SPEECH AT THE MEETING OF THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE AGAINST APARTHEID IN OBSERVANCE OF THE DAY OF SOLIDARITY WITH SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICAL PRISONERS
12 October 1981
For the past 18 years now, the international community has unflaggingly been reminded by this' Committee of the plight and problem that faces the South African political prisoners, and also of our comrades in arms who are with our leaders on Robben Island, comrades such as Toivo Ja Toivo of Namibia, and many others from that sister country.
Over the past 18 years we have seen the growth of the international movement of solidarity with the struggle of our people. We have seen the continuing support of that struggle by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which has unflaggingly carried out the task set out in its charter, of seeing that racism and colonialism are wiped off the face of the African continent. We have seen the growing support of non-aligned and socialist Moreover, progressive and democratic organizations of the people, countries. especially in the Western world, have grown and are doing everything possible giving us invaluable service in building up the necessary lobby in those countries. That is necessary particularly because the Governments of those countries have been known over the period to continue to support the racist regime of South Africa.
Over those 18 years, contrary to the wishes of the apartheid regime in our country, the stature of the political prisoners has grown, particularly that of Nelson Mandela and his colleagues who have been in prison during that period. Indeed, our leaders on Robben Island have firmly underlined the revolutionary principle of no surrender to the terrorism of the fascist regime.
In reply to that, the apartheid regime, instead of yielding to world public opinion and the mounting pressure of oppressed people in South Africa, has continued and even intensified its oppression against the majority of our people. Having failed to break some of our leaders, it has now started the tactic of simply assassinating them, as we have recently witnessed in the criminal assassination of Comrade Joe Gqabi, a member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress (ANC) and a representative of our organization in the young republic of Zimbabwe.
This morning we listened carefully to one representative after another of various international organizations as well as representatives of States emphasizing their continuing support for our struggle, but we must bear in mind that, far from relenting in the face of this pressure, the apartheid regime has been intensifying its oppression of the people of South Africa.
Another feature of this period has been that the repression of our people has spilt over the borders of South Africa. Today we have a new category of political prisoner in South Africa - the person who has simply been abducted after the apartheid regime's punitive forces have crossed borders into sovereign States and abducted freedom fighters from those States. That happened not long ago with the abduction of our people from Mozambique.
The regime's repression of our people, its aggression against the oppressed population of South Africa, has also spilt over in its growing aggressive tactics against those countries in Africa that continue to support the struggle of our people. The world has witnessed continued aggression since 1975 against the people of Angola, and recently that aggression assumed dimensions that emphasized the danger facing the independent States of the continent. The ANC today emphasizes its unfaltering condemnation of such behaviour against independent African States.
It may be well to associate the plight of the prisoners in our country, the continuing incarceration of our people in extremely difficult conditions, with the real-life experiences of some of our brothers, by giving an indication of the kind of things that they have to suffer, and what is happening increasingly with some of the regime's machinery, such as the judiciary, which has always tried to demonstrate that it is impartial but which has many times been found to side closely with the regime's aggressive and repressive policies against our people.
One of the political prisoners today is a 26-year-old African woman called Caesarina Makhoere, who was sentenced to five years' imprisonment. For four of those five years this young freedom fighter has been able to meet only one person, her mother. In other words, she has been completely isolated.
We leave it to the members of the Committee and others present today to imagine for themselves the detrimental long-term effects of that kind of prolonged isolation on the health of that individual.
We should also recall that on the evening of 3 May 1978 a police detective sergeant ripped out two teeth from a young Sowetan man's mouth with pliers during interrogation. In the three years since, that police sergeant has been promoted to warrant officer and has had no action taken against him by the courts or the police department. That clearly shows that such acts of barbarism are condoned by the apartheid regime.
We should draw attention to one other case which is more or less typical of what people have to suffer in the struggle in our country. We were recently informed that the wife of former Robben Island prisoner Comrade James Kati of Engcobo died in hospital while her husband and daughter are being held by the Transkei security police. We must wonder what is now happening to the rest of the family since the mother has died and the father is in detention.
Those are just a few examples which are a reflection of the general situation facing the oppressed people in that country, the people who are fighting with determination to wipe off the face of the earth the aggressive apartheid system.
We should also draw attention to the fact that of late, in order to give the courts of law an opportunity to impose the maximum sentence on freedom fighters captured on the battlefield, the regime is now charging our people captured on the battlefield with high treason. Already soldiers have faced court cases in South Africa as a result of this new assault by the regime, and six of them have been sentenced to death. Their names were read out earlier. They are Comrades Petrus Mashigo, Johannes Shabangu, David Moise, Naphtali Manana, Johnson Lubisi and Anthony Tsotsobe.
