Mr. Chairman,
Permit me first of all to express to the French Anti-Apartheid Committee, to the other European Anti-Apartheid Committees and to the organizers of this important European Conference against Apartheid, the deep satisfaction and the sincere gratitude of the United Nations Special Committee on the Policies of Apartheid of the Government of the Republic of South Africa. In my capacity as Chairman of the Special Committee which delegated me to this Conference, it is my happy duty to wish, on behalf of the members of the Special Committee and the overwhelming majority of the Member States of the United Nations, a great success to your Conference, an important event in the rich history of the struggle against racism and for the achievement of equality and brotherhood amongst all men without distinction as to race, colour or religion.
The Special Committee, which was established by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1963 to review the various aspects of the neo-nazi policies of South Africa known as apartheid and to assist the United Nations in promoting effective action, has always tried to maintain close and continuous contact with the liberation movements of South Africa and with the anti-apartheid organizations in the world in order to promote the widest and most concerted efforts against the cancer of racism which exists in the most acute and dangerous form in southern Africa.
I must stress that the Special Committee attached particular importance to this Conference which has brought together for the first time the various anti-apartheid movements in Western Europe - the movements of conscience in countries which bear grave responsibility for the tragedy in South Africa because of their economic, military, political and other collaboration with the racist regime in that part of Africa. It has mandated me to attend this conference in order not only to convey the best wishes of the Special Committee and express its active solidarity to the anti-apartheid movements, but also to exchange information and ideas with the participants in order to promote more effective collaboration between the United Nations and the anti-apartheid movements in the common effort to secure the eradication of apartheid.
It seems to me appropriate that this Conference should be held in Paris - this great capital of humanism and rationalism, which are the antitheses of the mentality behind apartheid, and a city which in our own generation has manifested such glorious resistance to Nazi racism. Paris is also the main center of culture which cannot bear a barbarous ideology such as racism which has been instituted as a dogma and a system of government ...
As a son of Africa - particularly of the Republic of Guinea which has denounced racism and recognized that the dignity of its independent people is incomplete so long as men are discriminated and humiliated anywhere for the blackness of their skin - I am particularly happy that there are men in Western Europe who share our determination to eradicate racism in Southern Africa and our faith that multi-racial Africa can be made a non-racial continent where all the peoples who choose to live in it, will live in equality, liberty and fraternity. This solidarity between resurgent Africa and the progressive opinion in the West is heartening as it is based on a recognition of the indivisibility of freedom. If we in Guinea and in Africa suffer the humiliation of the Africans in South Africa, your own freedom and security in the West is menaced by the conflict which is being precipitated by racism in South Africa. If Nazi racism resulted in a world war and if the situation in Vietnam threatens peace today, the racism in Southern Africa can certainly breach it tomorrow…
There is hardly any need for me to dwell at length before this Conference of the militants against racism on the evils of apartheid and the inhumanity and injustice which it embodies, and the numerous dangers which it entails …
What I would wish to emphasize, however, is that this problem of apartheid is an aspect of the broader problem of racism and that as the Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant, declared:
"There is the clear prospect that racial conflict, if we cannot curb and finally, eliminate it, will grow into a destructive monster compared to which the religious or ideological conflicts of the past and present will seem like small family quarrels. Such a conflict will eat away the possibilities for good of all that mankind has hitherto achieved and reduce men to the lowest and most bestial level of intolerance and hatred. This, for the sake of our children, whatever their race and colour, must not be permitted to happen."
In struggling against apartheid in South Africa and its environs, the anti-apartheid movements are contributing to the broader struggle against this danger of race conflict and for the building of a new world in which the dignity of man is not dependent on the colour of his skin. May I say this is a cause which should attract not only all the people of Africa or the non-White majority of the world, but also the so-called "Whites" who perhaps need a greater readjustment of outlook, to facilitate the achievement of this new world.
