11 October 1991
In the name of the leadership and the membership of the African National Congress (ANC), I am most pleased to greet all participants.
Through you, Mr. Chairman, I wish also to address my most profound gratitude to the Special Committee against Apartheid and the United Nations Centre against Apartheid for honouring me with an invitation to speak before this special meeting and to address so august a gathering of distinguished personalities.
Never having had the chance to do so before, I want to congratulate you most sincerely, Mr. Chairman, on your assumption of the stewardship of the Special Committee against Apartheid. You represent Nigeria's exemplary tradition of active and consistent opposition to apartheid. Your considerable experience in international affairs, both within and outside the walls of academia, as well as your outstanding personal skills and aptitudes, are well known. For all those reasons, you were, in our eyes, a natural choice for the assumption of your truly momentous responsibilities, and we are confident that you will continue to execute them with distinction.
It is no less a source of joy and reassurance to see you, Mr. Mousouris, at the helm of the Centre against Apartheid. Your personal qualities, especially your commitment and your diplomatic skill and experience, are definite assets to the work of the Centre against Apartheid. We are also deeply touched by the symbolism of the fact that you hail from Greece, a country which has contributed one of the most powerful and enduring impulses to the global quest for freedom and democracy.
I would definitely be remiss in the discharge of my mission if I did not also put on record my most sincere appreciation to the Special Committee and to the Centre against Apartheid for the outstanding work they continue to do to inform, mobilize and lead international solidarity with our struggle against apartheid and for a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic South Africa. In that regard, only the genuine liberation of our country will suffice as fitting appreciation for the time, efforts, energy and other resources those two bodies continue to devote to our cause.
Standing here before you, I have an acute sense that my presence in your midst is a tribute to the effectiveness of your efforts, as well as an affirmation of the hope that much sooner, rather than later, South Africa will indeed be free. It is doubtful that without your sustained intervention I would be standing before you today rather than continuing to languish behind bars in one of apartheid's dungeons.
It must be said that in a direct sense we owe it in part to your sustained and principled support for our struggle that our President, Comrade Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, and many of my other fellow former political prisoners have gained release; that our national Chairman, Comrade Oliver Reginald Tambo and other political exiles have come back home; that the African National Congress and all other organizations of our people have been either unbanned or derestricted; and that many of the fundamental laws of apartheid have been repealed.
Those are all positive developments for which you must justly share the credit. However, as all here will understand, due to the concrete situation on the ground in our country I have come to the United Nations not to announce the death of apartheid but to alert the world to the fact that the Pretoria regime continues to imperil the agenda for South African liberation. I have also come to strike a note of caution against premature optimism which could unwittingly result in the prolongation of apartheid. Those of us who have returned either from exile or from prison have returned not to freedom but to apartheid. Like that of our other compatriots, our abiding historic challenge remains unaltered: to continue struggling until apartheid is eradicated and a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic South Africa is born. Some of our compatriots still remain in jail, and many more are still in exile. Though the African National Congress has been unbanned, it remains the organization of the unfree. As in the years before the African National Congress was banned, we are still completely voteless and our political activities are still not free from repression.
Though many political prisoners have gained release from apartheid jails, the Pretoria regime, contrary to previous agreements with us, continues to use its own arbitrary and narrow definition of political prisoners, which excludes many patriots convicted for politically motivated offences, including acts of violence against apartheid. According to the Commission on Human Rights, at least 1,000 such individuals remain in apartheid jails with no foreseeable prospect of release. In addition, there are approximately 12 patriots, such as Mthetheleli Mncube and Robert McBride, whom the regime has unilaterally lumped together into what it calls the grey-area category. It maintains that their cases cannot be covered by a general amnesty even though they were convicted for acts committed in the line of service to our national liberation struggle. It insists that each individual be held personally responsible for his or her actions against apartheid.
The Pretoria regime has effectively bottlenecked the indemnification and repatriation of political exiles. While we continue to demand the immediate and unconditional indemnification of all political exiles, the regime persists in refusing to grant such indemnity. Instead, it has only granted selected and limited indemnity covering only the categories of leaving the country illegally and belonging to a banned organization such as the African National Congress and Umkhonto We Sizwe up to 2 February 1990, when such organizations were unbanned. Beyond that, especially in instances where an individual may in any way have been involved in the armed operations of Umkhonto We Sizwe, the regime insists that each case be considered on the basis of its merits as arbitrarily defined by the regime. It also insists that each person so affected be personally answerable for his or her actions. As a result, out of a total political exile population of over 20,000 members of the African National Congress, to cite but one example, only 7,000 have been indemnified, and slightly more than 1,500 of them have been repatriated.
The Public Safety Amendment Act, which empowers the regime to impose a state of emergency, is still intact. Certain sections of the Internal Security Act have been suspended, and the effect has been to shorten the period during which an individual can be held in detention without trial. Otherwise, the Act itself remains on the statute books of the apartheid regime. More than 100 political trials continue, including that of the leaders of the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
As came to light in the middle of July this year, the regime has been using public funds for partisan and politically motivated covert operations. Through its security establishment, it has secretly been funding Inkatha, now called the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). As official correspondence intercepted by the press shows, its objective was to promote the growth of the IFP into an organization capable of upsetting the political influence and strength of the African National Congress.
