16 August 19841
Mr. President, I thank you most sincerely for giving us the opportunity to make known to this august body how and why the Pretoria regime's decision to impose the unashamedly racist and colonial constitution has provoked a wave of indignation among the millions of the oppressed majority in our country. Our thanks also go to all the members of the Council for making this possible.
Mr. President, your country's deep commitment to the international fight against the neo-Nazi system of apartheid has always served as a source of inspiration and encouragement to freedom fighters in southern Africa.2 We seize this occasion to say how the African National Congress (ANC) greatly values the reaffirmation of this position as conveyed to Comrade President Oliver Tambo by Comrade Captain Thomas Sankara in New Delhi two years ago and this year when he visited our region. It is for that reason that in congratulating you on your assumption of the presidency of the Council for this month we feel confident that under your guidance it will adopt decisions that are appropriate and in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the aspirations of our people as reflected in the Freedom Charter.
The attention of world public opinion is today focussed on the outcome of this Council's meeting with greater interest and more common expectation than ever before.
The reason is clear. It is that the Council must be guided by the self-evident truth that men are born equal and by the principle of government with the consent of the governed. Consequently, in pursuance of its unshirkable duty, it is expected to condemn, reject, fight and defeat racist South Africa's constitutional manoeuvres aimed at the consolidation of the universally-condemned system of apartheid, that offshoot of Nazism and prescription for war.
The expectations of the oppressed and struggling people of South Africa which they share with their natural allies, the peoples of the world, lead me to an important statement made by the then United States Secretary of State George Marshall in Paris on 10 December 1948, when, three years after the defeat of fascism, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified by the General Assembly of the United Nations. He declared:
"Governments which systematically disregard the rights of their own people are not likely to respect the rights of other nations and other people and are likely to seek their objectives by coercion and force in the international field".
Racist South Africa's record, not only in words but in deeds as well, makes this statement truly prophetic. "In white South Africa, onlythe white man was baas" - meaning master - "and the National Party would maintain this position forever - with force if necessary", said Vorster on 16 March 1970, four years before the P.W. Botha invasion of Angola, followed by the regime's extension of its so-called defence perimeter to include all African countries south ofthe Equator and followed by the regime's undeclared war against neighbouring countries, some of which today victims ofunequal agreements secured at gunpoint.
This is but part ofthe larger background against which the racist, colonial and fascist constitution must be examined. As a result ofthe inevitable developments today beyond its control, the regime has to adapt or die, according to its spokesmen.
What are these circumstances? They are, first, the rising tide of black anger; secondly, the collapse ofthe buffer that had protected apartheid South Africa; thirdly, the regime's acute shortage ofwhite military manpower resulting from its repressive army being overstretched and its failure to stem the ever-growing tide ofintensified armed struggle being waged by the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) in Namibia and by the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC) in South Africa itself; fourthly, the demands by some of the regime's Western allies for reforms that would give a human face to the apartheid monster in order to render possible its continued diplomatic protection. It is important to place South Africa’s 1983 constitution in its proper historical context. Without going into details on how, in pursuance of settler colonialism, racist South Africa adopted only those features ofthe Westminster system that allowed it to practise racial domination and reject the principle of universal suffrage, we must make a brief examination ofthe 1961 constitution. What is the character and function of the present constitution, whose demise is due soon?
It is unashamedly racist in composition and function. It comprises a single legislative chamber of 177 white members of Parliament elected by white voters only. Bills are passed by a simple majority vote and become law when signed by a non-executive State President. This is how the horrendous discriminatory and repressive laws designed to secure and perpetuate the black people's enslavement, dispossession, exploitation and genocide are passed. Executive power is vested in a Prime Minister and Cabinet - all white and Afrikaner - which enjoy the undivided loyalty and support of 126 members of Parliament.
This is what has served as the so-called legal basis for the practice of the apartheid policies which stand condemned by the General Assembly as a crime against humanity and a threat to world peace and international security.
The question before the Council is whether the 1983 constitution marks the beginning of the long-awaited departure from this position. Is it a step in the right direction, responding to the General Assembly and Security Council's repeated calls on the South African authorities to end the repression and oppression of black majority and seek a peaceful, just and lasting solution in accordance with the principles of the Charter?
The 1983 constitution is the creation of the architect of apartheid, the National Party, whose leaders and spokespersons have often boasted of their fascist commitment, proclaimed an allegedly divinely-inspired right and resolve to ensure that South African nationhood is for whites only where the black majority can stay only as temporary sojourners for the purpose of ministering to the needs of the whites. It is therefore yet another and more effective instrument aimed at maintaining the National Party and apartheid control behind the fig leaf of reforms and power-sharing.
According to John Duggard, the Director of the Johannesburg-based Centre for Applied Legal Studies, the main feature of the 1983 constitution is its tricameral structure: Parliament will consist of three legislative chambers, located in separate buildings. There will be a white House of Assembly with 178 members selected by whites to represent 4.5 million whites, a House of Representatives with 85 "Coloured" members elected by Coloureds to represent 2.5 million Coloureds, and finally a House of Delegates with 45 Indian members elected by Indians to represent 400,000 Indians.
Each house will deliberate separately, and in case of disagreement the will of the majority party in the white house of assembly will prevail.
The State President, enjoying far-reaching executive and legislative powers, will be elected by an electoral college of 88, comprising 50 members of the white house of assembly designated by it, 25 members of the "Coloured" house of representatives, and 15 members of the Indian house of delegates. In practice, the 50 members of the electoral college constitute the majority that ensures the selection of its candidate.
John Duggard correctly characterizes this scenario when he says:
"The State President will manipulate the tri-cameral Parliament like a puppet master, for to him is given the power to decide which matters are to be disposed of finally by each House on its own, and which matters are to be passed by all three Houses sitting separately, or if necessary, by the dead-lock procedure”.
Duggard further elaborates that:
"If the State President decides that a given matter is an 'own affair' of a particular House, he will refer it to that House for final legislative determination. Should he decide that a matter is not the 'own affair' of a particular House, it becomes a 'general affair', to be decided on by all three Houses and this presidential decision is final and no court of law may question its correctness”.
Bills designated as dealing with a "general affair" passed by the three Houses sitting separately will become law when they have been assented to by the State President. In the event of disagreement between the Houses, the matter will be referred by the State President to the President's Council for resolution. The decision of the President's Council is, in such cases, deemed to be the decision of Parliament.
The regime's spokesmen have given different reasons to explain the failure of the constitution to deal with the indigenous African majority. First, there was the nakedly racist one given by the Minister of Constitutional Affairs, who said this was because the inadequate development of the Africans made them incapable of comprehending the complex democratic process. Since this outburst, which embarrassed the regime's allies abroad, the now repeatedly declared position is that the constitutional development for the Africans is already settled. They are to be deprived of South African nationhood and allowed to exercise their civil and political rights in the bantustans.
We humbly submit that this alone is enough to clear the minds and position of the Council to condemn unanimously and reject this Constitution, based on bantustan policy, to which there is unanimous opposition.
The other reason is, in our opinion, the fact that no Member State, can fail to condemn the so-called constitution, which seeks to perpetuate the disenfranchisement of the indigenous African majority and makes them foreigners in the land of their birth.
Some spokesmen of one Member State have been reported as welcoming racist South Africa's constitution as a step in the right direction. We want to believe that the Reagan Administration supports the United Nations position calling for the establishment of a non-racial, democratic society in South Africa. If that is the case, South Africa's 1983 constitution cannot be welcomed as a step in the right direction.
However, in fairness to the Reagan Administration, we must add that this reported statement of welcoming what has been rejected by the General Assembly, as well as by the Summit Conferences of the OAU, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Commonwealth countries, has been contested by Mr. Chester Crocker. That leads us to expect the United States to join the international community in condemning Botha's constitution, which is obviously designed to entrench further white minority rule and the universally condemned apartheid system.
There is another reason why we think the United States should have no problem in voting in favour of the draft resolution sponsored by the non-aligned countries. It will be recalled that in his major policy statement last year, Mr. Lawrence Eagleburger, Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, said:
"Our policy is directed, therefore, not at whether a non-racial order will be arrived at [in South Africa], but how that non-racial order will be arrived at. Western policy towards South Africa today must focus on how groups acquire the basis and influence necessary to participate in a genuine bargaining process that produces changes acceptable to all”.
It will be further recalled that P. W. Botha himself wasted no time to respond - angrily, if I might say - by reaffirming once again that there will never be a system of one man one vote in South Africa. Botha’s response clearly dismissed the idea often whispered by some Washington spokesmen suggesting that the regime's constitutional changes should be given a chance since the regime might be having some hidden agenda involving black participation in the South African political process.
Pretoria's clarity of purpose was further underlined during the November referendum campaign. Several South African newspapers have reported that:
"On repeated occasions, the regime's spokesmen emphasized that the new constitution would preserve white domination, that the new constitution was not a step towards integration, that the Group Areas Act would be retained, and, if necessary, forcefully applied and that there was no place for representation of Africans, who would have to exercise political rights beyond the local level through the bantustans”.
The African National Congress sees and condemns Botha's new constitution as the continuation of the 300-year-old policy of conquest, enslavement, dispossession and genocide. It is not a step towards change. Proof of this is that all the repressive laws which constitute the main pillars of the inhuman apartheid system remain intact. They are in fact being consolidated by the draconian Koornhof bills.
