STATEMENT IN THE PLENARY MEETING OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

30 October 1985¹

On behalf of the African National Congress of South Africa and the oppressed and struggling people of South Africa, I wish to convey the warmest greetings to all the participants in this important session.

I am particularly pleased to join preceding speakers in congratulating you, Mr. President, on your unanimous election to take the helm at this session of the Assembly on the occasion of the Organization's fortieth anniversary.² We are convinced that your diplomatic skills, experience and commitment to the anti-apartheid cause will further reinforce the world campaign for a free, united, non-racial and democratic South Africa. I also wish to congratulate your  predecessor, Ambassador Paul Lusaka of Zambia, on the exemplary manner in which he led the thirty-ninth session of the General Assembly.

Our thanks also go to the Secretary-General for the relentless efforts he continues to make towards the implementation of United Nations resolutions on the total isolation of the Pretoria regime.

World public opinion has reached a consensus in its characterization of the situation prevailing in South Africa today. The same goes for the recognition by both friend and foe that apartheid is doomed. Except for the major trading partners of racist South Africa, the rest of the world is committed to comprehensive and mandatory sanctions against the Pretoria regime in order to help avert the type of racial blood-bath that could poison race relations in southern Africa and the world for decades to come.

In describing the situation prevailing in South Africa today most observers talk of a deepening crisis. Bishop Desmond Tutu says it is five minutes before midnight for this embattled country, which is sitting on a powder-keg with a short fuse. Dr. Beyers Naude, a former member of the Broederbond - a clandestine organization notorious for its role as the architect and custodian of the doctrine of apartheid - who has become one of the foremost white opponents of apartheid and has succeeded Bishop Desmond Tutu as Secretary-General of the South African Council of Churches, says the same thing in different words. Last Sunday's New York Times quotes him as saying that South Africa is in a state of civil war and that he agrees with those who say that South Africa is moving into a state of revolution. In a typically perverse way the Botha regime's so-called Minister of Law and Order, Louis Le Grange, admitted as much when threatening total war on the ANC which he blames for the revolutionary upheaval which is sweeping through the country today.

At the beginning of last year our President, Comrade Oliver Tambo, urged our people to make apartheid unworkable and the country ungovernable. He also instructed the underground structures of the ANC to take appropriate measures in order to translate this call into concrete mass-united actions. The people responded enthusiastically. By the time our President repeated that call on 8 January this year the people had already undertaken action which, inter alia, led to their refusal to pay rent for their slave cabins. Through heightened mass-united action inspired by our President's call, the people proceeded to dismantle apartheid's administrative extensions into the black communities and to replace them with popular administrative structures. They also proceeded to weed out the regime's informers and collaborators from their midst and declared their communities no-go zones for the regime's police.

Unable to enforce its repressive laws through traditional means, the regime then decided to declare war on the people; thus it declared its state of emergency, under the cloak of which the regime's soldiers plunder, pillage, rape and murder our people in the townships. But the control which the regime hoped to regain through this reign of terror has instead become more and more elusive.

In the past three months several Governments, non-governmental organizations and individuals have strongly condemned the Pretoria regime for the imposition of the state of emergency - an act calculated to place South Africa under martial law and to give unbridled licence to individual members of the regime's bloodthirsty police and army. The regime's notorious "security forces" have predictably used those powers to effect the arbitrary mass arrests, detention, torture and murder of opponents of the system.

Those murdered in cold blood include infants. Those since arrested include hundreds of children below the age of 13. In all, the state of emergency has already claimed more than a thousand lives of unarmed people, many of whom were popular trade unionist, student and community leaders, who have been assassinated bythe Pretoria regime's death squads and their collaborators.

Already outraged by the regime's so-called new constitutional dispensation, the people's determination to be free was further bolstered rather then deterred by the imposition of the state of emergency. Through mass united action to make apartheid unworkable and the country ungovernable they raised the level of the struggle to unprecedented heights. Specifically, they forced the overwhelming majority of apartheid's black councillors to resign. They have instituted a consumer boycott which has already forced a rift between the regime and the white business community. The black workers' strike movement continues to grow and to spread throughout the country. The major unions, which have discovered their political power, are seeking ways and means effectively to deploy that power in the service of liberation. To that end they are all geared towards the creation of a nation-wide labour federation which would significantly strengthen the united democratic front of the people in struggle. Within the framework of this nation-wide revolutionary upsurge, the armed struggle continues to escalate, its pace fuelled by the violence of  apartheid.

Even in the face of the intensified apartheid State terrorism, the ANC has not abandoned its strategy of inflicting as much damage as possible on the enemy personnel, its security and its economic and other installations, at the least possible cost in terms of human lives lost.

