.

We go further. We realise that apartheid has divided and subdivided our people into numerous so-called minorities, minorities artificially created for the purposes of the apartheid system, the country fragmented so as to house each ethnic group, each racial group, in separate compartments - at any rate, as far as blacks are concerned.

The African National Congress calls for a united South Africa: one people, one country, one government, however that government might decide to devolve its political power, but one government which derives its mandate and its authority from the governed. These are the principal components of the South Africa we envisage.

There is a further component which has given pause to those who relate to economic problems. So in our proposition as to what South Africa should look like, we do address the question of the economy too. And our starting point is what any economy should serve: the people. An economy should be so handled that the wealth is equitably distributed. Under apartheid and under the existing system, there is no distribution of wealth, experts have said. What there is is abject poverty affecting millions of people in the midst of that wealth.

It is a glaring injustice which must be redressed, and so the ANC says we must do something about that. It is common cause, I think, and certainly common knowledge that the ANC has had debates with leading South African businessmen on this question. We believe they benefited from those debates, as we did from what they had to contribute. And here, again, this is fundamental to the ways the ANC sees the future.

Let us, as fellow countrymen, discuss our problems together. This is what happened when we met Gavin Reilly, the head of Anglo-American. We met as brothers from the same country, separated by circumstance, but otherwise fellow countrymen, and we discussed the problems of our country, and how we saw the future. And we were happy at the end of that meeting. We all assessed it as having been most useful. It gave us a sense of what it is to be human as distinct from being colour conscious, as distinct from suffering from a sense of racial superiority, and so we will continue to debate these things.

We have been saying we shall nationalise, and people get alarmed if we say we will nationalise some of the industries. Some of the major industries in South Africa are owned by the State. There is a very high level of nationalisation, so we are saying nothing new. But that nationalisation must relate to the formation of a new society in which we seek to banish poverty, ignorance and disease.

As the result of this policy which the ANC has held before the people of South Africa, now for more than thirty years, proclaimed and elaborated in our Freedom Charter, we have won considerable support in the country. It is less support for the ANC as an organisation than for the objectives which the ANC puts forth as the solution to the South African problem. Our people are supporting the goals which we say will, if attained, bring peace and harmony to the people of South Africa and to the people of the region.

We know of no alternative answer. None has been proffered to the question of apartheid. Therefore, I believe it is true that the support of the ANC inside the country is massive. The Eminent Persons Group, in their report, said that wherever they went, and they went just about everywhere, the people supported the ANC. It was their experience, not their assessment.

Why do I elaborate this aspect of the South African problem? Because I would like to suggest that there may be a lack of realism in an approach to the South African problem which underplays the place and role of the ANC in that situation. It could be a mistake, but the ANC, of course, is not the only organisation. It is one among many.

And sometimes the impression is gained by the large variety of different voices that the black people are disunited. It is different voices, each one as powerful as the next one, but what that voice represents in practice is something very small. But it is an audible voice.

Some of the people who don't agree with the ANC - and we don't say they should - think it is wrong to say South Africa belongs to all who live in it, as the ANC says. They claim it should be an important statement of policy that South Africa belongs to black people; therefore the whites must find a place somewhere else. We don't think that that is a realistic line to take.

Those we call whites are there to stay. We can't ask them to go back to Holland or to become boat people. They belong. But even so, we are prepared to differ. We only say our common task is surely to rid mankind of the scourge of apartheid. And what do we put in its place?

I think it is a mistake to encourage small groupings to behave as if they represented anything when they don't. I think it is a mistake to go to South Africa and look at everyone who said everything different and regard that as a point of view to be respected. The test, the ultimate test, is: What do we want to put in the place of apartheid? We are all agreed about its destruction. What do we want to put in its place?

Apartheid Regime is the Problem

You either agree or disagree with what the ANC says. If you agree with it, then support it and encourage it. But we are not getting that support because those who are in power do not want that kind of solution. They are devoted to apartheid and to racism. They are committed to it. Therefore, they must resist movement towards a nonracial democratic South Africa with everything at their disposal. And one of the methods they have found is that of sticking labels on the ANC, to pretend that the ANC does not mean what it says.

The ANC has been saying it in terms of the Freedom Charter for thirty-one years now. Very true. It has not changed. But somehow it must be labelled so that there should be a movement away from the ANC and its policies. Their solution is a vigorous campaign against white people making any contacts with the ANC at this time. Because at this time in South Africa, there is a search for a way out of apartheid.

