Contents
The Chairman
General Assembly
United Nations Organization
Westminster
London
Africans South Africa protest against Incorporation South West Africa into Union. Pray urge control territory by UNO Trusteeship Council. Mandate over territory was under Article 22 Covenant League of Nations.
Africans South West Africa no share in Government therefore take no part in Incorporation Negotiations. South Africa itself denies Political and Economic Rights her 8,000,000 Africans.
83 percent Land reserved for 2,000,000 Europeans only less than 17 ½ Percent For 8,000,000 Africans. Only 40 per cent African children accommodated in mission schools.
95 per cent Africans are imprisoned under Discriminatory Regulations against Africans only. South Africa must first remove colour bar, restrictions, discriminations at Home.
(Signed) A.B. Xuma
President-General
South African National Congress
SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS
Press Reports Mr. Louw, Union Delegate, as saying in Fourth Committee
On Sixteen November that Mr. Rathebe told meeting of Johannesburg Joint Council Europeans and Africans that "Natives" would accept apartheid if it was total Segregation.
This was Apropos Polish Delegate's Anticipation of racial conflict resulting from Union's discriminatory policy and meant to show that Africans like Rathebe supported Apartheid. Regret to say that what Rathebe said was Opposite. Mr. Louw dared not tell delegations of Trusteeship Committee that among other things Rathebe Said, "Africans tried to be subservient and had done all menial work of the country, but in spite of this they had not been able to satisfy the Europeans.
They realized that they needed the guidance of Europeans who had the advantages of education and an older civilization, But felt that because of their own contribution in labour to the country's wealth they should be given equality of opportunity.
They Were no longer willing to be regarded as serfs or articles for exploitation, they wanted to be considered equal partners in the land of their birth. If this could not be achieved then total apartheid would be welcomed by them. But they knew that the apartheid envisaged by the Nationalists was quite different from that for which they hoped. The Nationalists wanted them to continue as hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Africans were well aware that it was futile to try and quarrel with Europeans, as they had the machine guns, for this reason and because they were so frustrated, they thought the only way to achieve harmony with the Europeans who possessed eighty-seven percent of the land [was for the Europeans] To give them territory and let them go their own way and build up their own civilization, with the help of Europeans l Goodwill.
" Rathebe Continued, "At the back of every person's mind was the desire for Freedom-European countries were endeavouring to regain freedom they had lost during war; Indonesia, India and Palestine were all striving for it and Africans Too longed for a state of their own where they would no longer suffer under oppressive laws." Rathebe Continued, "Africans Hoped that UNO would not be influenced by South African Government's Attempts to prevent the discussion of Union's Domestic Affairs at its meeting. Naturally they felt that the rest of the world should know of the racial discrimination in South Africa."
I beg you in interest of Justice to backward peoples of Union of South Africa who are unrepresented in assembly to circulate this cablegram to all members so that wrong impression may be corrected before debate in General Assembly. On twenty-third instant i cabled Mr. Louw requesting him to correct misrepresentation.
In the Course of a recent debate in the Ad Hoc Political Committee on the question of the race conflict in South Africa arising out of the apartheid policy of the Government of the Union of South Africa, it was suggested that I be invited to make a statement to the Committee on behalf of the African people whose views would not otherwise be available to the Committee, although they are vitally affected by the present trend of events in South Africa.
May I respectfully draw your attention to the fact that the request for a hearing by the United Nations comes from the African National Congress? In July 1952, before the item at present under discussion was placed on the agenda of the seventh session of the General Assembly, the African National Congress addressed a communication to Mr. Trygve Lie, Secretary General of the United Nations, asking for an opportunity to put their grievances before the General Assembly. (See the New York Times report, 26 July 1952). I do not know whether this request has been brought to the attention of your Committee, but as far as I am aware that is the only official request which has been addressed to the United Nations on behalf of the African people.
As a member of the National Executive of the African National Congress I have received a cable from the General Secretary of the African National Congress, Mr. W. M. Sisulu, authorizing me to speak on behalf of that organization at the United Nations, should the occasion arise. I have also received from his a copy of a memorandum setting forth the views of that organization regarding the apartheid policy of the Government of the Union of South Africa, and the grievances of the people subject to it. I am forwarding this memorandum herewith.
I feel bound to point out that ever since it became known in South Africa that there was even a remote possibility that I might be invited to make a statement before the United Nations on this subject, considerable official pressure has been brought to bear upon me not to accept such an invitation in view of the action which the Union Government would feel compelled to take against me. The University College of Fort Hare, in South Africa, with which I am connected, has also been warned that the Government "will be reluctantly compelled to take a very serious view of the matter as he (i.e., myself) is employed by your college which receives a considerable subsidy from the State". The authorities of the college, in view of this direct threat, have instructed me not to accept any invitation to appear. It is in the face of such threats of victimization that I submit the enclosed document for your consideration. As the request of the African National Congress for a hearing has not yet been considered, I do not feel called upon to decide, at this stage, on the issue of a personal appearance.
(Signed) Z.K. Matthews
President,
African National Congress (Cape)
Please see http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/un/ancmem.html
C/o Hotel Diplomat
108 West 43rd Street
New York, N.Y.
July 23, 1963
Mr. U Thant
Secretary-General
United Nations Organisation
United Nations 17, New York
Dear Mr. U Thant:
About three months ago, our attention was drawn to a letter purporting to be from Chief A.J. Lutuli, President-General of the African National Congress of South Africa. It appears that this letter was sent to you, as well as to other people and organisations in Europe and America. I enclose a photostat of this letter which is dated May 2, 1963.
From the onset it became clear to those of us who represent the African National Congress outside of South Africa that the letter was a blatant forgery and could not have possibly been written by Chief Lutuli. Our Vice-President, Mr. Oliver Tambo, whose offices are in London, then wrote to Chief Lutuli drawing his attention to this document. A reply has been received from Chief Lutuli confirming that this letter is in fact a forgery. I enclose the letter of June 21, 1963 written by Chief Lutuli to Mr. Oliver Tambo, in which he repudiates authorship of the letter of May 2, 1963. Chief Lutuli has requested us to immediately draw your attention to this situation.
I beg to remain,
Yours sincerely,
Tennyson Makiwane
East African Representative of the
AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS
Enclosure:
LETTER FROM CHIEF LUTULI TO OLIVER TAMBO, JUNE 21, 1963
Private Bag,
GROUTVILLE,
Natal, South Africa
21st June, 1963.
Mr. Oliver R. Thambo,
LONDON.
England.
Dear Oliver,
I acknowledge receipt of a copy of a letter purporting to have been written by me to the Secretary of U. N. O. I am shocked and dismayed at the fact that some people, in order to further their dirty ends can sink to such despicable levels.
I categorically deny authorship or any association whatsoever with this letter. I would sooner see myself dead than be an author of such a letter. In all my political life I have opposed the things which it is now alleged I am thanking the South African government for. I shall continue, whatever the consequences to fight against what this letter so mischievously claims I espouse. The sentiments expressed in this nefarious document are so contrary to my beliefs that I am certain that no one who knows me will ever accept their being associated with me. I am confident that all right thinking people will dismiss with the contempt it deserves this desperate but clumsy fraud by the enemies of the cause of our liberation in our land.
I ask you to take immediate steps to inform the Secretary-General of U.N.O. of my denunciation of this letter. I request you to take the trouble of showing him this my letter to you. You will also see to it that the contents of this my letter are communicated to all our friends and supporters abroad.
I reiterate on behalf of myself and of the oppressed people of South Africa our sincere gratitude and proud admiration for the courageous fight waged by our friends the Afro-Asian and other countries in support of our struggle here. I also take this opportunity to once again commend your own magnificent work and that of our other representatives abroad. All these efforts - our friends', yours and ours here, must be crowned with success in the very near future.
Yours in the struggle,
ALBERT J. LUTULI.
January 19611
Our organisations have sent many memoranda to the United Nations since its formation. We have repeatedly stressed the unjust and undemocratic rule of an all-White minority Government over a disenfranchised Non-White majority.
The character of South African political life can be readily understood by an examination of the Parliamentary structure in this country. All the Members of Parliament and the Senate are Europeans. There are three representatives of the Coloured people in the House of Assembly, but they are Europeans elected on a severely restricted separate roll. There are no members representing the African and Indian people, and no Africans or Indians have a Parliamentary vote of any kind, direct or indirect.
In place of political rights, in the legislative assembly, the Government has chosen to introduce so-called "self-Government" for Africans in the "Reserves". This policy, known as Bantu Authorities, has been rejected by the African people throughout the country, and they have demanded representation in Parliament which they maintain, is the law-making body for the whole of South Africa, including the reserves. Bantu Authorities is by its very nature purely administrative and, therefore, can never take the plece of democratically elected peoples' representatives.
The persistence of the Government in imposing Bantu Authorities on the African people in the face of African opposition has led to violent eruptions in one reserve after another, including such important areas as Zeerust, Sekhukuniland, Pondoland, Transkei, Ciskei and many others. No major reserve area has been left untouched by strife and bloodshed: The recent disturbances in Pondoland have shown such united and strong opposition to the Government that a State of Emergency has been declared over the whole of the Transkei and the Police, Army and Navy have been brought in to enforce Government authority. This is the way "self-Government" is granted to the African people.
Political rights for the Indian people are practically non-existent. Most of them do not even have the elementary right to vote in municipal elections, even though many are property owners paying municipal rates and contributing to municipal coffers in other ways. In many towns in Natal, the Indian people form the great majority of the inhabitants, but they are ruled by a local authority elected on an all-White franchise. Only Indians registered before 1922 may vote in municipal elections in Natal. As for representation in Parliament itself after 100 years of settlement in South Africa, the Government is not yet prepared to officially recognise the Indian people as South African citizens.
The Coloured and Indian people in the Cape Province only are entitled to a limited vote on a separate roll for Parliament and they have a qualified vote for the Municipal Councils. However, the Government is preparing to remove these voters from the common roll and to create separate municipalities with separate voters' rolls where they will be privileged to "develop on their own lines," according to the principles of apartheid. These municipalities will, however, embrace a poverty stricken community from which the authority will be unable to raise sufficient funds for necessary local works. The Coloured local authority will also be subservient to European local authorities and to the all-White Provincial Authority and Parliament.
In dealing with political rights, it is necessary to add that even for the European voters democracy is severely curtailed by the loading of constituencies, by delimitations favourable to the Government and by the general restrictions on free speech and organisations.
The denial of political rights goes hand in hand with the most oppressive and discriminatory measures.
The Indian and Coloured people have suffered greatly from the Ghetto provisions of the Group Areas Act. Under this law, land is reserved for a specific racial group and no other race may reside or trade in this area. Thus thousands of people have been forced to sell their homes and businesses at great loss and under duress, and move to an area reserved to them alone. An all-White Government elected by Europeans has used this law to benefit Europeans at the expense of the Non-Whites.
