"SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS OF STRUGGLE": ADDRESS AT THE LA TROBE UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA, APRIL 3, 1987⁽¹⁾

Professor Scott, Vice-Chancellor of the university,

Dr. Dorward, Director of the African Research Institute,

Members of the faculty, students of this university, invited guests,

Ladies and gentlemen,

May I begin by saying what a great honour it is for my delegation which is visiting Australia to be given the opportunity of meeting this vast body of the Australian people at this university. This is one of the ways that Australia is manifesting the choice she has made in the conflicts over apartheid in South Africa.

For in that conflict, there are two sides recognised in South Africa, in southern Africa, in the whole continent and in much of the rest of the world. The one side is represented by the racist apartheid regime, a notorious regime which is known to be perpetrating a crime against humanity. Its victims are millions of Africans, of Coloured people, of people of Indian origin. They are its victims because they are not white. The other side in this equation is represented by the African National Congress, which is leading in the defence of human rights and human dignity, which is leading the struggle against the violence of this crime against humanity known as apartheid. Much of the world has made its choice.

We believe Australia has made its choice, consisting in the statements of condemnation of that system which have come repeatedly from the majority of the Australian people, the majority of humankind. I must emphasise the point of the choice having been made. Because, but for that choice, we should not be honoured with this rostrum. We should not be having the benefit of your ideals. You are assembled here because you have taken sides.

Secondly, let me thank you for the welcome you have extended to us. This hall looks like an ANC conference hall. We greatly appreciate this. It is a powerful statement of support by the students of this university, by the Vice-Chancellor and other members of his staff and by the community which has come to hear us. We thank you in the name of some of those of our people in South Africa who should have also been here, but cannot be. Winnie Mandela cannot come to Australia. Nelson Mandela cannot come to Australia; he is serving life in prison. Barbara Hogan is not here; she is serving ten years' imprisonment, having been convicted of the alleged crime of high treason because she worked with the ANC. A white woman, she is not here. And so we must thank you in her name and in the name of others, hundreds, who cannot be here. We thank you in the name of small children, children who are not with their mothers because they are detained like criminals. They are in jail because like their mothers and grandparents, they have stood up to resist and overcome the monster known as apartheid. Thank you very much for your support.

Origin of the ANC

I have been asked to address this great gathering on "75 Years of Struggle". Perhaps the suggestion comes from the knowledge about this year; 1987 marks the 75th anniversary of the formation of the African National Congress. Therefore, if I may, I shall take you back to that year, 75 years ago, when Africans descended on Bloemfontein, the capital of the so-called Free State, to form the African National Congress. They came from what is now known as Lesotho, from what is now known as Botswana, from Zambia, from Swaziland, they came from the rest of South Africa itself. They came to form what was at the time a regional organisation of countries that were under British rule.

What brought them together was something that stunned the black population or, as we said at the time, the "Non-Europeans". Because Britain had decided in 1909 to adopt a law which became the constitution of South Africa, in which the then Non-Europeans, or as they were called more precisely, the "natives", had no say in the political life of South Africa. It was a racist constitution, perhaps the only racist constitution that the British government has ever endorsed as a British Act. Those who assembled in Bloemfontein were set to correct this glaring racism and to have the blacks, as we call them today, participate fully in the political life of the country. The ANC was formed. It sent delegations to Britain. It sent delegations to the government in Cape Town and Pretoria. From year to year, it mobilised and united the people.

Apartheid Violence to Turn Back History

Let me move quickly to what happened during the war, the 1939 war. The war brought the world into confrontation with a dictatorship, a racist regime, a brutal regime, a regime which believes in this superiority of race - Hitler. That was a message to the people oppressed by white minority government in South Africa. Along the course of the war, there was signed what was called the Atlantic Charter. That document said a great deal about democracy and how the people, as people, are entitled to democratic rights. The ANC produced a document called "African Claims" which was based on this Atlantic Charter.