The great question in South Africa today is not whether apartheid should go or should not go. The great question is: What takes its place? And our poor white compatriots are put inside a kraal, pressed into a laager, and bombarded with propaganda against the ANC. "Don't go anywhere near them. They are dangerous. They are terrorists." Some people think it is correct to find out what your enemy has to say, to find out what is so dangerous, therefore, about the ANC. What does the real answer really say? Talking about the answer, what does it say?

The white people in South Africa are not allowed to know, and we suspect that this is because if they did know, they would abandon Botha. That is not true of the United States. We think that is why the people of the United States have come to understand. It is true that they are not entirely free from propaganda that emanates from Pretoria, but we believe the truth will overcome.

Let me therefore say that we know where we are getting to. What remains to be defined is the precise steps by which we bring about a nonracial democratic society. How do we do that?

The ANC is fighting with everything at its disposal. And it doesn't have everything. Our people are fighting with everything at their disposal, including their lives, and their lives are short-lived. There is a crisis in the country: there is a state of emergency; there is death every day. How do we get out of this and bring about peace under a nonracial democratic society?

One solution, a solution which commends itself to the reasonable person, is where those who differ and are in conflict sit around a round table, or even a rectangular one, and discuss how to get out of this situation. If we are agreed about getting out of apartheid and bringing about a nonracial democratic, united South Africa as the alternative, why do we not sit down and discuss the modalities? Negotiations have been mentioned. So many people have urged negotiations. So many people in South Africa have called upon the Botha regime to talk to the ANC. Sir Geoffrey Howe has called upon the regime to talk to the ANC. He has certainly said, "It is not possible to have negotiations without the ANC. Why are we not having negotiations? We have had negotiations to end situations of conflict."

In South Africa, the problem is not with the ANC; it is not correct to say the ANC must abandon its violence so that there can be negotiations. It would be more correct to say that both parties must declare a cease-fire. If it is essential - because history does not say it is essential; even our own history, the history of our own times - but if it were essential, we would say: Well, of course, it is reciprocal, and we are going to discuss what we do need to discuss: how to get out of this situation.

But if it was reciprocal, the violence we are concerned about is not the violence of the police in the streets because that violence has a deeper cause in the violence of the apartheid system. You can't have an apartheid system which humanity opposes and resists and not use violence to suppress humanity, so violence belongs to the apartheid system. If that can be stopped, it would mean stopping the apartheid system itself, and we have no problems. But we refuse to be disarmed in the face of rocketing violence by the apartheid regime.

And does Botha want negotiations? No. If he did, he will be pleased to hear that the group of Afrikaner intellectuals from Pretoria University and the Rand Afrikaans University want to come to Lusaka to discuss constitutional questions with the ANC. He will be very pleased. But only recently he put his foot down and stopped those professors from coming to have discussions with the ANC. Ministers of religion have wanted to come, to find out about this communism of the ANC - in any case, what the ANC has in store for the religious community and for the future of the country. They were not allowed to. They have to find secret ways of doing it.

Students, Afrikaans students, want to come and share with the ANC the future of the country, their vision of the future of the country. They are forbidden to do so.

Need for More Pressure

Who wants negotiations? Not Botha. So that's where you have the problem, and we say the way out of this is not to plead with Botha. The United Nations has been pleading with Botha since 1946, with Botha and his predecessors. The United States has pleaded with Botha, we hope, with some seriousness, to no avail. The time demands pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure, and more pressure. There is a point beyond which apartheid cannot stand the level of pressures imposed on the system by the struggle of the masses and the action of the international community. And that is where we see a way forward: in more pressures.

Resistance and bombast are all right, but reality can dictate sense to those who resist reason. And the reality of sanctions and the isolation of South Africa, the positive and determined action of the international community, will insure us progress out of this impasse. In the meantime, we, the oppressed, we, the victims of massacres, have no alternative but to fight off this crime against ourselves until it is terminated in our land.

Thank you very much. (Applause)

Unity in the Struggle

MR. ALBRIGHT (Chairman): Thank you, Mr. President.

Having presided over a number of these luncheons, I can say I have more questions in front of me than I have ever had at any luncheon that I have presided over, which I think is a reflection, not only of a great deal of curiosity, but indeed a hunger for information about what you and the ANC represent in terms of future developments in Africa...

One of the questions, in fact, there are a number on this score, is deep concern over what seems to be a fragmentation of the blacks in South Africa - to be sure, in many cases I think the fragmentation being promoted and encouraged by the national government - but the fact is there does not seem to be at the moment a very clear collaborating constituency among the blacks. Some divisions, in fact, between the Inkatha and the ANC, between AZAPO and the ANC. How do you see some kind of greater degree of coordination and collaboration occurring among the blacks, and particularly among these major divisions that exist at the moment?