Job Reservation has been applied by the Government to limit the possibilities of advance of the Non-Whites as a whole. It has hit the Coloured artisans in the Cape particularly severely with many skilled artisans forced out of skilled work and replaced by Europeans, often with less skill.
The working population of South Africa is severely hampered by the complete denial of trade union rights to the African workers, and by the splitting effects of the Industrial Conciliation Act. In most cases workers have no recognized channels of negotiation, and their strikes are met with police brutality. These are the realities of life for the workers under Nationalist rule, and nothing can disguise them.
Conditions for rural farm workers in the countryside are even worse. Their working conditions have been exposed frequently as being sub-human, and the International Labour Organisation and other international bodies have described them as blatant forced labour.
The material conditions of the Non-White people have been analysed and described on many occasions, not only South African social scientists, but also by many visiting writers.
Almost everyone has been deeply moved by the squalour that is to be found here, and by the fact that, taken as a whole, the situation is deteriorating under Nationalist rule.
The people themselves are supremely conscious of this fact, and are now expressing the view that as long as apartheid and race discrimination remain, conditions will deteriorate.
The people are, therefore, turning to political action in order to seek relief. But Nationalist tyranny meets this political activity with outright repression and military force - hence the South African deadlock and crisis.
The record of political suppression is a long one. From its very first year of office, 1948, the present Government has followed a policy of eliminating its opposition. Members of Parliament were removed from office, trade unionists proscribed, political leaders banned from their organizations. On many occasions meetings have been banned for no other reason than that the Government did not approve of the particular manifestation of opposition.
This throttling of the expression of public opinion is bottling up widespread resentment among the people. This frustration manifests itself in periodic eruptions with increasing intensity and frequency, which cannot be suppressed. That we are sitting on a volcano due to erupt at any time arises directly from this fact. This is recognized by all men interested in South African politics the world over, but it appears to have escaped the myopic vision of our present Government. This, too, is the basis for world-wide concern for South Africa.
An eruption in South Africa would have world-wide repercussions. Whereas the unjust nature of South Africa's form of government was only of academic interest in the past, it is now a source of great concern to many nations throughout the world. This is because South African tension and violence is recognized as a threat to world peace.
Above all, we hope that your investigations here will bear out our repeated contention that the South African Government is a monster imposing its arrogant will on a dissenting people. We hope that you will recognize, as we do, that this Government is holding the vast majority of our people down by sheer force and that its policies are contrary to world practice. We hope, too, that you will inform the Security Council that the majority of the South African people are looking to that body for substantial assistance in their struggles for the realization of true democracy in our country.
We enclose herewith copy of a leaflet recently issued and distributed by the African National Congress in South Africa in reply to the South African Police statement that the African National Congress had been smashed.
We also enclose copy of background material we have prepared in connexion with a campaign we are presently mounting for the release of Walter Sisulu and others. The campaign should be launched within the course of the next week or so. Our fear is that the South African Government is going to be very ruthless when sentencing these people. It is also our feeling that the Government is going to dramatize the whole matter in an effort to appease the White electorate.
(Signed) Maindy MSIMANG
Administrative Officer,
African National Congress of South Africa
ENCLOSURE I
THE A.N.C. IS ALIVE!
Umkhonto We Sizwe fights on
The police say they have smashed the African National Congress. We reply: the A.N.C. shall never die! Our underground organization is at work, tirelessly meeting, organizing, planning. Our secret forces are with the people all the time, in the buses, in the factories, in the townships. We shall strike the oppressor government when we are prepared.
The A.N.C. is ready for anything!
Some of our bravest leaders have been arrested. But while the heroes of the people suffer brutally in Vorster`s jails, the people do not despair. The people will never run out of leaders. We have trained deputies, new leaders; a second wave of militant young men. The police know nothing about them. Does Vorster think the people are barren? Does he imagine we have not prepared ourselves?
We are not alone
The African people are not alone in the struggle. The Indian youth is now with us, and the Coloured people are learning to fight. Kicked out of their homes, their businesses strangled, forced out of town, the Indian people now understand what life is like for us. Squeezed out of their jobs, the Coloured people are learning the same lesson: THE OPPRESSED MUST STAND TOGETHER.
The longer this government lives, the more it unites us. Our colleagues outside South Africa, in Africa and the rest of the world, are acting surely to cut Verwoerd off from his friends. When he is alone and helpless, we will finish him off.
WE GATHER STRENGTH
Stand Fast!
While Vorster terrorizes the people, jails our sons and leaders, some of his henchmen are getting scared. Others are stricken by conscience: they all know the people shall win freedom. To save themselves, they offer all sorts of ingenious schemes to appease our demands and take the force from our fists. Judge Snyman, whose report gave Vorster the legal excuse for attacking the organizations of the people, now appeals for harmony! Whites must be tolerant, he says, and all will be well. Do not be deceived. We do not want to shake hands with the police before they beat us up; we do not want to be endorsed out by B.A.D. officials who smile at us. We demand freedom now: work, wages, land and bread! We want one man, one vote! We want our country back!
Release our leaders!
If Snyman and the Government genuinely want race harmony, they must talk with our leaders. They must talk with the leaders we choose, not their own self-appointed stooges like Matanzima. If this government wants peace, they must release our leaders from prison. There will be no rest until the prisoners of war are free.
We do not think the Government wants peace. Right now, police informers are the main enemy of the people. Until we rip out the last informer, there will be no freedom, no end to police raids, arrests and oppression. Like a disease rotting our body, informers are eating the strength of the people for police cash. The people must awake. Report every suspicious sign, anyone who asks too many questions. To informers we swear: if it takes five years or a hundred, we shall track you down. There will be no mercy. There will be no escape.. The police are trying to blunt the weapons of the people; but Umkhonto will strike again and again. For we are the Spear of the Nation.
AMANDLA! NGAWETHU!
THE POWER IS OURS!
Issued by THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS
ENCLOSURE II
The case of Verwoerd V. Sisulu and Others
The circumstances surrounding the recent arrests of Walter Sisulu and other opponents of apartheid gives rise to grave anxieties that the South African Government will shortly put them on trial in an attempt to prop up the regime and intimidate the opposition. The lives of Sisulu and other political prisoners may be at stake. In this Note the African National Congress sets forth some of the factual background explaining the urgency and importance of a new and powerful campaign on behalf of Sisulu and his companions, including the thousands of political prisoners now languishing in South African gaols.
1. Rule by terror
The white minority which dominates South Africa retains its position by terror. The chief objects and victims of this policy of force and violence are those who resist oppression and apartheid. Already Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe and thousands of others are toiling in South Africa's gaols, many of them without having ever been charged or convicted, even in the law courts whose former independence and judicial impartiality has largely disappeared. The Government aims to destroy all movements which reject and resist the policy of white domination by the simple technique of smearing them as communistic, treasonous and criminal. Goaded by sheer hatred, fear and a bad conscience, it will seek increasingly to herd all resistance leaders into gaols and concentration camps and even to put them to death.
The notorious Treason Trial of 1956-61 was an attempt to do this through the courts and laws as then constituted. It failed when all the accused were finally acquitted in March 1961. The Government set methodically to work to make sure that "next time" there would be no such failure. Even while the Treason Trial was in progress, the African National Congress was declared unlawful, as was also the Pan Africanist Congress. All means of non-violent protest which the resistance movement had employed were proscribed, making recourse to other methods inevitable. Draconic new laws were introduced, by-passing normal judicial procedures, enabling persons to be detained insolitary confinement without trial, and laying down the death penalty for a large number of offences re-defined as "sabotage".
The Treason Trial was preceded by an announcement by General Rademeyer, then head of the South African police, to the effect that the police had uncovered a treasonable conspiracy. These things run true to form: first announce the crime, then start looking for - and manufacturing - evidence. Rademeyer’s announcement was followed by a series of massive police raids on members and offices of the A.N.C. and its associate organizations. Thousands of documents were seized, later to form the basis of the prosecution case in the Treason Trial.
There is a remarkable parallel between the Rademeyer announcement of 1955 and the Snyman reports of 1963 (see ANNEXURE "A").
2. The events of July 11
On 11 July 1963, armed police surrounded and raided the home of Mr. Arthur Goldreich, well-known artist at Rivonia, near Johannesburg. They captured and arrested Walter Sisulu, underground leader of the African National Congress who had been living in hiding. At the same time they arrested a number of other people of various South African nationalities whom they say were with him at the time (see ANNEXURE "B").
Eighteen people in all were arrested and are being held in solitary confinement under the notorious "detention without charge or trial" clause of the General Laws Amendment Act. They are allowed no visitors, not even legal representatives.
Contrary to earlier reports, not all those arrested were taken at the same time. For example, Mr. and Mrs. Goldreich were arrested when coming home that night, long after the raid had taken place, and Dr. H. Festenstein when visiting the house still later. A number of those arrested are known to have been staff and agricultural labourers on the premises, which are on a small-holding.
The police claim to have seized a number of documents on the premises. They say they also found duplicating machines, typewriters, "a powerful radio transmitter and booster", nitric acid and a "partly completed mechanical device with a spring action - described bya policeman as 'something like a land mine' " . (Rand Daily Mail, 15.7.63)
3. Preparing a frame-up
It is obvious that, following this sensational "coup", the police are building up for one of the most spectacular demonstration trials ever held. Immediately after the arrests Colonel H.J. van den Berg of Security police headquarters in Pretoria said the arrests were "a culminating point in intensive investigations throughout the country to combat subversive activity".
"It is one of the most important round-ups so far", he said. He went on to say that the police had "smashed the ANC underground headquarters". (Rand Daily Mail, 12.7.63)
Reporting on an interview with "senior security branch officers in Pretoria", the Johannesburg Sunday Express (14.7.63) says:
"the seventeen people who were detained in last week's raids ... face the possibility of being charged with high treason. (They) can be charged on any of the following counts, three of which could result in the death penalty being imposed:
high treason;
sabotage;
furthering the aims of a banned organization;
harbouring men wanted by the police;
aiding refugees to flee South Africa by way of an underground escape route."
B. J. Vorster, Minister of Justice, told the press:
"This year was set aside by the Communists, the ANC and other subversive organizations as the time to wreck law and order and create chaos in South Africa ... The police have achieved a major breakthrough in curbing and smashing the ANC and the Communist movement in this country." (CapeTimes, 20.7.63.)
At the same time the Government has unleashed a new massive propaganda campaign.
"In its second mammoth pamphlet distribution scheme aimed at the natives of the Transkei, the South African government says that the African National Congress is Communist-controlled,"
states the Rand Daily Mail (16.7.63). The report states that about 270,000 pamphlets are being distributed in all the six districts of the Transkei by the Department of Information in Umtata.