At the end of the war, when the United Nations was formed, the question of racial segregation was raised and General J.C. Smuts, then Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, was subjected to tremendous pressure from the United Nations where delegations challenged the segregation policies of South Africa. The issue then was racial segregation. When he came back, he made a statement which filled us all with the promise of things to come, because coming away from the United Nations, Smuts declared in South Africa that racial segregation had fallen on evil days. That was an encouraging statement because it reflected the new interest by the international community in developments in South Africa. The fact that J.C. Smuts should have found it necessary to make a public statement to the effect that racial segregation had fallen on evil days meant that he was taking a new look at the policies which were based on the racist Union of South Africa. The war had been won. Democracy had triumphed and we the blacks understood it to be democracy for all people. After all, we had participated in the war. Hitler had been defeated. Elections came in 1948, following close on the defeat of Hitler.

In the meantime, during the war, some of those who had hoped for the victory of Hitler's Germany had been detained, arrested for subversion, for attempting to subvert the war effort. They never accepted that South Africa should participate in the war against Hitler. They were supporters of Nazi Germany. The results of the war were a tremendous setback for them. But, then, history vindicated their long wish. They won an election. They defeated Smuts and those who were winning were the friends and supporters of Nazi Germany. They were well organised. They were highly motivated. They were determined to achieve in South Africa what Hitler had failed to do internationally. They were determined to win the war which Hitler had lost. They were going to turn South Africa into something which Hitler would have been glad to see. A superior race lording it over allegedly, supposedly, inferior races - especially the black race. They came against a powerful current that was generated by the war itself, and by the victory.

We became aware, as blacks in South Africa, seeing ourselves as part of triumphant humanity marching forward to democracy. Life was going to change for us. At last we were part of the world's concept of democracy and we were filled with hope. The world had assembled at the United Nations to compose a new world order of peace, of human dignity, of human rights, of human equality, of friendship among peoples and races. We were all part of this.

Then something went wrong in our country. We were part of this stream of humanity which was rushing ahead under the impulse of a victory against fascism. And we ran into an opposing force. A force which tried to turn this human tide back, this great stream of humanity marching forward, a force which pushed with great vigour, with great energy, with great determination, with great thoroughness. They were pushing back the forces of history. It was a violent situation, this conflict between the future and the past; for the whole country a new situation had arisen. These were new challenges for the oppressed. Their hopes for an immediate liberation from domination by whites had been dashed in a way we were never prepared for. How could it happen barely five years after the end of World War II?

By the very nature of the direction that apartheid was taking, it had to be a violent force against those who have been carried by the current of history to a democratic world, to a democratic future. This was achieved by physical violence, by laws which virtually tied the blacks hand and foot; a regime which is impatient of criticism, which attacked all opposition and all opponents; laws which were enforced with indescribable brutality; an offensive which was all-embracing. No one could escape the forces of the new apartheid regime. As for the blacks, they were thrown into a turmoil of struggle. The provocation in these circumstances of physical violence, of police beating up and shooting people, was immense.

Nonviolent Resistance

It seemed to the ANC leaders at the time that perhaps this strategy of the Nationalist Party of South Africa was to win the support of the English-speaking section of South Africa for apartheid by the technique of provoking the blacks into violent assaults on any and every white person because apartheid spoke in the name of whites. It was a drive against blacks to undo all that had been achieved in the struggle for, up to then, some 30 to 40 years. The ANC leaders decided that we want to live in a South Africa for South Africans. A conflict which defined itself in terms of black versus white was not going to serve the interests of South Africa, or of South Africans, black and white. We could not allow ourselves to be provoked. This was a trap, this assault on blacks, this great provocation of people getting killed, beaten up, run over by motor cars, arrested - not for any offence they had committed, except that they happened to be black.

We decided that we must not respond to this provocation. Our leaders led the people to resistance against apartheid but we campaigned for nonviolent resistance. This lasted for 12 years, this kind of deliberate, conscious refusal to use any violence against the violent regime or its forces or its police. During those 12 years they were shooting freely. There were many minor massacres and the minor massacres grew into sizable massacres. We still said to the people as their leaders, "our struggle is nonviolent". We told them wrongly, "we shall win our freedom with our bare hands". It was a familiar expression. We mobilised the whole country.