We know that in South Africa itself, the White minority has been the prisoner of its prejudices and has followed a leadership which is bent on a suicidal path, a path which can only end in an inglorious battle in which the very survival of that community would be at stake. To combat apartheid is, indeed, in a sense,
to protect this blind and ignorant mass against itself, and to have a better outlook of the future of mankind which cannot be seen through the distorting prism of racism.
If the danger of race conflict in South Africa is today more serious than ever, it is precisely because the myth of superiority of one race over another has been shattered. The most basic element in this myth - the superiority of the White man with the gun - has been destroyed in a series of colonial confrontations in our generation and continues to be, day after day, for those who are too blind and too deaf to see the truth and listen to reason.
The South African Whites have become madder than ever in this generation, precisely because it is very hard to retain the conviction of superiority. They are not behaving like brutes because they think the Africans are savages but because they are afraid of the nobility, intelligence and steadfastness of such African leaders as Chief Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki. It is also because the myth of the inferiority of the black people, and of all non-White people in general, has been destroyed by the greatest political revolution of the second half of our century, namely, decolonization.
There is no doubt that the African people of South Africa will achieve their freedom whatever the ferocity of their oppressors and whatever the obstacles in the course of their legitimate struggle. It is the duty of those of us who recognize the inevitability and the justice of this change to do everything possible to ensure a rapid transformation, with a minimum of violence and in the most favourable circumstances, so that the whole world will not be shaken by racial confrontations and so that something positive may be salvaged for South Africa.
As I said at the Seminar in Brasilia2, South Africa is in a sense, in view of its races, religious and political belies, and its dangerous division into "have and have nots", a miniature of the world. The solution of the racial problem in that country is a test for the whole world.
When the South African authorities try to create artificial divisions, they, in fact, divide the world into races in violation of all the efforts made and the victories achieved by the international community, particularly by the United Nations, for the achievement of peace by international co-operation and respect for human dignity.
South Africa has seen not only a long reign of racism but also a long struggle against racism often launched against many odds. The African National Congress is itself more than half a century old. A great part of the Indian community, which has a long tradition of resistance - having been led by Gandhi in passive resistance at the turn of the century - has resisted the divisive manoeuvres of the oppressors and has recognized the need to identify its own future with the victory of the African struggle for justice. The Coloured community, long alienated from the Africans by the privileges accorded by the rulers, has also joined the resistance. A few courageous Whites - people like Abram Fischer - have also contributed to the struggle for liberty.
Much as I reject and hate the language of the race classifications of the doctrinaires of apartheid, I have referred to it in order to emphasize that because of historic reasons and because of the growing inhumanity of the racists the struggle in South Africa has gone beyond the limits of a struggle of the black man alone. The other oppressed groups, as well as a few men of conscience from the privileged group, have also joined this struggle, while recognizing that the core of the problem is the struggle against oppression by the indigenous African, the Bantu, and that, in the struggle for equality, the voice of the African people and their organizations should be paramount. The African people have produced broad-minded and humane leaders who have been able to maintain this unity in struggle. They have made it clear that their goal is not the replacement of the humiliation of the African by injustice to people of other origins but the elimination of racism and the building of a non-racial society.
While we have no doubt that the struggle of the African people will inevitably succeed, the form of this struggle, whether peaceful or violent, is of momentous importance for the future of South Africa and of humanity. It is significant that the jails in South Africa today are crowded not only with African leaders but also with people of other racial origins. If a violent conflict is unavoidable, we can foresee with confidence that the blood of the people of different racial origins will mingle in the cause of freedom.
What would be the fate of the rest of the world? We should ask ourselves whether we have contributed our share in this struggle which is essentially the struggle of all humanity. Or, have we failed to learn from the history of this generation and are we letting the South African people go through fire and sword all alone without coming to their help in order to avoid a disaster?