To those who are familiar with the outlook and methods of the South African police such statements carry the most sinister implications. It can hardly be doubted that they are at present intensively engaged in manufacturing evidence for conspiracy charges, perhaps involving the death penalty, in preparation for a trial.
Any such trial will bear little resemblance to what is regarded, in countries where the rule of law prevails, as normal judicial proceedings. It will be a demonstration, intended to panic the whites of South Africa into hysterical fear for their property and their very lives; to terrorize the non-white majority into submission to their own subjection and degradation.
It would be misleading to compare the South Africa of 1963to that of 1956 when the treason trial was launched, for our country has during the intervening years degenerated into a full-fledged police state. Judicial impartiality and procedures and the rule of law have long gone by the board, and freedom of criticism and opinion are but memories.
This will be clear from a brief examination of some of the laws which make up the background and under which these patriots will be tried for their lives (see ANNEXURE "0").
1. Stop this murder!
With a packed and intimidated Bench, a gagged and fearful press, there is no possibility of a fair trial for Sisulu and his colleagues.
Untrammelled by the restrictions which faced them in the treason trial, not subjected to the checks and restraints of a searching defence, the special branch of the South African police will fabricate "evidence" at will and "horrify" those who are prepared to take them seriously with blood-curdling details of planned atrocities and "communist" plots directed from Moscow, Ghana or Peking to the limits to which their lurid imaginations may carry them.
One thing and one thing only, can now save the lives of Walter Sisulu and his colleagues from judicial murder at the hands of Verwoerd's executioners - a powerful campaign of unprecedented dimensions in Africa and throughout the world, aimed at securing the immediate release of Welter Sisulu and all other political prisoners held in the gaols of the apartheid state of South Africa.
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE WORLD MUST NOT ALLOW WALTER SISULU AND HIS BRAVE COMPANIONS TO BE SACRIFICED ON THE ALTAR OF APARTHEID AND WHITE DOMINATION
ANNEXURE “A"
In November 1962, Africans living in the location near Paarl, Cape Province, under unendurable conditions, rioted and a number of lives were lost. The Government set up a one-man commission, consisting of Mr. Justice J. H. Snyman, to go into the causes. Snyman made two reports. The first, submitted in February, declared the Paarl riots were organized by Poqo, which he described as a "terrorist" organization. This report, known as the Interim Report, was the occasion and pretext for Vorster's General Laws Amendment Act, 1963, which was rushed through Parliament in indecent haste last April, and followed by mass arrests.
Snyman's Final Report was tabled in Parliament on 25.6.63. In this Report he alters his ground. The CapeTimes says it
"seems to imply almost a reconsideration of the seriousness of the situation as it was stated in the Commissioner's Interim Report, in which the country was warned of plans for an uprising ... Yet it was partly on the evidence of this Interim Report that the country was rushed into accepting the virtual suspension of the rule of law involved in Mr. Vorster's second General Laws Amendment Act." (Editorial, CapeTimes, 26.6.63)
In this final report Snyman went far beyond his terms of reference and field of investigation, to declare that "South Africa's greatest danger is the African National Congress."
"Mr. Justice Snyman states that because his terms of reference required him to inquire into the events in Paarl, and Poqo appeared to have organized the riots there in November, he gave particular attention to this movement.
"'I wish, however, to guard against creating the erroneous impression that it is the only, or even the most dangerous, organization plotting the violent overthrow of the Republican Government’". (CapeArgus, 25.6.63)
Synman repeats with emphasis the smear that the ANC is "communist controlled". He lists the organizations which co-operate or who have co-operated with the ANC and concludes:
"The ANC has within its ranks the greater number of educated and intelligent men ... It is openly plotting the violent overthrow of the present governmental order in South Africa". (CapeAngus, 25.6.63)
Within a fortnight of this sensational "Report" the security police raided the Goldreich home at Rivonia when eighteen people were arrested. Since then numerous arrests have taken place in different parts of the country.
ANNEXURE "B"
Those arrested during, or in connexion with, this raid include:
Walter Sisulu. Formerly Secretary-General of the African National Congress, he was one of the accused in the treason trial. Once an underground worker on the Witwatersrand gold mines, he was convicted during the Defiance Campaign of 1952 and has devoted his life for many years to the liberation of his people. In March this year he was sentenced to six years imprisonment for "incitement". While on bail pending an appeal against this sentence, he was placed under 24-hour-a-day house arrest by Ministerial order and forbidden to receive any visitors or communicate with anyone outside his house. He escaped from his home in April, according to an announcement by the underground ANC in South Africa. On 26 June, South Africa Freedom Day newspapers reported that his voice was heard on the illegal Freedom Radio. After he "disappeared", his wife, Albertina Thetiwe Sisulu, and his seventeen-year-old eldest son Max, were detained under the “no trial" clause. Walter was born at Engcobo, Transkei, on 18 May 1912. He has five other children.
Govan Mbeki. A member of the national executive of the banned ANC, Mr. Mbeki holds the degrees of B.A. and B.Econ. of the University of South Africa, and for four years represented the constituency of Idutywa in the old Transkeian Territories General Council, a quasi-parliamentary body abolished by the Nationalist Government. For many years he was the Port Elizabeth editor of the famous anti-apartheid newspaper, New Age (later Spark) suppressed by the Verwoerd Government. Mr. Mbeki is held in highregard as an expert on rural problems, especially those of the Transkei. He was served with a notice by the police in Johannesburg in February, ordering him to return to Port Elizabeth and undergo house arrest. Instead of complying with this notice he "disappeared". Govan is married and has two children. His son, Thabo, is at present studying in Britain.
Lionel "Rusty" Bernstein. A 43-year-old Johannesburg architect, educated at Hilton College, Natal, and Witwatersrand University, he served with the Sixth Armoured Division in Italy. Also a treason trialist, "Rusty" is a former member of the Communist Party of South Africa and the Congress of Democrats. He and his wife, Hilda, have four children, the youngest of whom is six, and the eldest twenty. Last November he was served with a Government notice placing him under twelve-hour daily house arrest, forbidding him to attend gatherings and ordering him to report daily to Marshall Square Police Station, Johannesburg.
Denis Goldberg. A 31-year-old Cape Town civil engineer, and a foundation member of the Congress of Democrats, he came into the news last year when a bomb was exploded in his front garden by fascist elements. Both Denis's parents are pioneers of the South African labour movement. He was detained for three months during the "state of emergency" following the Sharpeville massacre in 1960.
Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada. As long ago as 1946 - he was then seventeen - "Kathy" was arrested in the Passive Resistance movement being conducted by the South African Indian Congress against General Smuts’ "Ghetto Act". Since then he has never ceased to devote himself to the struggle of the oppressed people of South Africa. He has long been banned from all gatherings and membership of anti-apartheid organizations. He also "disappeared" while under 24-hour-a-day house arrest, in March 1963.
Raymond Mhlaba. A pioneer Port Elizabeth trade unionist, Mr. Mhlaba is a top leader of the banned African National Congress in the Eastern Cape Province. His outstanding organizing abilities are regarded by many as one of the main factors in making Port Elizabeth a stronghold of the African National Congress, as it has been for many years. Employed as a clerk by a Port Elizabeth lawyer, he is a widower, his wife having died during the State of Emergency. His two minor children live with relatives.
Adv. Bob Hepple. Bob's father Alex Hepple was leader of the South African Labour Party in the House of Assembly until this party was eliminated from parliament in the last General Election. A brilliant student, he matriculated from the Jeppe High School, Johannesburg, with distinctions in all six subjects. When he graduated with a B.A., LL.B. from Witwatersrand University in 1957 he was ranked as "top law student". He lectured at the University in law until admitted to the Bar last year. He and his wife, Shirley, have a two-year-old daughter and a baby son of seven months.
Arthur and Hazel Goldreich. An architect by profession, Arthur is best known as a painter. He has exhibited widely in South Africa and overseas and in 1955 won the award for the "most promising work shown by a young artist", at the Pretoria Centenary Celebrations. He designed the sets of "King Kong". He is employed by a big department store group in South Africa to plan new buildings and shop interiors. A keen sportsman, he represented North-Eastern Transvaal in the Currie Cup cricket tournament. His wife, Hazel, is a qualified nursery school teacher. They have three children.
Dr. Hilliard Festenstein. Educated at the Pretoria Boys' High School and the University of Cape Town, Dr. Festenstein, thirty-three, specialized in bacteriology at the School of Tropical Medicine in London. At the time of his arrest he was head of the South Rand laboratories of the South African Institute of Medical Research, engaged in research into tissue immunity. He and his wife have two sons aged four and seven.
ANNEXURE “C”
"Any commissioned officer may without warrant arrest or, cause to be arrested any person whom he suspects of intending to commit any offence under the Suppression of Communism Act or ... who in his opinion is in possession of any information ... and detain him at any place he may think fit …"
The clause adds that "no such person shall be detained for more than ninety days on any particular occasion", but this provision is of no value because at the end of ninety days the detained person can simply be re-arrested for a further ninety days and so on ad infinitum. It is also stipulated that:
"No person shall have access to any person detained", and "No court shall have jurisdiction to order the release from custody of any person so detained ..."
Under the General Laws Amendment Act, 1962 (Vorster's so-called "Sabotage" Act), anyone who commits any one of an enormous number of offences may be charged with "sabotage" for which the minimum sentence is five years imprisonment, the maximum death.
Sabotage includes strikes, demonstrations and painting slogans as well as "illegally entering any land or building".
Any person "who attempts to commit, or conspires with any other person to aid or procure the commission of or to commit, or incites, instigates, commands, aids, advises, encourages or procures any other person to commit any such act, or who in contravention of any law possesses any explosives, firearm or weapon or enters or is upon any land or building or part of a building, shall be guilty of the offence of sabotage and liable on conviction to the penalties provided for by law for the offence of treason: provided that, except where the death penalty is imposed, the imposition of imprisonment of a period not less than five years shall be compulsory ..."
The treason trial of 1956 had its positive side. The accused boldly made use of the court as a tribunal to try the unjust system of apartheid. Their speeches were freely reported in South. Africa and throughout the world Their lawyers mercilessly exposed the inconsistency and legal blunders of the prosecution, as well as the crude fabrications of the police witnesses.
Today, all that is changed. The traditional South African legal procedure of a preparatory examination in public has been abandoned, for political cases. The normal rules of evidence and procedure have "been scrapped. The "Sabotage" Act specifically places the onus on an accused person to prove his innocence. Nothing a banned person says may be reported or reproduced in any way, in terms of a clause which makes it an offence to "reproduce ... print publish or disseminate any speech, utterance, writing or statement ... made or produced or purporting to have been made or produced by any person prohibited ... from attending any gathering".