The ANC grew to be a very powerful organisation. It drew in sizable sections of the white population. We were powerful against apartheid, but not against this violence. We defied that violence. We became a problem, such a problem that in the end we were declared an illegal organisation in South Africa, which was bizarre, but before that declaration the crescendo of the apartheid offensive and violence had climaxed in what is known as the Sharpeville massacre. There were so many people killed who were merely standing next to a police station; there were so many children among them, so many women. It happened during the day, the men were at work. The women and children were at home and they were massacred in a way we have not experienced for many decades.

The international community was shocked, and for the first time many people in the world turned and looked at South Africa and tried to understand what was going on there. Sharpeville told the story of what had been happening all the time but told it in such a way that the international community could hear and see and feel the pain. The ANC said, "let us continue with our nonviolence in spite of Sharpeville. In spite of this horror, the carnage which was wholly unprovoked and unjustified. Let us nonetheless continue with our nonviolence struggle." And so we did. In 1961, we organised a national strike which was observed as far afield as Namibia. It was most successful, peaceful, nonviolent, but so successful that the South African army was mobilised to stamp it out on a scale which it was said was last seen during World War II.

The army was to roll across the country with its tanks, armoured cars, with soldiers going house-to-house in the townships, forcing people out of their houses and driving them to work. The question that arose after Sharpeville, after this display of military might which is addressed to a peaceful stay-at-home - not even peaceful demonstrations in the street, but people just staying in their houses - was: Where do you go with nonviolence? There was only one answer. The time had come to reply to violence with violence, to carry on this struggle against apartheid, not only by every method that we could think of including nonviolent methods, but also to embrace violence. We declared an armed struggle.

Who are the Terrorists?

The organisation known as the African National Congress today is a subject of tyre demonstrations. There seems to be many tyre men (tyre carrying persons) around.⁽²⁾

But before we address these tyres, this is the background. Having decided on armed struggle, we also decided that that armed struggle must consist of sabotage carried out in such a way that no one would be injured in the process. No life lost. That was the policy.

And so there were hundreds of sabotage actions in the course of which leaders like Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and others were arrested and charged with high treason. And sentenced to life imprisonment (short of being hanged) for carrying out these sabotage actions - not that anybody had been killed because of these actions. But in spite of their conviction, the policy remained. And what is not always recognised is that that policy remained for more than twenty years before South Africa would talk about an injury to civilians. For more than twenty years the ANC was selecting what are called "hard targets" with great care and caution. There were numerous sabotage actions with the police reporting no casualties. Not by accident but by design were there no casualties. Nineteen eighty-three was the first time that South Africa heard of casualties involving civilians - South Africans. But I think any other country would not have been surprised that some 19 people had died as a result of a bomb exploding at the headquarters of the Air Force. Anywhere else in the world there would have been no surprise, simply because death has become the order of the day under apartheid, the killing of people, the Sharpevilles, the Kassinga (in which thousands of Namibians were killed), the Soweto massacre, the Maseru massacre, the Maputo massacre - dreadful, terrifying, horrible massacres.

All this had been going on before 1983. And apartheid had continued in its violence against the people. They were still being arrested. This time torture had become part of the law of the country. No judge could do anything about torture, and those who got arrested knew they were going to be tortured most brutally. But in South Africa, the press, the media was horrified at what had happened in Pretoria in May 1983. We ask why?

Five months earlier the Maseru massacre had taken place. Forty-two people had been killed - nationals of Lesotho and members of the African National Conference who just happened to be in Maseru. Nineteen were killed in Pretoria. What was the difference? The difference was the colour of the skin of those who died in Maseru in December 1982 and those who died in Pretoria. That was the difference.

What was so new about people dying in a violent situation in South Africa where by then thousands of blacks had been killed by the regime? I am not talking about the violent nature of the system itself, the violent nature in which it operates, the numbers of children it kills. I am talking about physical violence, deliberate killing. But did South Africans not know this? Perhaps they did not know. They knew about Sharpeville. They knew about Soweto. They knew about other massacres. The point is that these thousands who were killed were black and therefore, somehow, they were not civilians in the minds of the white population in South Africa.

