21 March 1976
Sixteen years ago, on 21 March 1960, South African police, agents of the apartheid South African regime, armed to the teeth and using Saracen tanks in an unprecedented demonstration of savagery, cold-bloodedly shot and killed 69 Africans, seriously injuring about 180 others. This was no ordinary crime. All the dead and injured Africans were, a few minutes previously, engaged in a peaceful political demonstration against pass laws and other forms of oppression outside the police station near a small African ghetto in the Transvaal known as Sharpeville.
It must be stated from the outset that to the oppressed people of South Africa, the Sharpeville violence was not an isolated incident. The naked violence of the white minority state against innocent and unarmed people had become the normal pattern of relations. Sharpeville was one of many incidents - tragic, because of the number killed - known, because it occurred in an age of modern communications - significant, because it focused the attention of the world on the reality of apartheid in South Africa.
Since then, the world has come to know the reality of apartheid only too well which could not be hidden by the various faces of fascism which the regime in South Africa has attempted to present both to South Africa and the international community. The massacre of striking African mine workers at Carltonville in September 1973 and that of the ordinary workers of Madadeni location in Newcastle in 1975 are but a few examples which are proof of the brutal consistency of the apartheid regime in using this form of violence against the black oppressed people of South Africa. The physical elimination of political detainees and those who are already serving long terms of imprisonment for so-called crimes against the white minority state has become such a common feature that it has bordered dangerously on being regarded as an unavoidable occurence. Most of these crimes are hidden even from the next of kin in South Africa. In this category, such revolutionaries as Vuyisile Mini and Wilson Khayinga were amongst those sentenced to death and executed because of their leadership of the revolutionary movement in South Africa. Advocate Bram Fischer and many of his colleagues have already succumbed to the harsh inhuman conditions in South African prisons. Babla Saloojee and many others died in the hands of the South African Gestapo whilst undergoing interrogation. The list is endless.
Since the Sharpeville incident, the South African fascist regime has demonstrated yet another form of violence, this time not against the African people in a small town somewhere in South Africa, but against millions of people of an independent African State. The imperialist aggression using the fascist South African régime as its task force against the independent People's Republic of Angola is now common knowledge, and there is no need for an elaborate description of this dark page in the history of relations between the South African fascist regime and international imperialism on the one side, and the people of the African continent on the other. We need, however, to underline that the South African apartheid regime and her allies had sought the physical elimination of the revolutionary vanguard of the people of Angola, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), so as to clear the ground for the installation of the counter-revolutionary imperialist puppets, the FNLA and UNITA - agents of neo-colonialism. For South Africa, the regime's aggression against the People’s Republic of Angola was an attempt to extend the collapsing frontiers of apartheid and to maintain the buffer destroyed by the liberation of Mozambique in particular. Thanks to the heroism and determination of the people of Angola under the leadership of their consistently revolutionary vanguard, the MPLA, coupled with the unflinching support of many independent African States including that of the genuinely revolutionary forces in unliberated Africa, the Socialist countries notably the Soviet Union and Cuba and other democratic forces all over the world, the dark schemes hatched against the people of Angola and the whole of Africa in Pretoria, Washington and other capitals of Western Europe came to naught.
Nevertheless, the international community will ignore the lessons of recent events in Angola to the detriment of the peace and security of the peoples of Africa and the world. If anything, the open aggression of the South African fascist regime and her imperialist allies against the People's Republic of Angola has shown that having moved from the stage of behind the scenes diplomacy, political blackmail and intimidation, the enemies of Africa have proved that they will stop at nothing in their bid to protect their strategic, political and ideological and vast economic interests in our continent.
In this regard, we cannot be charged with mere speculation. Already, after the Angola debacle, word has come from influential news media in Britain openly calling for the protection of the racist regime of South Africa as the last remaining bastion of the so-called free world in Africa.
Criminals and the other elements of the social scum in the United States and other countries of Western Europe are being mobilized and trained to go and militarily destabilize progressive régimes on our continent. Taxpayers' money is being used to finance these criminal projects against the African people whilst the overwhelming majority of the population, the working people of these imperialist countries wallows in poverty and is faced with prospects of an interminable bleak future. The Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America handed out millions of dollars, not for the economic assistance of the developing African countries, but for the purpose of arming the hordes and brigands of FNLA and UNITA against the People's Republic of Angola and its people. The next destination of the imperialist trained mercenaries is now Rhodesia, whose aggression against the People's Republic of Mozambique was a subject of debate of the Security Council during the last few days.
On the other hand, the fascist regime in South Africa is making frantic preparations for further acts of aggression against the independent States of Africa. The African National Congress has already informed the Secretary-General of the United Nations about the South Africa Defence Act Amendment Bill, the aggressive intentions of whose provisions have no parallel in modern times. In terms of this new law, "South Africa" is defined as "Africa South of the Sahara", which means that the South African Defence Force can be deployed to attack any of those independent African States from whose territories the racist Minister of Defence is satisfied an attack would be launched against South Africa. At the same time extensive mobilization of the white population into the South African Army is taking place. The military budget has rocketed further to a reported total of $17,000 million.