We notice from reports in the Press that the South African Government has refused a request by you to allow a group of United Nations experts to visit South Africa.7 We would like to place on record our indignation at the defiant and contemptuous manner in which the South African White Minority Government treats resolutions and Committees of the United Nations Organization. This conduct of the South African Government is consistent and is becoming more brazen.
So far, it appears that the South African Government has been able to flout resolutions and even humiliate committees appointed by the United Nations Organization with impunity. This attitude towards the United Nations Organization shows a disrespect for that Organization which is incompatible with South Africa's membership of that body.
We urge, Sir, as we have done before, that the time for punitive action against the delinquency of the South African Government is overdue.
South Africa's continued membership of the United Nations Organization does little to enhance the reputation and purpose of that body. Her immediate expulsion would be in the interests of the struggle against apartheid and would pave the way for other forms of action.
In our view, any further delay and any other conciliatory gestures to the South African Government merely adds fuel to her defiant attitude.
Vuyisile and 2 others sentenced to death in Sabotage Trial Port Elizabeth South Africa. Verwoerd Government deliberately flouting UNO Resolution and paving way for Judicial murder in other Trials. Situation grave and warrants emergency security council meeting
Passing of death sentence Vuyisile Mini leading Member of African National Congress Cape Province and two colleagues Wilson Khayinga and Mkaba Vicious Assassination by Verwoerd Government of Freedom Fighter and bound to further intensify racial crisis stop will precipitate widespread bloody racial clash. Urge United Nations call upon Verwoerd Government refrain hanging these gallant freedom fighters and release all political prisoners.
We enclose some of the biographical data we have so far on the case of the three Africans who have been sentenced to death by the South African Government. We are desperately trying to get all possible information from South Africa about the case. We shall send this information to you as soon as we get it. Unfortunately, we have no background information on the others.
ENCLOSURE
Death sentences have been passed on three leaders of the banned African National Ccngress in South Africa. All three are from the Eastern Cape Province. They are Vuyisile Mini, Zinakele Mkaba and Wilson Khayinga.
They were tried in the isolated village of Port Alfred, hundreds of miles from their homes in Port Elizabeth and the venue of the trial in itself created tremendous difficulties for the defence.
The three were accused of seventeen incidents of sabotage between September 1962 and January 1963. Other charges against them included house-breaking, propagating the aims of the banned organization - the African National Congress by addressing meetings and recruiting members with the object of sending them overseas for military training, and one of murder.
The charges under which the three men were condemned to die were framed under the General LawsAmendment Act 1962. Many of the witnesses were men detained under the 90-day system trial. When these witnesses were broken down in solitary confinement they were then considered suitable to give evidence.
Vuyisile Mini, the most well known of the three, was born in 1920 and grew up in Korsten, an African township near Port Elizabeth. By 1937 Mini had already taken part in local protests against higher rents and bus fares and later became secretary of the local African Dockworkers' Union and a prominent member of the S.A. Congress of Trade Unions. He was also Secretary of the Cape region of the African National Congress before it was banned.
He was prominent in resisting the mass removal of residents from Korsten and in 1952 went to jail for three months for his part in the Defiance Campaign.
In 1956 Mini was arrested and charged with 156 others in the Treason Trial which was to end in acquittal after nearly four years. Before being charged in the present trial Mini was also held in solitary confinement for months under the 90-day laws.
He is also a well-known singer and composer and many of his freedom songs are still sung in South Africa.
Details are unavailable yet about Mkaba and Khayinga.
We wish, Sir, to place on record that the United Nations has this year shown a new firmness and determination in the handling of the South African question. We wish to express our deep appreciation of the unequivocal stand of the United Nations on many issues affecting our struggle against apartheid.
The vigilance and swift reaction of the Special Committee on Apartheid, and its detailed, up-to-date and comprehensive reports deserve special commendation.
We welcome the unanimous demand by the United Nations General Assembly that all political prisoners should be released and their trials abandoned. The murder of Vuyisile Mini, Wilson Khayinga and Zinakile Mkaba in the face of this clear demand by the General Assembly and the Security Council and in total disregard of your own appeals are sufficient proof of the suicidal intransigence of the South African white minority Government.
The time has come to indict those countries which for the sake of profit have encouraged and aided the inhuman excesses perpetrated by the racist Government of Verwoerd in South Africa in pursuance of policies that constitute a serious threat to peace in Africa and the world.
It is, therefore, our hope, Sir, that the New Year will see United Nations action of a kind which will unavoidably force the racialists in South Africa to heed world opinion and surrender political power to the majority of the people. Only so can mankind avert the unspeakable tragedy of the racial conflict which the South African Government is fomenting so assiduously.
With the sincere wishes of the African National Congress and the oppressed people of South Africa for a successful New Year in your great work,
Yours faithfully,
(signed) O.R. Tambo
Deputy President, ANC (S.A.)
At the beginning of the New Year, I would like to send cordial seasonal greetings to all friends of our cause, and particularly to our friends in the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid.
Those of us who are engaged in the struggle for justice and for the destruction of racial oppression in our country are deeply grateful for all the help that is being given, both materially and morally, in our fight against a ruthless tyranny.
At this time of joy, there is much for us to sorrow over in our country, and unhappiness for many persons and families in South Africa who are bearing the brunt of apartheid oppression. But we are also conscious of the generous help which is being given by our friends, to alleviate hardship, to give legal assistance to those being persecuted for their resistance to apartheid, and to enable us to go on fighting in good heart.
For this we are especially grateful to the U.N. Special Committee on Apartheid and all its devoted workers. The Special Committee on Apartheid has engaged in many worthy ventures on behalf of the struggling masses of South Africa and I would particularly like to commend support for the Campaign for the Release of Imprisoned Politicians in South Africa; this is one project which we can never abandon, and which we must continually be working on. There can be no letting up until the men who are condemned to spend their lives in prison because they fought injustice are free: this is the duty which we owe to them and which we cannot abandon, and so I am especially glad to commend this project to which Defence and Aid International are now giving a great deal of their support and attention.since 1963, welcomed that Campaign as a means to promote greater public action.
The fight for freedom must go on until it is won; until our country is free and happy and peaceful as part of the community of man, we cannot rest. And so, at the beginning of a New Year, I greet you all and wish you well and say: Thank you, and forward to the freedom of our country.
In the course of my address to the session of the Special Committee on Apartheid in Stockholm, I asked the Chairman, Ambassador Marof, to convey to Your Excellency the gratitude of my colleagues and myself for your vigilance and concern over the political situation in South Africa.
It is my firm belief that the South African situation has within it all the essential ingredients of an explosion which, in its brutality and repercussions, will have few parallels in modern history. I believe that the force of this explosion will have the effect of a violent earthquake on the whole edifice of African independence. I believe that the most complex and excruciating problems the United Nations has had to face will flow from this explosion. For that reason, I believe that the greatest and most imminent threat to the life of the United Nations Organisation is the deteriorating situation in South Africa.
Your Excellency's personal efforts to encourage and facilitate concerted international action against the white supremacist regime of South Africa could save our country the needless loss of millions of lives, and ensure world peace for the future. We wish you all success in your work.
Yours faithfully, (signed)
Oliver R. Tambo
Enclosed herewith please find:
Our organization is very concerned about the circumstances under which one of our leading members, Caleb Mayekiso, has recently died while in gaol in South Africa. Indeed, we are very concerned about the sinister circumstances under which a number of people have recently died in detention. We urge that everything possible be done to draw the attention of the world to these developments with a view to raising to the maximum possible awareness of the terrible conditions prevailing in the gaols of South Africa where political prisoners are being held.
The second document deals with the introduction of the Bureau of State Security, which quite clearly is one of the legal instruments whereby the South African racialists intend to entrench themselves still further. It is reported that two judges of the Supreme Court have indicated their intention of resigning if this Bill is enacted.
We trust that your Committee will see its way clear to render the maximum support to our viewpoint in these matters.
(Signed) R. SEPTEMBER
We forward herewith a statement of the African National Congress of South Africa on the announcement by the Tory Government of the United Kingdom that it would. resume arms sale to South Africa.
We sincerely urge the United Nations Assembly and the Security Council to take appropriate action against this move which would be contrary to the provision and spirit of resolutions S/5386, S/5471 and S/5775 of the Security Council.
STATEMENT BY THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS OF SOUTH AFRICA
The announcement by the Tory Government of the United Kingdom that it will resume its traffic and supply arms to the racist Government of South Africa will come as no surprise to those who know the history of the treachery of the British Government in matters which concern the destiny of the Africans and the peace and security of Africa and the world.
In this instance the Tory Government is guilty of the most despicable crime against international law and order.
There are three United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for arms boycott of South Africa.
On 7 August 1963 the following resolution was adopted by 9 votes to 0 with Britain and France abstaining:
The Security Council:
"3. Solemnly calls upon all States to cease forthwith the sale and shipment of arms, ammunition of all types and military vehicles to South Africa;"
On 4 December 1963 a second resolution was unanimously adopted, appealing to all Member States to comply with the first resolution and added that:
"5. Solemnly calls upon all States to cease forthwith the sale or shipment of equipment and materials for the manufacture and maintenance of arms and ammunition in South Africa;"
The third resolution adopted on 18 June 1964 stated that the Security Council:
"Reaffirms its call upon all States to cease forthwith the sale and shipment to South Africa of arms, ammunition of all types, military vehicles and equipment and material for the manufacture and maintenance of arms and ammunition in South Africa;"
These are the resolutions of the highest international body charged with the responsibility of maintaining world peace. The Tory Government which was then in power in Britain voted for these resolutions, fully aware that they were adopted to curb the growth of that monstrous fascist military machine in South Africa which pursues a policy of police and military terrorism against the majority of the people of the country and which constituted a grave threat to the sovereignty and security of Africa and to world peace.
In 1964, the Tory Government adopted an arms embargo against South Africa.
The complete somersault by the Tory Government is a gross violation of a fundamental decision of the Security Council to which it was a party and a total renunciation of its obligations to that council. It is the most outrageous and perfidious international crime committed by a State which calls itself "civilised" and demonstrates irresponsibility to obligations.
What is even more disgusting is that the Tory Government uses as an excuse for violating international law and agreements to which it is committed in the world forum the lame excuse that it has to honour the Simonstown Agreement which was entered into with the racist and fascist Government of South Africa. The Simonstown Agreemen [which] provides for military-naval co-operation between the United Kingdom and the racist South African Government is itself a violation of both the letter and spirit of the resolutions prohibiting military co-operation between Member States of the United Nations and the racist Government of South Africa. When the supply of arms was prohibited by the Security Council this obviously included military pacts, which is what the Simonstown Agreement is.