The struggle for freedom in South Africa is certainly the right, the responsibility and the privilege of the people of South Africa. They have not abdicated their struggle or asked for freedom as a gift from the rest of the world. Whatever we do at the international level - whether as governments or in anti-apartheid movements and other popular organizations - we need to recognize in all humility that our role is but secondary. We do not aspire to liberate - which would be tantamount to substituting ourselves to the South African people - but to assist the liberation, as that is our duty if we are loyal to our own convictions. We can discharge this duty only if we avoid any pity or paternalism and remain at all times responsive to the needs and desires of the liberation movement.
For over twenty years, the oppressed South African people have knocked at the doors of the United Nations appealing to it to fulfil the promises made by the allied countries in the struggle against Nazi racism and in the Charter of the Organization, by taking meaningful steps to promote the cause of equality in South Africa, a founding Member of the Organization.
The organs of the United Nations - the General Assembly and the Security Council - have considered numerous documents, heard thousands of speeches and adopted a mass of resolutions - numbering well over thirty on apartheid and 76 on South West Africa. But it is sad to note that these resolutions have largely remained on paper. The situation in South Africa today is no better than in 1946, but far more oppressive and explosive. There is little to show for all the discussions at the United Nations except for an arms embargo - which is violated by certain Great Powers, permanent members of the Security Council such as France which has agreed to sell three submarines to South Africa - a modest fund for assistance to prisoners and their families in South Africa and a programme of scholarships for some refugees. (All these, I might note, have come in the past few years after the establishment of the Special Committee on Apartheid). I do not ignore the great increase in the votes against apartheid, the verbal condemnation of apartheid or the more forthright positions taken on principle, and the increasing awareness of world public opinion. But the fact remains that this increasing concern has not led to concrete action which is meaningful in relation to the objective of eliminating racism from the face of the earth.
In the meantime, the South African regime has been able to take frantic measures to intensify the racist oppression and, on the other hand, to build up a powerful military and economic armour to secure a total hegemony over the peoples of that territory who are kept under medieval slavery. The tragic history of the past decades proves that the people of South Africa, who encountered ever-increasing ruthlessness of the regime, have heroically resisted that tyrannical oppressor.
While many Governments, because of their abhorrence of racism and in solidarity with the oppressed South African people, broke their economic relations with South Africa in pursuance of United Nations recommendations, it is painful to note that most countries from the so-called free world have nullified the sacrifices of these States and vied with each other to boost South Africa's trade and their own trade, profiting from the sweat of the exploited masses of South Africa. They have poured investments into the country, and they have lent liberally to South Africa to bail it out of its economic dependence on the rest of the world.
These Western Christian countries have also helped to build up South Africa's war machine - at first, we were told, in gratitude for the co-operation of the racists in the Korean war, then to combat communism in Africa, later to protect sea communications of the so-called "free world". More recently, and in the absence of more persuasive arguments, we are assured that this war machine that they have helped to create is not intended to establish and consolidate apartheid.
This increasing collaboration - which encourages the racists to persist in their madness - is accompanied by impressive statements declaring abhorrence of apartheid. Indeed. some of the Western delegates are nowadays so eloquent in their protestations of dissociation from apartheid and racism that the contrast between words and deeds has become scandalous.
The South African regime is seemingly ignored by them in the halls of the United Nations as if it is an embarrassing and illegitimate child, but it is received with open arms and with courtesy in the commercial capitals - London, Paris New York, etc.
If the South African regime wants a factory to manufacture guns or planes to reinforce repression of the people, or refineries or ships to resist economic sanctions, or loans to tide over economic troubles - there is always an immediate and acute competition among the Western governments and the giant corporations to supply the needs, needless to say, at an attractive profit.
Then we are told that economic sanctions are so difficult to apply. We are told that persuasion is the best policy as if oppressors have ever been persuaded by words to give up their privileges and as if the hypocrisy of condemnation coupled with collaboration will persuade the racists to become saints. We are told that economic forces will automatically undermine apartheid. This argument which has a certain value is, in fact, a comforting thought to the foreign economic interests as it enables them to continue reaping profits without let-up from the country of apartheid, but this policy of inaction and drift has only made the situation more explosive.