The ANC is called terrorist because it was responsible for the killing of 19 whites. The regime is not terrorist, notwithstanding the thousands it had killed by then, and the thousands it has killed since, notwithstanding the countless thousands it has killed in the neighbouring countries, in Mozambique, in Zimbabwe, in Angola, in Botswana, in Zambia - going out across the borders of South Africa to leave a trail of death, destruction and devastation. In the African independent States, again, perhaps it is only blacks who are dying there. This apartheid regime is not terrorist? No motorcar tyre is carried against it for the massive destruction of life in southern Africa.

And so that is how the ANC became terrorist. Because for the first time in 1983, after a chain of massacres against our people in assassinations, it targets a military establishment in which there happen to be, well let's say civilians, innocent too for that matter.

But I should like to say to the Australian people, we could not expect the citizens of this country to behave as if they have grown up in an apartheid situation where the black person does not mean anything, where he is just a thing, where you can be holding election after election confined to white voters, white candidates for a white parliament, for a white government.

After 1983 it was time to raise the level of our struggle because the bombings and the killings of our people and the massacres signalled an escalation of the conflict in South Africa and we had to respond to it... It was a natural development that there should be an escalation of conflict and escalation of conflict means that more people die. In the past two and a half years I think close to 3,000 have died, shot in the streets, massacred, wiped out. Children, many hundreds of children, have been shot down by the police, not accidentally but knowingly, consciously, deliberately.

Why is the ANC said to be terrorist by anybody? The first to say the ANC members were terrorists was exactly the apartheid regime itself, the terrorist apartheid regime. So in southern Africa we don't mind this, we think it is nothing to be called a terrorist. We know who is saying it and we expect them to say it. Robert Mugabe was reported in South African newspapers as a terrorist and Samora Machel was a terrorist - until these leaders got into power. Then they became Mr. Mugabe, Mr. Machel. Don't be surprised if some of these people who call me a terrorist are going to say Mr. Tambo. Because, although we have been going through a prolonged dark time in the many years of struggle, we have never lost the conviction that victory would come. Indeed, we have been witness to very difficult struggles fought in southern Africa in which thousands of people were killed, and we have seen that at the end of the day justice has triumphed.

Apartheid in Crisis

We have never doubted that in South Africa, as in Namibia, justice will triumph. This conviction sustains us, keeps us on the move. It enables us to defy difficulties, to defy suffering and misery, to defy pain, to defy death; but now we can identify the light at the end of this dark tunnel. We accept that before we reach the point where this light shines we are going to have to go through gruelling darkness guided only by the vision which we can now delineate of a nonracial, democratic, united South Africa - of South Africans living together as one people, under one government, in one unfragmented country. The outlines of this new South Africa are becoming visible. We can now see after these 75 years of struggle, and particularly the last 40 years of apartheid and its inhumanity, that that system is now running into problems. We can see that the old strategy of forming a laager of resistance to external pressure has collapsed. The laager now belongs to the past, to history. Those who have gathered into this laager have abandoned it and we think for good.

There is so much division among the ranks at the core of white minority rule that there is no way they can be united by more pressure. What has caused the divisions is pressure; because people can gather together to form a block to defend themselves against pressures, but if the pressures are maintained the tendency of people is to get out of the group, to seek to tear away and move into different directions.

That is what has happened to the laager. It means that the defences of apartheid, its foundations, have taken on serious cracks. This is manifest in many ways. It is manifest not least in the fact that the Dutch Reformed Church, at its synod last year, reversed the positions it has held for centuries - positions which contributed to a racist clause being put into the constitution of the Union of South Africa in 1909. Their philosophy, their doctrine has always been that there shall be no equality between black and white, either in Church or in State. And from that basis, reading their defences in the Bible, they contributed to the construction of this structure of apartheid which has proved so inhuman.