In February 1968, Sir Alec Douglas-Hume shortly after returning from Johannesburg stated that:
"A conservative Government would operate the same system as it always had with South Africa - selling arms to her for her defence. It would not be restricted by the United Nations."
In 1967 the Minister of Defence, Mr. Botha stated clearly that:
"The British Government cannot continue to rely on our benevolent acquiescence to the use of our airfields, or the naval base at Simonstown, or any of our other harbour facilities, in peace or war, except if we deem it in the interest of South Africa to make them available."
The United Kingdom Government prefers to violate its agreements with the nations of the world entered into in the Security Council and instead observe its so-called responsibilities to an international bandit.
The basic reasons for this are to be found in the fact that the United Kingdom Government is completely committed to the White racists of South Africa because of Britain's huge stake in the plunder and exploitation of the people and wealth of South Africa.
On 19 December 1967, Mr. Heath advanced the following reasons for lifting the arms ban:
"1.The arms required by South Africa were for external defence and not for dealing with civil disturbances;
2.By refusing to supply the arms, Britain was preventing South Africa from carrying out her obligations under the Simonstown agreement;
3.The British ban would enable France to become the permanent supplier of arms to South Africa and inevitably to take over the facilities at Simonstown;
4. The United Nations resolutions of 1963 and 1964 were not mandatory, so any British Government were entitled not to follow them;
5. Britain drew £57 million a year from South Africa in dividends from over £1,000 million investment;
6. South Africa is Britain's third largest customer, accounting for 5 per cent of British exports."
The South African Government used the closure of the Suez Canal with good effect to achieve the resumption of the arms trade with Britain. But more than that the greed for profits through a trade in arms which would bring British industrialists contracts estimated between £200 million and £500 million was one of the main hails.
The Tory Government is committing a grave crime against international law, a crime against the people of South Africa, a crime against security and peace in Africa and the world.
We appeal to the O.A.U. to conduct the most vigorous campaign against the United Kingdom Government for its treacherous collusion with the South African fascists against the peace and security of African Independent States.
We call upon the Security Council to invoke the most drastic action against the United Kingdom Government under the Charter. Certainly the United Kindom Government no longer deserves a seat on that body.
We call upon the members of the Commonwealth whose very security is threatened by the British collaboration with South Africa to resign from that body.
We call upon the organizations and peoples of the whole world to protest against this act of international banditry.
Alfred NZO
Secretary-General
14 July 1970
The African National Congress South Africa vehemently condemns decision to impose state of emergency by queensland government during tour South Africa racist team. Demonstrations and actions of people and workers against tour fully consistent with United Nations resolution to combat racism and Apartheid in 1971. Urge strong protest to Queensland government to refrain from criminal action.
We wish to confirm our cable to you of even date as follows:
"African National Congress South Africa Urges United Nations join us vehement condemnation calculated murder political prisoners by South African Racist Regime stop we demand stern and immediate action against Vorster Regime recent death in detention Ahmed Timol and for barbaric torture being perpetrated on Mohamed Seedat and others"
Following a recent nation-wide secret police swoop on more than 100 homes in South Africa, several people were detained for usual police interrogation during which brutal methods of torture are applied on the victims. Of these Mr. Ahmed Timol, an Indian school-teacher, has already met his death and Mr. Mohamed Seedat, a student, is at the moment seriously ill at the Verwoerd Hospital in Pretoria.
With characteristic callousness, the South African racist authorities have sought to explain the murder of Mr. Timol as a case of suicide. This of course, is not new. Many cases of police brutality have in the past been explained away unconvincingly. We have in mind cases of men like Looksmart Ngudle, Babla Saloojee, Imam Haroun, including respected national leaders of the African people such as Caleb Mayekiso and others who died under similar circumstances.
Your Excellency, we should like to draw your attention and that of the Member States of your Organisation to what we consider a growing scheme of things. You will recall that Babla Saloojee was reported arrested by the South African "Special Branch" police in Johannesburg. He was taken to the Greys Building for interrogation and was later reported to have committed suicide by jumping out through a window on 10 September 1964. On private investigation, however, it was found that Babla Saloojee could not have managed to jump out of the window because of certain structures in that room which impeded easy access to the window thus making it difficult for any person to escape particularly in the presence of the interrogating staff. Under such circumstances, can the world still believe that Ahmed Timol "jumped out of the window" at will?
It can therefore not be said that we are in any way presumptuous if we allege that these two cases were a result of deliberate acts of murder on the part of the agents of the South African fascist regime. Thanks to the popularity of our deceased colleagues, as otherwise the fact of their savage murders would not have come to light.
In this connexion, we have in mind again a case of murder by the South African police of an unfortunately less known person, Mr. Mthayeni Cutshela of Bizana in the Transkei. He died whilst in detention last year and his corpse returned to his family in a coffin by the police without so much as to disclose the cause of death to them. When it was disclosed, two contradictory versions were given by Vorster's gestapo police which went to underscore their direct responsibility for Mr. Cutshela's death.
The African National Congress and other progressive organizations and individuals, including influential Church leaders both inside and outside South Africa have consistently alerted world public opinion to the brutalities into which political prisoners and detainees are constantly subjected in South African prisons. It will be recalled that only recently an Anglican priest, Rev. Bernard Wrankomore completed a 67 day fast which he undertook to reinforce a demand for a thorough investigation into the circumstances which led to the death of Imam Haroun in prison.
All these protests have been contemptuously ignored by the racist South African authorities. Instead, their reply has always been more repression on the African people and other peace-loving forces in South Africa.
The brutal actions of the South African regime give a lie to their "friendly" overtures to independent African countries through the dialogue manoeuvre which has been presented by her imperialist supporters as the only possible peaceful solution to the so-called South African problem. This, of course, is the easy way out for those countries that have consistently ignored numerous United Nations decisions which demand an all-round isolation of the regime of terror in South Africa.
It is, however, still our considered view that more resolute and positive action against South Africa is demanded of all those countries that uphold genuine freedom and fair play. To this end, we reiterate our persistent demands for:
(a) Mandatory sanctions against South Africa as long as she ignores world public opinion and contemptuously tramples underfoot all norms of international law:
(b) Expulion of the South African white minority apartheid regime from the United Nations and all its agencies since it represents only the barest minority of the South African population - the Whites who are barely one-fifth of the whole population;
(c) Immediate action to be taken for the release of all political prisoners and detainees. Meanwhile, we demand that international pressure should be mounted for the immediate alleviation of the conditions of all the political prisoners whilst still under illegal detention;
(d) Direct aid from the United Nations to enable our organization, the African National Congress of South Africa, to effectively prosecute the struggle for the liberation of the African people from fascist white minority terror.
In conclusion, Your Excellency, we like to recommend that appropriate United Nations Agencies such as the Security Council and the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid give urgent consideration and attention to the latest outrageous crime of the South African regime with a view to recommending appropriate measures to be taken by the General Assembly at its present session.
Please, accept, Sir, our assurances for the highest esteem and consideration.
(Signed) Alfred Nzo
Secretary-General
The African National Congress of South Africa, representing the vast majority of the oppressed peoples in our country, wish to draw the attention of the United Nations Organization to the following most disturbing events that have arisen in the Republic of South Africa in recent months.
In June and July last year, six men and a woman were arrested by the South African Security police and held incommunicado in solitary confinement for a period of over 120 days. They are Messrs. Theophilus Cholo and Gardiner Sijake, both from the Transvaal; Justice Mpanza and Aaron Mtembu from Natal; John William Hosey, an Irish citizen; and Alexander Moumbaris, an Australian, and his wife, Mrs. Marie Jose Moumbaris, a French citizen.
All except Mrs. Moumbaris appeared for a formal remand in the Pretoria Magistrates' Court on 11 November 1972, on allegations under the so-called Terrorism Act. No charges were made and they were not asked to plead.
Mrs. Moumbaris was released after four months in solitary confinement and deported to France. In an interview datelined Paris, published in the Rand Daily Mail of 25 November 1972, Mrs. Moumbaris said that her middle-aged French parents were unaware of where she was for four months, during which period she was held in solitary confinement in a Pretoria goal. "As far as they knew, I had vanished from the face of the earth", she said. Mrs. Moumbaris, who was seven months pregnant at the time of her release, said that her parents only learnt that she was in prison a week before she was released. Although she is a French citizen, she was not allowed to see the French consular representatives and only saw her husband twice during her four months in prison. She said:
"I kept asking for them to charge me formally with a crime, but they never did. I saw absolutely nobody from the outside. One day my cell door was opened and I was told that I would be expelled. I saw my husband for the second and last time and a strong police escort took me to the airport and put me on a Paris-bound plane."
The South African Government did not only appear to disregard normal diplomatic duty by not allowing Mrs. Moumbaris access to diplomats from her country, they went further.
According to a report which appeared in the London Sunday Times of 7 January 1973, on 5 August, a fortnight after Mr. and Mrs. Moumbaris were arrested, Mrs. Helen Amiel, Mr. Moumbaris' mother, received a caller in her Paris office. A South African aged between 25 and 30, who spoke good French, told Mrs. Amiel that he was on his way to continue his studies in England. The Sunday Times report continues:
"He said he had just arrived from South Africa and was a friend of Alex. I was very excited because I hadn't heard from the children for several weeks, and this man had seen Alex only four days before," Mrs. Amiel recalls.
The visitor produced a letter from Alex. It was dated '29/6/72', but Mrs. Amiel did not notice the 'error' of the June date at the time. The letter was headed 'Blue Marlin Hotel, Scotsburgh', where the couple had been staying five weeks before. It was unusually formal. The second paragraph read: 'The bearer of this letter is a man whom I met here and he has asked me if he can spend a couple of days at our place in London. I accordingly ask you to kindly give him the key of the house which I believe to be in your possession.'
Meanwhile, Alex and Marie-Jose had vanished without trace. Repeated efforts to find them by the French and Australian embassies in Pretoria produced no results. The South African police, security police, Department of the Interior and Foreign Affairs Department all denied knowledge of the couple, who were in fact being held in solitary confinement.
From the beginning, Marie-Jose asked to see the French consul, but under the Terrorism Act consular access is not permitted. For the first six weeks she was interrogated from 9 a.m. to mid-afternoon. She speaks hardly any English and no Afrikaans, yet for long periods she did not have an interpreter.
In Paris, the couple's families grew increasingly worried. When she still had not got the borrowed key back, Mrs. Amiel phoned the caretaker of her son's flat, but he had nothing to report. Then, desperate for news, she and Marie-Jose's mother came to London.