And specifically, a number of people wanted to know about your relations, of course, with Chief Buthelezi.

DR. TAMBO: Thanks.

The division between the ANC and AZAPO does not express itself in conflict. It is a different political position. We encouraged the formation of AZAPO. We knew it didn't agree with everything the ANC said. We didn't regard it as a manifestation of disunity that they had some differences with the ANC. But we knew they were oriented against the apartheid system. That was sufficient for us to welcome and support AZAPO, and we do.

UDF was formed. It did not have a policy that coincided in every respect with that of the ANC, but it was formed to oppose the apartheid system. We encouraged that. There have been conflicts reported between AZAPO and the UDF. It is not a correct presentation of what happens. The UDF has some seven hundred affiliated organisations. If members of one of them pick a quarrel with some members of AZAPO, this is not a conflict between seven hundred organisations and AZAPO, especially if it happens in a particular local area, but it gets reported and it comes out as a demonstration of fragmentation in the front of the struggle of the black oppressed themselves.

What I am trying to say is that in a situation of violence such as we are in, where tempers run high, where it is even possible for the regime's police to organise this conflict, to use its agents to kill or attack an AZAPO man in the name of the UDF although he is not even UDF, he is a member of a local organisation, and then incite a response from AZAPO, we must expect that to go on because the Pretoria regime has an interest in this kind of conflict.

But by and large, there is unity about the need to get rid of the apartheid system.

You should see when we call a national strike in protest of something that the regime has done. You should see what happens when we have funerals. Thousands of people come. Because no matter whether they are AZAPO or whatever, but thousands will converge there. This is how our unity is expressed. Not in localised conflict between individuals, some of whom are agents of the police.

Therefore, the true picture - and I don't want to be blowing ANC trumpets here - I think the way to see the picture is: What are these people saying about apartheid? Are they saying different things? Who, for example, which black person wants to go and serve in the National Statutory Council which Botha is supporting? Who? No one. Because we are agreed about the nature of that kind of organ that is being created. It is an apartheid institution meant only for blacks.

Therefore, we are not, in fact, as divided as may appear. Unfortunately, the position of Chief Buthelezi is different. With all due respect to him, he is being used, whether he understands that or not. He is being used as a great agency for division.

The Zulu people are the only ones who are kept being referred to as Zulus. Six million Zulus. Five million yesterday. Six today. Six and a half. Just about every second day, half a million more have arrived from somewhere. I gather it is a clever strategy of separating the Zulu people from South Africans, which is what apartheid wants to do in the first instance. And Chief Buthelezi has been willing to play this game.

And, therefore, an impression of division among Africans, six million on one side against the rest. That is not true. People who speak Zulu are South Africans. Some of them support Chief Gatsha Buthelezi. Not all. Not the six million. The six million is an apartheid concept of an ethnic group that follows one person. But South Africans are not given to ethnicism. That is the one instance, therefore, of division which looms, but it manifests itself even within the area where Chief Buthelezi operates. There is division there. And it is a division which arises basically out of his attitude to the struggle for liberation.

He has surely a wrong attitude: an attitude which makes him want to oppose, and to fight, and to challenge, and to attack those he differs with. We don't mind if he is nonviolent. And certainly as against the regime, he is very, very, very nonviolent. Not so against the blacks. There he is openly violent.

The latest instance of a massacre is attributed to the people he controls. There is nothing new in South Africa about that because those massacres have been going on for quite some time now, aided by the police.

So there you have a problem of a leader who has placed himself in the hands of the regime. Speaks their language. Defends them. Travels around the world saying what they want to be said. He is quoted by the racists' radio every second day. He has put himself outside the family of those who seek liberation. So you have that single instance. For the rest, there is unity in the struggle against the apartheid system.

The ANC has grown up in a country where there were many parties among Africans, many political parties. Nothing new about it. These seventy-five years have been seventy-five years in which the ANC existed side by side with other people who differed with it. We will continue to have this after our liberation. There will be many parties. People will form what organisations they want to, what political parties they want to. The parties they will not be allowed to form are racist parties which advocate racism and fascism, and all that. So it is not as bad as it looks.

Role of the Communist Party

MR. ALBRIGHT: Thank you.

One final question. There were a number of questions, very thoughtful questions, about aspects of the ANC agenda for change in South Africa. We don't have time to get to them, but if there was any one overriding question... there is a widespread concern, at least in this country, about the involvement of the South African Communist Party in the ANC, its role, its representation, and its own agenda in terms of future change. Could you comment very briefly on that?

