I come here to greet you in the name of the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid of which I have the honour to be Chairman.
I come here to greet you also on behalf of the Government and the people of the Republic of Guinea and on behalf of the Africa of the militants for freedom, dignity and honour.
I come here, above all, to join with you in commemorating the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and in pledging an unrelenting struggle to rid this world of the scourge of racism.
The General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed 21 March - the anniversary of the massacre of peaceful demonstrators against racist laws at Sharpeville, South Africa, in 1960 - as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It recognized that racism was a crime against humanity and that it was essential for the peace and future of the world that this cancer should be eradicated.
I must confess that I am not particularly satisfied with the polite name for this day. What we seek to eliminate is not some kind of sorting out of people or some mild injustice - but the humiliation, the degradation and the oppression that is imposed by privileged groups in the name of race in order to secure and preserve their privileges. It is the inhuman system and ideology which encourages and permits some privileged groups to treat their fellow men as beasts of burden.
In the Republic of Guinea, which has abolished racism in all its forms, we like to call a spade a spade even if that makes us unpopular with some newspapers downtown. We do not beg the oppressors for dignity and freedom - we fight for it and we exercise it, whatever the cost.
I can give a mass of facts and statistics to show what racism means in South Africa - that beautiful country on the southern tip of Africa with its bountiful natural resources.
The Africans in South Africa constitute 68 per cent of the population but account for only 24 per cent of the nation's purchasing power. The Government is spending millions of dollars to show how much they are helping "their blacks" to advance - and they tell us that the share of the Africans will increase to 27 per cent by the year 2,000!
The Government spends some two hundred dollars a year for the education of a White child and less than twenty dollars a year for an African child. What is more, the per capita expenditure for African children has gone down in the last ten years.
There are 40,000 Whites in universities which are reserved for Whites but only 2,750 Africans - even if we include 1,600 who are taking correspondence courses and many others who are unmatriculated students in tribal colleges.
The Whites have one of the highest rates of life expectancy in the world. The life expectancy of the Africans is not even calculated.
The Africans are not allowed to have any land outside the reserves which cover less than one-seventh of the country.
If they want to come out into towns to get jobs, they have to have a pass. They are herded into locations on the outskirts of towns and even their wives cannot visit them without a permit from the magistrate. If an African loses his job or loses his pass, he can be jailed and expelled to the reserve.
More than any statistics and laws, there is the constant humiliation of the Africans in the country built by the labour of the Africans.
As far as the regime is concerned, it is the White man's country outside the reserves and the African is there only to sell his labour.
Dr. Verwoerd once said that the African comes out of the reserve only to sell his labour. There is no question of integration because you do not "integrate" a man with the ox which works the plough. That is the attitude of the racists in power.
The African people have struggled for decades in defence of their dignity and for their rights. They struggled for a long time by non-violent means for elementary rights. Again and again, peaceful demonstrations were held and the Government countered with bullets.
The events at Sharpeville, when 68 men, women and children were killed and over 200 wounded, convinced the African people that they should no more give themselves up peacefully for a massacre by the racists. They decided to fight back with all they have. If African blood has to be shed, let it be shed in the battle for freedom. Let the oppressors know that they cannot shoot like cowards at unarmed men, women and children, and that their blood will be shed too.
This racism in South Africa today carries a grave danger of a violent conflict. The oppressed people will certainly fight, as they did in Kenya, in Algeria and in all the other colonies. If there is a conflict, let there be no doubt that it will not be a local conflict: all of Africa will be on the side of the oppressed, people of South Africa.
The danger of a conflict has been clear since Sharpeville even to those who had their eyes closed before that time. There have been endless debates and resolutions in the United Nations, but there is little effective action and the South African regime has been able to challenge the United Nations with impunity.
For those who followed the struggle against racism in South Africa, it has become clearer and clearer that the forces ranged against this struggle are quite complex. It is not only the Whites in South Africa who profit from racist oppression and wish to preserve it. A great part of the profit finds its way to powerful corporations in elegant offices in London, New York and other centers of international finance, British and American interests alone derive nearly two hundred million dollars a year in profits from South Africa.
More and more, it had become clear that there has to be a struggle against all these forces which feed on racism, which fool the people about the realities in South Africa and which exercise great influence on the policies of the Great Powers which can end the oppression in that country.
As I speak today in the heart of New York, I am compelled to say in all frankness that we are rather disappointed that the United States - this Great Power which bears a tremendous responsibility for the maintenance of peace and strengthening of international co-operation - has been rather half-hearted in dealing with this problem of racism in South Africa.
We have expressed appreciation to the United States for joining an arms embargo against South Africa and for gestures like the recent decision to avoid landing of American sailors in South African ports.
But we are disappointed that the United States has opposed proposals
for effective action, such as economic sanctions against South Africa, without even suggesting any meaningful alternatives. The United States has not even contributed to the United Nations fund for relief to the families of prisoners in South Africa - although the United States voted for the resolution establishing the fund and many American organizations have strongly supported that fund.
Above all, we notice with distress that American economic involvement in South Africa is increasing daily. All the biggest corporations in the United States are pouring investments into South Africa to benefit from the fabulous profits made possible by the oppression of African workers who are not allowed to form trade unions and who are sentenced to long terms in jail if they strike. These corporations are busy helping South African racist propaganda in the United States and using their influence against international action.
The leaders of the African people in South Africa are very much concerned that when there is a conflict in South Africa, these foreign business interests will be on the wrong side and will use their influence to pull their Governments to help the oppressors on one excuse or another. They demand that if big Powers cannot go along with economic sanctions, they should at least disengage themselves so that they will not become the allies of the oppressors.
I wish to pay tribute to the American Committee on Africa and other organizations for their efforts to draw the attention of the American people to the American economic involvement in South Africa and for their campaign to end that involvement.
Mr. Chairman,
Brothers and Sisters,
Whether anyone likes it or not, racism is doomed because the people will not tolerate it. Africa will fight, the whole non-white world will fight - until the cancer of racism is eradicated from Africa and from all over the world.
It is for the oppressors and their friends and allies to decide whether they wish to end racism by peaceful means, or at least by a minimum of violence, or by bloody conflicts which will have incalculable consequences all over the world.
Africa, the victim of racism, has seen much conflict and bloodshed, and it seeks peace. It invites all the peoples and nations of the world to join it in common efforts so that we can avoid even more hatred and violence.
We seek no black oppression to replace white oppression. We seek a future in which a man's worth has nothing to do with the colour of his skin - so that peoples and nations can live together in equality and dignity.
On this solemn day, we invite everyone to join in the struggle to end the scourge of racism - to close that shameful chapter in human history which included slavery, the ivory trade and apartheid - and to build a new world of free men.
Let us, on this day, remember the millions of men, women and children who have been and who still are the victims of the myth of racism. Let us, on this day, pay tribute to the memory of all the martyrs in the struggle against racism - to those who fell in the slave revolts, and in the struggles for the freedom of Asia and Africa and those who are still fighting against racism in Mozambique, Angola, Southern Rhodesia and South Africa and in all other places where racism exists - shall I say, including Harlem?
Let us pledge to continue the struggle for the future for which these martyrs have laid down their lives - for the vision of Nat Turner, of Patrice Lumumba, and Malik El-Shabazz.
Let us join the struggle for which Mangaliso Sobukwe and Nelson Mandela are rotting in jail, for which Chief Albert Luthuli, that winner of Nobel peace prize, has to be confined in a tiny reserve.
We shall overcome and destroy racism, not some day in the distant future, but very soon.
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