If the Dutch Reformed Church today says, as it does say, that apartheid cannot be defended on Biblical grounds, that is saying something about the future of apartheid. Because the strongest defenders of apartheid have been religious leaders. Intellectuals have spoken out, even from the great University of Stellenbosch which was virtually the birthplace of apartheid's theoreticians. They are revolting against apartheid. The youth, the white youth, are turning against apartheid, refusing to join the army which seeks to defend apartheid by waging war against the people of Namibia and Angola, by shooting down children in the streets of Soweto and Mamelodi and other places. Thousands of young people have refused to respond to the call to serve in the army.

At the political level we now know that for the first time we have had breakaways from the Nationalist Party on its left. All sorts of rightists have emerged in the course of its history but never before have leading members of parliament, leading members of the Nationalist Party, resigned and taken positions that come closer to the positions of the ANC. There is great discontent in the army. Not that there is about to be a coup within the army or a substantial split, but it is significant that the number of suicides, or attempted suicides, among the army is almost astronomical. In the past year there have been more than 400 suicides and attempted suicides.

Members of the white population are flocking out of the country in thousands. The majority are going to Britain. They can no longer take apartheid. The next largest number are coming to Australia. More than 60,000 are either in Zimbabwe, back from South Africa, or have applications being processed to reenter Zimbabwe out of South Africa. Those who are leaving are doctors, professionals, lawyers, technicians, dentists. Hundreds, it will soon be thousands.

There is something wrong with apartheid. Unemployment has shot up from 21 percent in 1981 to 60 percent in 1986. In those figures you have for the first time white workers unemployed, a new development in the South African situation. We have lived through a time when it was impossible to find a white person who was unemployed. There were blacks everywhere, hundreds, thousands of them, unemployed but never a white person. Apartheid has generated pressures - internal pressures and external pressures - which have resulted in this new situation confronting the white workers.

We had expected this to be the result of sanctions. We expected sanctions would affect blacks first, but not for the first time, in terms of unemployment. But we also expected that, as sanctions became more effective, the white workers would be affected. They are in government. They have a vote. They can protest and their protest would be heard. Their demands would be met. But the only way to meet their demands is to ensure that South Africa is not put under pressure, but as long as apartheid is there, it will be put under pressure...

We are Ready to Suffer

We, the oppressed, are ready to suffer. We have suffered for 75 years. There is nothing new about suffering. Those who feel pity for us because we will be unemployed, are misplacing their pity. There is nothing new about blacks being unemployed. Those therefore who are refusing to employ sanctions against South Africa because blacks will suffer should be told that sanctions, however much they may hurt if they hurt the blacks, certainly do not kill. They can only hurt. Apartheid kills, has killed, continues to kill, and will kill because it is apartheid. To stop the killing, to save human life, stop apartheid. Never mind what happens to a few workers, or even thousands of workers. Look at what is happening to millions of blacks.

This is the reason why early on in the years of our armed struggle, our late President-General Albert Luthuli, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize because of the nonviolent struggle waged by the ANC in the face of unspeakable violence by the regime, issued a statement in 1962, together with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., of the United States, in which they appealed to the international community to impose economic sanctions on South Africa. They acknowledged that sanctions could cause some suffering among blacks but they said that unless that happens bloodshed would increase to what could become horrific dimensions. They saw it happening and today bloodshed has increased in South Africa - in part because the international community has ignored that call on the pretext that sanctions would hurt blacks. What could hurt blacks more than the thousands who have been killed in the past two and a half years? How could sanctions kill so many? It is apartheid which kills, and the hypocrisy of pretending to be feeling for blacks has been exposed by the experience of the international community in the past two and a half years.

The attempt to divert attention from the crimes of apartheid by shouting about the terrorism of the ANC is understandable when it emanates from the apartheid regime. It is not understandable when it comes from a world which since 1946 has been condemning apartheid and in most of that period has described it as a crime against humanity.