DR. TAMBO: I am glad the question has been raised because I am aware that it is a matter of concern among some people in this country and the State Department has expressed its concern about this.

This is an old question, especially for the people of South Africa. We have grown up. We entered politics with, among other political organisations, the South African Communist Party. It was formed in 1921, nine years after the formation of the ANC. When it was formed, some members of the ANC joined it, and over a period, some members of the Communist Party came over to the ANC. So there has been overlapping for more than sixty-five years now. It is nothing new.

There have been members of the South African Communist Party in the ANC since I joined the ANC in my youth. In fact, one of the members who I respected very much as a leader of the ANC, and if you know Chief Albert Luthuli, he respected him as much, was a member. I met him in 1946, which is forty years ago, and he was a member of the National Executive Committee throughout. No one could say, listening to him and seeing how he went about things, that he was not ANC.

So younger generations in the membership of the Communist Party have come up with this tradition that you can be completely ANC and support its objectives as stated in the Freedom Charter fully, defend its policy, speak its language, carry out duties as an ordinary member of the ANC, but of course you have another loyalty...

I became a member of the National Executive Committee in 1949, and I have continued to be right through. I was second in command to Chief Albert Luthuli from 1958. Three years before that, I was Secretary General. So I have been in the heart of this thing right through, and I would like to assure you that those people who sit at meetings and do their duties as ANC are in fact ANC, notwithstanding that they may also be Christian or Communist, or anything else.

But there is a Communist Party with its own agenda and its own programme. There is no conflict because the Communist Party has accepted the programme of the ANC. What the Communist Party may want to do in the future, well, that's something it will want to tell a democratic people of South Africa and try and convince them, if it is able to.

But we are now concerned with getting rid of the apartheid system, and there is absolute agreement about that. That is why clauses in the Freedom Charter which may be interpreted as somehow Communist and intended to create a socialist State are in fact defined by experts as not even being socialist.

So if that is unique, well, it is simply because of the way our history has developed. We had a period under the leadership of Chief Albert Luthuli when we were conducting a nonviolent struggle in South Africa. Everyone in the country, including thousands of white people, followed his leadership, and it was the leadership of the ANC. Leaders of the Communist Party followed Chief Luthuli as their leader. This is during the fifties. Nothing has changed.

My authority in the ANC, if I may say so, is unchallenged. I give orders to all ANC people, and they obey. So I, with the length of time that I have spent in the innermost circles of the ANC, can tell you in all truthfulness, and I believe in the truth, that all this campaign by Botha, which has been picked up in this country, is, at worst, an injustice, at best, it is misplaced. An injustice to the people of South Africa because the effect of it is to say the leader of those people is not the leader. But our people don't believe that.

But it is saying to the white people: Don't follow. It is a trap. Look for something else.

If the white people in South Africa are going to look for something else, they will find it in a deluge of blood. That's where they will find something else. And that is what worries us.

So I would like to say: Believe us when we say the ANC is ANC. It has its programme. Go and read it and quarrel with that programme. Don't put to us the programme of another political organisation which is independent of the ANC, and don't believe, either, because it is not true, that we are dominated, that we are controlled. I dominate. (Laughter) Yes. I dominate. I control. I am not dominated and controlled but by my own brothers. Nor, ladies and gentlemen, are we controlled from Moscow. We get assistance from Moscow which we would love to get from the United States, which we do get from countries like Sweden. We go to Socialist countries, to Yugoslavia, to Bulgaria. We go to the Netherlands and Italy, and we are welcomed, and we get assistance.

Some of them, not too many, can give us weapons. We need the weapons, having said we are going to fight. The Soviet Union gives us weapons. Where else would we get them? We can't buy them. We can get them in Europe if we paid for them. We haven't got the money. And why should we pay for them when we get them free? (Laughter)

But the fact that we get them free doesn't mean we are mortgaging ourselves and our independence and sovereignty. We are supported, we believe, because we have a just cause which calls for support. So that is the truth. I can't carry this matter any further. There will always be people who like to believe that wherever you have a Communist and a non-Communist, it is the Communist who is dominating; he is the chief one. That is not our experience in South Africa. It is not. So I don't think I can take this matter any further.

MR. ALBRIGHT: Mr. President, thank you very, very much.

1. ¹ From: Tambo papers (transcript by the Foreign Policy

Association)

This speech was delivered at a luncheon meeting at New York Hilton under the chairmanship of Mr. Albright, President of the Foreign Policy Association.