We have already made available to the international community information concerning the increasing nuclear collaboration between the fascist Republic of South Africa and the Federal Republic of Germany. There is also evidence that the fascist régime of South Africa is now being drawn into NATO's strategic plans. The sum total of all this is a danger sign against the vital interests of peace and security in Africa. Thus, whilst imperialist agencies are attempting to befuddle the minds of the African peoples by allegations of a non-existent threat from the Soviet Union and Cuba, plans for the consolidation of the fascist regime in South Africa as a striking force against the African revolution are advanced.
The oppressed population in South Africa has learnt a different kind of lesson from the events in Angola. The resounding defeat of the South African army of aggression has punctured, once and for all, the myth of the invincibility of the apartheid regime. This lesson has also not been lost to the vast sections of the white population who before now had intended to derive cold comfort from the apparent ability of the fascist white state to continue to protect their privileged position in South African society. The shame of defeat, the painful experience of losing so many of their next of kin in the field of battle is bringing a lot of political awakening to large numbers of the white community in South Africa.
Some of the "trusted" servants of the apartheid regime, the Bantustan chiefs are already taking the unprecedented step of publicly denouncing the Bantustan solution and are calling for the solution of the problems facing the oppressed people through "majority rule." This was stated by Chief Gatsha Butelezi to a crowd of more than twelve thousand African people in Soweto, Johannesburg on 14 March 1976 during a meeting in which he also told his audience:
"History will triumph over apartheid. It will triumph because in the final analysis history is made by majorities and not by minorities. Minorities cannot prevail forever."
He continued saying that those who were attempting to divide South Africa into so-called homelands were "fighting against the force of history that began marching across Africa in the 1960s which had all but reached South Africa's borders by 1976." It can therefore be seen that the impact of the escalating revolutionary struggle of the oppressed people in South Africa is drawing the positions of some of the Bantustan leaders much closer to those behind which the African National Congress has consistently rallied all the people inside South Africa and their international democratic supporters.
Despite everything else, the fascist South African regime seems determined to pursue its two-pronged manoeuvre of bearing its aggressive teeth whilst at the same time seeking to lull the vigilance of her neighbours through the much vaunted so-called detente in southern Africa. Inside the boundaries of South Africa, the South African régime is pursuing its Bantustan fraud. It is known that the Transkei Bantustan will be granted "independence" in October 1976. African traitors are already active in the United States and other Western countries canvassing support for the Transkei fraud.
Meanwhile, the economic situation in all the Bantustans continues to deteriorate catastrophically. Mr. Colin Eglin, leader of the former Progressive Party, once remarked after a visit to several Bantustans that whilst independence was the "grand illusion", poverty was the grim reality. Reports of malnutrition especially among children in the Bantustans have become frequent. In response to a request for information sought by Kupugani, a voluntary organization aimed at boosting nutrition, it was revealed that hundreds of people in the Transkei, Ciskei and Namaqualand were starving; 75-80% of the children examined at two hospitals in Pondolard, in the Transkei, in 1972 were found to be suffering from malnutrition, according to a recent study on the Bantustans.
The plight of the Black people in the rest of South Africa is no different. In line with the general economic crisis of the imperialist system, the South African economy is going through a deep crisis. Whilst its effects are widely felt, as usual the main sufferers are the exploited Black population, mainly the African people. The recent 17.9% devaluation of the rand has hit them very hard. With growing militarization of the economy in response to growing pressures both internally and externally, the economic future of the country is bleak indeed.
The apartheid regime's attempts to dislocate the liberation struggle continues. The repression of the democratic forces has intensified. In recent months, a number of the leaders who formerly were members of the banned African National Congress were arrested; several trials involving members of the National Youth Organization, the South African Students Organization (SASO), the Black Peoples Convention (BPC) are currently going on in South African courts. Banning orders have been re-imposed on several former leaders of the banned African National Congress, including Mrs. Lilian Ngoyi.
Such, in brief, is the background to this year’s observance of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. In spite of obstacles in their path, the oppressed people in South Africa are determined to raise to new heights their revolutionary struggle for the defeat of apartheid fascism. This is reflected in the growing mood of militancy of all sections of the oppressed population.
The obligations of the international community in support of the national liberation movement of the oppressed people of South Africa have become very urgent in the last few months. In this respect, we must underline our profound appreciation for the unfailing assistance of the Member States of the Organization of African Unity, the young States in other regions of the world including some countries in Western Europe especially In Scandinavia, the Socialist countries and other progressive democratic forces including this United Nations Committee and other agencies of the United Nations.
It is however, imperative that efforts in support of the African National Congress and the oppressed people of South Africa should be increased in the following domains: