The Special Committee on the Policies of Apartheid of the Government of the Republic of South Africa has decided to hold this special and solemn meeting today to commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination because of its particular responsibility, under its mandate, to assist in the struggle against racism in one of the last strongholds of racism and because of the very special significance of this date for all the opponents of apartheid in South Africa.
We meet here today to denounce firmly the myth of racism which has caused untold suffering to humanity and now constitutes a potential source of violent conflict with incalculable consequences for the future of humanity.
It is the purpose of this Organization, born after the bloody world war caused by Nazi racism, to combat racism in all its forms and wherever it occurs because racism is but a myth designed to preserve and perpetuate the illegitimate and enormous privileges of some rapacious and ignorant groups, who are often criminals, organized in societies whose only means of living and survival is the exploitation of irrational emotions diabolically conditioned to serve eternally the cause of the privileged.
At its very first session, on 19 November 1946, the General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring "that it is in the higher interests of humanity to put an immediate end to religious and so-called racial persecution and discrimination," and calling "on the Governments and responsible authorities, to conform both to the letter and to the spirit of the Charter of the United Nations; and to take the most prompt and energetic steps to that end."
Since that time, numerous resolutions have been adopted, numerous committees have been dealing with the problem, but though some progress may perhaps be discerned at present, in the national and international awareness and in the methods of struggle, the situation throughout the world continues to be explosive and the menace of the racist monster remains serious and ever present.
The State of South Africa, a founding member of the United Nations, has, for its part, persistently challenged the Charter and the spirit of the United Nations in matters relating to racial relations, by systematically adopting racist principles and furiously promulgating oppressive and repressive laws against all the people, I repeat, all the people of South Africa, that beautiful country which nature has provided with fabulous material riches and which Providence seems to have cursed with the perverted settlers and their Dutch Reformed Churches of South Africa. The attitude of the South African authorities and of the overwhelming majority of the European population has resulted in the fact that in the two decades since the birth of this Organization, hundreds of thousands of families have been uprooted from their homes in the name of racial separation and resettled like animals. Millions have been jailed in efforts to control the movement of African labour. Strikes by non-Whites have been outlawed or suppressed. Thousands have been jailed in the name of the so-called Immorality Act designed to preserve the so-called "racial purity". Untold families have been subjected to racist concepts which inspired the "Population Registration Act". Thousands have been daily jailed, banned, interned or banished as a result of their opposition to apartheid - in the name of the "Suppression of Communism Act", that legislative fraud which clearly reveals the nature and the spirit of the South African regime.
The Government has incessantly fanned racist prejudices and injected in the hearts of the Whites fear and hatred of everything non-White as a means to preserve its absolute power and satisfy the greed and the avarice of the privileged White minority.
It is this disastrous course of the South African regime which led to the Sharpeville massacre seven years ago - when Africans demonstrating peacefully and in dignity against the hated "pass laws" were mowed down from every corner by the bullets of the insensate and jittery police, consumed by the madness which characterizes the apartheid regime. Within less than a minute, sixty-eight men, women and children were killed and over two hundred wounded.
This tragic event was accompanied and followed by mighty demonstrations all over the country and these were similarly put down by beastly violence and terror.
Sharpeville, many thought, shook the conscience of the world so deeply that the regime of racism would be brought to a swift end. Many Chiefs of State and spiritual leaders and other eminent individuals expressed their grave concern. The Security Council of the United Nations, on 1 April 1960, recognized that the situation if continued might endanger international peace and security, called on the South African regime to abandon apartheid and called for arrangements to uphold adequately the purposes and principles of the Charter.
Seven years have passed since this resolution was adopted by the Security Council at the urgent and pressing request of Asian-African States and with the support of great Powers such as the United States and the Soviet Union.
As we remember the victims of Sharpeville today, we cannot but note that we can discern no substantial change for the better and towards racial democracy but only a constant and unrelenting aggravation of the situation in that country on the brink of disaster.
As the racist regime consolidated its power and sought vengeance on the opposition in the country, the world has seemed desperately powerless. Here in the halls of the United Nations, we witnessed endless debates on the legalities and the appropriateness of effective action while in the big capitals of the so-called free world, powerful economic pressure groups have left no stone unmoved to bail out the regime from economic dependence and to continue merrily to share in the disgusting profits of a ferocious racism which has no precedent in the history of the exploitation of peoples by other peoples.
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, the leader of the Pan Africanist Congress of South Africa which led the demonstration at Sharpeville, was jailed by the racists and still remains in jail on Robben Island under a special law enacted in 1963, on the day he was due to be freed.
Chief Albert Luthuli, that man of peace, who led the burning of the hated passes in 1960, is confined in a small reserve in Natal and banned from all public activity.
Nelson Mandela, who escaped the clutches of the police and organized resistance against that racist regime, was captured in 1962 and condemned to life imprisonment. He is now rotting on Robben Island.
The organizations of these great South Africans are banned and thousands of leaders of non-Whites and some White opponents of apartheid - such as Abram Fischer, that noble Afrikaner - are now in prison or in exile.
Today, it is not enough to remember and mourn the victims of racism. Indeed, it will not be honest to mourn, unless we are prepared to pledge in all sincerity to make all efforts to eradicate the cancer of racism in South Africa and everywhere in the world.
As an African, a son of a continent which has suffered the worst humiliations of racism from slavery to apartheid, let me say emphatically that the peoples of Africa have pledged to put an end to the cancer of racism on the African continent and there is no doubt that they will. They have undertaken to put an end to all forms of racist humiliation against African people everywhere and they will not fail to honour that pledge. They have pledged to close the sad chapter of racism in human history and they will succeed, whatever the sacrifices required.
The struggle that the Africans have undertaken may be long, it will certainly be hard and doubtless trying, but because their cause is just, their course clear and their faith unbreakable, they are certain of victory.
But we call on the White minorities of Africa, while there is still time, to cure themselves of this disease of racism and thus avert a violent conflict which may undermine everything, including the privileges they seek so much to preserve. Let them be assured that Africa, the continent which has been the victim of racism, wishes to enjoy a future of freedom and dignity and does not seek to humiliate or enslave anyone. The so-called White minorities in the midst of the African peoples are welcome if only they irrevocably abjure racism and undertake to live amongst us like equals, in other words like Africans.
It is vital for the future of man that the so-called white nations join in the efforts of the other nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America in order to combat together racism in general, and apartheid in particular, so that we can build a future of concord, peace and fraternity to which we all aspire and which the entire humanity, without any restrictions, deserves - a future in which men, nations and continents will co-operate in equality, dignity and honour.
We appeal particularly to those great industrial nations of the Christian West which bear a grave responsibility for the tragedy in Africa - to beg them to forsake the profits of racism and join us in building this future for the benefit of all.
Let this Sharpeville Day - this International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination - be not merely a day of mourning and recollection, but also and, above all, a day of determination against racism.
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe declared:
"… there is only one race to which we all belong, and that is the human race. In our vocabulary, therefore, the word 'race' as applied to man, has no plural form."
In the same vein, Nelson Mandela said:
"I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
The members of our Organization and the countries which they represent must ponder the words of these two great men of South Africa and must be guided by them. That is the way of salvation for the United Nations and for all mankind.
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