Even though presented as reforms, those insidious manoeuvres have been seen for what they are by our people. The strong opposition to this racist, colonial and fascist constitution has united our people more than ever before. The leadership of what has turned out to be the most powerful non-racial coalition of all times has come from Coloured, Asian, and African community leaders. It is inspired by the eloquent warning of Comrade Nelson Mandela in a letter smuggled out from Robben Island in 1980 and published in 1982, in which he declared:
“Apartheid is the embodiment of the racism, repression and inhumanity of all previous white supremacy regimes. To see the real face of apartheid one must look beneath the veil of constitutional formulae, deceptive phrases and playing with words”.
In examining the record of previous white supremacy regimes, we find that following the wars of conquest in the nineteenth century, Britain imposed a constitution in its South African colony which entrenched white minority power, Boer and British, whilst giving the qualified franchise to the Coloured and the small number of Africans in the Cape Province. In the rest of the provinces, our people were excluded from political participation.
Like the 1983 Constitution, the Act of Union was an act against the indigenous African people. It brought together sworn enemies, Boers and Britons, because of their common interest inthe wealth of our country, which they planned to extract with our labour. From 1910 to 1936, the process of harnessing our labour through landlessness began. The 1913 Land Act which prepared the ground for the present antustans was passed and complemented in 1923 by the Urban Areas Act, which spelt out that Africans could only remain inthe cities as temporary sojourners if they ministered to the needs of the white man. In 1936, even that qualified franchise was eliminated and replaced by the Native Representative Council. Those Africans who lived inthe Cape could elect three white representatives. This constitutional fraud reached its demise after the 1946 miners' strike and was finally eliminated when the Nationalist Party came to power in1948. In 1956, the token franchise of the Coloureds was also eliminated.
It is clear to us that one of the reasons why the regime that has in the past gone to great lengths to eliminate the Coloured franchise and even attempted to deport the Indians, and is taking such a position today, is to solve the acute problem of shortage of white military manpower. By granting this limited parliamentary representation to the so-called Coloureds and people of Asian origin, the regime aims at securing their conscription into the apartheid army for internal repression and aggression against the neighbouring States. It hopes in the process to divide the black people and weaken their common struggle against white supremacy and for a non-racial society based on majority rule in a united and non-fragmented South Africa.
The pressing appeal we address to the members of the Council to reject racist South Africa's 1983 constitution as null and void is an appeal for support of the position taken by the South African patriots who see this manoeuvre as designed to further entrench white minority rule and apartheid. It is an appeal for support of the democratic mass organizations inside our country which have called for the boycott of the pseudo-elections due to take place this month. This boycott movement isco-ordinated by the United Democratic Front (UDF) which was formed in August last year and comprises 600 organizations whose common objective and resolve is the rejection of the new constitution and the Koornhof bills.
Having launched the million-signature campaign for the rejection of the new constitution, UDF has issued an appeal for the boycott of the forthcoming elections and the new constitution because, firstly:
"Whites will still be in control. For every four whites in the new system, there will be two Coloureds and one Indian person. Coloureds and Indians will therefore have no real say”.
Secondly, Coloured adult males will be forced to do border duty. Key government officials made it clear that if the constitution is accepted, border duty will follow. Although conscription and border duty can be rejected by the Coloured and Indian people in the new parliaments, whites will still have the final say. Thirdly, African people are left out of the new constitution. This will create greater tension amongst the different race groups. The UDF is concerned that if Coloureds and Indians accept the new constitution, they will be seen as a party to the white man's laws against African people. Fourthly, nothing will change. The high rents, rates, low wages, and other problems will remain. The Group Areas Act and other unjust laws will not be changed.
In his statement this morning in which he rejected in advance any decisions that may emanate from the Council, the representative of the racist South African regime has displayed the type and level of arrogance, defiance and intransigence that must convince the justice-loving members of this body, firstly, that in this case of apartheid South Africa the Council is dealing with an entity that will not be persuaded by reasoned argument - if I may borrow from his words; secondly, that, indeed, the Pretoria regime and its apartheid policies constitute not only the obstacle to peace, stability and security in southern Africa, but also threaten world peace and international security; thirdly, that the problem facing the Council today in its resolve to help bring about the establishment of a non-racial society based on majority rule in South Africa can be traced to the unjust decision taken by the United Nations in admitting as a member a settler regime founded on the denial of the right to self-determination for the indigenous majority; and, fourthly, that racist South Africa's suspension from the General Assembly must be maintained while the Council takes appropriate steps to expel this regime from the United Nations.
1. United Nations document S/PV.2549
2. ?? of Burkina Faso was President of the Security Council.