Future as Seen by ANC

But if the ANC at the beginning sought to ensure equality among all South Africans, politically and otherwise, how does the ANC see the future of the country today? What would we regard as a victory of the 75 years of struggle and more? It would be where South Africans would have learnt to see one another as fellow South Africans, where we would be living together regarding each other as fellow Africans in Africa, South Africans in South Africa. Where elections are now organised for whites only, for participation by whites, elections would embrace all the people of South Africa, all South Africans of adult age. The basis of distinction would not be between those who are white and those who are black.

The ANC is suing resolutely for a nonracial society, a colour-blind society even if it is colourful. But colour-blind. That is the life we live in the ANC. We have no sense of fair white skin, or black skin; they are members of the ANC, they are fellow South Africans. That is why we met business leaders who came to Lusaka to have discussions with the ANC. We asked them not to sit on one side as whites face to face from the other side with us blacks. We said this is not South Africa, let us sit together, let us mix, let us feel we are fellow countrymen and we did. One of them said it was the finest meeting he had ever attended, because for some six or seven hours, there we were in a bush in Zambia talking about the problems and prospects of our country, looking at the future of our country, exactly the future that I am describing, of fellow South Africans.

The ANC will allow various political parties to exist, to operate, and to put their case before the people. We shall be democratic, but we shall refuse to allow racist political formations either in terms of their constitutions or in terms of their objectives; those will not be allowed. Otherwise anyone may become a member of parliament, anyone may become a member of government, anyone may become President of the new South Africa, even if he is white. Because today if Pik Botha says there may be a black President, he is subjected to a severe harangue by P.W. Botha - "how can you say such a thing, can you imagine South Africa being under a black President"? That is not the position of the ANC...

What else about the future of this country? Today we are divided up into various races. We want to come together, as one people in one country. We are divided up into various tribal entities and the country is likewise fragmented. We shall come together as South Africans, not on the basis of tribe or anything like that, but simply as South Africans, with no bantustans.

Other questions which arise in this context are: What sort of economy should we have? Are we going to nationalise everything? Are we going to nationalise anything at all? Shall we leave the economy intact? Well, in 1955, the people of South Africa called together by the ANC - black and white - looked at that question, and we decided that South Africa is a very wealthy country, but the wealth is confined to a few hands. They are fewer today. Today more than 80 percent of the shares listed in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange - more than 83.1 percent to be exact - are controlled by just four monopolies, conglomerates. Anglo-American takes the lead; the others are SANLAN, South African Mutual, and Rembrandt. More than 80 percent of the shares are controlled by these four. What is happening to everybody else? As far as blacks are concerned South Africa is a very poor country, because they are so poor.

Well, when this question was examined more than thirty years ago it was decided that we would have to tamper with this arrangement. There would have to be State participation in the economy. The precise terms of that participation would be determined by the people democratically.

But as we see it, ours would be a mixed economy. At present it is also a mixed economy, but wrongly mixed, because it is mixed with virtually no distribution of the wealth. The wealth is not being distributed. The wealth must be produced but having been produced it must be distributed. It is not. One of the problems which we shall solve is the gross injustice of driving the entire black population into 13 percent of the land and leaving 87 percent in the control of the minority population of the whites. That has resulted in massive death by starvation. Hordes of children have died from malnutrition. The life expectancy in this 13 percent is frightening. Apartheid feels like a practice, and exercise, in genocide. We will have to adjust that. This then is the kind of South Africa that we are looking at.

A question which arises often is: Should we do like Zimbabwe and reserve several seats in parliament for the whites? Well, if a democratic South Africa so decided that would be alright. But looking at South Africa of the future from this point of time, we say that if we did that we would be continuing the structures of racial separation, racial discrimination. You will be sustaining racial attitudes. You will be encouraging Africans to do what the ANC has discouraged them from doing all the time, to see the white population as other people, on the other side - something else and not as part of South Africa. We do not think that we have the luxury to play around with apartheid in that kind of way and still claim that we are living in a new South Africa. And this is not the problem which people think it is.

Botha against Negotiations

It is true people fear that kind of situation until they hear what we are saying about it. We have met many South Africans of various stations in life - lawyers and politicians, churchmen, university students, workers - and we have discussed these questions with them, about how we see South Africa, the South Africa of the future. And we have reached agreement that the ANC vision is the correct vision. What we have not succeeded in doing is to gain access to the vast population of our white compatriots...