They found the flat in a mess. 'There were papers all over the show, drawers were ransacked, chairs on their side,' says Mrs. Amiel. 'They thought the young man had found himself a girl friend, gone wild for a couple of nights and forgotten to return the key. They did not go to the police. Weeks before, in the Pretoria prison, Marie-Jose's interrogators had shown her a picture of her husband. 'You have been to my flat,' she shouted angrily."
Mrs. Moumbaris denied that her husband had written the letter about the key while at the Blue Marlin Hotel.
Not only have members of the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS) flagrantly walked into a private flat in Britain and ransacked it with impunity, they went even further.
They violated the sovereignty of Lesotho by kidnapping a South African political refugee, Mr. Herbert Fanele Mbale, from their territory at about the same time. Four members of BOSS were assisted in this dastardly deed by two members of the Lesotho Troopers.
The Government of Lesotho, unlike those of France and Britain, were naturally outraged by this action and rightly demanded the return of Mr. Mbale. The South African Government was forced to return Mr. Mbale to Lesotho and apologized for the excessive zeal displayed by her police.
In an extraordinarily arrogant statement, even by white South African standards, published in several South African newspapers on 30 November 1972, Police Commissioner, General Gideon Joubert, commenting on the kidnapping, said that the policemen involved were only "doing their duty". Asked whether he supported policemen who crossed foreign frontiers to apprehend people wanted in the country, General Joubert said: "They did contravene certain regulations, but they acted out of a sense of duty." He added that he saw no reason to take action against his men and, when asked if the kidnapping was carried out with his knowledge, he replied: "I'm not going to be cross-examined any further. I have no further statement to make." Meanwhile, one of the Lesotho troopers, Jobo Molofo, who helped in the kidnapping, has been granted political asylum by the South African authorities and is at present working in South Africa.
The intransigence of the South African Government, which persistently ignore resolutions of the United Nations Organization and the Organization of African Unity and international public opinion for the release of political prisoners is further highlighted by the fact that some of the political prisoners, like Nelson Mandela, who have been sentenced to life imprisonment, have now served 10 years of their sentence. In terms of statements by officials of the South African Government, life imprisonment, in so far as political prisoners, means exactly what it says - imprisonment for life. Even murderers and rapists sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa are entitled to a review of their sentences. However, in the case of Mandela and others this will not be so.
In view of the above, we urge the United Nations Organization, through its relevant agencies:
There has been talk of late emanating mainly from sources that have vested interest in the present system of oppression and economic exploitation of the Black majority in South Africa that liberalization of investments accompanied by improvement of the lot of African workers along the lines of the "Polaroid experiment" will eventually corrode apartheid from within. Our attention has been drawn to a 'STUDY PROJECT OF EXTERNAL INVESTMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA AND NAMIBIA" being set up in London by a group of international sponsors.
We believe it to be a well-known fact, supported by copious research and documentation, that South Africa's economic growth and the present size and nature of its economy are substantially the result of the of foreign investment in South Africa over the past 80 years or more. Furthermore, we believe it to be a fact that the flow of investment funds, the political super-structures of white racism and apartheid and the high rates of profits earned by foreign capital in South Africa, all stand in a relationship of mutual dependence on each other. The apartheid system ensures high profits through the massive repression and exploitation of the African majority; the inflow of foreign capital services to bolster the security of the South African regime and so sanction the apartheid system. Hence in our opinion any study of the role of foreign capital in South Africa which does not rest on the political understanding and on a grasp of these political facts will either be of little real value or will serve those who wish to perpetuate the present situation, e.g. the Polaroid Experiment. In our view the aims and objects of the Project fail to take these facts into account and hence we must have grave reservations about its value and purpose.
The United Nations in response to petitions and vehement protests from the ruthlessly oppressed Black people of South Africa, through the African National Congress, has taken a number of important resolutions calling for an embargo on the flow of foreign capital to South Africa and Namibia. These resolutions are based on extensive studies published by the UN Special Committee on Apartheid and other agencies of the UN. These studies conclusively show that the South African apartheid system and the continued South African illegal occupation of Namibia crucially depend on the support of international capital and its continued flow into South Africa and Namibia. The Project ignores these resolutions and studies. And above all callously negates the call of the oppressed people for a total international boycott - economic, political, cultural, etc. - of South Africa. Therefore we fear that any re-opening of the question as the Project attempts to do can only serve to undermine the credibility and force of the policy of the UN.
The African National Congress of South Africa as the premier liberation movement of the African people of South Africa have not been consulted by the sponsors of the Project. Had we been so consulted when the Project was first mooted, we would have certainly urged the sponsors to clearly define the political frame of reference of the Project in the terms under paragraph two above and next, that any research being undertaken should be directed towards strengthening the policies of the UN and the international campaign for the ending of foreign investment in South Africa and Namibia.
We hope these views of ours will be of assistance. We are forwarding a copy of this letter to the UN Special Committee on Apartheid in New York for their information.
With further reference to our letter to you dated 1 February 1973 and released by the Special Committee on Apartheid at its 233rd meeting in response to our appeal for a campaign for the release of all South African political prisoners, we now wish to draw your attention to a summary trial that is to take place in the Pretoria Supreme Court, starting on 14 March 1973.
The accused, namely, Sandi Kitchener Gardener Sejaka alias Douglas Nene, Petrus Temba Mthembu, Ranka Theophilus Cholo and Justice Mpanza alias Reuben Ntlabathi shall have been held for a period of over 265 days in solitary confinement when they appear in Court to face charges under the obnoxious Terrorism Act. As you are no doubt aware, to keep a human being isolated from society for so long a period of time is not only excessive but severe in the extreme. But of concern is the naked violation of human rights perpetrated by the South African racist regime through its tyrannical practices which make "criminals" of, and in their wake, produce mental abnormalities in, our people.
In order to assist in broadening the base for that campaign therefore, we set out hereunder short biographical notes on each of the four people hereinabove referred to:
(a) Sandi Kitchener Gardener Sejaka (Douglas Nene)
Born in the Transkei at a place called Ncambedlana in the outskirts of Umtata in May 1942, Sandi grew up like any average African boy - herding cattle, helping at home and in the fields. He has a number of brothers and sisters. His parents lived partly by eking out a miserable income from the land and partly by migrating to industrial "white South Africa" for cash wages.
He attended school at St. John's College, where he finished his secondary education about 1957 or 1958. He was and still is a keen student and a hard worker. But like all African children coming from the poor sections of South African society, he was compelled to abandon his studies despite his thirst for knowledge. However, leaving school did not mean an end to his academic progress. His educational attainments, which he achieved through self-study, are indeed high in a number of fields. An avid reader, he studied all the fields he regarded beneficial to himself and to the oppressed people of South Africa. He excelled not only in theoretical subjects but also in technical ones. One of his close associates once described him as "energetic, fearless and technical-minded".
The general hardships, poverty and disabilities suffered by the African masses drew him into the fold of struggle. Thus he joined the ranks of the African National Congress whilst still a student at St. John's College. Very fond of political discussions, he also turned out to be a good organizer for the Youth League. Ever since, he has consciously and consistently broadened his political understanding and grasp of the South African situation and international affairs.
He joined the Umkhonto we Sizwe (military wing of the ANC) in 1964 and left the country soon thereafter for training abroad. His main hobbies were judo, body-building and reading, which explains his well-built and slim figure through the years. Most of his spare time was spent on reading, making notes, typing and filing them for reference. He never had an idle moment. Among the militants, he was one of those on whom our greatest hopes were pinned. We are confident that his dauntless courage will not be broken by the arrest, torture and gaol conditions.
(b) Petrus Temba Mthembu
Petrus is one of the ANC militants who, when returning home to continue the liberation struggle under the harsh conditions of illegality, fell into the clutches of the police network. Although he grew up in Natal, he was born in Kliptown near Johannesburg into a family of workers. He is the eldest of a family of two sisters and a brother.
For the greater part of his life, his father was a worker but later took to shoe-repairing in an attempt to make ends meet. His father's meagre income was supplemented by the earnings of his mother who worked as a washerwoman.
Coming from a poor family, he could only study at school as far as Standard II and had to look for employment at a tender age. He worked in a number of firms and factories. Nevertheless, he managed to improve his education through self-study. His hobby was football.
He joined the African National Congress in 1958. Though a fine football player, he devoted most of his time to the movement. He was at one time an assistant branch secretary of the ANC Youth League. In the sphere of political activity, he distinguished himself as an organizer - relentlessly moving from house to house preaching revolution. He himself participated in local and national campaigns launched by the ANC. He also took an active part in the selling and distribution of the ANC publications and various propaganda materials.
The South African Special Branch Police kept him under constant surveillance and his home frequently raided. He left the country in 1963 under the auspices of the ANC to undergo military training. This decision was taken on the recommendation of his branch because he was "already sold out" and it was not safe for him to remain in the country any longer. When he left, he was about to get married.
Peter, as he was at times called by his friends, is a short, energetic man of dark complexion. His deep loyalty to the ANC and the people of South Africa earned him the admiration of all who knew him. It is his sense of duty and commitment to the cause of the revolution that moved him to return to South Africa despite the risks of arrest and heavy penalties.
(c) Ranka Theophilus Cholo
Comrade Ranka was born in Pietersburg at Chief Matlala's village. His father was a blacksmith. He attended school but went only as far as Standard IV.
On leaving school, he went to Johannesburg, where he found employment as a domestic servant and thereafter as a worker in a shop. The general conditions of the black workers in South Africa made him realize the importance of the trade union movement which he joined and rose in its ranks to become a shop-steward. Not long afterward, he was elevated to the executive of the Shop and Office Workers' Union. During his lunch hour breaks, he worked for the strengthening of his union by organizing more workers.
He was a member of the ANC and at one time was chairman of a local branch in which he was active. He left South Africa in 1962 to study at a trade union school, leaving behind a wife and a child.
In 1967, he made an attempt to return to South Africa to carry out underground work. He did not reach home as he was intercepted and detained by the Botswana police. In the course of interrogation by the police in Botswana, he stood firm even though the police were threatening to hand him over to the South African police if he failed to answer the questions to their liking. Subsequently, the Botswana authorities sentenced him to a prison term of three years and three months plus a fine of R800/- or six months' imprisonment. Though he had money on his person, he refused to pay the fine, preferring to serve the entire sentence of imprisonment. He maintained his high morale in gaol and inspired the rest of his prison mates.
We are convinced that no amount or form of brutality will break this fine militant and the very fact that he is at present undergoing torture at the hands of the South African gestapo is a convincing demonstration of the unflinching courage and dedication of Comrade Ranka.
(d) Justice Mpanza (Reuben Ntlabathi)
Justice, popularly known among his colleagues, as "Gizenga", was born in Groutville, Natal in 1934 of a devout Christian family. His father owned a small sugar plantation where Justice used to work after school, helping his parents.
