STATEMENT AT THE 1992^ND MEETING OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL

25 March 1977¹

Mr. President, allow me to associate myself and our organization, the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, with the views expressed by previous speakers regarding your dedication to the cause of freedom, justice and world peace.² We congratulate you most heartily on your assumption of the presidency of the Council. We are confident that, under your leadership, the Council will not fail to help to advance the cause of the oppressed peoples of Africa.

The situation in South Africa now presents a major crisis, not just for the people of South Africa and the African continent but for the whole world community. The question before us today has in one form or another been on the United Nations agenda for the past 30 years. Numerous resolutions have been adopted, both in the General Assembly and in the Security Council, in an effort to facilitate the downfall of the South African racist regime. That regime has been repeatedly condemned for its barbarous and indefensible policy of apartheid. It has been condemned many times as a threat to international peace and security. Yet the United Nations has still to take effective action against apartheid.The flow of noble words and resolutions continues unceasingly, but nothing results from it. No real action has been taken. Indeed, as time passes and the crisis in South Africa grows more serious, we are asked even more insistently by some to accept rhetoric as a substitute for action.

Mr. President, four days ago you condemned apart­heidas an affront to mankind. You are not the first one to have done so. A number of leading statesmen have in the past used equally strong language to condemn apartheid. We recall, for example, the speech by Sir Alec Douglas-­Home at Manchester on 24 April 1964, in which he equated the problem of racism with the danger posed by the atomic bomb. Many others, including men like Dean Rusk, have had strong things to say against the South African regime. We have welcomed those pronouncements in the past, as we do yours now, as a prelude to the implementation of resolutions democratically adopted by the United Nations.

It has been clear for many years that the South African crisis could eventually become a world crisis. Delegation after delegation in the Security Council warned that the international community cannot afford to ignore the situation in southern Africa. Repeated attempts were made to persuade the Council, and its permanent members in particular, that the only way to avert a major crisis was to take action against the minority regime in South Africa, action which would force that regime to recognize the realities and to establish a time-table for the transfer of power to the majority. These warnings have been ignored. Many Member States have demonstrated their solidarity with the struggle of the South African people. The Council, however, has held back from taking action against the South African Government. On occasion, when it was clear that a majority of members intended to take action, their efforts were thwarted by the use of the veto.

Today we see the results of this temporizing. South Africa has gained invaluable time, which it has used to build its economic and military strength. Far from abandoning apartheid,it has shown itself absolutely determined to preserve the status quo. South Africa, faced with a greatly intensified struggle on the part of the South African people, has today become a volatile and dangerous force on the African continent. Its enormous power has become a standing threat to every independent State south of the equator.

It is against that background that we must ask whether the United Nations can afford to wait any longer to take effective action against apartheid.

There was a time when it seemed that the interna­tional community would take the kind of action demanded by the Charter. I recall how, in the early 1960s, each session of the General Assembly and each series of Security Council meetings would raise the expectations of our people to lofty heights. They were happy witnesses to the progressive and apparently irreversible collapse of alien rule in Africa. They watched one African nation after the other take its rightful place among the community of nations. And they were convinced that South Africa's liberation was also on the agenda and that they would, thanks to their own efforts and to international solidarity, soon be free from bondage.

There were several other factors that suggested that their hopes would be fulfilled. The unprecedented destruc­tion of human lives and property which had been expe­rienced during the Second World War was still fresh in our minds. The world's horror at what had happened seemed an assurance that all nations, irrespective of their political or ideological affiliations, would make common cause and help to crush the cancerous evil which was rearing its head in South Africa. There was a nearly unanimous view that apartheidwas not only repugnant and indefensible but also a crime against humanity. The massacre at Sharpeville had profoundly affected the conscience of the world. People saw in it a sign of things to come and were appalled. Thus South Africa, which had once enjoyed a certain respectabil­ity as a founding Member of the United Nations, became increasingly isolated in the international community.

The stage seemed to be set for measures which, together with the efforts of the South African people, would force the racists in South Africa out of power. In the mid-1960s, the internal situation in the country seemed to favour the success of such action. The African National Congress organized a national strike to protest the proclamation of a fascist State.³ The most ruthless repression was mounted to crush that strike by force of arms, and a consensus developed in the country among ANC members and their supporters that the time had come to change the methods of the struggle. It was decided to abandon non-violence in favour of armed struggle combined with political agitation. In late 1961, Umkhonto we Sizwe - that is, the Spear of the Nation - the military wing of the ANC, was formed. It immediately announced itself by organizing a country-wide campaign of sabotage.

Pressure was increasing at the time for United Nations action against the racist regime. Resolutions were adopted in the General Assembly in the aftermath of Sharpeville, calling for the severance of all diplomatic, economic, military and cultural ties with South Africa. We saw such resolutions as an important beginning, as an indication that the international community would play an active role in helping to isolate South Africa. We thought that the United Nations would lend its active support to our struggle and thus hasten the downfall of the apartheidregime.

The Security Council seemed poised on a number of occasions to take action. In 1964, it constituted an Expert Committee to study the feasibility of mounting various kinds of sanctions against South Africa [resolution 191 (1964)]. The report of the Expert Committee indicated clearly that South Africa was vulnerable to United Nations action and that it could be seriously hurt, for instance, by certain kinds of economic sanctions. The Council never acted on the report.

There have been many similar cases in which the United Nations has begun to take specific steps to put pressure on South Africa and then withdrawn from further pursuit of the matter. Paradoxically, as the crisis in southern Africa has become more serious, as the liberation movement has demonstrated that it could pose a real threat to the power of the minority regimes, less and less has been heard about translating United Nations resolutions into action. As the situation has become more and more unusual, the doctrine of business as usual has taken command. It is hard to escape the impression that the successes of the liberation struggle have been seen less as part of a process of ending injustice and oppression than as a "threat" to the interests of certain Powers, and parti­cularly the interests of the major Western Powers.

It must be said clearly that, in our view, this is now the core of the problem. South Africa's actions over the last 10 years have demonstrated clearly that the racist rulers of our country are determined to try to maintain the system of exploitation and oppression which now lies so heavily upon the shoulders of our people. Far from being made "more humane", apartheidhas been given a new and more horrible form, combining the primitive laws and customs of an exploitative society with the ruthless efficiency of a modern police State. And South Africa, sensing that apartheidis now truly threatened, has turned its energies to the creation of a powerful military machine with which it seeks to dominate the whole southern African region. South Africa has built a garrison State, a new laager equipped with the most modern and deadly weapons, equipped indeed with a military nuclear capability.

This new and more arrogant posture on the part of the apartheidregime has been made possible by the growing support which it is receiving from other countries, support which is partly invisible but absolutely critical for the present regime. These countries, under the guise of business as usual, have in fact been helping to finance and arm a Power which is moving away from any possibility of reason or reform. It is clear that they are doing so because they believe that, by arming and protecting South Africa, they are also protecting their own interests in the southern African region. Thus South Africa has been made a surrogate colonial Power in Africa. It is expected to perform the function of local gendarme. There is no need to demonstrate the short-sightedness of such policies. It is obvious enough that such calculations fail to take into account the dynamics of the liberation struggle. They assume what cannot be assumed, that the apartheidsystem can survive. In the long run the people of South Africa will wrest their freedom and independence from the country's racist rulers and make their own future.

The important point for the Council is that South Africa could not survive as it does today without the support which the Vorster Government receives from other countries. This points the way to effective action by the United Nations, for, if that crucial foreign support for apartheidwere to be withdrawn, the present regime would have no option but to begin the dismantling of apartheid. It would have no power to resist the efforts of the South African people to free themselves. That is the true and only way to peaceful change.

It is a sad comment on our deliberations here that we are being asked, even at this late date, to believe otherwise. For indeed we are being asked to wait yet again for our freedom. Not because the props which hold up the apartheidregime are to be torn away, but because some believe that "with time" they can persuade those who now rule South Africa to change their very nature, to abandon the system which has for so long been the basis of their unprecedented power and privilege. Is this really a credible proposition? Can today's rulers of South Africa, who shoot down children in the streets and claim that detainees are under orders to commit suicide, really be expected to abandon their whole way of life willingly, or even for a few hundred million Eurodollars?

Apartheidis a system of power, a particular form of economic and social organization originating from settler colonialism. It is based upon and institutionalizes the most extreme kinds of inequality in every sphere. Such a system cannot be made into its opposite. It cannot be turned into a democracy, and it cannot assure economic justice which must mean, at the very least, a decent and reasonably equal chance in life for every citizen. Apartheidmeans perpetual bondage for the vast majority of South Africans, and it will continue to mean perpetual bondage even if the political plastic surgeons produce a new neo-colonial version of that system.

I hasten to say, however, that, disappointing though the past record of the Security Council may be, we remain convinced that this series of meetings potentially marks a turning point. Whilst we have always had reason to denounce what we saw as the imperialist global strategy for world hegemony in which South Africa was being armed to the teeth and assisted in producing an atomic bomb in order to play the role of a regional gendarme, we are today heartened by certain pronouncements made by the new Washington Administration, as well as the steadily growing humanitarian support from the Western European coun­tries, support that we hope will soon reach the level of that given by the Nordic countries. We hope that the former United States Administration's position under Memoran­dum 394 on the reported project of establishing a naval base at Port St. Johns in the Transkei and other covert activities, will soon be the subject of public renunciation. We also call on the Governments of France and the Federal Republic of Germany which, together with the former United States Administration, permitted nuclear collabora­tion with fascist South Africa, in addition to supplying genocidal weapons, to put an end to that collaboration. Finally, we request the Council, in keeping with the recommendations of the General Assembly at its thirty-first session, to invoke Chapter VII of the Charter and impose mandatory economic sanctions and an arms embargo against South Africa, and pronounce itself against any so-called internal solution arrived at with the bantustan authorities.

The African National Congress was founded in 1912 in the wake of a heroic resistance waged by our forebears against colonial conquest. In the same manner as our fellow Africans in other African countries which are free and independent today, we in South Africa are resolved never to accept perpetual bondage. After 325 years of white supremacist policies, we are resolved to strive for self-deter­mination in our fatherland. We recognize, however, that the whites in South Africa, having severed cultural ties with their respective mother countries, now consider South Africa their home. And indeed it is their home. The principle of the equality of peoples is therefore a corner­stone of the ANC policy, as it is of the Charter of the United Nations. We believe that the principle of self-determination must have equal validity for all.

Our fundamental objectives were set out in the Freedom Charter which was adopted by the Congress of the People in 1955. That document was embraced not only by the ANC but also by its allies, the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured Peoples' Organization, the Congress of Democrats and the South African Congress of Trade Unions. It faithfully reflects the spirit and idealism of the Charter of the United Nations. The preamble of that document states:

  “We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:

  “That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no Government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people;
"That our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality;

"That our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities;

"That only a democratic State, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief;

"And therefore, we the people of South Africa, black and white together - equal, countrymen and brothers­ - adopt this Freedom Charter. And we pledge ourselves to strive together, sparing nothing of our strength and courage, until the democratic changes here set outhave been won”.

Let me further indicate the principles on which the Freedom Charter was based: "The people shall govern"­ - "All national groups shall have equal rights" - "The people shall share in the country's wealth" - "The land shall be shared among those who work it" - "All shall be equal before the law" -"All shall enjoy equal human rights" - ­"There shall be work and security" - "The doors of learning and of culture shall be opened" - "There shall be houses, security and comfort" - "There shall be peace and friend­ship".

Those are the principles for which we stand, the principles which we strive to make a reality in our country. It should be abundantly clear that there is no way in which those principles could be applied in an apartheidsystem. There is a fundamental incompatibility between the Free­dom Charter and the system of exploitation and oppression so painstakingly pieced together by the present rulers of South Africa. There is no way in which such a system, especially in the present circumstances, could be modified and made to accommodate the just demands of the South African people. No African parliament sitting on a founda­tion of transnational corporations could accommodate those demands. The principles of the Freedom Charter can only be realized in a free and independent South Africa, when the repugnant system of racism has been entirely dismantled.

It is clear, therefore, why the decision of the African National Congress and of the people of South Africa to wage an armed struggle for the overthrow of the apartheid regime is irreversible. The songs of “peaceful change” are simply the means by which some seek to beguile us and to sow confusion in the international community. We shall continue our struggle because the South African regime has left us no alternative. We should, of course, have preferred to see change come by peaceful means. Our record, crowned by the Nobel Peace Prize award to our late President, Albert Luthuli, is eloquent proof of that.

However, the regime has consistently and stubbornly stepped up its reign of terror. Its fascist intransigence, today characterized by the wanton murder of thousands of defenceless men, women and schoolchildren, as well as the assassination of political detainees in prison cells and torture chambers, has sown seeds of revolution throughout the length and breadth of the country.

As they enter the decisive phase of the struggle, at a time when the independence of Mozambique and Angola has changed the balance of forces to the detriment of the Vorster regime, our people are confident of victory. The role of the international community is actively to support this struggle and facilitate the elimination of the threat to peace and international security which the apartheidregime constitutes. It is for that reason that the ANC hails the resolution adopted by the General Assembly at its thirty-first session [resolution 31/6-I] , which declares the Pretoria regime illegitimate and reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle by the people of South Africa, by all possible means, for the seizure of power. We request the Council to endorse this position.