We are compelled to conclude that the forces ranged against us are not only the racists of South Africa but powerful accomplices abroad, particularly the economic interests which profit so greatly from the oppression in South Africa. In fact, we are compelled to conclude that the racists of South Africa are the mere slave-drivers, the well-paid gendarmes, who do their unpleasant duty in return for a few crumbs thrown by the economic and financial oligarchies living in grace across the seas.
The actions of these powerful collaborators with South African racism - who have encouraged the proponents of apartheid in their madness and shielded them from effective international pressure - have forced the South African freedom movement, noted for its patience and pacifism during fifty years of struggle, to conclude that there is no salvation except through violence. We who have tried in the international field to promote effective peaceful measures to solve the South African problem cannot, in all honesty, disagree with the assessment because we are convinced that the powerful interests and certain Western governments are not likely to change their attitudes and cease to undermine effective international action, or to associate themselves with such action. Indeed, at present, even the arms embargo is being turned into a ghastly farce with offers of submarines and planes, no doubt at a respectable profit stained with blood.
Then these forces which sell the weapons of death to the racists in order to protect their illegitimate interests in South Africa turn around and tell us that South Africa is militarily and economically too strong to contemplate any serious action. Unfortunately this argument of South African strength has also overawed some weak-minded men, though liberals, who suggest to us to look for the solution of the problem in humanitarian measures. Others are so imprudent as to consider apartheid exclusively under a humanitarian aspect, though it is in fact a serious political and economic problem.
This is the place and now is the time to denounce the myth of the South African strength and to demolish it once and for all. We call it a myth because the strength of South Africa, so visible today, will prove an illusion. The most common mistake is to compare the military potential of South Africa with that of the African States, separately or collectively. It is a sign of political blindness to overlook the fact that the real enemy of the South African regime is in fact, not the African States - which certainly do not hold it in esteem - but its own people who live with it and whom it sees through the distorting glasses of prejudice and privilege. The South African regime cannot fairly judge the people of South Africa because it refuses to recognize those peoples for fear of loving or respecting them.
It must be recalled that mightier powers have been defeated in the battlefields of liberation wars of oppressed peoples in Asia and Africa and even Europe when the people of these continents took up arms to affirm their right to live freely. South
Africa will have the same fate the day when the South African population, impatient and disillusioned by the impotence of the United Nations and the international community, will resort to weapons at the appeal of their liberation movements. We are aware that that day is nearer than is generally thought. Many South Africans are, in any case, preparing themselves for that confrontation.
The so-called strength of South Africa is based on the labour of an oppressed majority. The regime is a colossus with clay feet. The people will find a way to challenge its power and, in fact, utilize the strength of South Africa against the racists and for its liberation.
We need waste no pity on the oppressed people of South Africa nor doubt the inevitability of the ultimate triumph of the cause of justice and equality in South Africa. What we need to consider is our role in this great drama, the course of which will have inescapable repercussions and incalculable consequences al over the world.
For all these reasons the Special Committee on Apartheid, which has had the duty of following the situation in the past four years, has come to the conclusion that any more paper resolutions are worse than worthless, and that it is criminal to promote illusions and false hopes about international action which many countries have no intention to implement. It is hardly worthwhile to pass a resolution on economic sanctions against South Africa, however large the vote, if it will be undermined by the countries which are the closest economic partners of South Africa. It is of little use to engage in annual condemnations of apartheid or appeals for release of prisoners if there is no force behind such resolutions.
The Special Committee has, therefore, proposed, and the General Assembly has approved, an international campaign against apartheid to demonstrate the determination of the United Nations to secure the eradication of apartheid, and back it with the power of world public opinion.
This campaign should be a many-sided effort at all levels - by Governments and inter-governmental organizations, and by non-governmental groups and world public opinion - to take concrete action to help eradicate apartheid. While the United Nations and Member States bear a great responsibility, we feel that, at this stage, an intensified non-governmental campaign is essential. The mobilization of public opinion is of crucial importance in order to end, especially in the Western countries, the policies of equivocation, drift and hypocrisy. We need a more vigorous public opinion to help break the impasse at the United Nations and to supplement and reinforce its efforts.