On completing Standard VI, Justice went to work at a sugar refinery in Durban. Dissatisfied with the poor pay and working conditions and convinced of the need for the improvement of the lot of the African worker in South Africa, Justice found the answer in joining the South African Congress of Trade Unions.
He joined the African National Congress in 1956. Because of his outstanding organizing ability and sheer hard work, he rose to become chairman of a local branch of the ANC Youth League. In time, he also became the ANC local organizer. Subsequently he participated in all the activities and campaigns of the ANC and as a result was arrested on a number of occasions for taking part in political demonstrations.
Justice joined Umkhonto we Sizwe (the military wing of the ANC) in 1962. He left South Africa in the same year to undergo military training abroad. He left a young wife and children behind.
In 1966, he was arrested (later released) with some of his colleagues in Botswana when attempting to return to South Africa.
In 1967, he participated in the Wankie Campaigns when the ANC-ZAPU combatants fought and inflicted heavy casualties on the Rhodesian and South African troops in Zimbabwe. Justice acquitted himself with bravery in those battles and displayed complete disregard for his personal safety. The operations were strenuous and there were days when there was no food and Justice never showed any signs of wavering.
"Gizenga" is a man regarded by comrades and colleagues alike as having the courage of his convictions and as a person with an indomitable faith in the ultimate victory of the just cause of the oppressed people of South Africa.
His disposition is marked by a strong sense of good-fellowship and amiableness. He threw himself into a variety of activities including traditional dancing, volleyball, singing, the recitation of Zulu poetry and praises of African heroes.
Your Excellency, we do not wish to burden you any further save to urge you once more for the immediate initiation of a world-wide campaign for the release of all South African prisoners.
We shall await to hear from you in due course.
Brief on Exposes of British Business in South Africa
On 12 March 1973 the Guardian began a series of articles exposing the extent of British business complicity in the maintenance of the super-exploitative nature of the system of apartheid. Many other British newspapers either followed suit or commented in full agreement with the revelations. This provoked nervous reactions in business circles both in Britain and in racist South Africa.
Plausible as this exercise may be, there is however more to it than meets the eye. Behind this projection of a public image of concern, lurks a shoddy column with vested interests in the present system of oppression and economic exploitation of the Black majority in South Africa. Its objective is "to mobilize the Western presence in South Africa in support of local (liberal) efforts to achieve a peaceful revolution (reformation)" (our emphasis).
In other words, it pretends that the liberalization of investments, accompanied by improvement of the lot of African workers along the lines of the "Polaroid experiment", will eventually corrode apartheid from within. And it overlooks the fact, and conveniently at that, that "the cheap labour system" as our rejoinder in the Guardian of 14 March 1973 points out, is fundamental to the socio-economic system, and to it is bound all those features which illustrate the lack of all African rights in South Africa. To raise African wages... does not guarantee the end of exploitation. In the final analysis, the only solution must be the complete dismantling of the socio-economic structure in South Africa and the return of the country to the (African) people." (our emphasis).
It behoves us to further demonstrate our correct stand on the issue of capital investment and its collaborative role in apartheid. Rather than cry out aloud for total disengagement from apartheid, the articles reproduced hereunder from the British press merely spell out palliatives to salve the conscience of Western businessmen for more and more involvement in South Africa.
British firms tried to suppress pay findings29
A confidential study of the wages paid to the African employees of British companies in South Africa has shown that nearly 80 per cent of them were last year being paid below subsistence levels.
The results of the study, conducted by the South African Productivity and Wage Association for the United Kingdom South African Trade Association, were so bad that it vas decided by mutual agreement that they should not be published.
The Productivity and Wage Association's study of the South African labour market, completed last July, was the most comprehensive ever conducted in South Africa.
It covered more than 1,000 companies of all nationalities who employed between them nearly 200,000 Africans.
After the results were published showing that a vast majority of' Africans were receiving below poverty datum line wages (£10-£11 for a family of five), the Productivity and Wage Association, a South African employers' body, was asked by UKSATA to extract the figures applicable to British companies in the hope that the picture would not be so bleak.
The results, however, were almost identical, as the figures show. Grade One represents unskilled, Grade Seven semi-skilled workers. The vast majority of workers are paid in the lowest unskilled grades.
The weekly wages in the survey - see table - are average minimum rates.
Officials of the Productivity and Wages Association said the results of the survey should be interpreted with caution as it probably gave an unduly favourable picture of wages actually paid by companies. Only 13 per cent of the 1,084 companies surveyed, presumably the best, agreed to co-operate.
British companies All companies surveyed (1,085)
Grade One R 9.68 (£5.53) R 8.95 (£5.11)
Grade Two R11.33 (£6.47) R10.64 (£6.08)
Grade Three R11.95 (£6.82) R11.21 (£6.41)
Grade Four R13.53 (£7.73) R12.34 (£7.05)
Grade Five R14.56 (£8.32) R14.25 (£8.14)
Grade Six R17.26 (£9.86) R16.91 (£9.66)
Grade Seven R16.45 (£9.41) R17.49 (£10)
The wages of apartheid30
Not since the early part of the nineteenth century, when the campaign for the abolition of slavery was led by an. influential part of the Establishment, have British businessmen had to face such a moral challenge to their right to profit from black men's sufferings as they face now over their role in South Africa's economy.
Revelations last week in the Guardian about the abominably low wages paid to black workers by most of the 512 British firms in South Africa - who have
£1,200 million invested in the Republic, producing nearly 10 per cent of Britain's export trade - add strength to a campaign which has been steadily gaining momentum.
Three years ago a similar campaign was launched in the United States to force American firms either to disengage completely from South Africa or to adopt industrial policies in line with United States practices. So far, only one American company, Polaroid, has said that it would consider withdrawing altogether if it is not allowed to improve conditions for its African workers. So far Polaroid has raised wages, promoted blacks to supervisory posts, introduced training schemes, earmarked a part of its profits to assist African education, and refused to allow its photographic equipment to be used to help the Government's Pass Laws.
Mobil took its whole board to South Africa to examine its policies on the spot. Another oil company sacked its chief representative for insisting that the company's policies should follow the lines laid down by the Government. The motor giants - Ford, General Motors and Chrysler - all promised substantial reforms. A United States government official has said that Washington may lay down guidelines for firms dealing with South Africa.
But the American anti-apartheid lobby is now divided between those who insist on total disengagement from South Africa, and those who think United States fires should use their economic power to improve conditions of black workers and help to remove discrimination in industry.
This conflict over strategy is also likely to divide South Africa's opponents in Britain. Many critics of apartheid believe that the issue of wages and conditions of employment for black workers - though deeply important - is only part of a much wider problem.
For more than two decades international pressure on South Africa to abandon or mitigate the harshness of apartheid has achieved virtually nothing. This has persuaded many activists that the only possible solution is force, either by external intervention or internal revolution. Others - more conscious of the power of the South African Government, less hopeful of external intervention, and fearful of bloodshed for the blacks have looked for alternatives.
They seek to mobilize the Western presence in South Africa in support of
local efforts to achieve a peaceful revolution. This is an unattractive course for those who are impatient for an immediate end to the present situation but, so the argument goes, it is the only. practicable and humane approach. The problem may be simply stated: how is this peaceful revolution to be achieved, given a powerful, confident and intransigent regime? The solution is more complex.
In the past, South Africa has proved a magnet for foreign investors because it offers a higher return on capital than almost any other country. These golden returns have always depended on industrial peace and political stability. In recent years both factors have begun to look less permanent.
Because of the rigid application of racial policies in a period of massive economic expansion, South African industry has begun to suffer. from a serious shortage of suitably trained labour, despite the existence of over 1,250,000 black unemployed. Moreover, the 80 per cent of the working force that is black is prohibited by law from doing skilled jobs. This has faced the Government with a dilemma: whether to slow up industrial expansion, or to open the doors of industry to more skilled black workers. To adopt the second course would, in the long run, seriously undermine the economic basis of apartheid.
Industrialists, both Afrikaner and English, have been pressing the Government to abandon its rigid stance. Some reluctant concessions have been made; but the Govennment, backed by a section of white trade unions, has resisted the economic imperative to use its black labour fully. Economics and politics have collided, producing serous internal strains. At the same time, the black workers have become more militant.
Caught between these twin pressures - industrialists demanding a greater use
of black labour and black labour demanding more pay and better jobs - the Government has been unable to make up its mind. The unpalatable choice is between diluting apartheid or facing a slow-down in economic growth and a possibly violent black industrial revolt.
South African political leaders, businessmen and newspapers speak with increasing urgency about what the Financial Mail in Johannesburg has described as "a rising tide of black grief and unemployment in town and country (which) is the greatest threat imaginable to the white man". It was echoing a statement by the Prime Minister, Mr. Vorster, that "the greatest threat confronting South Africa is not so much the threat from outside her borders, serious though that may be, but mass unemployment and disturbed race relations".
Yet he sacked his Minister of the Interior, Dr. Theo Gerdener, when he warned that the country's priority was to reduce the wage gap between white and black, otherwise neighbourliness would turn into "enmity which could lead to murder and violence".
An equally solemn warning was given a few months ago by Mr. W. B. Wilson, deputy chairman of Mr. Harry Oppenheimer's Anglo-American Corporation:
"Our assessment of the labour situation is that our attitudes and practices towards black employees require a major overhaul: that this is a potential trouble-spot and that there are trends that call for a change in direction."
South Africa's 3,800,000 whites will never be able to say they weren't warned. There is unmistakable evidence now that turbulence is growing among the 19 million non-whites. Predicting trouble in any country is unreliable, but there have bean just too many explosive puffs lately in South Africa for the signs to be misread.
If the police had not learnt a lesson at Sharpeville 13 years ago, no one can say what the industrial scene might have looked like by now. This time the police, as one officer put it, allowed the strikes to "play themselves out". The trouble is that the strikes are beginning, very slowly, to spread to Johannesburg, where almost one million blacks are congregated in the vast, sprawling township of Soweto.
It was in Johannesburg last week that the Zulu leader, Chief Buthelezi, warned of "bloody revolution". He has never spoken quite so aggressively before. This is a signal every white man should be reading; the way Chief Buthelezi is stepping up the pace of verbal confrontation, and how he is winning the support of other Bantustan leaders.
An Afrikaner, Professor D. P. Erasmus, of Potchefstroom University, spoke of the 5 million Africans in the metropolitan areas "constituting a large complex of slumbering discontent".
In fact, there have been so many warnings by whites, blacks and Coloureds that they have become repetitious. But what is being done?
British businessmen say they can't do much to alter the system on their own. If any firm with a conscience wishes to pay its black workers more, they say, it will price itself out of the market unless others are made to do the same. They say they want to train their black labour, but come up against at least five laws which restrict their freedom to do so. This is only partly true.
The scandalous conditions of African, Asian and Coloured workers are one of the least controversial of all the vexatious issues raised by apartheid. The basic facts are not in dispute. Even the Government accepts that an average African family requires £35 a month to live above the poverty datum line, which provides for only the bare essentials.
In Soweto, 70 per cent of all African households live below the poverty line. Only 30 per cent of urban black families earn more than about £30 a month, which is still well below the poverty line, while 14 per cent of them earn less than £10 a month. Only 13 per cent earn more than £50 a month. The situation is similar in all other areas.
When rural incomes are included, the national average income for Africans is £18 a month. This compares with £299 a month for whites, £78 for Indians and £47 for Coloureds. Nearly 15 per cent of the total African population (1,250,000) are unemployed; the official projection is four million unemployed. by 1980.
The social consequences are reflected in the incidence of disease among Africans. The mortality rate for infants among black urban dwellers is 122 per 1,000 compared with 31 per 1,000 for whites. In the Transkei, disease kills 40 per cent of all children before they reach the age of 10. South Africa, one of the world's richest countries, is one of the few countries where the incidence of tuberculosis is rising.
This is the "tide of black grief" which is causing so much concern to South Africans. But, so far from conditions getting better, they are steadily getting worse.
Under the pressure of strikes and growing public disquiet, substantial wage increases have been granted in the last two years. But steep living costs and the initial low level of wages mean that the position of all black workers, except a tiny percentage of the better-paid, is worse now than ever before. A Cape Town professor, Dr. Francio Wilson, recently demonstrated that the real wages of the country's black miners are no higher today than they were in 1911.
Meanwhile, the gap between the wage levels of whites and blacks has grown
steadily, as the white workers cream off the lion's share of the Republic's prosperity.
These facts bear out the charge that British firms participate in a harshly discriminatory system. Yet, even if they do increase wages to the poverty datum line - which will require a minimal doubling of all black wages across the board - this will only relieve the immediate economic hardship of urban workers. It won't make a fundamental difference to apartheid.
South Africa's Achilles heel is her economic dependence on foreign investment and overseas markets. More than half this investment is British, with substantial amounts from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. When African delegates at the United Nations accuse these Governments of hypocrisy in simultaneously condemning apartheid and condoning - and in some cases actively encouraging - national investment in South Africa, they make a valid point.
How could "the economic lever" be used to erode, and then destroy, apartheid? Four principal alternatives present themselves.
The first is that foreign firms should continue to invest heavily, but should insist on conditions of employment for Africans which the South African Government would have to accept.
Then there is the argument, most articulately expressed in Britain by
Mr. Neil Wates, the builder, that there should be no more new investment in South Africa while present apartheid policies are maintained. This voluntary embargo would, again, have to be widespread to have any real impact, and does not touch the question of increased operations by firms already there.
Another argument, generally associated with Mr. Harry Oppenheimer, is that the rate of growth of the South African economy should be accelerated by more foreign investment, thereby creating a labour demand which would compel firms to train, pay, and look after black employees in vastly better conditions than at present. This argument is viewed with scepticism by observers who note the remarkable growth rate of the South African economy over the past two decades and the absence of any significant improvement - to put it mildly - in the wages and conditions of black workers.
Then there is the call for full and complete disengagement, which is usually put forward vehemently. But how is this to be achieved, and if it were achieved, what would be the consequences? Is there any guarantee that the withdrawal of British, American and West European investment would not be immediately replaced by eager investors from other areas? Would not such a development, in effect, throw away the West's "economic lever"? To these crucial questions no sensible answers have been provided.
Here are four possible alternatives, but we lack the firm evidence on which to reach a decision as to which one is likely to be the most effective way to destroy apartheid. The real facts of the situation are hardly known at all. Many foreign firms operating in South Africa hide behind the argument that they are necessarily bound by South African laws, but until recently no detailed study of these laws has been attempted.
Research in this field is extremely difficult. Not surprisingly, the South African authorities are thoroughly alarmed at the possibilities of such research, and their apprehension will now have been greatly increased.
The work, however, is in hand. It is being undertaken by an international consortium of British, American, Swedish, and West German universities, with the active involvement of the Africa Publications Trust in London. The leading British sponsor is the Institute for the Study of International Organisation of the University of Sussex. Its purpose is to conduct objective research on the facts; to publish them; and to provide a solid basis for decisions by Governments, firms, and politicians on the most practicable course to be followed. It is exactly the kind of project which arouses the fevered contempt of militants on the one hand and the suspicions of firms on the other, but it perseveres in its difficult task, convinced that when the full facts are known the impact on public opinion will be even greater than last week's revelations.
Investment and the ANC Stand
Pre-empting that cautious but deceitful move to create more favourable conditions for increased international capital flow into South Africa, the African National Congress of South Africa addressed a communication to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on 7 March 1973, drawing his attention to the setting up in London of a "Study Project of External Investment in South Africa" by a group of international sponsors which, quite apart from the brilliant exposures in the articles above, is being canvassed..
The concessions for higher wages extracted by the black workers from their employers are no substitute for the dismantling of the apartheid edifice. At best, they are the harbinger of the seizure of power by the oppressed majority. Equally, "complete disengagement" from South Africa is not in itself an end but a desirable step in the creation of favourable conditions for the final liquidation of apartheid. For the oppressed and fighting people of South Africa it means a little more sacrifice. To the overseas investors with a conscience, if at all, it means an unqualified rejection of bloodstained super-profits reaped from the obnoxious system of apartheid. Yet the mere mention of "complete disengagement" vexes the minds of the British, American and West European investors because of the ever-present fear that they may be replaced "by investors from other areas". If previous attempts have not proved effective in this direction, it is because of the reluctance of the imperialist countries to implement United Nations resolutions on sanctions against racist South Africa.
It will be recalled that similar dishonest considerations moved the representatives of the American military-industrial complex in 1971 to perpetrate flagrant violations of the United Nations Security Council resolutions on sanctions against Rhodesia. Through a legislative stratagem, the importation into the United States of "strategic and critical commodities" from Rhodesia was made possible. Rather than import these from other areas, the long-term American profit motive superseded all else. By relieving the illegal Rhodesian regime from international pressure, the United States of America was underwriting her lucrative profits in South Africa at the expense of principles and the aspirations of the people of Zimbabwe.
In the letter referred to hereinabove, the African National Congress of South Africa made the following valid points:
"We believe it to be a well-known fact, supported by copious research and documentation, that South Africa's economic growth and the present size and nature of its economy are substantially the result of the high rates of foreign investment in South Africa over the past 80 years or more. Furthermore, we believe it to be a fact that the flow of investment funds, the political super-structures of white racism and apartheid and the high rates of profits earned by foreign capital in South Africa, all stand in a relationship of mutual dependence on each other. The apartheid system ensures high profits through the massive repression and exploitation of the African majority; the inflow of foreign capital serves to bolster the security of the South African regime and so sanction the apartheid system. Hence in our opinion, any study of the role of foreign capital in South Africa which does not rest on the political understanding and on a grasp of these political facts will either be of little real value or will serve those who wish to perpetuate the present situation, e.g. the Polaroid Experiment. In our view, the aims and objects of the Project fail to take these facts into account and hence we must have grave reservations about its value and purpose.
"Secondly, the United Nations in response to petitions and vehement protests from the ruthlessly oppressed black people of South Africa, through the African National Congress, has taken a number of important resolutions calling for an embargo on the flow of foreign capital to South Africa and Namibia. Those resolutions are based on extensive studies published by the Special Committee on Apartheid and other agencies of the United nations. These studies conclusively show that the South African apartheid system and the continued South African illegal occupation of Namibia crucially depend on the support of international capital and its continued flow into South Africa and Namibia. The Project ignores these resolutions and studies and, above all, callously negates the call of the oppressed people for a total international boycott - economic, political, cultural, etc. - of South Africa. Therefore, we fear that any re-opening of the question as the Project attempts to do can only serve to undermine the credibility and force of the policy of the United Nations.
"Finally, the African National Congress of South Africa as the premier liberation movement of the African people of South Africa have not been consulted by the sponsors of the Project. Had we been so consulted when the Project was first mooted, we would have certainly urged the sponsors to clearly define. the political frame of reference of the Project in the terms given... and next, that any research being undertaken should be directed towards strengthening the policies of the United Nations and the international campaign for the ending of foreign investment in South Africa and Namibia."
The world should therefore understand that the current strikes by the black workers are not a new phenomenon in South Africa's political scene. Rather, they are part of the revival of political activity among the masses after a period of the most vile and barbaric repression and the suppression of all legal forms of political expression. They underline an unfolding political crisis in the country in which the African people are in a state of revolt both in the urban areas and in the countryside. A crisis which is fast revealing the inability of Vorster and his ruling class cohorts to rule our people with reckless and contemptible abandon.
Throughout the country, the rural population is resisting government orders to leave their lands. The students, churches, professionals and other such groups are asserting their national pride and human dignity. Even the chiefs, who all along have been reputed for their docility to the racist regime, are becoming more articulate in voicing their protests reflecting, in the process, the pressure of the masses from below.
For years, the African National Congress has been making the same demands
and is still irrevocably committed to their achievement. From experience, however, it recognizes that demands must be fought for and won in the context of the fundamental struggle for the transfer of political power to the African majority.
AMANDLA - MAATLA!
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
[Only the introduction to the memorandum is reproduced here.]
Economic relations between France and South Africa
Up until the 1950s, economic relations between France and South Africa could be summarized in one word: wool. Year in and year out, France bought from 40 to 60 per cent of South African production. When the rest of the country - except for rugby players - largely ignored the existence of the Republic, South Africa was almost a household word in Mazamet, where the skins are treated, and in Roubaix, where the wool is spun. The importance of this commodity was so great that one of the biggest French banks created a South African subsidiary to cater primarily to the needs of the wool buyers. This is now the French Bank of South Africa, born in 1949. South Africa was only remotely mentioned in connexion with exotic names of gold mines, the shares of which were traditionally found in most investment companies.
The French Government seemed to take notice of the existence of South Africa for the first time only after the 1958 takeover by General de Gaulle, when France sought allies for her position on the Algerian question, which had come up for debate at the United Nations. The previous regime, left-to-centre oriented was satisfied with the dormant relations between the two countries, exclusively in the hands of the private sector: Banque de l'Indochine, Compagnie Maritime des Chargeurs Réunis, Compagnie des Messageries Maritime, U.T.A. and the big "lainiers" (wool buyers) of Roubaix.
General de Gaulle was to change this. To express his gratitude to one of the very small number of countries which wholeheartedly supported his position applied to the Algerian war, he never publicly mentioned apartheid. Added to this mild satisfaction, South Africa drew great comfort from De Gaulle's conse