Today we mourn the execution by the authorities of Pretoria of two South Africans for acts or alleged acts arising from their opposition to the inhuman policies of apartheid.
We have received information that Mr. Washington Bongco was secretly executed early in February without any news in the South African press.
Mr. Bongco, a newspaper vendor, had been found "guilty" of being a member of the regional committee of the African National Congress in East London, of being the volunteer-in-·chief of the regional committee, of soliciting funds for the organization, and of engaging in acts of sabotage.
Sentencing him to death on 23 March 1964 in Queenstown, Mr. Justice Cloete denounced this "dreadful organization" to which Mr. Bongco belonged. He was refused leave to appeal and had been in the death cell at Pretoria Central Jail since July 1964.
Mr. Bongco, it may be noted, was arrested as early as February 1963 and brutally beaten. We have received a copy of a statement made by him in the death cell on 15 July 1964. I will not read to you the story of the brutality inflicted on him by the police, although they fully knew that he was a T. B. patient. He had to stay in hospital for more than three weeks as a result of the assaults. He was then charged with nothing more than the trumped up charge that he was illegally in East London.
He was detained under the 90-day law in July 1963 and charged much later with sabotage when he insisted on suing the police for assault.
Even after the death sentence, he was told by the police on April 27, 1964, that his life would be spared if he gave evidence against other Africans. He refused.
In mourning the death of Mr. Washington Bongco, the courageous patriot of South Africa, I would like to say that in the opinion of decent humanity, the "dreadful organization" in South Africa is not the African National Congress, led by such outstanding men as Chief Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo, which has patiently sought a peaceful solution for half a century in the face of utmost brutality and provocation. The most dreadful organization in South Africa is the racist regime of the White minority which stands condemned today of wanton murder of patriots who struggle for a new South Africa based on the principles of the United Nations Charter.
As we mourn the death of Mr. Washington Bongco let us remember also the three patriots from Port Elizabeth executed on 6 November 1964 - Mr. Vuyisile Mini, Mr. Wilson Khayinga and Mr. Zinakile Mkaba.
Let us remember also the numerous members of the Pan Africanist Congress who have been executed since the beginning of 1963. We have recently received an incomplete list of 47 of the persons executed.
The South African press thinks so little of the lives of Africans that it does not even announce or report the executions.
Today we mourn also the death of Mr. Frederick John Harris, 27-year-old former chairman of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee which opposed segregation in sports and advocated exclusion of segregated South African teams from the Olympics.
Mr. Harris, a teacher and a member of the Liberal Party since 1960, is one of those few courageous White men in South Africa who believed passionately in racial equality, identified himself with the oppressed people and suffered persecution. His passport was seized in 1963. He was served with banning orders in February 1964 preventing him from continuing his work with the Liberal Party and the Non-racial Olympic Committee.
Like many others, he became convinced that there was no way left to influence the situation except by clandestine activity. When most of his colleagues in the underground organization, the African Resistance Movement, were jailed or fled the country, he tried to plan a spectacular demonstration. He placed a bomb in the Johannesburg station and telephoned the police so that the area would be cleared. The police did not act promptly and an elderly lady lost her life as a result of the explosion.
Under the prevailing circumstances in South Africa, the means of struggle are for the liberation movement to decide in the light of the conditions in the country.
The responsibility for the consequences lies very much on the rulers of Pretoria who, in defiance of the world and all sense of decency, created a situation which left no other alternative to decent people than to engage in violence.
In mourning the execution of Mr. Frederick John Harris, let me say that it will not be forgotten that in the struggle of the South African people this man, a member of the privileged group, gave his life because of his passionate belief in racial equality. This will serve to strengthen the faith of all those who fight against the danger of a "race war" and retain their faith that all human beings can live together in dignity irrespective of the colour of their skin.
I have recently received a message sent by him from his death cell in Pretoria Central Prison in January. He wrote:
"The support and warm sympathy of friends has been and is among my basic reinforcements. I daily appreciate the accuracy of the observation that when one really has to endure one relies ultimately on Reason and Courage. I've been fortunate in that the first has stood up - my ideals and beliefs have never faltered. As for the second, well, I'm not ashamed - I know I've shown at least a modicum of the second. "
When I think of John Harris, the first White martyr in the cause of equality in South Africa, I am reminded powerfully of a great White American, a man who gave his life over a century ago - on December 2, 1859, to be exact - because of his passionate hatred of slavery: I mean John Brown.
People said then that John Brown was eccentric, that he was unwise in attacking the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and that his act would only strengthen the slave lords.
History has made a very different judgement. Whether the particular act of John Brown was right or wrong, wise or unwise, his cause was right and invincible.
Those whose hands are stained with the blood of John Harris have, unfortunately, not learned the lesson of John Brown.
On that fateful day of 2 December 1859, as he left his cell to mount the scaffold, John Brown left his last message: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with Blood."
Within two years, the nation was embroiled in a civil war in which it paid the price of half a million lives. The north resounded with the anthem:
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in its grave, But his soul goes marching on.
I wonder if Dr. Verwoerd and his cohorts and apologists are seeking a repetition of history.
The Special Committee has warned for more than a year that the continuation of executions of opponents of apartheid may have irreparable consequences on the situation in South Africa.
With this series of wanton executions, in defiance of world opinion, the regime in Pretoria is leading the Whites on a suicidal path.
The warnings are already clear. I read in this Committee last November a message from Mr. Duma Nokwe, Secretary-General of the African National Congress, that the killing from now on would not be on one side only. Spokesmen of the African National Congress have been speaking of a new phase of struggle.
On 22 March 1965, Mr. Z. B. Molete, a leader of the Pan Africanist Congress, said in Cairo that "the South African Verwoerdian Gestapo is maintained by reactionary violence and only revolutionary violence can overthrow the racist Verwoerdian brutes."
It is getting too late to save the peace and ensure justice in South Africa.
We have again and again appealed to the Great Powers to assume their responsibilities to avert the disaster which will certainly have the gravest consequences.
I think it is time that we consider seriously and urgently means by which we can persuade the Great Powers and the major trading partners to wake up, to stop equivocation and act when there is still time.
We should give the utmost attention to this problem and warn those western imperialist countries which are directly or indirectly helping the clique of Verwoerd to continue its crimes against the people that their policies and actions not only undermine the United Nations but create the conditions for a race war on the African continent. Such a conflict, which we of Africa do not seek, will not be limited to Africa alone. The policies and attitudes of these countries, moreover, may lead them later to line up on the side of the oppressors, as they often do, on some specious excuse or other, for example, fight against Communism for the defence of the "free world."
I call on these countries, to realize the consequences of complicity with the racist oppressors of the African people, to desist now from supporting the South African regime and to join in the sacred fight against racism. The peoples of Africa, the peoples of Asia, all the coloured peoples, and history, will not fail to pass judgement on those who are today, by their action and inactions, contributing to a holocaust compared to which, as Secretary-General U Thant said, the religious wars and the ideological wars of the past would be like mere family quarrels.