I come here, therefore, to greet you and to appeal to you to redouble your efforts not only because your work is worthwhile in itself but also because it is essential to the United Nations in its efforts to find a more efficient solution to the problem of apartheid which poses a test and a challenge to that Organization.
Let every group or organization join this campaign with an effective contribution. Sports associations may perhaps promote a boycott of apartheid in sports. Humanitarian and philanthropic associations may help alleviate the distress of the victims of apartheid and repression, and show, by their actions, their unshakeable opposition to apartheid. Student associations may demonstrate their solidarity with the student community in South Africa in its resistance against the increasing encroachments of racism in the universities and schools. Many of you may act in concert to counteract the nefarious racist propaganda, and mobilize world public opinion against apartheid for more effective action through the United Nations. Some of you may perhaps help provide direct political and material assistance to the liberation movement engaged in the struggle for liberty. The international day for the commemoration of the struggle against racism, which is observed on 21 March, the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre, should be better organized.
While each group may work at the level appropriate to it and take up specific issues, let it be understood that these activities are part of a concerted campaign which has the aim of total eradication of racism. There can be no compromise with racism in South Africa or anywhere else. We fight not the excessiveness of racism, but all manifestations of racism.
As Breyten Breytenbach, the Afrikaner writer, poet and painter (in exile in Paris) wrote recently:
"… the whole ideology underlying apartheid must be abolished before we can think in terms of culture, and therefore in terms of human dignity. Advocating the liberalization of a situation is another way of condoning the status quo…
"It is the basic ideology of the White people in power (and those they represent) as embodied in all the apartheid laws, which denies culture and human dignity to all the people of South Africa, including themselves3.
We are deeply distressed at the actions of the few countries - the main trading partners of South Africa - including certain of the Great Powers which bear a tremendous responsibility for world peace - which have permitted the intensification
of racism in South Africa, by their economic collaboration, by their supplies of aircraft, warships and strategic material, and by their resistance to economic sanctions.
I have not come here to point the finger of accusation against any country or group of countries, but to appeal to you to see to it that your countries are true to their best traditions and interests, and indeed, to the ideal of the brotherhood of all men and peace. Let not the vision of your great countries be corrupted by the glittering profits that certain groups derive from racism in South Africa.
Speaking today in Paris - in this great city of learning, where 15 years ago I came to renew my intellectual forces - may I venture to recall to you and pay tribute to the glorious resistance against Nazi racism - in the eyes of which the Frenchmen and the Africans were all inferior beings differentiated only by degrees and in the struggle against which the memorable French martyrs were joined by many Indo-Chinese, West Indians and Africans.
Let me hope, in all sincerity, that France will not be tempted to blunder again, this time in Southern Africa when it wants to be the true friend of the third world in general and of Africa in particular.
To veil a certain complicity, one should not bring up the fallacious argument of non-intervention in the internal affairs of South Africa, which is the argument advanced by many countries - such as France - which precisely interfere with the affairs of that country on the side of the oppressors. In the struggle for liberty France should be a precious ally because of all its traditions.
Mr. Chairman,
I wish this Conference great success in achieving its purposes and promoting concerted action by anti-apartheid movements. I wish to assure you that the Principal Secretary of the Special Committee on Apartheid4 and I will follow your proceedings with attention and will report its results to the Special Committee on our return to New York. I wish also to inform you that the Special Committee looks forward to more intense co-operation with the anti-apartheid movements…
I very much hope that this family reunion will be the signal of a mobilization of other European brothers in their efforts to join their forces, energies and intelligence for the achievement of a common, and soon universal, action which will result in the eradication of apartheid and the collapse of the system of oppression and exploitation as it is practised in the country of gold and tears, the country of despair but also of the Cape of Good Hope, namely South Africa, that martyred giant of a continent which is engaged inexorably in the path of progress and justice.
Footnotes