That was in turn linked to the regime's intention to use the anti-sanctions position of the IFP in order to try to end prematurely the international isolation of apartheid South Africa. It must be recalled that the violence that began in the province of Natal and has since spread to other provinces of our country began largely at the instance of the IFP, the same organization which has gone on to become the most visibly active purveyor of that violence.
It should not be forgotten that in an overwhelming number of cases the victims of the violence were individuals who were either sympathetic to, or actual members of, the African National Congress. It must also be remembered that, not too long after the violence began, we voiced the suspicion which, strengthened by steadily mounting evidence, grew into a conviction that senior ranking individuals in the regime's security establishment, or the regime itself, had a veiled but directly active hand in the promotion of the violence.
The regime responded with protestations of innocence. Contrary to our formal and informal demands and appeals, it also refused to take decisive action to stop the violence. All this was happening at the very moment that the regime and the African National Congress were beginning to engage each other in preliminary exploratory talks intended to clear the way for a peaceful resolution of the South African conflict.
On the strength of all this we cannot help but draw at least two interrelated and alarming conclusions. At the very moment when the regime ought to have been trying to create the climate necessary for meaningful negotiations, it was undermining the possibility of the emergence of such a climate by directly or indirectly promoting violence. At the very same time that it was professing its commitment to the search for a peaceful solution to the South African conflict, it was actually waging war against those organizations and individuals most committed to peace.
We cannot but question the sincerity and seriousness of the regime's commitment to a negotiated settlement of the conflict in our country. As a matter of practical necessity and to ensure that if we should err we will do so on the side of wisdom, we must assume that apartheid will not die without a fight and that it will take further struggle before a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic South Africa becomes a living reality.
It is important to underline the possibility that the regime's professed commitment to necessary change has no greater depth than a public-relations exercise to deceive the international community, and that its real objective is to salvage as much as it can of apartheid, if not to restore it completely.
On 4 September this year, the National Party, at its federal congress, unveiled its constitutional proposals for a future South Africa. As usual, the proposals were disappointing. They turned out to be no more than a euphemistic rehashing of the National Party's ever more thinly disguised refusal to abandon its commitment to the preservation of apartheid by insisting on its perceived need to protect group rights at the expense of democratic majority rule.
More specifically, as indicated in our official statement on the subject, those proposals were an attempt to institutionalize government by coalition. The dominant feature of the circumstances in which those proposals are intended to be translated into reality is one deeply characterized by fundamental, conflicting and mutually exclusive claims. On the one hand, there is white minority racism, determined to survive and to preserve its hold on a virtual monopoly of our country's wealth and the implied economic power. On the other hand, there are the popular forces of the national movement against apartheid and racism and for freedom and democracy, and their non-negotiable demand for a just, equitable and productive redistribution of our country's latent and developed resources - without which apartheid cannot be truly eradicated. In such circumstances, to institutionalize government by coalition is to attempt to reconcile what by definition cannot be reconciled. It is a prescription for an unworkable government.
Furthermore, the overwhelming thrust of the checks and balances contained in the proposals is so blatantly biased against any potential majority political party and so obviously in favour of minority political parties that it effectively stamps the proposals as a formula for minority domination.
In a more practical and immediate sense, that arrangement would give racists the absolute political power to veto popular initiatives against de jure or de facto initiatives against racism and for the economic and social development of the black majority, which has been thoroughly dispossessed and impoverished by apartheid. The proposal is nothing less than a scheme to make the victims of apartheid accomplices in the perpetuation of apartheid through the preservation of its most essential and lasting effects.
We reject those proposals, which provide additional grounds for our suspicion about the real intentions of the National Party and the Pretoria regime. The Pretoria regime's refusal to allow a full and independent investigation of its covert activities in the wake of the "Inkathagate" exposures has predictably also strengthened suspicions about the anti-democratic agenda of the National Party, to the point where it is now felt by a growing number of our people that engaging the National Party in pre-talks, talks about talks or negotiations for a democratic future is most likely to be futile.
This in turn has sharply underlined the urgent need for the creation of an interim government of national unity to supervise the process of transition away from apartheid and towards the creation of a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic South Africa.
It would be dishonest to pretend that the Pretoria regime has not taken some important steps towards the creation of the climate necessary for negotiations. However, it would be even more dishonest to claim that those steps amount to the creation of that necessary climate. More to the point is the fact that the regime's covert actions against its political opponents and its subsequent refusal to have those secret activities investigated fully and openly have nullified any progress it may have made towards the creation of the climate necessary for negotiations.
It has also effectively turned the regime itself into the most serious obstacle to a negotiated solution to the South African conflict. The constitutional proposals of the National Party and their virtually explicit rejection of the fundamental principles of majority rule, which is essential to democracy, can only serve to place a stamp on that unfortunate fact.
