STATEMENT AT THE 2046^TH MEETING OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL

4 November 1977¹

Mr. President, I should like most sincerely to thank you for giving me the opportunity to express the viewpoint of the African National Congress on the outcome of this series of Council meetings, the first of which was convened by your eminent predecessor, Ambas­sador Jaipal, in response to the request of 49 African countries.

On behalf of our organization, I also wish to convey warmest congratulations to you on your assumption of the post of President of the Council for the current month.² Libya's active and unswerving commitment to our struggle and your personal experience, dedication and indefatigable contribution in all forums which have been seized and continue to be seized of the problem of mapping out the correct strategy as well as ways and means of comple­menting the efforts of the liberation movement to attain the overthrow of the apartheidregime and the seizure of power by the people is to us a firm guarantee that the Council will under your guidance live up to our expecta­tions.

Allow me also to pay a tribute to your predecessor, whose statesmanship and selflessness in presiding over so controversial a series of meetings helped to preserve the essential spirit of reconciliation.

For the benefit of a body such as the Security Council, whose raison d'etre is the preservation of peace and international security, it is, I believe, necessary and imperative that at all times truth should override diplomatic niceties or considerations of personal friendships.

The Council was convened on an emergency basis, following the escalation of the reign of terror in South Africa. For the African National Congress and the over­whelming majority of the representatives who spoke here, the issue before us was not how to react to the current crackdown on 18 organizations and two newspapers and the detention and banning of some individuals. The issue before us was the long-overdue concrete and effective punitive measures to be adopted by the Council against the regime whose apartheidrule has created a situation which constitutes a threat to international peace and security. I believe that it was for that reason that the three African members of the Council limited themselves to the draft resolutions which they had introduced on 29 March this year. In so doing, they enjoyed the full support of the African countries and the liberation movements. After all, the Council had been seized of this matter for seven months following the resolution on the matter adopted by the General Assembly at its thirty-first session and the subse­quent request for a two-month delay presented by the five Western countries members of the Council.

The negative vote cast by the three Western perma­nent members, joined by Canada and the Federal Republic of Germany, came as no surprise to us. Their position is in keeping with their persistent violation of countless resolu­tions calling for the total isolation of the apartheidregime. However, I must be honest and say that we thought that they would have demonstrated their avowed indignation and that of the peoples which they represent by at last joining justice-loving and peace-loving mankind and sup­porting the other three draft resolutions.

We listened attentively to the arguments which they advanced for not doing so. We half agreed with Ambassador Andrew Young and other representatives of the Western Powers who stressed the need for a clear and unconfused signal which was expected to come from the Council. However, we parted ways when it appeared that they were talking of this signal being conveyed to Vorster.

We maintain that the international community has, through countless United Nations decisions, sent a barrage of clear signals to the apartheidregime - signals which have been systematically confused by the Western Powers for reasons well known to all of us. Our position was that the time had come to send clear and unconfused signals to the oppressed struggling people of South Africa and its poten­tial allies, the peoples of the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Canada and the Federal Republic of Germany. That is of vital importance to our people, whose struggle has entered a decisive phase. They need to know whether those who have always been friends and allies of their enemy have changed their traditional position. Our people must know whether the highly orchestrated bid for the so-called negotiated settlement in southern Africa points to a change still in the pipeline and not yet consummated or is a change of tactics towards the objective that remains the same, that is, the perpetuation of the status quo in a camouflaged form.

The three triple vetoes confirmed in the clearest terms that whatever the Western Powers pretend to be doing in support of our struggle is calculated in terms of pounds, dollars, francs and deutschmarks and not based on principles. Our people has once again been told that economic sanctions and the withdrawal of investments would harm the economies of the Western countries. In other words, they have been told to continue to shed their sweat and blood to ensure the continued prosperity of the white minority in South Africa and the "mighty few" in the West represented by the transnational corporations.

We are in a war situation. We may be excused if we use as our criteria for judging friends or foes what people do either to strengthen our striking power against the enemy or to strengthen the enemy's striking power.

It is for that reason that we wish to state quite categorically that the resolution that has just been adopted is too little and has come too late. The Council, repre­senting the international community, has missed an oppor­tunity to erase from the surface of the earth the iniquities portrayed in the picture behind you, Mr. President. How­ever, we feel that, while it is too late for peaceful change, there is still time for the Western countries to join us in a common struggle, a common battle against the common enemy.

It is important to stress that our people have come to the conclusion reached by their counterparts in various countries that have been placed in a similar situation, that genuine freedom cannot be granted, it can only be grabbed.

The resolution adopted today, as I have said, falls far short of our expectations, but we maintain that, if it is true that some changes are in the pipeline, it serves as a basis for effective action which we hope will be undertaken before it is too late.

At this juncture I should like to associate our delegation with the position expressed by a few members of the Council, particularly the African members, that is, we hope that in the near future there will be moves towards setting up a watch-dog committee to ensure the strict implementation of the limited measures that have just been adopted.

We thank all those who have stood firm with us in calling for the appropriate and overdue measures, and we wish to express the hope that the Council, which remains seized of this issue, will, next time it meets, surprise us and our people by sending the appropriate signal to the Vorster regime. To achieve that, it is important that we speak the same language. For us, the situation is characterized by expropriation, hunger, super-exploitation and social deprivation, and maintained by the ever-escalating reign of terror and aggression against neighbouring States constitutes a threat to peace and international security and calls foreconomic sanctions and a mandatory arms em­bargo under Chapter VII of the Charter.

There has been much talk of Canada having "hi­jacked" India's draft resolution; we do hope that the next draft to be hijacked by Canada will be that on economic sanctions.