Botha is afraid of our message to our white fellow countrymen. He debars us, he calls us names in order to frighten them away from us. He even forbids them from coming to see us. He takes that decision and says that if they do come to see us they will be committing treason. Out of respect for him, many have not done so, but others have defied. And our experience of those who have come is that they are very happy with the future that we envisage for South Africa.

Therefore, to the extent that the solution to this whole conflict can exist in negotiations, the two parties getting together, however you define those parties, basically have to be the ANC and the regime.

The ANC party would not consist of blacks only because we have white members. It would not even consist of members of the ANC only. It would consist of those people who are agreed on the kind of South Africa we want to create. But if there are going to be negotiations, what must precede those negotiations? Surely this climate of imprisonment of the very leaders who would be expected to play a leading role in these negotiations, that climate cannot be allowed to persist.

Nelson Mandela and other political leaders who are in jail - there are many of them - would have to be released and allowed the freedom to go anywhere and talk to anybody, including members of the white community. The ban on the ANC, which prevents us addressing meetings like this in South Africa, or any meetings at all, would have to be lifted and also the ban on other political organisations. Many political organisations have been banned. Not all of them are in agreement with the ANC. But surely they will be entitled to participate in the general consultation among those who want to see a new South Africa.

Sir Geoffrey Howe told the South African regime that it is essential that the negotiations should be started. Otherwise there can be no end to violence. On the contrary, violence can only escalate. But he said there is no question of negotiations starting unless Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners are released and unless the ban on the ANC and other political organisations is lifted. He said those two things when he was in South Africa some time last year. Nothing has happened since, nothing has moved.

What is the alternative for the victims of apartheid? It is surely to continue the struggle with everything we have. There is no question of our suddenly abandoning armed struggle when apartheid is increased and violence heightened...

There is nothing to prevent Botha releasing Nelson Mandela if he wants to. It is very easy, he opens the gates. That is all it involves if he wants a solution. But we think he does not want negotiations. The fact of the matter is he does not want negotiations. The Western countries have pressed him for negotiations; he has not moved. The EPG⁽³⁾

went to South Africa to press for negotiations. They were thrown out. Why then is there so much about the violence of the ANC in the face of all this?

Support those who Seek Justice

Ladies and gentlemen, what would everyone have done in our position? We are in a war. The enemy has not been defeated. Why should we still fight? Who would have wanted to suggest that the allies should send their troops to the barracks before Nazism had been overcome? No one. There was violence then. There was no deterrent to the conduct of the war and the pursuit of the war, until the objective had been achieved. Why are the blacks, the victims of a known crime against humanity, being advised to stop resisting?

And our appeal to the government, to the people of Australia, the youth of Australia, the intelligentsia of this country, workers and women, is to support those who seek justice even if you don't agree in every detail with the way we are going about it. Because the method is dictated by the conditions in which we are operating. There is nastiness in all wars. When a country goes out bombing a town it knows there are women and children there. It is a nasty thing for anyone to let those bombs down knowing what damage they are going to inflict. But the objective is to defeat the enemy and to bear up with all the unpleasantness of it all.

We don't like to see death. We are dying for the day death will end in our country. It is long in coming but we know it will come. When children can grow up, when families can live together, when South Africa can be at peace, when the region of southern Africa can also at last know peace and security - that day is coming. We ask you to help us to realise, to let that day arrive, sooner rather than later. You would have contributed to saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

Thank you very much.

1. ¹ From: Oliver Tambo, 75 Years of Struggle, La Trobe

University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia, 1987.

The lecture was sponsored by the La Trobe University near Melbourne - its African Research Institute, and Chisholm and Menzies Colleges - and the Preston City Council.

2. ² The reference is to demonstrators hostile to ANC carrying tyres - linking the ANC to

incidents in African townships in South Africa where several alleged informers were killed by burning tyres around their necks.

3. ³ Eminent Persons Group of the Commonwealth