Countless men and women of conscience around the world, outraged by the regime's barbarism and moved by the resilience and determination of the South African people to rid themselves of racist minority rule and to win their freedom, have responded with appropriate action. With one powerful voice they have demanded the immediate imposition of comprehensive and mandatory sanctions against the Pretoria regime. They have embarked on campaigns for increased all-round support and assistance to the African National Congress in its role as the vanguard of the broad-based national liberation movement. A growing number of Governments, academic institutions, labour organizations and other non-governmental organizations, as well as intergovernmental organizations, are unilaterally imposing various packages of sanctions against Pretoria.

It is encouraging to note that the Nordic countries, which have for some time adopted  voluntary sanctions as a step towards total isolation of the Pretoria regime, have happily been joined by New Zealand, Australia and Canada. The growing unity of purpose between the anti-apartheid forces and Governments in the direction of stronger and comprehensive sanctions is warmly welcomed.

Conspicuously out of step with this growing world-wide momentum in favour of comprehensive mandatory sanctions are the Governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany. In pursuance of the universally condemned policy of so-called constructive engagement, which has emboldened the Pretoria regime to engage in even more brazen acts of repression and aggression, the Reagan Administration has abused its veto power to shield racist South Africa.

The challenge posed to those millions of people in the United States who cherish freedom has recently led to the growth of the anti-apartheid movement, as is evidenced by the emergence of the Free South Africa Movement following the self-sought arrest of Congressman Walter Fontroy, United States Human Rights Commissioner Marion Berry and TransAfrica's executive director, Randall Robinson.

The gaolings of hundreds of civil rights leaders at the South African embassy in Washington DC has sparked a new situation in the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. Public opinion has been aroused and activated to bring pressure on the Reagan Administration to abandon constructive engagement. The Administration has responded by making tactical concessions while preserving the essentials of its policy of alliance with the apartheid regime. Despite this, pressure continues to build around the issues of divestment, the prohibition of bank loans and the call for a breaking off of diplomatic and economic relations and the stoppage of air links with racist South Africa.

Some of the leading universities in the United States have been forced by their students to divest. The list includes Columbia University here in New York, Yale, Princeton, Rutgers, the State University of New York, and so on. Those to be commended include the Governor of New Jersey, who has recently signed legislation passed by both houses of the state legislature to disinvest approximately $2 billion in state funds from corporations doing business in South Africa. The anti-apartheid movement has scored a similar victory in California, where legislation calling for divestment of approximately $4 billion has been passed and today awaits the Governor's signature.

This renewed upsurge, the direct result of relentless efforts by grass-roots anti-apartheid campaigners, civil rights leaders, legislators and community leaders of conscience, was introduced into the public debate during the presidential campaign last year for the first time in American history owing to the successful campaign by Reverend Jesse Jackson.

The irreversible momentum in favour of sanctions against the Pretoria regime recently resulted in the adoption of the Commonwealth Accord, which, in addition to a compromise package of sanctions, also calls on the apartheid regime unconditionally to release Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners, lift the ban on the ANC and other political organizations and lift the state of emergency, or face comprehensive sanctions in the next six months.

As the United States Administration and its allies have continued to resist moves towards the total isolation of apartheid, the same Administration has repealed the Clark Amendment, thus giving itself free reign to support UNITA, a gang of bandits maintained, directed and used by the Pretoria regime as one of its instruments of its war against the People's Republic of Angola. This juxtaposition points to what we have always asserted, that the collaboration with the Pretoria regime is the outward manifestation of the alliance between the racist regime and its Western collaborators against the people of South Africa and Namibia, and that it is the alliance that underwrites the Pretoria regime's programme of destabilization of front-line States and Lesotho through acts of military aggression, political subversion and economic sabotage and blackmail. It is an insidious alliance against all the people of southern Africa.

The campaign against sanctions, including the abuse of the veto power by the Reagan and Thatcher administrations, is an integral part of this unholy alliance and must be universally condemned.

We commend the neighbouring states, particularly the front-line States and Lesotho, for their resolute resistance to the racist regime and its allies. We commend them doubly for their clear-sighted and principled support for comprehensive mandatory sanctions despite the short-term hardships they might suffer.

It is 40 years since the defeat of Hitlerite Nazism. It is 40 years since the United Nations was created, inter alia to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war by preventing the recurrence of fascism and eliminating colonialism, racism and the oppression and exploitation of man by man, as well as all other causes of conflict and war. Yet, through devices such as constructive engagement, fascism in its apartheid reincarnation continues to be tolerated and defended even as it ravages our continent without let.

Yesterday's London Financial Times reported that the racist regime intends to increase its police force by 11,000 and to build more police stations in black townships. The regime's military budget, which has never stopped growing, today constitutes more than 30 per cent of its total national budget. Apartheid is militarizing its police State even as it converts that police State into a concentration camp.

Beleaguered though apartheid is, it is more intransigent than ever. Instead of heeding the voice of reason, it is preparing to stage a last-ditch stand, which cannot be anything but catastrophic in its consequences. Apartheid remains unrepentant. It cannot be reformed. It must be completely dismantled and replaced by a free, united, non-racial and democratic South Africa. The imperative task of the international community is to impose with urgency comprehensive mandatory sanctions under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.