The struggle of our people is intensifying inside the country. One of the main features of its intensification is the growing intensification of the armed struggle by the masses of the people and the people's army.
There can be no doubt that in the very near future more of our freedom fighters will fall into the hands of the fascist regime. How does the African National Congress regard this matter? Last November no less a leader of our movement than the President of the African National Congress, Oliver Tambo, signed a declaration on behalf of the ANC in Geneva, on the basis of the Geneva Conventions governing those captured on the battlefield.
The full text of that declaration reads as follows, if I may quote it:
"It is the conviction of the African National Congress of South Africa that international rules protecting the dignity of human beings must be upheld at all times. Therefore, and for humanitarian reasons, the African National Congress of South Africa hereby declares that in the conduct of the struggle against apartheid and racism and for self-determination in South Africa it intends to respect and be guided by the general principles of humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict. Wherever practically possible, the African National Congress of South Africa will endeavour to respect the rules of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 concerning the victims of armed conflict and the 1977 Additional Protocol No. 1 relating to the protection of victims of international armed conflict."
As part of the international campaign and as part of the effort of the international community to bring sanity to the apartheid regime in our country, the African National Congress hopes all our friends internationally will popularize this declaration, and in fact calls on them to do so, so that figthters captured in the field of battle must be treated as prisoners of war and accorded that status, and cannot be treated like ordinary cheap criminals, as is the situation today in that country. After all, it is the international community which has declared apartheid to be a crime against humanity. The only crime that the freedom fighters are committing and are going to continue to commit in the future is to engage in a heroic and determined struggle for the total eradication of that system.
Weshould again remind this Committee that our Organization and all the democratic forces in South Africa long ago determined the path to be followed through the revolutionary political programme, the Freedom Charter, that was adopted as long ago as 1955. The preamble to that Charter states that South Africa belongs to all wholive in it, black and white, and that no Government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people. He are happy to note that the international community in the intervening period has come to accept very fully the legitimacy of this programme and has also come to accept completely the legitimacy of the struggle of the people who are endeavouring to bring this programme into being in a liberated South Africa.
However, the tasks that face the international community show that there are forces, especially those that are very closely associated with the crimes that this regime is continuing to commit every day against our people - namely, the leading imperialist countries - which continue to buttress this regime. The world has been informed very clearly by the Reagan Administration that the United States of America is not going to turn its back on its allies. And in fact those of us that are leading the struggle of our people for a better future, for a truly democratic South Africa, have been characterized as terrorists or terrorist organizations. This calls for an intensification of the effort of the people, particularly in this country, and we are happy to note in this respect that only yesterday a conference was concluded in the United States of America, which had drawn together representatives not only from across this entire country but also from various political, social, community and religious organizations and which gave to the world the real voice of America - - the voice of condemnation of the growing collaboration between the Reagan Administration and the South African apartheid regime of terror.
Our organization warmly congratulates those heroic people who, in the face of the Administrations of Western Europe that will stop at nothing in their attempts to protect the regime of terror, are continuing in spite of this to make their voices heard, as a majority, in condemning the crimes of that regime and also condemning those that collaborate with it.
Our task is simple. The African National Congress will continue the struggle, which has reached such proportions that today the fascist regime in South Africa is confronted by a growing crisis as the mass of our people in open political activity are knocking at the gates of that citadel of apartheid while the people's army is intensifying its armed onslaughts against that regime. The least we expect from our friends all over the world is to intensify the efforts to implement the kind of programme that has already been put before the international community: a programme aimed at intensifying comprehensive sanctions against the apartheid regime in the economic field, culturally and militarily, including an oil embargo; a programme that is going to ensure the strengthening of the arms embargo against the apartheid regime; a programme that is going to call in ringing tones for the liberation of political prisoners in South Africa; a programme which, as was already said at the time of the declaration of 1982 as international year for mobilization against apartheid, will see the further growth of the international movement towards solidarity with our people in their struggle.
On our side, we shall in the year 1982 celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the African National Congress before the entire international community and we shall express the hope that in the course of the activity of the international community during that year the legitimacy of the existence of our organization, which has led the struggle of our people for the last 70 years, will be brought to every doorstep internationally. The need for acceptance of this programme, the Freedom Charter, will be brought to the doorstep of every household in this community. With the growth of such a movement, coupled with the intensification of our struggle inside the country, we must win.