Existing international pressures, especially sanctions, against apartheid South Africa were intended to help eradicate apartheid. Apartheid is still in place. In addition, it is actively fighting for survival by trying to subvert and weaken its opponents and by spreading violence. As its recent proposals show, it seems more committed to the reformulation of apartheid than to its abandonment.
Therefore, this is not the time to lift existing pressures, especially sanctions, against apartheid South Africa. To do so would be to encourage the forces of violence and apartheid and to help postpone the advent of freedom and democracy in our country. We must not allow this to happen. In that regard, we are confident that the Special Committee against Apartheid and the Centre against Apartheid will do the right thing, and that whatever they do they will do in consultation with the South African people.
Notwithstanding the obstructionist attitude of Pretoria, we remain soberly aware that the stakes at issue in the South African situation are too high to permit us to fold our arms in frustration. We attach particular urgency to the need for action which would not only arrest and end the violence that currently assails our country, but which would also help place the transition period on firm ground and accelerate it towards the emergence and consolidation of a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic South Africa.
Failure to guarantee that outcome would constitute no less than a prescription for the outbreak in our already troubled country of a civil war of the most frightening dimensions. We have therefore launched and actively kept in motion at least two important initiatives. The first is aimed at ending the violence and isolating the forces that promote it. To that end we have continued to involve the widest possible political spread of our people and their various political, civic and religious organizations in the search for peace.
In that regard we have employed dialogues between leaders, bilateral and multilateral meetings between leadership bodies of various specialized and political formations, and summits between the major political organizations. Though in that process we have frequently been able to emerge with agreements which promise the onset of peace, in several cases, especially those involving the IFP, those agreements were broken even before the ink with which they were written had dried.
Despite any number of pitfalls and obstacles, we take pride in the fact that this initiative was crowned by the holding of a convention of the African National Congress, the National Party and the IFP, called by the churches and by interested sectors of the business community. The towering achievement of that convention was a formal agreement among the three principals that violence is detrimental to the real interests of all South Africans, particularly at this stage in the political life of our country. They also took a collective decision therefore to commit themselves to working in cooperation towards ending the violence.
They also agreed to form a joint peace commission. It is to have under its wing five sub-commissions charged with the following responsibilities, among others: to draw up a code of conduct for the regime's police and soldiers and a code of conduct for all political organizations and parties; to monitor the implementation of those codes of conduct; to coordinate peace activities among the principals; to review, report on and make recommendations on the situation; and in general to strive to engage the widest possible non-partisan constituency in the search for peace.
The recent massacre in Thokoza of 18 people and the injury of 16 more as they were returning from the funeral of assassinated civic leader Sam Ntuli is a grim reminder of the gravity of the problem of violence in our country. The fact that the regime, with its vast, highly experienced security forces, has hitherto not apprehended and brought to book the assassins of Ntuli or the perpetrators of the massacre is further cause for alarm. It underlines our long-standing assertion that the regime's seeming inability to bring to book the perpetrators of these and other acts of violence is but a thin disguise for the regime's reluctance to act decisively to end the violence. It also points once more to the complicity of the regime's security forces in the promotion of the violence. It attacks the chances of success of the national peace accord and reinforces suspicions about the regime's real agenda.
F. W. de Klerk's recent speech at Stellenbosch, in which he viciously and emotionally attacked the African National Congress and questioned our credentials for assuming a constructive role in a democratic South Africa was disturbingly reminiscent of the ideological posturing of P. W. Botha in his typical defence of apartheid. It was obviously a red herring calculated to draw attention away from the fact that his regime is doing - ominously - far less than it can and should to stop the violence. It highlights the fact that the regime has indeed become the most significant obstacle to peaceful and meaningful change in South Africa. It sharpens the urgency of the need for an interim government of national unity to supervise the transition process.
The African National Congress remains steadfastly committed to the search for peace. We have also launched, and are actively promoting, an initiative for the creation of a patriotic front of organizations opposed to apartheid and committed to a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa.
A wide range of organizations, including the Pan Africanist Congress and the Azanian People's Organization, have shown strong interest in this initiative and are involved in campaigning for it. Its objective is to oppose the forces of reaction with a force, based on issues that unite us. Brought together under the umbrella of this Front each member organization will retain its independence and identity.
Our common demand for the election of a constituent assembly mandated to draw up a constitution for a free and democratic South Africa has already been identified and embraced as one such uniting issue. We shall continue to strive to broaden the bases of agreement while seeking to involve more and more parties in the patriotic front. We believe that the oppressed people of South Africa, speaking at last with a coordinated - or, at least, united - voice, stand the best chance of prevailing on behalf of freedom and democracy.
We also urge that the option of violence be avoided and that political means be given priority effort to ensure that democracy triumphs in Haiti, and that under no circumstances should the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of that country be infringed.
We restate our solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people led by the Palestine Liberation Organization for their rights to self-determination and for the establishment of a Palestinian State in their homeland.
I wish once again to thank all of you. We look forward to a free and democratic South Africa.